By Cate Slabotsky, Bethany High School
If you’re at all involved in pop-culture today you’ve probably heard the word canceled used to describe a human being. In this context being canceled generally refers to a person being shunned by their community or in a broader sense by society. This reaction typically comes as a result of said person doing or saying something deemed problematic or wrong.
Recognizing that someone has done something wrong, and holding them accountable for that action isn’t bad. When someone has done something so irredeemable that it calls for effectively removing their presence from your life, I feel that it can be justifiable. However, there has to be room for people to apologize and grow. Not every bad action calls for exile, and as a society we must look at our intentions when hopping onto cancelation band wagons and ask ourselves, do we truly want to hold people accountable, or do we want to seem more righteous?
One incident that immediately comes to mind regarding cancelation involved Zoë Kravitz and Will Smith. After Smith’s incident at the Oscars explained here by Us Weekly, Kravitz deiced to weigh in on Instagram, in a now deleted post Kravitz questioned why this behavior had been allowed and indirectly condemned Smith for his actions.
The reaction to her post was almost immediate uproar from fans defending Smith flooding in through comments and tweets, and eventually there was a counterattack. As explained by BuzzFeed News an old interview featuring Kravitz began to resurface in which she called a then 14-year-old Jaden Smith (Wills son) “handsome” and made other comments deemed “inappropriate.”
The remarks were seemingly innocent and playful in nature, but they were being used directly against Kravitz in an attempt to portray her as a predator.
With the speed that Kravitz’s comments began circulating, I’m led to believe one of two things occurred. In response to her comments about Smith, people either one, went to Google about any possible scandal Kravitz has had in the past, or two, were already aware of this interview and knew how her comments would be perceived.
Either way the goal was not holding anyone accountable, it was generating drama. People had to either purposefully look for an instance where she had done something wrong, or, what I think is more plausible, remembered the interview and decided to un-earth it to generate buzz. The article that included this interview was released in 2013 how would anyone stumble up-on that information this many years later? It just doesn’t make sense. So that brings me to my point that this attempted cancelation was done in poor faith.
I would have no problem with someone genuinely taking issue with Kravitz’s remarks and simply asking for her to take accountability, but whether or not you actually think her comments warranted that reaction the intentions of those attacking her were less than pure. The motivation behind it all was clearly the prospect of generating more drama. Behaving in that way not only makes a joke out of other attempts to hold people accountable, but if my assumption is right, that the people who released these statements where already aware of them and their problematic nature, then they obviously don’t care about her comments either.
Generally, we should be genuine in our attempts to hold people accountable. Not only do situations like this where the intent is purely to cause drama flood news sites and social media pages with unnecessary falsified claims, but they take away from the integrity of those who seek to actually recognize their wrongdoings and grow.
