The strange case of Ellie Kemper's debutante ball shows cancel culture at the intersection of silly and sinister.
First, some background on Kemper. She's a comedic actress who first leapt to prominence in the latter half of The Office's run (US edition) as kindhearted ditz Erin Hannon. When that was done she played the title role on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a sitcom about a former cult member and implied sex slave. While I've only seen clips, few things could be funnier than the fact that NBC picked it up for its opening season, then passed it onto Netflix in a blind panic before it ever aired when they realized what they'd signed on for.
The controversy or "controversy" of the past couple of days goes back to her Clinton-era teens, when she was crowned at some high society function that--if you traced it all the way back to its roots--used to be segregated. Wait until you hear about a little something called the United States of America.
The good news is that as cancellations go, this one thus far looks to be a bust. None of the high-profile actors/producers/etc. that Kemper has worked with have stepped forward to denounce her or apologize for associating with her. She hasn't tearfully checked herself into whiteness rehab to reflect on her privilege. If she's not on Twitter it's conceivable she's blissfully ignorant the whole thing happened.
As an X-ray into the psychology of wokeness, however, it's educational. The AV Club reading this as Kemper having a "racist past" and Kemper being called a "KKK princess" stem about entirely from her hometown being St. Louis, Missouri. Missouri was a slave state, albeit one that fought on the Union side in the Civil War. And it's hard to deny that we in the North look at the South/border states with an unearned sense of superiority. Which is to say that in both regions football is huge, water is wet, and debutante balls are kitschy, but it's much easier for us to project evil qualities on all these things if they're taking place below the Mason-Dixon line (as commonly accepted.)
Partisan attitudes following the migration of posh Rockefeller Republicans into the Democratic coalition may have exacerbated this tendency. And of course there is a huge overlap between Southern Americans and black Americans, which suggests how much alleged antiracism consists of condescension toward the latter.
As implied, I live in a Northeastern state, and there are a lot of things I like about it, such as brilliant fall foliage and a shorter mosquito season. This kind of snooty provincialism, though, I could do without.
2 comments:
Cancel culture and wokeism are two sides of a slimey coin that should have been left untouched when it was found in a gutter. A phenomen that poisons our culture, the creepiest thing about 'wokeism' is that it isn't awake, aware or even conscious. The Tablet article you linked to was a good one and the statement that really struck me as being most relevant to our current situation was this one:
'Many early American progressives believed that U.S. society was threatened from above by rapacious capitalists and from below by the ignorant, dangerous masses. What was needed was a third way between plutocracy and mobocracy—a planned society guided from above by highly educated, nonpartisan, altruistic experts informed by the truths of social science.'
Now we have a large percentage of educated young people who, although they never learned much about critical thinking or logic, were hired by institutions that operated on different principles than these fledglings who had always been kept safe were ready to accept. Happily for them the web and social media in particular were gearing up to give them a huge platform the like of which had never been available before. Essentially wokeism is weaponized personal grievances masquerading as a genuine social concern. The ones who didn't get prestigious jobs at least have twitter as a podium and the lucky ones get to be influencers.
I happened across this Unherd interview with a fascinating young writer, Chloe Valdary, who discusses her views about why wokeism isn't a religion.
ps: This time I'm not going to quote you to yourself, but you did get some very amusing lines here.
You're not wrong. I go back and forth as to whether they're genuinely two different things or two different names for the same thing. What's true in either case is that something in our culture has turned so that people feel comfortable destroying each other for little or nothing. It's a phase I hope doesn't last long.
There are, I think, lots of people who may be naturally bright and who think that they're highly educated, and yet much of the "education" they've received is really indoctrination. (Might not be a coincidence that the demand to "educate yourself" is thrown around so much.) As to wokeism being "weaponized personal grievances", yes but/and the way they get weaponized provides a strange story in itself. This is kind of a deep-dive history of one aspect of it, entertaining and disturbing at the same time.
I've read a little by and about Chloe Valdary. It's a good thing that some people are dedicated to thinking forward outside of the usual categories.
And I thank you again for reading and appreciating.
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