March 15, 2021 - 3:04pm
Netflix in India has been ordered to take down Bombay Begums, a series exploring the lives of five Indian women. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, an Indian statutory body, condemned the ‘inappropriate portrayal’ of minors in the series as engaging in casual sex and drug-taking, arguing that it could ‘pollute young minds’.
The takedown contrasts with the furore in Britain and America last year over Netflix’s marketing of the film Cuties, which depicts the sexualisation of young urban French girls in terms that prompted widespread debate. In the case of Cuties, the film stayed available but the marketing was toned down; in the case of Bombay Begums the series was taken down.
The difference between the two stories is a function of how socially acceptable sexual licence is in the West as compared to India. Whereas in the West there’s only enough of a moral consensus against blatantly glamorising underage sexualisation to force cosmetic changes to marketing imagery, the situation is evidently different in India. Here, a major statutory body has intervened to clamp down on media depictions of underage sex.
The recurring protests among Indian women over sexual harassment and rape suggest that it is far from rosy outside the West in terms of sexual culture — but arguments over media representation are contests over what should be, rather than what is. There is a clear difference between the two cultures in terms of what the majority agrees should be the norm regarding sexual behaviour.
It’s become common to think of ‘cancel culture’ as a feature of ‘woke’ moral principles — that is, of the identitarian value system that forms the basis of most instances of ‘cancel culture’ in the West today. Given that passionate moral conviction is far more often a feature of the ‘woke’ today, this is perhaps an easy mistake to make.
But in reality, what gets decried as ‘cancel culture’ is not a noxious feature solely of Left-wing identity politics. Social shaming, mob condemnation, or — as in the case of Bombay Begums — a mix of these things plus the power of institutions, are really the mechanisms whereby most societies police their moral norms.
What’s new is the fickle and ferocious new form this policing is taking, enabled by new digital technology. Anyone opposed to the effect ‘cancel culture’ is having on us should direct their ire not at the illiberal Left — any more than India’s guardians of sexual propriety — but at the power of the internet.
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Subscribe“Anyone opposed to the effect ‘cancel culture’ is having on us should direct their ire not at the illiberal Left — any more than India’s guardians of sexual propriety — but at the power of the internet.”
I’m not sure I’m convinced by that argument. For me, it’s analogous to blaming gun violence on guns rather than the criminals who use them.
The internet undoubtedly facilitates cancel culture, but the extremists of the left are responsible for the aggressive, politically-motivated form of censorship we now call cancel culture. What’s more, I think the ‘woke’ will proudly accept responsibility for their behavior.
Not at all. The Internet could conceivably be used for other things than shouting down the opposition. Guns, on the other hand, are literally tools of violence that have no non-violent uses whatsoever. And conversely, you can have cancel culture without the Internet, but you can not, per definition, have gun violence without guns.
You can’t have internet cancel culture without the internet.
You can’t have gun violence without guns.
You can have cancel culture without the internet
You can have violence without guns.
You can have the internet without internet cancel culture.
You can have guns without gun violence.
The problem is those using the tools for ill means, not the tools themselves.
So what is the purpose of guns (outside of hunting and sport) other than for gun violence? The analogy is that the internet can be made available to all and there is a valid purpose for this and disbenefits from restricting access. There is no valid purpose in making guns available to all other than the purpose of gun violence.
There is deterrence. Some value lies in the possibility of it being used will dissuade from violence sufficiently from the need for it to be used. Certainly not fool proof but in the right hands under the right circumstances has no doubt curtailed much violence and chaos by other means.
Too many ifs
Depends on whether you think that the common understanding of the phrase “gun violence” includes using a gun for valid self-defense. I would argue that “gun violence” is used as a pejorative and that it’s pejorative because it assumes an unjustified aggressive use of firearms. If I shoot a man who broke into my house and is advancing on me, that’s a defensive and not an aggressive act and I would never describe what I (or anyone in a similar situation) did as “gun violence.”
Guns are not “made available to all”.
Exactly. In Britain from the beginning guns were commonly carried by private individuals and no-one gave the practice a monemt’s notice. Dr, Watson in the Holmes stories, ladies in coaches with small handbag pistols. In those days it was quite acceptable to shoot at anyone violently attacking you. It would have seemed rather silly not to.
All that banning hand-guns has achieved is that while most people who would never use them except defensively are prevented from defending themselves, violent criminals do carry them, because they are precisely the people who don’t care about laws of prohibition.
The left ban self-defence because they believe that ‘the poor’ ought to be able to attack ‘the wealthy’ and deprive them of their possessions. It’s nothing to do with worries about ‘safety’. Apparently we’re all supposed to lie prone while violent druggie ‘redistributists’ invade our houses and relieve us of our money and ‘things’. Fortunately, as in a case a while back where a beleaguered householder shot an ‘ethnic’ minority burglar dead (after a targeted, personal campaign of disturbances) the general public are not so inclined.
Precisely. Disarming law abiding people leaves the non law abiding armed and the rest defenseless. What most Brits don’t grasp is that gun violence in the US is not committed by legal gun owners. And it occurs more often in places with very strict gun laws. But the ideology that the defenseless must remain unarmed is strong. Particularly if a woman suggests that people ought to be able to defend themselves.
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered…it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
G K Chesterton
The West is too naive. We think the world is full of good intentions. It is destroying us. The new Religion is Wokeism.
… and the CCP’s MSS – how they must snigger over there in Old Cathay …
As I never tire of saying. ‘wokeism’ is a specific type of old religion, and employs the very same methods as it did. It is literally the resurrection of the ‘crime’ of ‘heresy’.
Very good quote. I wonder when it was written.
It was from Orthodoxy, written in 1908. Plus ca change!
Chesterton was quite prepared to sanction violence or torture’ in the pursuit of ‘the faith’ e.g, Savonarola. This rubs the shine somewhat off him as far as I’m concerned. His weasel explanation of the question is deplorable.
It’s digital bullying. Instead of coming for your lunch money or your bike, these bullies are after your job, your reputation, maybe worse. As always, there is one means of dealing with bullies. It does not call for appeasement or apologies.
The Hyatt people gave a good demonstration of it when some pearl clutchers went crazy because a hotel in the chain rented rooms to people at CPAC. Hyatt professionally suggested that the aggrieved get over themselves. And the “story” went away.
In my experience, those who loudly champion the tenets of inclusion often go to great lengths to exclude others.
Maybe ”Gun Violence” ? High Noon in wokelyville ..Do not forsake ….
Sorry, film censorship on the grounds of moral protection of the young may or may not be a good thing but it is an entirety different beast from cancel culture.
Indeed the comparison seemed odd.
I can’t see why this writer would be using something that happens in India as a ‘foil’ against cancel culture in the west, which is eminently, invariably done by the woke/left/progressive types. India is not the West, so you can’t say ‘it’s not only progressives who act out cancel culture – look at these Indians, they’re conservatives, and they’re doing it!’.
it’s rather ridiculous, to be frank
Probably because cancel culture in the west is a progressive/woke activity.
And in any case the word ‘conservative’, if it has any meaning at all in India, is inappropriate to similar discussions here.
It’s all she’s got.
True and important point. This is the way a society polices its norms, and any society will have things that are accepted without trouble, things that are controversial and may be limited to marginal outlets, and things that can see you banished from polite society and maybe fired. There can be only one overall norm, and groups with different attitudes will always fight over what it should be. We should keep that in mind to maintain some persepctive.
The woke are particularly intolerant of dissenting opinions. But the big point is that we allow a small, loud minority of unelected activists to impose fast and radical changes in the norms we are all supposed to live by.
Your last paragraph deserves a mass of upvotes.
Yes, I think this point needs to be underscored more often. It is true that in the past a person could run afoul of society by, for instance, saying something that was broadly considered racist, and be “cancelled” as a result. So in that sense “cancelling” isn’t new. The difference now is that now the woke elect believe they have the right to impose their ever-changing norms on all of society.
“There can be only one overall norm, and groups with different attitudes will always fight over what it should be.”
A ‘norm’ is a statistical measurement. It is not a ‘moral goal’. The difference with woke is that it is determined that ‘a norm’ (i.e. a practical majority of cases which accidentally emerges) should be an imposed, universal moral ideal. A proper system of law actually does not try to ‘enforce’ norms. as there is no way it can do so. ‘Norms’ arise from varied human practices.
Cancel culture in the west is a liberal/progressive/woke (not liberal in the classical sense) phenomenon. Not a conservative one.
Conservatives want to conserve things (preserve the status quo) – progressives want to change things. Preserving the status quo cancels change – it removes the possibility of change, often with the support of the law.
In the UK parliament at the moment the conservative government is trying to pass laws creating tougher penalties and legal restrictions on the right to protest in the UK. They want to increase the maximum jail term for defacing a public monument to 10 years. What is that if not cancel culture?
It is not cancel culture. You are comparing apples and asteroids.
The new crime bill is a bad thing, but it is a completely different bad thing to cancel culture.
Don’t kid yourself that only conservative governments in the UK have bought in illiberal (in the old, English definition of liberal) policing laws.
Cancel culture is a product of the left in the west, and they are the ones doing – or attempting – 95% of the cancelling.
I’m not kidding myself that only conservative governments have brought in illiberal laws. People will use whatever power they have to promote their view or obtain and maintain advantage – whether that power is manifested by censorship, legislation, ownership and direction of the media or online pile ons.
Cancel culture (which I’m not convinced exists) is as far as it is described a result of people who formerly did not have access to means of mass communication finding they have that access and using it to promote their view and obtain or maintain advantage.
For example, an editorial in The Times or a headline in The Sun used to be the way opinions were promoted, opponents pilloried, (mis)information communicated and advantage was obtained.
The owners of The Times or The Sun had the power to cancel. That power has been diffused due to the internet. As the left generally has less formal or statutory power, and owns fewer traditional media outlets then those on the left appear to be the ones doing the cancelling. In reality the left is just reaching a wider audience than it used to through the Socialist Worker or Morning Star by making use of an alternative means of communication and finding lots of people agree with it. The right will eventually catch up and will continue to use all of the cancellation powers at its disposal within the media, judiciary and government as well.
Thank you. Mark is always a bit off the mark. (Pun intended)
Well DONT try to change Uk Street names,Dispose of Statues..etc….The bill is flawed and can be viewed As ‘Misandrist’ giving Tory Succour to Green idiot jenny Jones wish to have permanent lockdown or curfews on the Male sex… The Guardian was founded by Slave supporting John Edward Taylor,why isn’t it cancelled or Mentioned in mSM?
I sort of agree that it is cancel culture. But, to use your argument, if I go onto the internet and say, “All people who are born male, will always be male and will die male”. Is that also OK?
“Conservatives want to conserve things (preserve the status quo)”
Actually this is not true. Conservatism is actually not a positive creed at all. It relies on a reluctance to change things, where there is no need. That is defintely not the same thing as preserving the ‘status quo’, which might be more correctly applied to e.g. ‘Remainers’, whose reason for staying in the EU basically amounted to the fact that ‘well, we’re already there’. The proposal for a second referendum was supposed to be ‘Remain (whatever)’ versus a need for Leavers to offer wholesale justifications of different strategies, something which Remainers excused themselves from. That is ‘status quo’-ism.
No, the current manifestation of cancel culture is a liberal/progressive/woke. McCarthyism was a manifestation of the same phenomenon that was most assuredly not liberal/progressive/woke
McCarthyism had the backing of the State, it was official state policy and people went to prison because of it. That is not the same phenomenon as people using the internet to promote their views.
McCarthyism wasn’t wrong because it had the backing of the state; it was wrong in spite of that. It would have been wrong even if it didn’t have state backing and was just an angry mob demanding that communists and communist sympathisers be excised from any and all institutions, materials seized or destroyed.
People promoting their views isn’t a problem. That isn’t what cancel culture is about. Cancel culture is the phenomenon of some people demanding that other people not be allowed to voice views, publish books or otherwise have any visibility in public life.
Saying “I think that person is a t**t and I’m not gonna listen to them/buy their book” is not cancel culture. Saying “I think that person is a t**t and they shouldn’t be allowed to speak/get that book published” is. It’s the difference between saying “I’m not gonna listen” and “No one else should be allowed to listen”.
Various Clever Progressive like Orson Welles or Even Republican Gary Cooper ( he demanded blacklisted carl Foreman be Put back on Writing ”High Noon” 1952 Screenplay or he’d walk) toyed with the ignorance of McCarthy committee
Unless you find communism to be liberal/progressive, it didn’t amount to conservatives trying to cancel progressives/liberals. But nice try.
I’m not a proponent for or apologist for McCarthyism, but at least the fears that caused it were not a paranoid delusion (the Overton window was swinging wildly left, as evidenced by where we are now). Whereas with modern leftist cancel culture fears of “racism” are paranoid and delusional, in a society where by every objective measure we are far less racist than we were a generation or two ago. (Just one example 3 of my closest friends and one of my brothers are in “mixed race” marriages quite happily, all with well adjusted and wonderful kids, whereas in my parents generation a mixed race marriage was unthinkable and I know of a total of zero in a huge circle of friends they had.) I think there is clearly a parallel between McCarthyism and where we are now, the only difference is that the McCarthy-ites zealotry had grounding in reality.
I pointed that out last week blog…..Woke, conservative ,Liberal, Socialism,Communism,Fascism Are Spiritless Political movements..
I find this writer using India and their culture, and thus religion and, well, Race, as a tool in her woke argument a bit disturbing. Does she know India first hand? Can she even begin to comprehend a culture and society outside her middle class (or working class, same thing) British world? I very much doubt she can with this article.
This sort of amazing compairsion is the exact tool used by the woke to attack and erase the past. That the past is not the same as now means the past is wrong, as this little world of lefty/liberalism is the only reality, and thus the yard stick to measure all reality with. (sorry, meter stick as Britain is moved on from those times.)
Thank you Mary. I have just joined Unherd today and already a thought provoking article! I think you are right to remind us that organisations on both sides of the political debate will always seek to take opportunities to further their cause / progress their interests. That said, i don’t think that the action taken by the commission for the protection of child rights in India against Netflix is necessarily (i am not sure of the details of the case) equitable with “cancel culture”. For example, as well as cancelling the show, did the body also lobby for consumers to boycott Netflix? Did the body seek to present employees of Netflix as immoral individuals? Was Netflix (or anyone else for that matter) able to raise an objection or make a counter argument to the government body openly and without fear of severe negative consequence? As i say i am not familiar with the details of the case in question….but without having answers to some of these questions i wouldn’t be comfortable to class it on a par with cancel culture. To me it may well be simply a judgement call from an organisation operating within very different cultural circumstances to ours….and an unfavourable call (depending on what side of the debate you sit on) doesn’t to me automatically equate to an attempt to “cancel” the opposition point of view.
Well, there would not be any need to lobby for a consumer boycott. An official government body (with Narendra Modi behind it), would presumably have the power to force Netflix to comply. ‘Cancel culture’ only results to boycotts because they do not have that kind of power – officially.
I think there is more to it. A body with the executive power you allude to has 2 choices. One would be to force compliance. The other would be to force compliance AND to also seek to try to stop the thought or action that it opposes from ever rearing its head again by labelling it as an immoral concept…and it’s this second course that to me moves any given scenario into “cancel” territory. I don’t see the evidence in this Indian example of scenario 2.
I am not so sure. Is not the Indian government trying to suppress the ‘thought and action’ of underage sex. by removing films with the wrong message? Exactly because they think it is an ‘immoral concept’? I will grant that there are dfferences – and I do find the ‘cancel culture’ particularly intolerant and vicious. But I think there is merit in seeing both approaches as ways to achieve similar goals, i.e. to impose/maintain a particular set ofpublic norms.
I agree with you to an extent. Yes, they are trying to suppress the thought and action as you say. And, it’s probably (although not for certain) that this is because they deem it immoral. But what I’m wrestling with is that this logic could be applied to every single decision made by any individual or organisation where the topic in question had moral considerations (which in the case of a body managing media content would be many). And I dont believe that every single decision or judgement made by a body can automatically equate to cancelling. That said it’s a tough task to work out exactly where to draw the line. At present I think it’s where the decision maker doesn’t even accept that there is a credible opposing view and therefore seeks to explicitly eviscerate the opposition. But I would be interested in other views on this.
Cancel culture is special in its intolerance and take-no-prisoners approach. State press regulation is generally a matter of policing tone, details, … with a much softer boundary, as it were. But societies do have ideas that are quite strongly rejected. Paedophilia, for instance. Slavery. FGM. Neo-nazis. Rape. What I think Mary Hartington is saying (and what I agree with) is that having a norm for what is good, discouraged, or beyond the pale is a general thing, not limited to the woke. The difference is in how much space is allowed to various opinions, how zealously small infractions are punished, who sets the rules, and how large fraction of the population you need before an opinion becomes set in stone, or at least too established to ban.
In the end it may be a question of degree; but then I would have no hesitation in choosing Singapore over North Korea, even if they only differ by their degree of authoritarianism.
I agree with you. In the US, left wing media and politicians specifically try to shut down any view that opposes their own. They not only do not want to hear it themselves (which is fine) , they don’t want anyone else to hear it either. Even the US military recently tried to cancel a right wing talk show host for opposing a military focus on combat uniforms for pregnant women and hairstyle regulations, rather than military readiness. Whether you agree with that view or not, there is nothing about it that should mean that no one may hear it. Since when does the US military spout political views?
The US Military by its very existence spouts political views. On a more practical level by lobbying for more funding it spouts political views. By obeying instructions to staff Guantanamo Bay it spouted political views.
No, the US military is not political. Period. Nor should it be. At least until now. But they have apologized for going after a journalist.
in UK church,Judiciary,Police Commissioners,BBC ,speak with forked tongue,They should nOT be Politically motivated or biased
Well the BBC is a media outlet and I have no experience of the others but in the US the military does not take on journalists. It does not go after people who have criticized the military.
India probably is trying to take the concept of underage sex out of TV series. I’m an old git and I’m pretty sure underage sex has been going on as long as I’ve been alive. As proof my sister became pregnant whilst at school. Pretty sure sex was involved somewhere along the line.
However, do I believe that this should be portrayed on TV and in films – no. Do I think India banning it is cancel culture – again no. Maybe they’re just trying to uphold their moral standards rather than sink to the anything goes level we aspire to.
Well, yes. Most of us can still remember when it was conservatives who tried to censor everything in the West, too. Much of the bitterness in the cancel culture debates comes not from conservatives but from long-term liberals who still believe in all the pro-free-speech arguments they used back when they were fighting pearl-clutching fundamentalists, and who feel justifiably betrayed by the fact that it’s their former allies who are now trying to shut them up.
When did conservatives try to censor everything in the west?
When I was young, books (of some literary merit) were banned. Some books by English authors were published in places like Paris to get around the bans. There was a famous court case in 1960 about Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Was it illegal to own a copy? Amazon won’t sell books with a conservative viewpoint. But does that amount to “censoring everything”? Not in my view.
Someone needs to learn the difference between censorship and cancel culture.
India is a very conservative country, so I am not exactly shocked that they would censor a show that includes “casual sex and drug taking”.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the thing people are talking about when they refer to cancel culture.
That last sentence: It’s like blaming the gun instead of the person pulling the trigger. A complete cop-out from responsibility. It is after all PEOPLE (predominantly the illiberal left) that drive cancel culture, rallying support using the MEDIUM of the internet.
Cancel culture is hunting down people in their workplace and pressuring their employer to sack them because of something they Tweeted or posted , or something they said which has since been tweeted or posted by someone else. That’s it.
I don’t pretend to know how things are in India, but unless all the people associated with the banned television show are themselves banned as a result of a conservative government action, dropped by their agents with no further hope of employment in their field or probably in any decent job, with permanent loss of friends and even family, with limited prospects for further higher education, with the possible removal of their prior films and writings, and with a government-instigated removal of their right to post on social media—then the full horror of the modern, Leftist-led cancel culture has not been visited upon them.
I suspect that those who utilise cancel culture are those who have the ear of and are supported by whoever has power and runs the mechanisms of establishment in their domain.
Since the 1960s the area of what is socially acceptable sexual licence has widened to the point where it is admissible to produce films like “Cuties” and “Bombay Begums”. If we assume that films portray society as it is then underage sex is probably gathering momentum. It is good the brakes have been put on these two films. The hope is that it represents a line beyond which not even the West will stray. But this must be accompanied by a religious and moral revival which will lead to a transformation of hearts,minds, attitudes and behaviour amongst enough of the population to begin tipping the balance. Only then will the slide toward the social acceptance of underage sex, and then child pornography and then paedophile activity be stopped.
Been thinking a lot more about online reality and offline reality recently and how the mental states generated online are internalised and then transposed into offline reality.
Essentially, I think the online reality is psychologically creating a deeper experience of autonomous mental bubbles where perceptions created within online reality are increasingly mismatched with offline reality.
I think the effect is even deeper forms of atomisation and anomie as anonymous online interactions generates an anxiety of anonymous offline interactions.
An example of right wing cancel culture right here in the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/17/why-cant-britain-handle-the-truth-about-winston-churchill
The internet is a tool, and while it is tempting to dismiss the illiberal left as tool, they are people and are more to blame than any tool
Would ‘Mumbai Madams’ have been a more acceptable title?
… the use of the W word marks capitulation. W*ke sounds nicely illiterate and it’s monosyllable chimes well with favoured leftist expletive and ordure words which are spewed in such profusion at favoured targets,
“Identitarian”? Really? The term “cancel culture” is just another way for the right to parlay its “political correctness” tirades into more of what we have had with Trump and the right in the US. I think the expectation is that parroting “cancel culture”, which even Governor Cuomo cited for his woes, will allow the nasty racist, misogynist right to have an open road too continue its viciousness. What is on tap for this foolish term of “identitarian” is to continue the assault on “identity” politics, which is a term designed to hide the fact that the most prevalent identity in our worlds is whiteness but apparently that is not a part fo “identitarian”. Spare me, please.
You Twerp Trump was nOT right or left wing, 1) He is Not senile like his dopey successor 2) he drained the Swamp he refused to appoint Mitt romney,because of his Slimy two faced ‘Support’ ie slippery slope & Political career same Mitch McConnell 3) he upped Finances of Black &hispanic workers and Blue collar workers by Tax Cuts 4) He was a peacenik he Obtained Peace Agreements in North korea,Middle East, he brought troops home .Biden bombed Syria within two weeks of his dubious ”Victory”and 14 other countries with O’bomberin 2008-16
Whatever else you can accuse Trump of, cancel culture isn’t it.