Kevin Spacey Is Uncancelled, But Has He Learned Anything?
Even Cancel Culture's victims are reluctant to talk about it
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The uncancelling of Kevin Spacey just entered a new chapter.
After being accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, Netflix dropped the two-time Oscar winner from the hit series House of Cards, and Spacey suffered a professional death. Then, in 2022, he was found not liable in a New York lawsuit. The next year a London jury acquitted him on sexual assault charges. And now the industry that has shunned him for so long, not only invited him back to one of its swankiest film festivals, it presented him with an award.
When the American Beauty star recently took to the stage at the Cannes Film Festival in France, he quipped, “Who would have ever thought that honoring someone who has been exonerated in every courtroom he’s ever walked into would be thought of as a brave idea. But here we are.”
Spacey went on to warn of the dangers of blacklists and cancellations. He harkened back to the mid 20th Century:
It was a long, long time ago, but we have to think about the pushback [Kirk Douglas] received after he made the brave decision to stand up for fellow colleague, two-time Oscar winning screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted from 1947-1960. He was blacklisted. Blacklisted, do we know what that means? He couldn’t find work in Hollywood for 13 years.
But even after he was warned if he tried to hire Trumbo as the credited screenwriter for Spartacus in 1960, he’d be called a Commie lover, and his career and professional status would be canceled, Kirk Douglas took the risk, and would later say, and I won’t do my Kirk Douglas impression, but he said this, “It’s easier for us actors to play the heroes on screen. We get to fight the bad guys and stand up for justice. But in real life, the choices are not always so clear. There are times when one has to stand up for principle.”
Spacey continued, “I’ve learned a lot from history — it often repeats itself. The Blacklist was a terrible time in our history, so let’s hope that it never happens again.”1
Why would Spacey ask audience members to recall something that happened “a long, long time ago”?
If he really wants the threat to strike them as real, as something that could happen today, wouldn’t it be better to reference a more recent example?
Now if only there were a more recent example. Let’s strain our memories and figure out if we might be able to find one. Hmmm. I wonder if there might have been some kind of contemporary cultural development in which people were routinely cancelled.
Oh wait, how about this one?
How about Cancel Culture!
You know, that tsunami of paranoia that destroyed careers, open inquiry, and even led to many deaths?
You know, the one that began about a decade ago, and still claims victims today?
You know, the very same force that hit Spacey?