I love South Park. I have since I was 14, back when it was brand new. An episode that I’ve been thinking of a lot lately shares its title with the title of today’s column.
In the episode, we learn that planet Earth and all life on it exists because it is a reality TV show that is a hit in the rest of the universe. Everyone on other planets has been tuning in to watch “Earth,” watching human history for entertainment. During the episode, humanity achieves world peace, and this instigates global disaster.
See, the problem is that the conflicts on planet Earth are what make the reality show “Earth” interesting to the rest of the universe. If human beings start living in peace and harmony, the rest of the universe will stop watching the show and “Earth” will be cancelled. And if “Earth” is cancelled, the network that shows it will destroy the planet Earth and all life on it, since it has no reason to exist without the show.
By the end of the episode, human beings learn that living in a global peace will bring about humanity’s extinction, whereas continuing to fight one another will keep the species alive.
Dark, isn’t it?
Well, I thought it was funny. But I have a really, really dark sense of humor.
As far as I know, Earth isn’t getting cancelled any time soon, but lots of other things and people have found themselves cancelled lately. The emergent phenomenon of cancel culture has created a lot of controversy lately, as well as ended more than a few careers. But if you think about it, it’s not really as new as most people seem to think it is.
I first encountered cancel culture when I was a kid, and that’s because I was brought into some adults’ effort to cancel something. The more I look back on it as an adult, the more utterly strange it seems in retrospect.
I went to a Christian elementary school, and in 1995, the film “Showgirls” was released. It was playing at one of the local movie theaters, and our school’s administration decided to stage a protest. Part of the protest was to encourage people to boycott the movie theater and encourage others to do so, threatening to put the movie theater out of business if they didn’t cancel screenings of the offending flick. But this is where it gets weird, at least to me.
The only reason I knew this was happening is because the school’s administration made all of us kids participate in the protest by signing a petition against the movie theater and its decision to show “Showgirls” and instructed us to tell our parents they were expected to participate as well. As a part of bringing us into the protest, the school’s administration told all of us about strippers. I didn’t know what a stripper was. It was my first time hearing about them.
We were even shown a (admittedly black and white) picture of the movie poster, which boasted a very scantily clad Elizabeth Berkley. I was 11 and hadn’t started noticing girls yet, so I didn’t appreciate the poster in the same way that the boys a couple of years older than me probably did. But it still made an impression on me.
And so, I can honestly say that I first learned about strippers at Christian school when I was 11 years old, from the school administration (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type, but here we are.).
Not may folks can say that, I bet. It’s a weird thing to be able to say about yourself. But it is nonetheless true. Had I not been enrolled in Christian school that year, I probably would not have learned about strippers from school authorities, let alone been shown my first picture of one. The more I’ve thought about that, the more it occurs to me how bizarre it is. Something tells me I’m not the only one. I mean, that is weird, right?
I am certain that the intention of the people running the school was to get that movie taken out of the theater, not to unthinkingly introduce an entire elementary school of Christian children to the idea of strippers, but they wound up doing just that.
So that, Faithful Reader, was my first foray into cancel culture.
As you can see, it’s been around for quite a while.
And now, like then, I think the results are probably mixed. There will probably be a few unintended consequences.
Caleb Baumgardner is a local attorney. He can be reached at [email protected].