Cancel culture and wokeness aren't a problem. They never were.

A candid snapshot of the people who think "cancel culture" is the biggest problem facing society today

The Scary Movie 6 trailer has irritated me.

Ever since I saw a leaked print of it on YouTube last Friday, this trailer and its idea of "transgressive" humor have persistently frustrated me. Scary Movie 6's inaugural piece of marketing begins with a stupid joke where a stabbed person corrects an onlooker by infuratingly saying "my pronouns are they/them!" Later, the trailer concludes with a tagline declaring "there are no safe spaces" when it comes to this tired legacy sequel.

For starters, these jokes are incredibly tired. Stupid pronoun gags have been run into the ground for over ten years. Meanwhile, the 2017 film The Hitman's Bodyguard already had a poster featuring the tagline "Get Triggered" while that same year's Bright was released with a production company entitled "Trigger Warning Entertianment." The right-wing paranoia documentary No Safe Spaces was released in December 2018. In short: are we still doing lampoonings of mid-2010s left-leaning college terminology? At least move on to new terms like ACAB or something. 

Laziness is one thing. What really sent my frustration into overdrive was Scary Movie 6 leading man and writer Marlon Wayans yesterday declaring that this film intends to "[bring back comedy to the way it used to be...the only way to do that is to cancel the cancel culture." That's the most important mission as America drops bombs on Iranian citizens, Dallas, Texas engages in voter suppression, and Kansas strips trans people of their rights. The priorities of the bourgeoisie are cool. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" in the modern world is "Pay not attention to how much power the wealthy weild, instead get mad at nebulous 'cancel culture' concepts and gay people!"

It's time for a Lisa Laman screed. It's time for this idiotic "cancel culture" boogeyman nonsense to die. Just because rich people with microphones and Netflix comedy specials keep saying "censorship is everywhere!" doesn't make it so.

"Wokeness" Never Took Over Culture

Human beings are shaped by narratives. We organize history, people's careers, artistic mediums, and so much more into easily digestible passages of time. "A narrative has begun cropping up. The Age of Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution. Recently, there's been a growing perception that an "era of political correctness" has come to an end. This perception hinges on the idea that, circa. 2014 or 2015, college students and their trigger warnings/safe spaces/pronouns ushered in a new age of excessive sensitivity. The "powers that be" "suppressed" all speech, you just couldn't say anything anymore!

Donald Trump winning the popular vote in 2024 meant that "woke is dead." The r-word suddenly came back into general society. Pronouns in emails from federal employees have been banned. High-profile articles have hammered home being progressive is passe. Now comedy can return! Scary Movie 6 is possible!

In reality, none of this is true. Just keeping our gaze restricted to the film field for a moment (since Scary Movie 6 inspired this rant), but in this industry, systemic hostility towards marginalized identities hasn't budged. No matter how many pieces The New York Times writes lamenting how "out of control" woke college students are (as if these individuals under 25 can impact public policy), the reality is that long-standing challenges for trans and non-white people have endured in the last decade.

Heck, even the term "woke" or "diverse" were seen as "icky" by Hollywood brass. During 2015-2021, when Hollywood was supposedly "shoving diversity down people's throats", major studios kept doing everything possible to not use words or depict oppressed communities that could "offend" right-wingers. 

In 2017, Amy Pascal reassured an interviewer that Spider-Man: Homecoming wouldn't be "annoying" with its diverse cast. Former 20th Century Fox head Stacy Snider scrambled to make excuses for why more women weren't directing studio films. Netflix shelled out so much money to turn J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy into a movie, while feature films about Marsha P. Johnson, Angela Davis, or other non-white historical figures languished in development. In early 2022, Pixar artists alleged that Disney had constantly cut and censored queer material from this animation studio's films. Meanwhile, Nimona's creative team has alleged that, when the project was set up at Disney, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn and other Mouse House brass were very hostile towards the film's queer material.

Meanwhile, as late as 2019, theatrical comedies like Little and Shaft were throwing in transphobic jokes for cheap laughs. South Park, the show now being vomit-inducingly heralded as some sort of "bastion" of transgressive comedy (they said Donald Trump was fat!!), was centering whole episodes on mocking trans athletes that same year. Joker director Todd Phillips, responsible for so many homophobic and transphobic jokes in his Hangover films, was whining about how "wokeness killed comedy" movies. In early 2019, conservative producer Dallas Sonnier (who now works on "films" and "TV shows" for The Daily Wire) dismissed any complaints of right-wing or fascist tendencies in his films, saying "people are too quick to be offended right now." We'll come back to that phrase later. 

I'm not seeing a lot of "cancel culture" ruining lives or keeping careers down or suddenly unleashing an avalanche of queer/PoC/disabled representation. I do see, however, a lot of rich people bitching about how it's less socially acceptable to say certain slurs now or how someone was critical of them on Twitter. I see streaming platforms like Netflix handing over millions to transphobic comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais while failing to foster trans voices. I see major publications like The Hollywood Reporter acting like people watching "secret" screenings of new Woody Allen movies is a "revolutionary" act. Jesus Christ, you're not Cassian Andor/a French 75 member because you want to watch new features from an alleged sexual predator. I see multiple major entertainment companies firing countless executives of color in the summer of 2023 and, in the case of WarnerDiscovery, summer 2022 (long before Trump retook office). 

Claiming "cancel culture" has been some "grave threat" to "free speech" or "the entertainment industry" isn't just incorrect. It's ludicrously out of touch with reality. The era where Tim Allen claimed conservative celebrities were being targeted like Jewish people during the Holocaust was instead an era tragically like any other. Specifically, the class-based status quo remained the same, and opportunities for marginalized voices were few and far between. To boot, institutional forces and people upholding those forces continued to demonize any ideology or communities that could challenge capitalism and white supremacy.

The American Entertainment Industry Isn't "Liberal". It Suppreses Disenfranchised Voices

Despite all the "liberal Hollywood" bashing, the American entertainment industry is largely a centrist, right-leaning entity. After all, it's a capitalist industry run by massive corporations. Openly conservative folks like Jerry Bruckheimer are among the most prolific figures in Hollywood. Thus, much of the American media skewers "political correctness" and ignores marginalized lives. Even before the mid-2010s, this was true with projects like 90s comedy PCU. After all, it's better to make progressive political figures or "overly sensitive" college kids antagonists rather than rich people destroying the world or racists that divide the working class.

This is an extension of far worse manifestations of Hollywood depicting marginalized groups as ominous boogeymen that must be either slaughtered or assimilated. White settlers committed a genocide against America's indigenous people. Yet the default norm for Western movies (both classic and modern) is to depict indigenous individuals as monsters that only white men settlers can properly vanquish. Women advocating for themselves or equality are depicted as shrews or nags that need to be domesticated. Countless action films, like the Death Wish sequels, only have room for non-white faces when they can be depicted as terrifying figures white male protaganists can slaughter. While Ronald Reagan was overseeing a genocide of gay people and normalizing cruel stereotypes about Black people, action films reassured viewers that the REAL threat to the world was poor Black and brown people.

Power structures are to be revered. Any populations or rhetoric threatening white supremacy and the bourgeoisie must be eliminated. This is a microcosm of America as a capitalist society and who that society prioritizes. These priorities are how we get HUAC and its dehumanization of communists. This is how we get Paramount+ housing TV shows lionizing Israel border officers while Palestinian cinema can't get major U.S. distribution. Barack Obama will tsk-tsk Ferguson protestors who damage property while approving drone strikes that killed women and children. Joe Biden will label all pro-Palestine protests as "anti-semetic" while turning a blind eye to genocide and refusing to get into the trenches of condemning transphobic legislation.

Protect the status quo. Suppress challengers to the white supremacist and capitalist power structures. These are American norms that inevitably infiltrate our movies and media. Because of that infiltration, tired jokes about "college students are so SENSITIVE" that were tired in Where's the Money nine years ago or mockeries of people existing outside of the gender binary are still being trotted out like they're fresh. 

It's also why "cancel culture" has become a go-to crutch and cloud to yell at for old comedians who hate that language is always evolving. Oh no, privileged people might suffer consequences for being assholes, what a terrible idea. That very concept is so terrifying that it's warped the brains of most comedians and media executives. They don't exist in a world where Louie C.K. quickly returned to making stand-up specials after allegations about him broke or David O. Russell got $80 million to make a new movie in 2022. They also don't exist in worlds with actual challenges (like how A.I. data centers are adversely impacting your hometown, legislation targeting your existence, etc.), so "cancel culture" occupies their every thought, every moment. Plus, it provides a "Goliath" that uber-wealthy comedians can pretend they're the "David" to. 

It's out of step with reality...but then again, isn't so much of American society built on such warped visions of the real world?

Comedy Movies Didn't Vanish Because of Cancel Culture

Let's wrap this up (and wind down my excessive ramblings) by returning to Marlon Wayans. Specifically, his quote about how "bringing comedy back." It's true, theatrical comedy movies have dwindled in quantity in the last eight years. That's not because of college students or non-binary people existing, surprise surprise. Per usual, it has to do with wealthy executives and Silicon Valley. In the mid-2010s, studios began eschewing mid-budget films of all genres and began focusing just on blockbusters. Once the COVID-19 pandemic closed down theaters, theatrical studios sent their comedies once set to hit theaters in 2020 (The Lovebirds, Coming 2 America, Happiest Season, My Spy, Bad Trip, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, etc.) to streamers for some easy cash.

The perception was that the big-budget superhero movies, with all their spectacle, would be easier sells to people who hadn't returned to the theater in over a year. Grounded comedies, they TOTALLY belong on your iPad. Thus, even a gem like Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar was banished to premium-video-on-demand in February 2021. 

Once all North American theaters reopened in March 2021, studios opted to eschew "risky" theatrical comedies in favor of more "reliable" theatrical fare. Given that the surviving studios were releasing fewer films (and studios that previously released tons of comedies, like 20th Century Fox, were gone), there were fewer chances for comedy movies in theaters. Given that Paramount, Warner Bros., and other labels were all set to release tons of theatrical comedies in 2020, it's clear "cancel culture" didn't temporarily kill the theatrical comedy. Streaming executives dangling lots of money and the terrifying consolidation of the film industry made that possible.

Ah, but those forces are terrifying and immense. It's much easier to pin everything on trans people, immigrants, or "people being too sensitive these days," the go-to refrain of rich white people who're made they can't drop the N-word whenever they want. So the cancel culture myth persists. The most vulnerable people become scapegoats. A new study dropped this week, suggesting Black trans women are at the center of modern-day lynchings. There's also that group chat that just leaked of Miami Republicans gleefully trading anti-Semitic, racist, and disgusting verbiage. Elon Musk's happily dropping Nazi salutes in public...but the biggest threat is "they/them" pronouns.

Three years before she directed the anarchic comedy gem The People's Joker, writer/director/editor Vera Drew was interviewed by Them and asked about stand-up comics whining "about how comedy needs to be free to make fun of marginilized people or it's no longer 'challenging'." I'll let her words do the talking from here: 

"Well, for starters, I think that racism and transphobia are not challenging comedy at all. Especially when racism is so deeply ingrained in every institution imaginable. There’s nothing more mainstream than racism and transphobia. So relying on those as a crutch in your comedy is not edgy or interesting. 

I’ve definitely heard some pretty funny off-color jokes in my day, but generally speaking, it’s usually coming from a place of punching up and not punching down. I think that if you’re doing the kind of comedy that really calls people out or is mocking people or taking them down a peg, it shouldn’t be towards marginalized groups, because we’re already put down in the mainstream. 

It should be more about stripping power from corrupt people and the people who are taking advantage of those marginalized groups...I have yet to hear a cisgender comedian tell a joke about trans people that makes me laugh. They’re always so lazy and trite and just a bummer."

You're not transgressive or funny because you're transphobic or railing against cancel culture. It's not even that it's offensive...it's that you're just rehashing comedy beats that were tired in 2015. Congratulations, your punchlines could've been delivered in 1955, aren't you special. I've been hearing privileged people whine about "cancel culture," "Pronouns," "safe spaces," and all this shit for over a decade and I'm. So. Sick. Of. It. If you're so oppressed, with your multi-million dollar Netflix deals and constant elevation in the pop culture landscape, then why don't you shut the fuck up? Join the real world, where people of all genders, nationalities, ethnicities, and backgrounds are fighting against actual menaces to humanity, like white supremacy, fascism, and colonialism. Just for a few seconds, leave your fantasy world where some made-up 20-year-old college student will sniper you on sight if you don't know every Ethel Caine song by heart.

Also, instead of giving even more attention to tantrums about "cancel culture" and "wokeness" from Todd Phillips, Marlon Wayans, and other dinguses, why don't we appreciate the great comedy movies of the 2020s so far? The aforementioned People's Joker is a chaotic middle finger to corporate America, rife with hysterical visual imagination. Hundreds of Beavers is my favorite movie (of any genre) of 2024 for a reason. That movies a rib-tickling miracle, complete with an adorable frog puppet, ingenious homages to everything from silent comedies and video games, and so many unforgettable visual gags.

Last year's The Naked Gun was funny from start to finish, including in its end credits. They even did a great joke involving the R-word. See Deadpool & Wolverine, you can make that slur funny! Nirvanna: The Band - the Show - the Movie is my favorite movie of 2026 so far, I was cackling so hard throughout the whole movie. Never have jokes about the past-tense word for "skydive" been so funny. 

2023's Joy Ride a super giggle-inducing treat (Stephanie Hsu gets so much comedic mileage out of one annoyed "HMMM"), while Barbie was a miracle movie that channeled vintage Conan O'Brien Simpsons silliness to masterful effect. That same year gave the world Bottoms, which I quote incessantly (Ayo Edebiri's comic timing in that is insane). Do Not Expect Much From the End of the World had so many bleakly hilarious punchlines rooted in our late capitalist Hellscape, while Kneecap combined laughs with unforgettably catchy Irish rap tunes. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, if you haven't seen it, go watch it now and then proceed to climb up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree whose decided to go up a palm tree.

Conner O'Malley's Rap World, which went straight to YouTube, showed that great comedy movies can truly appear anywhere these days. That feature's eerily on-point portrait of late 2000s white boys living in suburbia is a riot. At the start of the decade, indie comedies Palm Springs and especially Saint Frances got the ball rolling by setting a high bar for the next nine years of comedic filmmaking. Last year, Friendship, The Naked Gun, and One of Them Days were tremendously funny exercises reminding the world that modern theatrical comedies don't have to look like CBS sitcoms (what a concept!). 

The folks behind Scary Movie, its fans, and right-wing folks will inevitably read about me rolling my eyes at Scary Movie's transphobic jokes and once again bellow their war cry of "EVERYONE IS TOO SENSITIVE THESE DAYS" before sipping out of a Liberal Tears mug. First of all, leftist here, not a liberal. Secondly, what's really galling about this Scary Movie trailer is its laziness, especially compared to the feature-length 2020s comedies that have been keeping this medium alive in the face of corporate consolidation and Silicon Valley entities. You're really just going to regurgitate "HA THEY/THEM" and "kids are too sensitive" jokes in a post-Hundreds of Beavers world? 

Equally insulting is the idea of Scary Movie being some crusader against the non-existent "cancel culture" boogeyman. Please don't piss on me and call it rain by acting like a new movie from the Fifty Shades of Black and A Haunted House director will either "save" comedy motion pictures or defeat an "enemy force" that doesn't actually exist. Come to reality, filmmakers and comedians. Leave behind the nonsensical idea that the greatest societal threat is young people on college campuses or social media. And maybe, just maybe, come up with some fresh jokes that are actually funny. I'm sure it's not too late to do some reshoots and get a person in a beaver costume into Scary Movie.