Do you guys still watch Dave Chappelle comedies? Do you dance to Michael Jackson songs? Do you also like films with Kevin Spacey? For some, questions may be rhetorical, but in art, answers are rarely given in black and white. On the other hand, in 2022, after a long period of almost unlimited freedom of expression, artistic practice is again becoming cramped. We are again talking about the limits of satire, about the dark past of some artists or even art itself, about the criteria by which a work is judged. And some, once famous, find themselves on the sidelines.

“Cancellation culture” is what they call it in one phrase, but Andrea Gilbert, technocritic and human rights activist, doesn’t accept the term. “The term is largely coined and used by Donald Trump to portray himself and his followers as persecuted. In fact, no one is persecuted for their opinion. Kanye West has been making horrendous anti-Semitic comments and he still has more followers on social media than Jews worldwide,” she said in a recent debate titled “Does Cancellation Culture Kill Art?” (Cancellation Culture Killing Art?) hosted by the Hellenic American Association.

Some interesting opinions were expressed there, but the questions in these cases are more meaningful. Is it possible to separate the artist from his work? What’s the point of having a classic film like Gone with the Wind accompanied by text explaining that it shows pro-slavery imagery that has no place in today’s world? Is it permissible for a man to create a work (literary, cinematic, theatrical, etc.) that includes a woman’s experience, and vice versa?

“If we exclude proven criminal cases, then everything else, I think, is debatable. Obviously it depends on how everyone feels, it’s impossible to make decisions in terms of black and white anyway,” says Kim Hoffnagle, illustrator and graphic designer, visiting professor at Hellenic American College. The real problem with the so-called “cancellation culture” is, of course, not so much the work of the past, but the work of today and tomorrow. In other words, the fact that more and more artists are choosing – consciously or unconsciously – self-censorship to the risk of being exposed by the community, ready to denigrate them at the first opportunity.

Especially in film and television, this trend has become almost the norm, although the starting point is noble. Because modern movements (#MeToo, anti-racist, etc.) do and rightly seek to balance the inequalities that have existed for centuries, but their massive effect often leads to a homogenization that can only be called progressive. And finally, moments of… embarrassment. Dave Chappelle, for example, is referred to by the same people as “genius witty comedian” when he lashes out at repressive white America, and “ignorant” and “outdated” when he targets the LGBTQ+ community.

An interesting formulation, however, about the boundaries of speech, as well as the role of education in this whole process, with which everyone agreed, was made by Andrea Gilbert: “The type of education received can be either a ceiling (s. R. boundary) or the basis of hatred.”