so Dwayne The Rock Johnson is not cooking up a presidential endorsement Johnson says he won't back Biden or Trump in 2024 in the hopes of avoiding quote political division and the blowback of cancel cult culture but can cancel culture really silence a big box office star a new MSNBC film cancelled the story of cancell culture dives into the phenomenon publicly canell we called it public shaming we called it rejection we called it ostracizing people we didn't have a problem with cancel culture wh
en it was only the powerful people canceling the power less it's only when the people used to be punched down upon start punching back all of us think there's a council culture this is awful this is awful joining us now K Jackson producer of canel canceled and comedian har Hari kondabolu who appears in the film welcome to you both thank you welcome oh my goodness okay so I I have seen this I'm going to watch it again tonight this is this is just such a really really really great MSNBC film and i
t left me with a lot of more questions than answers so uh K what where what were what was the goal of the documentary of this film because I was looking for a definition of cancel culture and I came out thinking well goodness I guess it depends on who you are and what is and and your Vantage Point here on where you land on that particular um answer exactly I mean I think the point was to get a lot of people together to have a conversation I think uh as the film making team we were also curious y
ou know we didn't know what we would find um and it was just a really interesting journey of conversation exploration uh learning new things and kind of like you mentioned understanding what different people's point of views and Vantage points are uh and and trying to trying to at least stay there long enough uh to hear some of the conversation so one of the things har that I think hiana and her team did so well is articulate the fact that conservatives get really upset about cancel culture but
then they actually sort of Jiu-Jitsu it and weaponize cancel culture the big question I was left with was like how real is any of this I don't think it's I mean I think it's real in the sense of uh we don't know how to talk to each other there's always been a mob mentality we've V but pre-dating the term cancel culture it's not like we knew how to talk to each other then and have you know discussions uh I think you know the point was made in the film like it was really the people with power that
are able to push down on people who don't and this is really a pushing back it's not perfect right and definitely when I think celebrities say they've been cancelled most times they haven't it's just a matter of you know bad publicity which has always been there and if anything when you get quote unquote cancel what we've seen is you come back strong you have a new base of people that is rabid about you because of your political beliefs and you end up like you know four more Netflix specials li
ke how does that lead to cancellation well yeah you but to hurry to get to those four you know four more Netflix specials you got to go through some is you got to go through a lot of noise and I think you know uh one of the things Kiana that's interesting from my perspective and particularly being in in the conservative space a lot and hearing uh a lot of the Wailing and nashing of teeth about cancel culture um as they are cancelling people um I guess the question becomes how do artists um and p
ublic figures uh you know navigate this space who want to if you're you know a comedian talk about the culture right and expose the culture for its fakeness it's lies it's truths right but at the same time not you know not be knocked over the head for it as we've seen comedians in the past be able to do that today seems a different space uh what did you find in putting this production together um is the thing that animates both that concern but also the opportunity to break a break up that sort
of mindset yeah uh this is something that actually comes up in the film I think there are a couple people who say that this is part of the job now you know things change things advance and uh so the level of connectivity that we have today uh you have to hold that and you have to hold space for the fact that people are going to react and people who haven't always had a platform to say something might react to something that you've said uh and that doesn't necessarily change your ability to say i
t it just changes uh the dialogue right so I keep coming back to the idea that this is about having a conversation being willing to have a conversation if you've said something that has really offended people then uh we need to kind of get rid of this idea that it's somehow embarrassing to come back and apologize or come back and say hey I don't understand um you know we shouldn't be embarrassed to learn we shouldn't be embarrassed to grow you know har in the film um you're in the film and uh yo
u know some people might say that you got aboo from The Simpsons cancel because you and you talk about they they explore this part in the in the MSNBC film and something I thought was very poignant you said look he wasn't cancelled he's still there but they just don't feature him as much where's the line between accountability and cancelled because I think there's a it's a very fine sometimes slightly transparent line I I mean I don't for example I don't think AO is cancelled cuz he's a cartoon
character and also the people who make him are part of a multi-billion dollar industry I'm not talking about the Simpsons but but whoever owns The Simpsons at this point like so I I don't think that's a real that's a that's a real thing you know and accountability I mean a lot of times it's up to the artists do you stand behind what you say even if you're quote unquote cancelled if people are criticizing you do you stand behind it or do you say I learned something from this I don't believe the s
ame thing most times people either double down and say they're you know this is what I believe and I care about and that I find courageous even if I disagree and then there are people like everyone's criticizing I'm being cancelled that's how art works the fact that people are willing to listen to you and reply to you means that the standups complain all the time nobody cares about us we're like the lowest rung and at the same time when people listen to us by criticizing us we're like well you'r
e being mean like who is actually like the snowflake here it's probably the artist so what what's the Rocks problem then I'm trying to figure out then why he feel like he was canceled he was just being criticized so there's a difference between cancellation and criticizing oh yeah I mean like and I'll try to summarize this as quickly as possible using Paul Robinson as an example most people don't know who he is I think that proves a lot of my point already uh he was in a law profession they were
racist towards him the people who were racist towards him weren't cancelled no he was forced to leave his job right he ended up becoming an opera singer an athlete the biggest star of the world in film he was he had recordings out right makes a film that was has a poor depiction of Colonial Africans he gets criticized for the stereotypical depiction did he say cancel culture did he back down did he did he make a big issue out of no he learned from it changed his view of Art and politics ends up
be becoming part of the Communist Party a lot of things happen he transfer so the government goes after him denies him his his his passport State Department's after him he goes in front of the McCarthy for the hearings you know he was the biggest star of the world especially in colonial countries his films were stopped being showed um he uh his his recordings were destroyed he was taken out of news reels that's cancellation that's what it is har look har is funny y'all because what you don't kn
ow is when we did the panel discussion about this for msbc films this point created a whole Hull balloo that almost turned into a a town hall that revolted all right not today thank you so much for being here Tiana Jackson thanks you all can watch cancelled the story of cancel culture tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern right here on MSNBC you do not want to miss it hey everyone MSNBC has a new and improved app you'll get realtime alerts and Analysis live blogs in-depth essays video highlights and the
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