CANCELLING CHARLIE

Charlie Chaplin defended working class interests and spoke out against Nazism at a time when the United States still maintained diplomatic relations with Germany. He was eventually hounded out of the United States by the rise of McCarthyism - the cancel culture of the times. The University of Canterbury music theatre group (MUSOC) has decided that Charlie Chaplin isn't a suitable person to do a show about.

IT IS ONE OF the bitter ironies of what has become known as cancel culture that it claims to be flying the flag for tolerance and inclusiveness while, at the same time, trying to suppress the activities and views of individuals and groups that dare to hold a contrary position. Its sneering middle class snobbery has found a home in the upper echelons of capitalist society where its acolytes claim their simplistic politics is, as woke journalist Andrea Vance has described it, all part of an emerging 'new culture'.

Imposed from above and propagandised by both the state and the corporate sector, this is a 'culture' that might profess to progressive qualities but, in truth, is a culture where liberalism has gone to die to be replaced by an authoritarian group think.

Such is its herd mentality that it has encouraged the absurdity of the University of Canterbury music theatre group cancelling a show about Charlie Chaplin because a group of anonymous members objected producing a show about an actor who was a well known womaniser.

Charlie Chaplin was indeed a contradictory character but cancel culture's anti-democratic character and holier-than-thou moral absolutism, means it is unwilling to accommodate itself to such contradictions. So by cancelling Chaplin MUSOC has bowed to an intolerance that wants to disregard the work of a man who held socialist ideas and eventually found himself being hounded out of the United States by the rise of McCarthyism - the cancel culture of the times. The FBI, who regarded Chaplin as a dangerous radical, kept him under almost constant surveillance.

Apparently it doesn't matter that a movie like Modern Times (1936) portrays Chaplin playing a character leading a demonstration of workers, who are beaten and imprisoned by the police. It also apparently also doesn't matter that in The Great Dictator, a savage portrayal of Adolf Hitler, Chaplin defended the Jewish people - at a time when anti-Semitism was rife in the United States. It was also a  film that upset the United States Government which, at the time, still maintained diplomatic relations with Germany.

In the final scene to The Great Dictator, a Jewish barber gives a long speech denouncing Nazism. With the Nazi terror about to descend on Europe, the character is defiant:

'You the people have the power..then in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old security..Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance'.

Yes, we certainly cannot have a university theatre group producing a show about a man who has his characters expressing dangerous ideas like this.

Yes, Charlie Chaplin was a womaniser but so was Pablo Picasso - so should we stop looking at his paintings?  Should we stop listening to Herbert Von Karajan's interpretations of Beethoven's work, because he was once a member of the Nazi Party? Many artists in history have been somewhat less than worthy individuals, but the dogmatism of cancel culture means it is incapable of judging the art, independent of the artist who produced it. It is fundamentally regressive politics that is both elitist and moralistic that has its origins in its middle class and neoliberal roots.