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Wil Wheaton's locker room story is a perfect example of why homophobic jokes are a problem

His thoughts came as a response to Dave Chapelle's controversial stand-up performance.

via Flickr

Wil Wheaton | Wil Wheaton speaking in 2018.

Comedy can be uplifting. And it can also be downright destructive. The rise of cancel culture has made us take a hard look at what we normalize for the sake of a good joke. And with Dave Chappelle’s controversial comedy special, The Closer, which includes jokes that can be perceived as cruel or homophobic jabs by the LGBTQ community and allies.

At the same time, comedy is supposed to be disruptive, is it not? It’s meant to be audacious, bawdy, outrageous. And let’s not forget it’s often said sarcastically, meaning we don’t really believe what what's being said … right? Wil Wheaton has previously given a brilliant take on how to separate the art from the artist. This time though, he’s confronting the art itself and what makes it problematic.

Wheaton is best known for playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gordie Lachance in Stand By Me. He is also a voice actor who has worked on Teen Titans and League of Super Heroes.


For anyone who genuinely doesn't understand why I feel as strongly as I do about people like Chappelle making transphobic comments that are passed off as jokes, I want to share a story that I hope will help you understand, and contextualize my reaction to his behavior."Wheaton started off his story by sharing how he used to play ice hockey when he was 16, and one night enjoyed a warm welcome as a guest goalie. After a fun practice, Wheaton joined his teammates in the locker room.

Before I tell you what happened next, I want to talk specifically about comedy and how much I loved it when I was growing up… One of the definitive comedy specials for me and my friends was Eddie Murphy's Delirious, from 1983. It had bits that still kill me… Really funny stuff.

There is also extensive homophobic material that is just…appalling and inexcusable. Long stretches are devoted to mocking gay people, using the slur that starts with F over and over and over. Young Wil, who watched this with his suburban white upper middle class friends, in his privileged bubble, thought it was the funniest, edgiest, dirtiest thing he'd ever heard… And all of it was dehumanizing to gay men… I didn't know any better. I accepted the framing, I developed a view of gay men as predatory, somehow less than straight men, absolutely worthy of mockery and contempt. Always good for a joke…


wil wheaton, comic-con, homophobia, punching down, star trek, lgbtq Wil Wheaton at the Phoenix Comiconvia Flickr

…A comedian who I thought was one of the funniest people on the planet totally normalized making a mockery of gay people, and because I was a privileged white kid, raised by privileged white parents, there was nobody around me to challenge that perception. For much of my teen years, I was embarrassingly homophobic, and it all started with that comedy special.

Here Wheaton pivots back to the locker room:

So I'm talking with these guys…We're doing that sports thing where you talk about the great plays, and feel like you're part of something special.

And then, without even realizing what I was doing, that awful word came out of my mouth. ‘Blah blah blah F****t,’ I said.

The room fell silent and that's when I realized every single guy in this room was gay. They were from a team called The Blades (amazing) and I had just ... really fucked up.

"'Do you have any gay friends?" One of them asked me, gently.

"Yes," I said, defensively. Then, I lied, "they say that all the time." I was so embarrassed and horrified. I realized I had basically said the N word, in context, and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to apologize, I wanted to beg forgiveness. But I was a stupid sixteen year-old with pride and ignorance and fear all over myself, so I lied to try and get out of it.

"They must not love themselves very much," he said, with quiet disappointment.

Nobody said another word to me. I felt terrible. I shoved my gear into my bag and left as quickly as I could.


That happened over 30 years ago, and I think about it all the time. I'm mortified and embarrassed and so regretful that I said such a hurtful thing. I said it out of ignorance, but I still said it, and I said it because I believed these men, who were so cool and kind and just like all the other men I played with (I was always the youngest player on the ice) were somehow less than ... I guess everyone. Because that had been normalized for me by culture and comedy.

A *huge* part of that normalization was through entertainment that dehumanized gay men in the service of "jokes". And as someone who thought jokes were great, I accepted it. I mean, nobody was making fun of *ME* that way…so…

This stuff that Chappelle did? …For a transgender person, those "jokes" normalize hateful, ignorant, bigoted behavior towards them. Those "jokes" contribute to a world where transgender people are constantly under threat of violence, because transgender people have been safely, acceptably, dehumanized. And it's all okay, because they were dehumanized by a Black man……Literally every queer person I know (and I know a LOT) is hurt by Chappelle's actions. When literally every queer person I know says "this is hurtful to me", I'm going to listen to them and support them, and not tell them why they are wrong…


In 1996, Murphy apologized for the homophobic jokes he made in his earlier stand-up specials. “I deeply regret any pain all this has caused. Just like the rest of the world, I am more educated about AIDS in 1996 than I was in 1981," he said, according to The Independent. “I think it is unfair to take the words of a misinformed 21-year-old and apply them to an informed 35-year-old man. I know how serious an issue AIDS is the world over. I know that AIDS isn’t funny. It’s 1996 and I’m a lot smarter about AIDS now.”

Wil Wheaton brings up some powerful points. While this is a complex issue, the insidious nature of dehumanizing jokes is pretty blatant. At some point, we have to ask ourselves: Is it really worth harming someone else for the sake of a joke? When put that bluntly, the answer, I hope, is a resounding no.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

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File:Johnny Depp-2757.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

While accepting an award at the San Sebastian film festival, Johnny Depp recently described cancel culture as being "out of hand." The actor, who stepped down from his roles in Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Beasts after losing in a domestic assault lawsuit with ex-wife Amber Heard, went on to say "no one is safe...not one of you."

Regardless of what you think about Depp's own personal life, could the actor who was once Hollywood's most reliable star be onto something here?



Johnny Depp Claims Cancel Culture Has Gotten 'Out Of Hand'www.youtube.com

A short disclaimer here: this is not a debate about whether or not Johnny Depp is innocent or guilty, or whether or now he should have been "cancelled". Rather, the point here is that Depp brings up some valid, or at the very least interesting, points about this cultural phenomenon.

Here is what Depp had to say, according to Deadline:

"...This instant rush to judgement based on what essentially amounts to polluted air...It takes one sentence and there's no more ground, the carpet has been pulled. It's not just me that this has happened to, it's happened to a lot of people. This type of thing has happened to women, men. Sadly at a certain point they begin to think that it's normal. Or that it's them. When it's not."

Public call-outs were once intended to give power to those without a voice, as with the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Finally, marginalized communities were able to take down high profile Goliaths and force them to actually take responsibility for their behavior. As with the cases of Harvey Weinstien and Kevin Spacey, cancel culture can create lasting, positive change.

However, things can become toxic, when the initial instinct is to publicly humiliate, revoke, and excommunicate others in snap judgements. Is this really advocating for more accountability? Or mob mentality?

Depp continues with:

"Hollywood is certainly not what it was… it is a case of, 'no matter what, I'm going to get mine'. That's where these people are coming from." "They realize they're just as disposable as I am."

Depp brings up another valid point in this jab at the Film & TV industry. Cancel culture in many ways can be seen as a branch of the "woke capitalism" tree. Woke Capitalism meaning those superficial nods to social justice, all in the name of making money off of it.

Take for instance the controversial, tone-deaf Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner, that completely trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement in the name of selling soda. Now, it doesn't escape me that what put these ads under scrutiny was, in fact, an act of cancel culture.


But it does raise the question: should we really be taking our moral cues from these industries, who try to cash in on genuine social justice movements? Hollywood is telling us to call people out now that it's in fashion, but they could have easily cancelled Weinstein ages ago. Perhaps the way some individuals (maybe including Depp, maybe not) are handled need not be as extreme as we're being called to do now. After all, isn't the whole point the pursuit of justice?

Johnny Depp's statement, whether intended to make himself a martyr or not, does contain within it some resounding truth. Undeniably, there are times of right vs. wrong. There are times when accountability must be claimed, especially when it comes to giving power to the disadvantaged. However, there is always a danger in the territory of extremes. In the case of cancel culture being given absolute power, the danger lies in how the weapon is used. It should be aimed with the intention of protection, rather than being swung wildly. It should be used when other methods have tried and failed. When cancelling takes the place of discourse, that's when we aren't really making collective progress.

via Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Last week, comedian Chris Rock spoke out about cancel culture on Power 105.1's "The Breakfast Club" saying it's made entertainment become too "safe" which has been terrible for the industry and audiences alike.

"And when everyone gets safe and nobody tries anything, things get boring," he told the New York station's Angela Yee and DJ Envy.

"I see a lot of unfunny comedians, I see unfunny TV shows, I see unfunny awards shows, I see unfunny movies — because everybody's scared to make a move," he said.



Rock has a point in saying that fear of a backlash has forced a lot of people to reevaluate their material and for entertainment companies to avoid controversial topics and entertainers. However, actor Seth Rogen believes that when it comes to comedy, the real problem has more to do with the medium's limited shelf life, than regressive political correctness.

"There are certain jokes that for sure have not aged well, but I think that's the nature of comedy," Rogen told "Good Morning Britain,' adding that some of the jokes in his films haven't aged well.

"I think conceptually those movies are sound and I think there's a reason they've lasted as far as people still watching and enjoying them today. Jokes are not things that necessarily are built to last," he said.

He added: "To me when I see comedians complaining about this kind of thing, I don't understand what they're complaining about. If you've made a joke that's aged terribly, accept it. And if you don't think it's aged terribly, then say that."

Rogen continued, saying that criticism is "one of the things that goes along with being an artist."

"To me, it's not worth complaining about to the degree I see other comedians complaining about," he added.

The "Pineapple Express" star says he's avoided having to apologize for tweets or jokes he's made in the past, because he's never thought punching down was funny. "I was never a comedian that made jokes that were truly designed to target groups that were subjugated in some way," he said.

"Have we done that without realizing it? Definitely. And those things are in our movies and they're out there, and they're things that I am more than happy to say that they have not aged well," he added.

Rogen believes that a lot of it just comes down to simply being a decent human being.

"Saying terrible things is bad, so if you've said something terrible, then it's something you should confront in some way, shape, or form. I don't think that's cancel culture," Rogen said. "That's you saying something terrible if that's what you've done."

Rogen and Rock's recent comments on cancel culture show why the controversy surrounding the issue is so tough. We should work to foster a society where artists are free to speak their minds, especially in the world of comedy, an artform based on pushing boundaries.

However, we've also progressed as a society to the point where it's fair to criticize artists who take shots at people from marginalized communities who don't deserve to be targets.

via Fox News and Todd Hoyer / Twitter

Fox News poked the sleeping tiger known as Gen X and got the generation known for slacking and sarcasm to muster, a collective "whatever."

The news network aired a segment on "cancel culture" where it urged "Generation X to lead the charge to save America from the social media mob. Can they do it?" Short answer: Who knows, but they aren't interested either way.

Right-wing media has been apoplectic recently over a rash of incidents where iconic pieces of pop culture from The Washington Redskins to "Gone with the Wind" to Dr. Seuss have been reevaluated by younger "woke" progressives.

While there is value in a movement that holds people accountable for propagating racist and sexist ideas, the Fox News crowd dismisses it simply as "cancel culture."


The Fox News target demographic is firmly in camp Baby Boomer, with the average viewer being around 65-years-old. According to Kasasa, "If you go by raw numbers, of the 3.3 million households taking in Sean Hannity's show on a nightly basis in 2018, just south of 2 million would have been senior citizens."

Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and are currently between 57-75 years old.

So as Boomer authority over the nation's youth wanes by the day, Fox News made an appeal to Gen X to protect older, conservative people from the ravages of cancel culture. But according to reactions on Twitter, Gen X, aka "The Coolest Generation," couldn't care less.

The generation that's currently between the ages of 41 to 56 remembers a time when their Baby Boomer and Greatest Generation parents tried to cancel everything in their childhood.

But these calls weren't from liberals in the '80s, they were from pearl-clutching conservatives (and even some high-profile Democrats like Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman), evangelical Christians, and paranoid suburbanites.

Whether it was the "Satanic Panic" surrounding heavy metal and "Dungeons and Dragons," the Parents Music Resource Center labeling hip-hop music, or the endless crusade against video games, the Boomer version of cancel culture was aimed squarely at Gen X.

In fact, Gen Xers lost one of their greatest childhood heroes in Pee-Wee Herman who got canceled for falling short of Bush 1-era moral norms.

Fox's appeal resulted in a slew of hilarious tweets from Gen Xers who could care less about the Boomer obsession with cancel culture. But, to be fair, it's not like Gen X was known for giving an F about much in the first place.

First of all, they just don't have the time.

They reminded Fox News of everything the Boomers tried to cancel back in the '80s.













Another huge reason not to get involved: "Whatever."





Gen X, the forgotten generation stuck beneath two of the most populous, was canceled long ago. It's almost like the parents of latchkey kids just realized they had children and now they want them to come to their rescue.





Like, we totally care. Seriously.


Could it be that they're harping on cancel culture because they have nothing else to complain about?


We have a winner.


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