This Too Shall Be Cancelled
On Kliph Nesteroff's OUTRAGEOUS: A HISTORY OF SHOWBIZ AND THE CULTURE WARS
By good fortune, I was between books and on the eve of a vacation to Southern Utah when a new read arrived in the mail - Kliph Nesteroff’s OUTRAGEOUS: A HISTORY OF SHOWBIZ AND THE CULTURE WARS.
I am a huge fan of Nesteroff’s previous book THE COMEDIANS and had written about his history of stand-up comedy for the now-defunct website Birth. Movies. Death. Nesteroff is a comedy historian, having written two books about the subject, as well as hosting the short-lived Marc Maron-presented podcast CLASSIC SHOWBIZ. He absolutely, positively knows his stuff inside and out.
Nesteroff’s books are breezy, informative explorations into the nooks and crannies of comedy - shining a light on both the previously forgotten and the criminally underrated. More so, Nesteroff himself is an entertaining curator of knowledge - clever, wry and cheeky in what he presents as well as how he presents it. The closest comparison I can make is to Karina Longworth’s podcast YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS - both Longworth and Nesteroff have perfected the art of being incredibly informative while never feeling professorial.
In OUTRAGEOUS, Nesteroff explores the concept of “cancel culture” - specifically the fact that as long as there has been popular culture, there have been forces trying to cancel it. It was incredible to read the evolution of the average comedian as Nesteroff explores their rise in the industry - brushing up against taboos and breaking boundaries on what you can say in front of an audience - until they hit a wall at some point in their career and become staunch advocates against the stuff the new generation is allowed to get away with. Every. Single. Comedian. Had. This. Arc.
In one anecdote, Nesteroff details the week Mae West spent in jail for producing a play that featured an almost all-gay cast of men. Upon release, she promptly sold the story rights to her time in prison, using the money to pay for a new library for the prisoners. But even West - who pushed boundaries like few other women of her generation - would spend her twilight years griping about the “dirty words” comedians were allowed to say in film and television.
Nesteroff’s book takes readers through the ‘90s - when THE SIMPSONS, heavy metal records and shock jocks all came under attack by groups seeking to protect the morals of American families. In doing so, Nesteroff charts the ugly snail trail of the real villains behind the scenes - culture war groups like the John Birch Society and the Moral Majority. These watchdog groups used - and continue to use - censorship tactics to push the country in the direction they desire: the far, far, far right. By attempting to ban depictions of interracial relationships, homosexual lifestyles or even just single-parent households from radio, television and film, these groups and the groups they inspired have used the weapon of censorship to help shape the country and bring modern American culture to the sometimes puritanical place it now sits.
Censorship sucks, right? If only it was that simple.
It’s easy to decry against the concept of censorship but Nesteroff shows just how far we’ve come as a culture and what we tolerate. Nesteroff explores the rise and fall and rise and fall of blackface as it came in and out of fashion depending on just how racist the country was feeling that decade. And boy has American culture been racist. Nesteroff paints a picture of generations of comedians who clung to their ability to do racist impressions of other cultures like modern-day Southerners cling to their guns. Nesteroff also shows how effective protests and letter-writing campaigns have been in enacting real change. The Frito Bandito - Frito-Lay’s incredibly racist mascot - is no longer used thanks to the efforts of Latinos in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
My biggest takeaway from Nesteroff’s book is that American culture is always in a state of evolution. The pattern of history proves that many of the things we tolerate in our media today will someday be seen as incredibly insensitive, hurtful and - perhaps - downright evil. This is a good thing - as morals are refined and people become more and more empathetic to their neighbors, we can only create a better environment to live in. It’s important to keep an eye on who’s pushing those morals, though. There are forces - incredibly smart and effective forces - working behind the scenes to make sure America reflects their vision of segregation, fear and hatred.
Censorship has been a tool for both growth and regression. The trick is in who wields censorship and what direction they are swinging that cancel culture axe.