“Ummm.” Monica Lewinsky takes a long pause. “I know this is going to sound weird. It’s a totally legitimate question. I don’t know how to answer that.” She thinks about it before finally saying: “I…
takes a long pause. “I know this is going to sound weird. It’s a totally legitimate question. I don’t know how to answer that.” She thinks about it before finally saying: “In some ways, I just feel too close to it.”
Nearly 25 years later, even in the post-#MeToo era, Lewinsky is not sure how differently things would have turned out today. “In moving forward, we need to think what are the subsets of cancel culture,” Lewinsky says. “I think that there is certainly a place for this. Something that we pull into the doc is the idea of shaming for change. We do see the public shaming tool used by marginalized groups and people who have traditionally and historically not had power and not have a voice.”
At the time Lewinsky became a household name, another young woman was also being attacked by the press: the pop singer Britney Spears, who was constantly “slut shamed” in the late 90s and early 2000s and mocked for her public troubles, which today, hopefully would have been viewed through the more supportive lens of mental heath awareness.
“With Britney and with all of these stories, we have to think about how we are contributing to that line of behavior in society, proliferating in a way,” Lewinsky says. “Our clicks matter, the things we read matter, the things we retweet matter. They all make a difference. I really wish only good things for her. That’s for sure.”
Lewinsky says that the political climate in America has also contributed to the rise of “cancel culture.” A timely topic explored by experts in the doc is how the power of big tech companies have contributed to the normalization public shaming, hate speech and canceling on social media. “I think there was a big change in 2016 with the election and our world becoming more vicious online with a lot more misinformation and disinformation,” she says.
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