According to Monica Lewinsky, the cancel culture has ‘become a little too broad.’
Monica Lewinsky has joined the chorus of famous personalities who have spoken out against the cancel culture.
Lewinsky refers to herself as “patient zero” for public shaming in the documentary “15 Minutes of Shame,” which she executive produced. She’s been extremely candid in recent years about her struggle to move past her scandal, having suffered from an early form of being cancelled.
During an appearance on “The Daily Show,” Lewinsky discussed the cancel culture and its far-reaching consequences.
“One of the factors – and we do take people through this in the film – is around the idea of how shame had been used since the beginning of time as a social tool. When the printing press was invented, it all of the sudden leap-frogged into being something that could not be commoditized,” she explained.
WARNING: The video below contains graphic language.
“15 Minutes of Shame” examines several real-life stories of non-celebrities who have been canceled or publicly shamed through various means. It also examines the history of shaming, dating back several centuries.
“Once the tabloid culture bled into every area of our culture, leading up to Princess Diana’s death – which was a function of the paparazzi living in that world, the tabloid world, that’s where their income comes from – and there was that moment,” she recalled. “That was only five months before 1998 [when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke], so we didn’t make a cultural shift.”
She continued: “The internet being there when ’98 happened, it then grew from there.”
Lewinsky said that today, public shaming and cancel culture is “very much about power.”
“Are there people in power who should face consequences? Absolutely,” she said. “But are there people who are not in positions of power who are facing the same consequence and its ruin their lives in a way that is very different? Yes to that too.”
Ultimately, Lewinsky said that cancel culture and the term itself “has become a little too broad” for her taste.