Full Comment - Will Smith’s slap smacks of celebrity cancel culture

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00:02:04.620 Hi, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:02:06.040 Thanks for joining us for the latest episode of Full Common.

00:02:08.460 Please consider subscribing if you haven't already.

00:02:11.220 What's the state of celebrity culture today?

00:02:13.460 When that whole Will Smith, Chris Rock thing happened, everyone was talking about it.

00:02:18.520 Everyone had an opinion on it.

00:02:20.480 And yet the whole thing was, I don't know, not very glamorous.

00:02:24.060 Is that fair to say?

00:02:25.020 It was all kind of high school.

00:02:27.020 Have celebs lost their allure in a way?

00:02:29.540 Or at least one incarnation of celebrity?

00:02:33.300 Have the movie stars become too normal and just some are now like regular Joes? 1.00

00:02:37.740 And what does the emergence of this new category of celebrity mean?

00:02:41.320 The TikTok stars, the online stars, the YouTube stars?

00:02:45.000 How is Andy Warhol's 15 Minutes of Fame comment looking now?

00:02:49.600 Sean Proulx certainly knows a thing or two about these things.

00:02:51.980 He's interviewed tons of stars, including Lady Gaga, Betty White, and Oprah.

00:02:56.060 He hosts the Sean Proulx show, Heard Weekends on Sirius XM, and the Instagram live show, Simone and Sean.

00:03:02.800 Sean, welcome to the show.

00:03:03.780 Great to have you.

00:03:04.580 Nice to be with you.

00:03:05.660 Thanks for having me.

00:03:06.620 Yeah, great to chat with you.

00:03:07.840 I mean, that whole Will Smith, Chris Rock thing.

00:03:09.580 I mean, let's just talk about that for a moment.

00:03:11.620 Like, what did you think when you first saw that?

00:03:14.640 And I'll preface it by saying I'm like one of those people who has stopped watching the Oscars for a few years.

00:03:18.800 But when I heard about this, I'm like quickly on my phone.

00:03:20.780 I gotta see this.

00:03:22.160 Gotta see it.

00:03:22.920 What did you think?

00:03:23.560 The Japanese version was the best version.

00:03:26.680 The Australian version, the American version, the Japanese version had the most meat to it.

00:03:31.580 At first, in the Red Hot Minute, I thought it was some sort of stunt that they had.

00:03:36.920 Because I could not believe that a grown man was going up to hit another grown man over a joke.

00:03:42.000 And then that sort of went right into disgust over that.

00:03:45.860 Because I just think, I think what happened is symbolic of where, at least for people who are celebrities, who have platforms, be it the movies, be it a podcast, be it a radio show.

00:03:59.000 If you've got a platform and you're a known voice, people are kind of on Tinder hooks right now.

00:04:04.060 And this, we don't know what we're allowed to say kind of culture.

00:04:06.720 And we saw that we can't say certain things, can't make a joke about being shaved-headed without getting a smack to the face.

00:04:15.780 We saw that.

00:04:16.560 So it's sort of evidence of what I'm saying as a whole, that people just don't know what to say anymore, what is right and what is wrong.

00:04:25.320 And then we saw that again a few minutes later when Will Smith won the award.

00:04:29.580 And Hollywood, for the most part, jumped to its feet and gave him a standing ovation.

00:04:33.440 Because what do we do?

00:04:34.460 I don't know.

00:04:34.980 What do we do? 0.98

00:04:35.420 We just hit a man.

00:04:36.380 But now he's won an Oscar.

00:04:37.600 What do we do?

00:04:38.160 Stand up, man.

00:04:39.380 And you could feel it's kind of palpable, this kind of society we live in right now, where we're not allowed to say anything for fear of being canceled, is rampant.

00:04:51.660 And that was kind of cancel culture in a nutshell when Will hit Chris.

00:04:59.520 Because if you look at it play by play, you've got Chris making the joke, cut to Will Smith laughing at the joke, cut to Jada Pinkett Smith rolling her eyes at the joke, cut back to Will Smith seeing that she doesn't like it, and then going and trying to cancel Chris with a punch.

00:05:20.440 And that's the way it works on Twitter with these social justice warriors as well.

00:05:24.520 You have these people who think the joke is funny, but, oh, oh, someone's offended?

00:05:28.720 I should be offended, too.

00:05:29.560 I'm deeply offended.

00:05:30.740 Let's cancel the person who said that joke.

00:05:33.180 It went to the exact same flow of events, sequence of events that you get.

00:05:37.780 And so there's a lot to unpack with that.

00:05:40.080 And the shelf life has went on for some time because of that.

00:05:46.460 I was deeply disturbed by the righteousness of Will Smith, thinking that he could just get up and hit somebody because they'd made a joke.

00:05:57.700 Chris Rock didn't know that Jada Pinkett Smith had alopecia, apparently. 0.97

00:06:02.180 But he didn't make that joke in that vein.

00:06:04.840 And he made it in the, hey, you look like G.I. Jane, give me more. 0.99

00:06:08.880 I didn't get it either.

00:06:10.540 I had to actually Google.

00:06:12.020 I thought, like, oh, is her hair like that because she did just record G.I. Jane 2, which is possible.

00:06:18.660 Like, maybe she was starring in that movie.

00:06:20.120 So I had to, like, research and go, I don't even understand what's happening.

00:06:23.260 Yeah, and she came out about having suffered from this for some time.

00:06:29.380 And, you know, she's an actress. 1.00

00:06:32.740 She's got to look a certain way.

00:06:35.120 It's a lot of pressure.

00:06:36.520 Plus, it's the crown on your head.

00:06:39.180 I can understand how sensitive an issue this might have been.

00:06:42.280 But we still get to make a joke about it.

00:06:44.260 Even if Chris Rock wanted to stoop as low as to make a joke about alopecia,

00:06:48.340 if you really wanted to make a joke about that, he still should be allowed to make a joke.

00:06:51.840 It would be a bad joke.

00:06:52.920 It would be tasteless.

00:06:54.000 He wouldn't look that great for making it.

00:06:55.700 But he's still allowed to make it without being kept.

00:06:58.080 No, it's such a good point.

00:06:59.280 I mean, I feel like now we act like this thing is totally new in terms of someone making an offensive joke.

00:07:04.160 But you go back not too many years and you got Don Rickles.

00:07:06.660 You got Joan Rivers.

00:07:07.520 I love all of them.

00:07:08.520 There's those Comedy Central roasts where, you know, if you're an offended person,

00:07:11.700 do not watch the Comedy Central roast.

00:07:13.820 But they're out there.

00:07:14.680 They get top ratings and people love them.

00:07:17.420 One of the best memes, because Will Smith and Judith Smith have been so open about,

00:07:21.840 having an open marriage, is, oh, you can boink my wife, but don't make a joke about her.

00:07:28.380 A man can boink my wife, but a man can't make a joke about her. 1.00

00:07:31.920 Oh, dear.

00:07:32.820 That meme was going around.

00:07:34.200 But it's true.

00:07:35.560 You know, we didn't hear about him beating up the guy that Janet Smith had an entanglement,

00:07:41.880 as they call it, with.

00:07:44.920 Will Swiss is down with that.

00:07:46.500 He was fine with that.

00:07:47.440 But a lot of jokes have been made.

00:07:50.960 He came out about the status of their relationship in his new book out recently.

00:07:58.080 So throughout the awards season, he was teased mercilessly for having an open relationship.

00:08:03.800 And I think this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

00:08:07.740 But still, it's keep your back in one piece.

00:08:10.700 Well, don't let it be broken, because you're a public figure.

00:08:16.180 You exposed this about yourself.

00:08:19.040 And you're a big boy.

00:08:20.180 You know how this game is played.

00:08:22.040 You didn't get to winning an Oscar by not knowing how the game is played.

00:08:25.960 You're going to be the subject of jokes and ridicule and gossip for being who you are.

00:08:30.260 And what's kind of funny, like, you make such a good point, because they know how the game is played.

00:08:34.780 And I feel like there used to be a heavily managed game for these A-list celebrities and that they were untouchable.

00:08:40.880 Whether or not we go back, you know, decades and how the old studio system would even just tell people, like, who they're dating and who they're marrying.

00:08:47.180 And you'd buy the magazines for them.

00:08:49.080 And these were, like, godlike figures.

00:08:50.680 And we still had that, you know, in the 90s, these box office gold, like the $20 million club people, the Julia Roberts.

00:08:56.580 And, you know, they're these, like, ethereal figures that people kind of idolize.

00:09:01.720 And now there's not – I found it interesting.

00:09:03.340 Denzel Washington, I know, reportedly chatted to Will Smith.

00:09:06.020 Or you can see pictures of it kind of saying, like, calm down, man, or whatever after that incident happened.

00:09:09.720 I'd say Denzel Washington is one of the few, like, true classic movie stars left in that, you know, he's not doing these direct-to-video things every second week to pay the bills.

00:09:18.760 I get you got to pay the bills, but I just mean he ain't doing that.

00:09:21.440 He's still the $20 million club.

00:09:22.900 We don't know anything about the guy's personal life, really.

00:09:25.640 He's so guarded.

00:09:27.020 But most of them – like, I guess I feel like – I'm trying to say Will Smith is – he's just become, like, a regular guy who, like, gets in a scrap with a guy now and we all see it.

00:09:35.860 Well, and with someone like Will Smith, where a generation has grown up with him.

00:09:40.060 We saw him when he was much younger.

00:09:42.120 Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

00:09:43.420 He's been in, you know, all kinds of popcorn movies like Men in Black.

00:09:48.760 And then now he's moved into more serious work.

00:09:51.620 You kind of feel you know him.

00:09:53.720 And his putting out a memoir, sharing the deepest, most personal aspects of his life that he wanted to share, makes you feel like you know him.

00:10:03.040 Whereas with someone like a Denzel that you've mentioned has that kind of can't-quite-touch-him quality, I think of Cate Blanchett as well in that category of someone who's uber-talented, accessible as an interview, but that's about as close as anyone ever gets to her.

00:10:20.900 But celebrity has changed, as you mentioned in your intro, with the advent of TikTok and other social platforms like it, where the word celebrity, which really means celebrated person, we're celebrating you for a reason.

00:10:39.720 Right, old Hollywood, we celebrated you because of the mythology about you and everything Anthony, you just described.

00:10:48.740 And to this day, there's a Hollywood that we still celebrate the glamour of, again, at Cate Blanchett or Washington.

00:10:56.700 But then there's the celebrity that maybe was spawned by Kim Kardashian.

00:11:03.000 Celebrated for what exactly?

00:11:05.040 Well, Paris Hilton was the original one, and what was that, like 22 years ago or something? 0.84

00:11:10.860 Now, I will say both those women, I understand now, they got famous for sex tapes and being airheads, really. 1.00

00:11:21.880 But now they've built what could be considered empires. 0.99

00:11:27.500 The smartest airheads I ever met.

00:11:29.540 The smartest airheads ever.

00:11:31.000 I gotta respect their empires.

00:11:32.440 Yeah, they work very hard being them.

00:11:35.980 I wouldn't want to be them and have to worry about what I look like nine out of every 10 minutes of the day.

00:11:43.080 But they sort of spawned this generation of what are you famous for exactly?

00:11:47.360 And then to think that somebody can just get on a YouTube channel and talk about gaming or whatever and earn six figures is incredible these days.

00:11:56.640 Sean, you mentioned TikTok stars, and it's interesting.

00:12:00.080 The idea of, okay, you got your YouTube channel, you're going to talk about Call of Duty or whatever, and you get a bunch of hits.

00:12:05.860 And it's one thing for maybe a video game company to be like, hey, this guy's getting a lot of traffic.

00:12:09.700 Let's send him a free video game.

00:12:11.260 And I know that's kind of how it started with these kind of influencers.

00:12:14.180 But now the influencers, they're not just people who are getting a free video game.

00:12:18.440 They're getting contracts, sponsorship contracts.

00:12:21.860 They're making more money than the celebrities, these TikTok influencers.

00:12:26.180 I mean, I don't even understand this world.

00:12:28.280 But I think it's at least changing the way the younger generation, like teenagers today and people in their early 20s, think about popular culture.

00:12:36.220 Yeah, I don't think the younger generation has any patience or any want for that kind of five steps away from being a celebrity.

00:12:45.960 They want to see themselves reflected back at them.

00:12:49.340 And they enjoy seeing people just like them doing whatever on a video, whether it's talking about Minecraft or whether it is doing some silly trick or whatever.

00:13:00.080 They want to see that it's more aspirational.

00:13:02.220 I want to be more like this than I want to be like this kind of floating ethereal celebrity that I don't even get anymore.

00:13:11.360 I think that social media has taken down a lot of the barriers, a lot of the lines between us and them.

00:13:19.400 And it's more democratic.

00:13:20.840 And that's what this generation that was born, tuned in, tapped in, turned on.

00:13:25.880 They know how to turn on an iPad at age six months and work it.

00:13:31.620 That's what they want is to see their own, I think.

00:13:35.400 Whereas people of a different generation, say mine and older, we still like to see people who have something that we don't, whether it's the lifestyle or the money or the perceived lifestyle.

00:13:47.680 But that, to your point, a lot of these people who are used to, just as supermodels, had to watch their contracts suddenly be given to actresses.

00:13:59.100 Actresses and actors are now watching contracts they once would have had be given to this guy in Brampton, Ontario, who's got X number of followers and who is a true influencer.

00:14:11.120 Is this going to stay?

00:14:14.980 Is it going to be like this for the next however many years?

00:14:18.160 Is this like the way it's kind of locked in for a whole generation?

00:14:21.520 Or are things changing so fast that this will pass soon?

00:14:26.300 Well, it's interesting because one of the bubbles was burst quite recently about sort of the fakery of some of this.

00:14:32.700 In a movie, a documentary, whose name escapes me, but what it did was it asked, put out an ad, and it asked for people to apply if they wanted to become famous.

00:14:44.780 They did this in L.A.

00:14:46.120 And so they got thousands of applicants.

00:14:48.620 They littled it down to five, and they began Instagram accounts for each of them.

00:14:53.440 Eventually, three people did not like the taste of fame they were getting, but two hung on, and we followed these two throughout the rest of the movie.

00:15:01.720 But the way in which they got their fame was purchased followers, purchased lights, and then they would do things like go into some grubby backyard and fill up a kid's pool with water and then put rose petals in it and then put the girl who wanted to be famous, put her head back in it so she looked like she was at a spa, a close-up shot of her with these rose petals around her head.

00:15:24.600 And then she would tag at Four Seasons, Los Angeles, that she was there.

00:15:30.040 And they were creating all of these fake posts.

00:15:32.560 They would rent out a private jet at $50 per photo shoot, and they would be there very much like the Tinder swindler and these people like Anna...

00:15:42.600 Odelvey.

00:15:44.600 Odelvey, yeah.

00:15:46.240 Odelvey, like the faking their lives, faking it until they make it. 1.00

00:15:52.480 And so there's an awareness to that now, though, that this stuff doesn't, you know, necessarily mean it's real just because it's showing up in your feed.

00:16:01.120 Like, my ex and I used to always joke when we'd take a group photo, instead of smiling and saying cheese, we'd say Facebook.

00:16:09.220 And because it's here's our great life and our great friends, and we knew how sort of true it was, but fake it was as well.

00:16:18.120 It didn't matter what mood you were in or what was going on in your life, you still bought a bright, shiny smile for Facebook.

00:16:23.320 And so there's an awareness now that this isn't necessarily someone's actual reality.

00:16:30.860 So long answer to your shorter question, does this have a long shelf life for the next generation?

00:16:36.500 I'm not so sure because the bubble has been popped a little bit there.

00:16:40.260 We'll be back in just a moment with more full comment after these messages.

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00:17:00.800 Sean, I want to talk to you now about how we consume our media, the different models out there we're using, the different platforms we're using.

00:17:08.440 You're host of a show on SiriusXM.

00:17:10.180 You and I were colleagues there when I was broadcasting on that station as well.

00:17:13.600 You're also a host of an Instagram live show, Simone and Sean.

00:17:17.220 And Instagram live, like, this is a new thing.

00:17:19.680 This is all in that sort of new terrain, accessing, I'm sure, new audiences, just going in a different direction.

00:17:25.080 Like, how does that work, Instagram live?

00:17:27.940 It's fairly new.

00:17:30.260 I just want to say that movie that I referenced in the first segment was called Fake Famous.

00:17:34.740 For anyone who's interested in listening to it, Fake Famous.

00:17:37.960 Yes, Simone and Sean is on every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern on Instagram.

00:17:43.800 And it's something we started about a year ago to take kind of – Simone is my co-host.

00:17:49.800 She's a multiple Juno-winning vocalist from Love Inc. and BKS.

00:17:53.780 And I'm my own media guy.

00:17:56.520 And we both have been friends for over 20 years.

00:18:00.180 And we have a certain comfort in chemistry.

00:18:02.180 And we decided why not have our own chat show on Instagram live and pull in from each other's faces and meet new fans and grow a new audience through the intermingling of both audiences.

00:18:18.300 And it's very simple to do on Instagram.

00:18:22.460 It's a choice, like it is when you go to post something, one of your choices is IG Live.

00:18:28.720 And you go live, and it tells your audience that you are live.

00:18:32.380 And they can come in.

00:18:33.740 You can bring them on to chat with you, which we do.

00:18:35.840 We were talking about Will Smith's stuff last episode that we did.

00:18:40.000 And we have a friend of the show, a fan of the show.

00:18:43.260 He came on as a – he's a black American DJ, and he had a very unique perspective on the Will Smith stuff as a black man.

00:18:53.220 And so we brought him on.

00:18:54.520 But we've had everyone from Jan Arden has come on.

00:18:57.940 Alan Fru from Glass Tiger has come on.

00:19:00.120 We've had tons of celebrities.

00:19:01.620 We've had tons of everyday people.

00:19:03.380 And the interaction factor is really what makes a show like Night G Show live work because people are commenting along as you go and throwing in their two cents.

00:19:12.080 So it's very interactive.

00:19:13.700 You really feel like you know your audience to a degree that I've never experienced before through this format.

00:19:20.580 And what I find so interesting about all these new formats is that people are really finding their own unique audiences.

00:19:28.560 Back in the day, it would be like, do you like watching Cheers?

00:19:31.300 And it's like, no, I don't like watching Cheers.

00:19:32.640 Well, then too bad.

00:19:33.400 You can't watch television because that's the only thing you could watch.

00:19:35.940 And you just got to like Cheers, and you're done.

00:19:38.220 And now, not only are there more options, but there's more communities.

00:19:41.700 And then celebrity culture is so kind of dissipated.

00:19:46.140 Like as I've said on the show a few times, and people are probably tired of me talking about my interest in real estate.

00:19:51.860 But I like real estate celebrities, like the million-dollar listing stars.

00:19:55.400 And I follow them.

00:19:56.320 And I even read the gossip pages about what they say.

00:19:59.240 And I don't care what – I don't pay attention to Will Smith and, you know, what he's doing, what house he's moved into.

00:20:04.200 But I read the stories about – and I'll sometimes say to my wife, oh, maybe this couple, they broke up or whatnot.

00:20:09.100 And that's – those are the celebrities I'm interested in.

00:20:12.240 And could you imagine back in the 90s someone saying, oh, I follow real estate agents.

00:20:16.300 And you're like, what?

00:20:17.240 How is that even a thing?

00:20:18.280 It is.

00:20:19.180 Who a celebrity is now has changed enormously.

00:20:22.200 Like I said, it used to have to be someone – you were celebrated, and that was usually someone who was a movie star or on the radio or on television, sort of in that category.

00:20:31.240 But now we have drag queens, for example. 1.00

00:20:33.580 You would never have thought of them as celebrities.

00:20:35.480 You mentioned the real estate agents.

00:20:38.160 The advent way, way, way, way, way long ago of home renovation shows spawned a slew of countless celebrities who are handy with a hammer.

00:20:48.100 Makeup artists are celebrities now.

00:20:49.900 And those guys, the property brothers.

00:20:52.200 I saw one of those property brothers here, both of them.

00:20:54.960 You can't tell who's who.

00:20:56.280 They're like on the cover of People magazine, and I think one of them is married to Zooey Deschanel now.

00:21:00.380 So it's like he, the realist, the home reno people, they're at a celebrity level, I guess, equal to the movie stars because they're marrying the movie stars.

00:21:10.420 Exactly.

00:21:11.280 Exactly.

00:21:11.900 Exactly.

00:21:12.300 So it's opened up doors, this sort of new generation or new definition of celebrity for people to enjoy the trappings of that.

00:21:22.980 More than ever before.

00:21:24.700 Although fame is something that you can only trade on so much.

00:21:28.580 I mean, it doesn't matter what kind of celebrity you are.

00:21:32.580 Fame just means a number of people who know your name.

00:21:36.300 And it can get you places sometimes, and it can be your worst enemy sometimes.

00:21:40.380 As you must know, Anthony Fury.

00:21:42.260 Well, you know, it's funny.

00:21:45.440 The other year when the AGO reopened the Art Gallery of Ontario, the first thing we did, we went to the Andy Warhol exhibit.

00:21:51.040 Checking that out.

00:21:51.860 Now there's the Andy Warhol miniseries up on Netflix, the docu-series about him.

00:21:55.820 I've always been interested in his work.

00:21:57.340 I've been interested in his career.

00:21:58.920 And he's known for turning art into something much more connected to celebrity, to pop culture.

00:22:04.480 And he's got his famous comment about fame, saying in the future, soon everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

00:22:11.240 And I know even like 10, 15 years ago when we first created whatever MySpace, we said, oh, look, Andy Warhol said this would happen.

00:22:18.300 But I feel like more and more what he's saying is becoming increasingly applicable.

00:22:23.160 Very Christian.

00:22:24.300 He was someone who understood celebrity back at a time when we didn't understand it to the degree that he did.

00:22:32.340 He knew how to make celebrities.

00:22:34.300 He knew the importance of an image and the importance of glamour, which means something that you exude out of you.

00:22:40.800 It doesn't mean something that you are.

00:22:42.560 It's something that you exude out of you.

00:22:43.820 He knew that exuding this sort of look that no one else had and being portrayed in a certain way.

00:22:51.940 He even made Campbell's tomato soup a celebrity through his portrayal of it in his paintings.

00:22:58.540 So he knew what fame was really about well before many.

00:23:03.200 He was a genius that way.

00:23:04.280 And so that most famous quote of him, of his saying that everyone has 15 minutes of fame is becoming truer and truer the more we spend time on social media and do things like punch out comics.

00:23:19.000 And Sean, you made a good observation when you were talking about how how things have become more democratized, how barriers have been brought down.

00:23:29.480 And the us versus them or the us and them, how celebs are so different from us that we can now, I guess, relate to them.

00:23:37.560 And maybe think our 15 minutes are just around the corner if we get the right number of followers or to your point about the documentary by the right number of followers.

00:23:46.220 And the number of like, you know, little kids who say like, oh, I have a YouTube channel now.

00:23:51.720 Is this I guess, is this healthy for society?

00:23:55.560 Is this us going in a good direction?

00:23:57.940 Are we unclear where we're headed right now?

00:24:00.060 What is it what does it mean from a social perspective?

00:24:03.660 There's there is an aspect that grosses me out when I find out that people just want to be famous.

00:24:09.360 Yeah, they just want to be known.

00:24:10.760 And I think that comes from an idea that each of us holds deep within us.

00:24:15.480 We all want to be seen.

00:24:16.540 We all want to be valid, validated at the end of the day.

00:24:19.760 I think that holds true for every human being.

00:24:21.960 But to be famous, as I said, is means nothing.

00:24:26.120 There's no necessarily there's no money attached to it.

00:24:29.160 There might be money attached to it.

00:24:30.640 It's not a currency that's reliable for you.

00:24:33.200 And you give up a lot of things like privacy, which a lot of people take for granted.

00:24:37.720 So it worries me when I hear young kids just want to be famous.

00:24:41.180 You want to be you want to be maybe a celebrity in the true sense of the word.

00:24:46.380 That is to say, do something that is celebrated by others and be celebrated for those reasons.

00:24:53.460 But not just to be famous.

00:24:55.340 People making sex tapes just to hopefully be discovered.

00:24:58.780 It's not the route to go.

00:25:00.680 I must say, I watched that Pam and Tommy special.

00:25:03.020 I don't know if you've seen it, that miniseries.

00:25:04.700 I can't wait to see it.

00:25:06.220 Well, it's so interesting.

00:25:07.560 I mean, it really takes you back to like the first ever time of that kind of happening,

00:25:12.300 that going viral with the sex tape.

00:25:14.240 And it's it's yes, it's a gossipy show, but it also it's a real statement about about 90s

00:25:20.580 culture.

00:25:21.320 Sean, to that point about particularly young people saying they want to be famous and

00:25:24.540 getting the YouTube channels going in in the pandemic during the lockdowns.

00:25:28.520 I know my wife and I talked about about our kids and we chatted with other parents about

00:25:32.880 it.

00:25:33.040 It was like more now than ever, everyone became Luddites and that we're like, our kids

00:25:37.100 are on the screen for 10 hours.

00:25:40.820 Like, is this healthy?

00:25:42.820 What do we do about it?

00:25:43.860 But we also feel like the genie ain't going back in the bottle.

00:25:47.240 It's not going back in the bottle, but I think it needs to be tamed.

00:25:49.940 There's something really creepy to me about a young child who knows how to work the camera.

00:25:55.140 Do you know what I mean?

00:25:55.980 And is and and and especially and I hope I don't sound sexist here, but I especially

00:26:02.700 get bothered when I see little girls who don't know much of anything.

00:26:07.140 They're they're they're just babies, really.

00:26:09.080 And they're posing seductively.

00:26:11.040 Right.

00:26:11.260 And and, you know, they want clothes that I know that's a tale as old as time girls 0.98

00:26:17.840 wanting clothes that are more adult before they're actually adults.

00:26:20.420 But I'm seeing it in younger and younger and younger children where they they mimic 0.81

00:26:24.820 and pose suggestively.

00:26:26.660 And you think about John Benet Ramsey, that whole culture, it just kind of grosses me

00:26:32.240 out.

00:26:32.520 So I do think the genie may be out of the bottle, but the genie needs to be told who

00:26:36.340 the boss is.

00:26:37.980 Who knew?

00:26:38.600 Will Smith starting the conversations, all the big picture called that one slap, the

00:26:42.620 slap heard around the world.

00:26:43.760 And then people can just get into the whole thing.

00:26:48.980 Sean, it's been a great conversation.

00:26:50.420 Thanks so much for joining us on the show today.

00:26:52.820 Nice to be with you.

00:26:53.820 Thank you.

00:26:54.020 Have a good one.

00:26:55.460 Cheers, man.

00:26:55.840 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:26:58.700 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:26:59.820 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:27:03.800 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:27:06.260 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify and Amazon Music.

00:27:11.320 You can listen through the app or your Alexa-enabled devices.

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00:27:17.920 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - April 11, 2022

Will Smith’s slap smacks of celebrity cancel culture

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