Posters on bedroom walls are par for the course for pre-teenagers. Of favourite actors, bands, sayings… you name it. I shared a bedroom at one point with my older sister and the Osmonds, Jackson Five and Partridge Family were the “soup du jour” at that point, and the pages of teen magazines were posted all over.
In Grade 6, my mother and siblings moved from a smaller city in Quebec (does anybody know the famous Granby Zoo?) to Montreal. I moved from a mostly French city (where I had my poutine minus the curds and gravy, not realizing I was disrespecting what would become a world-famous cultural delicacy) to an English suburb on the West Island of Montreal where everyone was upwardly mobile (except perhaps us). One of the first friends I met invited me to her Donny Osmond fan club. That was a foreign concept to me but, being new to the community, I attended. The leader of the club described a dream she had where each member of the club married a different Osmond and she described in detail their dresses and wedding décor. This was so beyond my small city life of running around the streets and climbing trees, I must have looked shocked that this was a thing. Suffice it to say, I was never invited to join that club.
Donny Osmond is the first victim of cancel culture that I can recall. He became so typecast and uncool given his clean TV image, despite being globally famous and a teen heartthrob, nobody would take him seriously as an adult. He actually ended up releasing an anonymous song on the radio in the late 1980s and people had to guess the “mystery artist”. It was a hit and he was able to sign on to a record deal.
Fortunately, he did not fall into the category of child stars that do not transition well into celebrity adulthood and end up with psychological issues and often early death from substance abuse, perhaps as a result of being cancelled from our consciences. Now there is more of a formula for escaping the cancellation of child stars. This often involves going through an anti-social or “bad boy” transition period and then redeeming one’s self by becoming an accomplished adult (think Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber).
Around this time last year I went through an adult version of cancel culture for saying what I strongly believed in out loud about the role of professional bodies. The debate behind the scenes in various groups was compelling. Some cancel culture hawks from both ends of the spectrum of some other issue swooped in to try to turn it into something else. It made the national news while I was out of country for a few days in Amsterdam where my younger daughter was studying abroad. Luckily, I was not cancelled. But it can happen to anyone, unless you stand for nothing.
Elon Musk has the good fortune (luck) to have a good fortune (money) where he seems to be able to say what he thinks, often without thinking. How many of us can say the same? I would never want to be Elon Musk (I like me just fine), but I do wonder how much controlling free speech might be controlling free thought. Cancel with caution, or you might be next.
Donna Purcell, K.C., (aka Lady Justice) is a Central Alberta lawyer and Chief Innovation Officer with Donna Purcell QC Law. If you have legal questions, contact dpurcell@dpqclaw.com.