In answer to your question I would argue that Kevin Spacey has been broadly cancelled and done successfully. It is unlikely that he will find work in his chosen field again. However, that is tangential to my argument here — which is the interconnectedness of art.
The problem with cancel culture is that it doesn’t take into account the myriad of other people affected. It’s using a simple solution to solve a complex problem. Regardless of my personal feelings on social shame (I’m not a fan) — read Jon Ronson’s “So You’ve Been Publically Shamed” if you want to read the counter argument to shaming, it has knock on effects.
When you cancel a musician, you cancel his/her producer, his/her bandmates, his/her roadie. You can boycott a film because Kevin Spacey is in it or Harvey Weinstein produced it— but that’s crapping on the artistic endeavour of at least three thousand other people per film. As a script writer, I would be fuming if a piece of work that I created was boycotted off the back of the behaviour of one of the people in it.
Call out culture is subjective, escalating and those people consistently engaging in it lack objectivity and reasonableness about what they are doing. Everyone is convinced they are the good guys, that their way is morally correct and will do mental gymnastics to continue believing that. The lack of questioning your own beliefs is what causes bigotry, and bigots come from both the right and the left.
