Cancel culture: It’s complicated

In this episode of Good Weekend Talks, we look at cancel culture.

It’s a hot-button issue in many Western countries, but just where did cancel culture come from, and what are its ramifications?

James Button, a freelance journalist and former speechwriter for former prime minister Kevin Rudd, attempts to untangle this highly politicised issue for a three-part series in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, the first of which is our cover story this week: “When Hugh Sheridan got cancelled: What it meant for him – and what it says about us”.

The piece examines how Sheridan landed the stage acting role of a lifetime, until a social media campaign killed the show and left him shattered. Was this a prime example of cancel culture gone mad, or the incidental cost of rebalancing biased power structures?

Loading

To answer that question, James is joined on the podcast by acclaimed theatre director and playwright Wesley Enoch, the Indigenous Chair in the Creative Industries at Queensland University of Technology and a former artistic director of the Sydney Festival and of the Queensland Theatre Company. Also on hand is Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland, to moderate a fascinating discussion that grapples with the thorny and inflammatory issues of race, gender and identity politics.

Good Weekend Talks offers readers the chance to delve even deeper each week into Good Weekend’s most intriguing stories, with lively insight from writers, editors and experts. Listen to more episodes by subscribing to Good Weekend Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

For the full feature story, see Saturday’s Good Weekend, or visit The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.