Words: they have meanings. Sometimes lots of them! That’s something we teach little kids, who will inevitably go on to forget it completely once they get on the internet or are hired to farm viral content for an online media organization.
Case in point: Last night, Donald Glover took to Twitter to engage in a seemingly innocuous conversation about the state of creativity in the entertainment business. “Saw people on here havin a discussion about how tired they were of reviewing boring stuff (tv & film),” he wrote. “We’re getting boring stuff and not even experimental mistakes (?) because people are afraid of getting cancelled.”
we're getting boring stuff and not even experimental mistakes(?) because people are afraid of getting cancelled
— donald (@donaldglover) May 11, 2021
The ensuing “controversy” is about as 2021 as it gets. Battle lines have been drawn! On the one side you have those —including media outlets posting bad faith, provocative headlines — claiming that Glover was invoking so-called “cancel culture,” a favorite straw man of the Right. On the other, you’ve got fans on Twitter insisting that he simply meant that creators are nervous about their television shows being canceled by networks. And then on a third front, there’s everyone who got a kick out of the fact that Glover doesn’t seem to know how to post a tweet thread, and honestly, they may be the least absurd actors in this whole scenario.
Donald Glover being cancelled because people thought he was talking about people being cancelled when in actual fact he was talking about tv shows being cancelled is peak 2021 pic.twitter.com/TFDXkbtvGu
— KJL (@kerryjeanlister) May 11, 2021
But sifting through his actual words, there does seem to be at least some evidence for both interpretations. In his first tweet, Glover specifically mentions both TV and film. And “canceled” isn’t really a term used very much in reference to movies. People don’t talk about films being canceled the way they do TV shows.
On the other hand, of the two media, Glover is primarily a television creator. His Emmy-winning FX series Atlanta is one of the most beautiful, surreal, and significant shows to ever air on TV. (Seriously, we should all probably drop this and go re-watch Atlanta’s first two seasons real quick.) Earlier this year, he also signed a multiyear deal with Amazon to develop content for Prime Video. It is entirely plausible, likely even, that in his second tweet, he was speaking from his own experience specifically as a TV creator. In that case, it would make sense that he would use the word “canceled” to refer to networks declining to renew shows, like his own, that take too many risks.
Glover himself hasn’t yet clarified what he meant by the tweets. Possibly he’s hard at work on his actual job, or just still asleep. Maybe he won’t explain what he meant. The last time he tweeted was back in November, so he might just have a vastly healthier relationship with the online discourse than the rest of us do and will simply refuse to engage. We will continue to obsessively monitor Twitter for future developments.
