In an interview with Rocking with Jam Man Youtube channel, Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French talked about the problem of cancel culture and how Michael Jackson’s songs canceled the cancel culture while promoting his new biography titled Twisted Business: Lessons from My Life in Rock N’ Roll.’
Cancel culture is defined as giving up to support someone especially a public figure because of something he or she has said or done offensive and illegal. Cancel culture is very effective in social media nowadays. French criticized its imbalance and unfairness by giving Michael Jackson as an example.
In 1993, Michael Jackson was accused of sexually abusing a child but he settled with the child’s family out of court and the case was closed. Then, he was also charged with molesting a thirteen-year-old cancer patient in 2005 but he wasn’t found guilty again.
However, Two men said that they were sexually abused by Jackson when they were kids in a documentary film ‘Leaving Neverland.’ The film made some people started to question the innocence of him also the others kept protecting him.
Jay Jay French stated that cancel culture is unstable because of different attitudes toward Jackson and others. Not defending what they have done, he gave examples of Marilyn Manson and Gary Glitter’s excluding from the whole music and media industry. But, in spite of all these accusations and witnesses, Michael Jackson was not canceled and still being listened to. According to him, cancel culture is being controlled by a majority who does not represent all kinds of perspectives and people should know more to make a final decision.
Here’s what he said:
“I’m not gonna tell you no – I mean, Michael Jackson got accused of some pretty bad stuff, but Michael Jackson’s music is still being played.
So obviously somebody decided that that was OK, someone decided that’s not going to bother people.
And yet, other people’s music has been taken off. You probably don’t even know who Gary Glitter is but he has a song called ‘Rock and Roll’ played in all the arenas, around the country, all baseball stadiums, football stadiums, everything…
But then Gary Glitter got arrested for some weird stuff he did in Thailand with underage children and got banned everywhere. When I say banned, I just mean that people said, ‘We’re not going to play his music anymore.’ So they don’t play his music.
And I am in no way endorsing in any manner way, shape, or form his actions. What I’m saying is that is a byproduct of what happens in life in general, and it’s terrible. Cancel culture is not a healthy thing because it just depends on who decides to do the canceling.”
He continued:
“So if they like Twisted Sister, we don’t get canceled, we’re OK. But if they hate Twisted Sister and they cancel us, it’s not OK. So therefore it’s not OK just to do it randomly, it’s a personal choice.
If you don’t want to buy something from somebody, don’t buy it. But for the media to withhold it is opening up a can of worms that is almost impossible to put back in the jar. It’s easy to say, ‘This sucks, so this is great.’
It’s easy to say that but it’s harder to read in between the lines, it’s harder to understand the nuances because I think you really understand this. When you talk to your friends, it’s always, ‘That sucks,’ or, ‘That’s great.’ It’s always one or the other, it’s never in between.
There’s a big gray area in the world and you need to be informed, you need to be well-read and informed in order to understand the gray so that you don’t sound like an ignorant idiot. And that, by the way, applies to anybody of any age, not to you personally, but just to anybody.
I am a left-wing person but I read five newspapers every day and I watch Fox, and I watch MSN, I watch all of it because I want to know what everybody thinks. It’s important to understand it.
But if you don’t want to know what other people think, it’s very easy to avoid it and go, ‘I don’t want to know about it, I hate you, I hate what you stand for, you suck.’ I would prefer to know a lot before I make that determination.”
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