From Bloomberg Opinion, January 31:
The French aristocrat has been both banned and extolled. What does his cultural immortality portend?
In theology, being condemned to perdition may sound a lot like going to hell, but it’s much worse than spending eternity amid fire and brimstone. Those who believe in the survival of the soul after death shudder at the gravity of perdition: the total dissolution of one’s existence even in spiritual form. In our increasingly soulless secular age, there’s an attempt at a similar punishment: We call it cancellation.
The concept derives from television — that which befalls series and shows with bad ratings, yanked by broadcast networks, never to be seen again. Its first use in popular culture in that sense may have been in the lyrics of Your Love Is Cancelled, by the disco-funk group Chic (“Well I saw it on TV ‘bout someone like me...”). The song’s from 1981, but cancellation as we know it really got going this century. Today, it’s a pile-on of blaming and shaming in our social media public squares that often leads to the target’s commercial or career oblivion. The courts can also get involved to mete out justice. The vitriol makes it much more hellish than old-fashioned consumer boycotts.
Some of the most spectacular examples involve fans turning against their idols. The most recent is graphic novel icon Neil Gaiman, who has received massive condemnation after lurid stories emerged alleging sexual assault and harassment on his part (a particularly explicit account can be found here; read with caution). He has denied the allegations and there are no criminal charges filed against him. Nevertheless, the furor has convinced publishers to avoid or drop Gaiman, who has become a multimillionaire from his oeuvre of close to 50 novels and comic books. HarperCollins and W.W. Norton, which have successfully published his books before, said they have no plans with the British author. In late January, Dark Horse Comics announced it wouldn’t release the last volume of its illustrated version of his 2005 fantasy novel Anansi Boys.
On Friday, Variety reported that Netflix Inc.’s adaptation of The Sandman, based on Gaiman’s bestselling comic books, will end after the second season later this year.Does such collective vengeance result in permanent perdition? The history of one offender may hold some lessons.
If any literary figure should be up for perpetual cancellation, it’s Donatien Alphonse François de Sade — the Marquis de Sade, pornographer, philosopher, poisoner, prisoner, the prophet of sexual excess and cruelty, the inspiration for the word “sadism.”
It’s not as if no one tried to erase the French nobleman from memory before. Beset by episode after episode of his violent sexual exploits and blasphemous outbursts, his status-conscious mother-in-law had him thrown into prison for more than 12 years, including a dramatic turn in the infamous Bastille just before it was stormed by the mobs of the French Revolution on July 14, 1789. He was condemned to be executed twice — the first time for sodomy and for poisoning prostitutes he’d hired for orgies in Marseille (the women fell ill after ingesting pastilles probably laced with the aphrodisiac Spanish fly). But he and an accomplice fled to Italy and were burned in effigy instead. When he was out of the Bastille, the chaos of the French Revolution saved him in the nick of time from the nick of the guillotine. Ironically, one of the charges was for being a political moderate in the reign of terror of Maximilien Robespierre, whose overthrow the same day, 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) likely saved Sade’s life....
....MUCH MORE
Possibly also of interest:
"Sodom, LLC: The Marquis de Sade and the Modern Office Novel"
