CANCELLED

The prolific public embrace of ‘cancelling’ disgraced or accused celebrities means the erasure of certain parts of our shared cultural history. But how, Huw Walmsley-Evans wonders, can we separate the art from the artist?

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Last March, a cruise ship carrying 2,650 passengers was allowed to dock in Sydney, Australia. The country had around 250 cases of COVID in the days prior to the Ruby Princess’s arrival and the nation was alarmed by the mounting case numbers overseas. Nevertheless, all passengers were allowed to disembark and to travel on to other parts of the country, including 110 passengers with flu-like symptoms. Within five weeks 662 passengers had tested positive for the virus, seeding COVID through the community.

As the virus took hold and lockdown orders snapped into place, all I could think was, why would anyone ever go on a cruise?

Cruises are terrible. They are gaudy, tacky, gauche. They take their aesthetic cues from two of the more objectionable built environments on land: casinos and malls. Terrible things happen on cruises. Hedonistic guests indulge in debauched, bacchanalian behaviour. Crews labour under conditions resembling indentured servitude. Gastrointestinal illness is rife. It’s a bad time. Have I ever been on a cruise? No, but like so many things I have strong opinions about, I’ve seen enough to make up my mind.

When it became apparent that COVID would shut down the cruise industry for the foreseeable future, my reaction was twofold: this should never have been a thing in the first place and nothing of value has been lost. It was with this same smug, self-righteous certitude that I approached the Me Too revelations beginning in 2017:

Dustin Hoffman? Mediocrity on a stick.

Michael Jackson? If he’s not the most overrated star in popular music, then I don’t know who is.