Seth Rogen’s no stranger to shaking things up on the big and small screens while engaging in all manner of joyous outrageousness, often of the profane variety. He’s shown himself to be extremely on-point when it comes to what is and what isn’t an actual controversy. Rogen also previously went on record to say that comedians who complain about cancel culture should maybe back up and concede that their jokes have “aged terribly,” and in a new Interview Magazine feature, Rogen touches upon the subject of cancel culture again with another astute observation.
While speaking with fellow funnyperson Quinta Brunson, the pair’s discussion largely related to the subject of writing books (note: here are the many reasons why Rogen’s Yearbook is a must-read installment from him). Brunson laments how she still wants to enjoy some books that are considered controversial, like Catcher in the Rye, and Holes comes up in conversation, which brings Shia LaBeouf to mind for Rogen. That leads the Pineapple Express (yes, I will always love that movie) star down this path:
“It’s funny, I think it shows that people don’t find art to be a useful thing. If something is considered useful, no one questions for one second whether or not the person who made it was a fucking piece of shit. Henry Ford was a Nazi and no one said, “We shouldn’t use assembly lines anymore.”
This is more than a fair point. It’s so fair that it isn’t even funny, which makes it even funnier. And there’s no comeback possible for this point because it’s quite true.
Perhaps this point seems eerily true for the “useful” allowance made for auto tycoons, and that might be entirely coincidental (and this is not comparable to Nazism or anything that Seth Rogen is saying, only to the notion of cancellation). There’s a certain Tesla CEO who’s trolled the Internet by saying not-nice things about trans-preferred pronouns and has been accused of “manipulating” the market. And that CEO has even been dubbed “Space Karen,” which says a lot, yet he does not appear to fear being cancelled (although “Anonymous” apparently had something to say on the subject).
Yep, I’ve really gone off on a tangent there, but Rogen’s point sure stands firm.
(Via Interview Magazine)
