We've been hearing a lot of complaints about "cancel culture" in the last few years. The term itself is a new one, but the phenomenon it describes definitely is not--in fact, "cancelling" is about as American as, if not apple pie, definitely baseball.

The term, and the most recent version of the "culture," originated in the book publishing world, specifically, young adult (YA) fiction, where readers and writers seemed to be the most keen-eyed and unforgiving about authors who crossed lines no longer acceptable to them. In several high-profile cases, YA novels were withdrawn from publication--literally "cancelled" by their publishers--because of objectionable depictions of marginalized groups, the use of certain language, or a topic that wasn't treated with sufficient sensitivity.

These cancellations raised considerable controversy at the time, with factions defending the authors or saying they resented being stopped from reading the books and deciding for themselves. But "cancelling" spread from the YA publishing world out onto college campuses, where personalities like Milo Yiannopoulos were disinvited to speak after protests; into the science-fiction convention community, where the feminist convention Wiscon rescinded its invitation to author Elizabeth Moon to be their Guest of Honor after she wrote a blog post about Muslims. It spread to the mainstream book publishing world, where publishers dropped contracts or cancelled book tours and promotions numerous times. In some cases, pending books were revised and their publication rescheduled (and some of the books were picked up by smaller, scrappier, less prestigious and well-paying publishing companies).

Then "cancelling" extended into the employment arena. Most recently, the 27-year-old hired to edit Conde Nast's young adult magazine Teen Vogue resigned after an online uproar over offensive tweets she made ten years ago when she was a high school student. The term has now taken on a much broader connotation, although those impacted by it are overwhelmingly in the media/entertainment world or in politics.

But America has been "cancelling" artists, authors, entertainers, filmmakers and politicians for ages.

The early film industry was founded and built largely by Jewish Americans, most of whom changed their names and downplayed their Jewish identity thanks to one of the greatest American "cancel cultures" of all, organized anti-Semitism. Early film pushed boundaries which today have been forgotten. As special effects and camera work became more advanced, audiences more sophisticated and the industry more competitive, filmgoers could see increasingly explicit violence, disturbingly dark and cynical plot twists and even nudity. Enter the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934, which reigned until it was replaced by the alphabetic film ratings system in 1967. Films that didn't conform to the Code either had to be changed, or could not be distributed.

The King of the Cancellers was newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, who essentially controlled the mass media in the first part of the 20th Century. Actors, actresses, writers and filmmakers had to kowtow to Hearst's every whim; if he didn't like you, he could pull all mention of you from every one of his newspapers and consign your film or your whole career to oblivion.

In the 1950s, the booming comic book industry was gutted by a man named Frederick Wertham, who wrote a book, Seduction of the Innocent, attacking comic books as immoral and contributing to juvenile delinquency. (Like the early film industry, some genres of comics had indeed gone to extremes in their quest to attract readers...but no one was being forced to read them.) The book led to Congressional hearings and the closing of comic book publishers; hundreds of artists, writers, letterers, colorists and other professionals lost their careers permanently. Comics were effectively "cancelled" as a bad influence on youth in the 1950s, only reviving in the same tidal wave of liberalism that broke the Motion Picture Production Code in the 1960s.

Of course, McCarthyism and its blacklisting stands as the most shameful example of all in the history of American "cancelling."

In every case, however, the "cancellers" prevailed because they had plenty of popular support for their cause. It was the Boomers, in the 1960s, who pushed back against so much of the older "cancelling," calling to "let it all hang out," destroying old restrictions about what could be published in books, founding alternative media, and generally breaking every rule they could. Our opinion of our elders back then was pretty much identical to the view young people today have of the Boomers now. The Boomers started families and suddenly all that freedom didn't look quite so attractive. Millennials, beware: you WILL turn into your parents, and your grandkids will be "cancelling" the heck out of you. I can guarantee it.

Where should the boundaries be set? We all seem to agree that not everything goes, and in a civil society, there are limits to what is acceptable to say, to do, even to think and believe. But who decides? Are we doomed to have ever fluctuating standards and mores that wash back and forth from generation to generation--right to left, conservative to liberal, strict to loose--with the constancy of the tides?

What do you think is truly unspeakable and unprintable? What would you do if society decided to "cancel" you?

Inanna Arthen