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Capstone Project
My Topic: Cancel Culture and its effect on society
People talk a lot about "cancel culture", but nobody seems to agree on what it is. I certainly don't know. But I aim to find out. Over the course of this project, I will investigate what cancel culture is and means. I also plan to look at a few sub-questions:
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Is there a benefit to cancel culture?
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Is it actually true that you "can't say anything anymore" and that "people don't know how to take a joke"?
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How does cancel culture affect our current political factionalism?
My Research Paper
To start my project, I had to write a research paper about my Topic using a variety of sources. I wrote mine about the connection between cancel culture and authoritarianism. It took about a month of blood, sweat, and tears, but I'm very proud of it.
The Silencing Of Liberty
This editorial cartoon is my attempt to show that cancel culture is inherently hostile to liberty. The Statue of Liberty's mouth is covered by the word "CANCELED" because cancel culture first restricts speech. I chose the Statue because it is an incredibly recognizable symbol of freedom. It is somewhat US-centric. However, I found that unavoidable while still maintaining clarity. Not enough people know about depictions of Liberty holding out soft caps for them to have impact.
The act of drawing this cartoon didn't take very long. However, it took me almost two weeks to think of the idea. A big problem was that I had no idea what I was doing. I researched praxis beforehand but none of the resources I found were very helpful. Luckily, I have a friend who has worked on political cartoons in the past. He was very helpful. Once I got advice from him it only took a few days to come up with an idea. From there, making the comic was easy.
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