“The painting is colonial”: cancel culture and a heated media debate in Norway
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Accepted version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3174925Utgivelsesdato
2025Metadata
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Originalversjon
https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2025.2452526Sammendrag
In winter 2023, two events from the world of visual arts and literature spurred into intense debates on woke and cancel culture in Norwegian newspapers. The visual arts debate was related to a statement from the chief curator of the National Museum that they did not want to display a particular work due to it being colonial, and the literature debate was related to the Norwegian publisher of Roald Dahl’s books wanting to accommodate recent adaptions based on suggestions from sensitivity readers. Through these debates, the US originated phenomena of woke and cancel culture got fully exposed in the Norwegian public sphere. Managers, critics, scholars, journalists, artists, and politicians presented their views on the phenomena and their normative evaluations of their place within the cultural sector. In this article, I analyze the dynamics of the debate and seek to answer why the incidents created such a fury.