Trending Now: Don’t blame Mardi Gras on Shia LaBeouf’s alleged antigay fiasco – Fans React

Cancel culture can be stupid. Speaking as someone who has been canceled myself, I have seen how quickly a stranger’s certainty can harden into a story that is impossible to dislodge, even when it is wrong. The internet loves an outline more than a person. Once it has the outline, it starts throwing rocks, then congratulates itself for being righteous.

But the correction for that ugliness is not to swing all the way into its opposite, where we turn a man’s repugnant behavior into a vibe because the footage is entertaining and the memes are easy. Accountability is not cancel culture. It is just what adulthood looks like when you refuse to let ignorance hide inside charisma.

My husband is from New Orleans, and we go to Mardi Gras every year. For people who grew up there, it isn’t a theme party or a long weekend. It is just part of life. You can show up and enjoy it, you can even get swept into it, but it is not a backdrop for your personal mythology. New Orleans is not a content studio, and it is not a stage for a celebrity to audition a redemption arc in real time. Which is exactly what Shia LaBeouf has been doing.

In the days leading up to Fat Tuesday, he became a little storyline. Sightings. Bartender anecdotes. Clips. The kind of minor celebrity chaos that social media turns into a “cool guy” meme, especially when the setting is New Orleans and the energy is, look how hard he parties. One bartender was quoted describing him as belligerent. Another person put it more plainly. He is terrorizing the city.

Early Tuesday morning, LaBeouf was arrested in New Orleans and charged with two counts of simple battery after two men reported being assaulted. One of the alleged victims, who was dressed in drag, said LaBeouf repeatedly called him a “faggot,” and another victim said the same slur was used against him as well. Hours later he was back out on Bourbon Street, dancing and posing, turning even the arrest into a continuation of the bit.

So no, this is not relatable. This is not iconic. This is alleged violence plus alleged homophobic slurs, committed by a man whose public record already contains years of volatility that people keep trying to reinterpret as depth.

This is the same actor who in 2017 was filmed directing racist remarks at a Black police officer during an arrest, behavior he later said he was ashamed of. It is the same actor accused in a civil lawsuit by FKA twigs of sexual battery, assault, and relentless abuse, allegations detailed in court filings describing choking, threats, and coercive control. The case eventually settled out of court, and he publicly acknowledged he had been abusive to himself and to people around him.

A court handles the specific incident. The rest of us decide how we respond to it. We have eyes. We have memories. We do not have to laugh just because something shows up as a headline or a meme. We do not have to forget what someone has repeatedly done simply because the internet flattened it into a joke.

If you are tempted to shrug and say, well, that is just Mardi Gras, it is worth remembering what New Orleans has carried, and what it has survived.

New Orleans queer history is not an accessory. It is foundational. The city has had queer communities building culture in public and in code for generations, including early gay Carnival traditions formed when that kind of visibility could get you arrested. It is home to institutions that functioned as sanctuaries long before acceptance was fashionable.

And it is also a city with scars. The UpStairs Lounge fire in 1973 killed 32 people at a gay bar, a catastrophe followed by institutional coldness and public silence.

All of that history is in the air when someone with celebrity status allegedly screams slurs at queer men, allegedly attacks them, and then gets treated like a folk hero because he is shirtless in beads and the internet is bored. This is not just about him. This is about what we are letting him do.

LaBeouf is using New Orleans as a publicity machine. The city is doing what it always does during Mardi Gras, spilling over with spectacle and beautiful disorder, and he is feeding on it as a stage. The cameras follow. The posts multiply. The headlines write themselves. Even the aftermath becomes content. Even the arrest becomes a prop.

And what do we do when a man turns a living city into a set? We help him without meaning to, playing along and turning him into the main character while calling it fascination instead of permission.

I am not interested in moralizing about drinking. People drink at Mardi Gras. I drink. That is not the point. The point is that partying hard has become a convenient fog machine that makes everything else harder to see. It lets us pretend this is about excess instead of entitlement, about chaos instead of ignorance, about a lovable mess instead of the very old American habit of excusing men who harm people as long as they remain entertaining.

If a regular person did what LaBeouf is accused of doing, there would be no charm campaign. There would be no mythology. There would be consequences, and there would be a basic social agreement that slurs and violence are disqualifying, not endearing.

Celebrity should not function as a hall pass to terrorize a city, especially a city you now claim as home, and especially not a city whose queer and Black cultures built much of what the world comes there to consume.

New Orleans does not owe Shia LaBeouf a redemption arc. It does not owe him softness. It does not owe him the alchemy where bad behavior becomes a brand.

If he wants redemption, he can pursue it the boring way, quietly, without turning a city into a mirror that only reflects him. He can make amends. He can take responsibility. He can do the work that does not trend.

The rest of us can do something even simpler.

We can stop rewarding the performance of not caring. We can stop converting alleged harm into entertainment. We can stop letting a man use New Orleans like a publicity machine and then calling it culture when the machine prints him a new narrative.

New Orleans deserves better.

Josh Ackley is a political strategist and the frontman of the queerpunk band The Dead Betties. @momdarkness @thedeadbetties

Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit out.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of our stories. Email us at voices@equalpride.com. Views expressed in Voices stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of Out or our parent company, equalpride.

This article originally appeared on Out: Don’t blame Mardi Gras on Shia LaBeouf’s alleged antigay fiasco

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