Public Shunning In The 21st Century

Shunning, by definition, is to “persistently avoid, ignore, or reject (someone or something) through antipathy or caution”. During the earlier centuries, the use of public punishments not only allowed convicts to be humiliated in front of others, people used it as a way to make society fear the consequences of bad actions that went against society’s faiths and morals, thus leading to shunning. Now, shunning is growing rapidly all across the country and the world. Popular forms of 21st century public punishments that led to public shunning include publicizing the location of sex offenders in neighborhoods, holding up signs in public places to express the crime that a person committed, etc. With those punishments, officials in the past and present …show more content…
Ever since about fifty women have come up to accuse the comedian of rape and sexual assault, the public’s reaction to Cosby turned into scorn and disappointment. Many former fans of Cosby turned to platforms on social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) to express their newfound shock and resentment for the fallen star. Additionally, many tabloids such as TMZ and Entertainment Tonight continually send in paparazzi to cover every little detail on Cosby’s life in order to satisfy the public’s mind. His life turned from a series of smiles and laughter to countless hours spent in courtrooms defending his name. Shunning also cost Cosby a delay in some of his televised shows and numerous amounts of tours across the country, all of which were cancelled due to the lack of attendance or conflicted with his trial dates; actions that subsequently hindered his career. Essentially, the life and career of Bill Cosby took a turn for the worst and struggled to redeem itself back to its near perfect state before the …show more content…
“Crimes”, more notably, adultery, murder, rape, etc. receive the greatest amounts of shunning by the public due to their newfound fear and disappointment of the “criminals”. Hester Prynne and Bill Cosby, despite the enormous gap in time for their “crimes” would be publically shunned similarly for their actions. Their scarlet letter (“A”) represented dishonesty and illegitimate actions that damaged their personal relationships with the ones they know and love, thus led to public shunning for both subjects. As a result, so long as an action defies the word of the law or the morals of society, public shunning will continue to exist and devastate a convict’s life as they know