Separate the Art From the Artist

[TarnishedPenny]

Djrip, I understand your point and accept that it is very common and hardly extreme, yet I’d be interested in taking this forward.

OK, Confederate generals were on the side supporting slavery. That was bad. Got it. Slavery was Bad and still is.

So let’s go 180 degrees and look at Abraham Lincoln. He led the side fighting against the pro-slavery side (not that it was anything near that simple), so that makes him a fit subject for statues, yes? The big one in DC is pretty impressive, certainly. I personally view him as the greatest president of the USA. I sincerely admire him. But…

Lincoln, like most in his time, dropped the n-word liberally. Today, that would be enough to cause protests. There’s no real evidence he accepted Blacks as equals, far from it. He argued against slavery prior to the war, yet was very clear that his priority was the preservation of the Union, not freeing slaves. True, that position shifted with theme, but the record is clear that many northerners felt him dilatory WRT abolition.

Lincoln’s treatment of natives was pretty dismal. He gave away huge areas of tribal land and ok’d the largest mass execution in US history, natives who had been fighting against that process. Today, it would be the political equivalent of riding a pogo stick into a minefield.

I could go on, but history shows Honest Abe as having done, said and thought some things we today would find horrifying - were it somebody else. My opinion is that one should not seize the bad, but rather consider the totality of somebody’s life. By that way of thinking, Lincoln was a great man, despite his flaws. And he remains popular (again, fine by me).


Lest anybody think I’m being antiAmerican, I could point out another example. Canadian society has in its heroic pantheon ‘The Famous Five’, five women who challenged Canadian law in what became known at ‘The Persons Case’, resulting in Canadian women being legally accorded full civic rights in 1929. Well, good for them and the world would be worse off had they not stood up to unjust laws. They are lionized in Canada - statues, images on currency, etc.

But, oops, there is some dirty laundry rarely aired. One of them, Emily Murphy, published hideous rants against Chinese, blacks and Jews and argued for much tighter immigration controls. She and others among the Five successfully argued for a eugenics law which resulted in thousands of women (generally minorities) being forcibly sterilized. Yet they remain heroes and nobody has defaced their images or such.

So, thoughts please. Is there some nebulous line of wrongdoing below which a person remains acceptable? Or is it one of willing societal blindness in the cases of certain very popular individuals?


Edit. My intent was not to damn or criticize or even question the heroic status of those I’ve mentioned, but rather raise a more general question of how our judgements are formed. Why do we ignore ills committed by some and focus on those committed by others?

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Stephen King wrote a fucking child orgy scene in his novel It. Is the scene problematic? Absolutely. Do I consider him a pedophile? Of course not.

Oooh man don't remind me of that shit, I had almost forgotten! Have you seen his interviews when questioned on it? He tries so hard to excuse that content... if ever that man did something to make me question him, that was definitely it.

 

[SimonDoom]

Djrip, I understand your point and accept that it is very common and hardly extreme, yet I’d be interested in taking this forward.

OK, Confederate generals were on the side supporting slavery. That was bad. Got it. Slavery was Bad and still is.

So let’s go 180 degrees and look at Abraham Lincoln. He led the side fighting against the pro-slavery side (not that it was anything near that simple), so that makes him a fit subject for statues, yes? The big one in DC is pretty impressive, certainly. I personally view him as the greatest president of the USA. I sincerely admire him. But…

Lincoln, like most in his time, dropped the n-word liberally. Today, that would be enough to cause protests. There’s no real evidence he accepted Blacks as equals, far from it. He argued against slavery prior to the war, yet was very clear that his priority was the preservation of the Union, not freeing slaves. True, that position shifted with theme, but the record is clear that many northerners felt him dilatory WRT abolition.

Lincoln’s treatment of natives was pretty dismal. He gave away huge areas of tribal land and ok’d the largest mass execution in US history, natives who had been fighting against that process. Today, it would be the political equivalent of riding a pogo stick into a minefield.

I could go on, but history shows Honest Abe as having done, said and thought some things we today would find horrifying - were it somebody else. My opinion is that one should not seize the bad, but rather consider the totality of somebody’s life. By that way of thinking, Lincoln was a great man, despite his flaws. And he remains popular (again, fine by me).


Lest anybody think I’m being antiAmerican, I could point out another example. Canadian society has in its heroic pantheon ‘The Famous Five’, five women who challenged Canadian law in what became known at ‘The Persons Case’, resulting in Canadian women being legally accorded full civic rights in 1929. Well, good for them and the world would be worse off had they not stood up to unjust laws. They are lionized in Canada - statues, images on currency, etc.

But, oops, there is some dirty laundry rarely aired. One of them, Emily Murphy, published hideous rants against Chinese, blacks and Jews and argued for much tighter immigration controls. She and others among the Five successfully argued for a eugenics law which resulted in thousands of women (generally minorities) being forcibly sterilized. Yet they remain heroes and nobody has defaced their images or such.

So, thoughts please. Is there some nebulous line of wrongdoing below which a person remains acceptable? Or is it one of willing societal blindness in the cases of certain very popular individuals?

If one were to go back in time to 1850 and administer a 2023-era 100-question "acceptable political views" test to all people of that time-- white, black, men, women, Native American, etc., etc., would anyone pass the test? Probably not. Almost everyone was politically incorrect by today's standards. Slavery and racism were not the inventions or unique provinces of European Caucasians.

I make it easy by not choosing what stories I read based on the politics of their authors. I can't recall ever having done this, and I doubt I ever will.

 

[Djmac1031]

Oooh man don't remind me of that shit, I had almost forgotten! Have you seen his interviews when questioned on it? He tries so hard to excuse that content... if ever that man did something to make me question him, that was definitely it.

I get what he THINKS he was trying to accomplish with that scene. Doesn't make it any less creepy.

But I don't think it makes him a monster. Just a guy who, at least at that time, was under some very impaired judgment.

 

[Voboy]

I've not read the whole thread, but I have no trouble separating an artist from their flaws. I can enjoy Michael Jackson, Jerry Lee Lewis, or Amy Winehouse. I can, and do, acknowledge that modern music would not exist without Phil Spector's genius. I can appreciate Tarantino's early stuff without feeling like I'm endorsing Harvey Weinstein; for that matter, I can (and do) think that Kevin Spacey is an outstanding actor who's capable of making almost any film better.

Those who can't separate art from artist, and who avoid that art thereby, are missing some of the best things in life, IMO.

 

[djrip]

Oooh man don't remind me of that shit, I had almost forgotten! Have you seen his interviews when questioned on it? He tries so hard to excuse that content... if ever that man did something to make me question him, that was definitely it.

That scene was great when I read it when I was 10. In my view, he was writing from the headspace of the kids. He was writing honestly, probably remembering his younger self. As a kid at the time I felt that the kids were realistically represented. I had sexual thoughts at that age, if not magical orgies. I seem to recall boys in Angela's Ashes masturbating together in a field. These things happen in life and honest art reflects that.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

That scene was great when I read it when I was 10. In my view, he was writing from the headspace of the kids. He was writing honestly, probably remembering his younger self. As a kid at the time I felt that the kids were realistically represented. I had sexual thoughts at that age, if not magical orgies. I seem to recall boys in Angela's Ashes masturbating together in a field. These things happen in life and honest art reflects that.

I've had vastly horrible experiences in my young life with sexual encounters between children and adults, so yeah, nah... it's not cute or 'coming of age' to me. A scene with one young girl and a group of boys written by an adult man makes it even less appealing, but hey, freedom of speech exists for a reason and I'm not gonna condemn anyone for being alright with reading it. I'll raise my eyebrow at King's response to why he felt the need to even include the scene in a horror novel but again, that's just my response to it. I prefer to avoid sexualizing or abuse of children in literature, I know shit happens in the real world and the number is staggering just among the individuals I know who had sexual encounters before the age of ten, but it's not particularly something I care to read, and I'm glad King didn't make a habit of revisiting that trope in later work.

I wouldn't say that scene ruined the book on the whole--not quite like reading A Child Called It or The Lovely Bones, but for me personally, it's not something I'm interested in reading.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've had vastly horrible experiences in my young life with sexual encounters between children and adults, so yeah, nah... it's not cute or 'coming of age' to me. A scene with one young girl and a group of boys written by an adult man makes it even less appealing, but hey, freedom of speech exists for a reason and I'm not gonna condemn anyone for being alright with reading it. I'll raise my eyebrow at King's response to why he felt the need to even include the scene in a horror novel but again, that's just my response to it. I prefer to avoid sexualizing or abuse of children in literature, I know shit happens in the real world and the number is staggering just among the individuals I know who had sexual encounters before the age of ten, but it's not particularly something I care to read, and I'm glad King didn't make a habit of revisiting that trope in later work.

I wouldn't say that scene ruined the book on the whole--not quite like reading A Child Called It or The Lovely Bones, but for me personally, it's not something I'm interested in reading.

I read It during the 80s, not long after the book came out, and I recall thinking it was a bizarre and contrived scene that made no sense on its own terms. A bunch of prepubescent kids, and the one girl among them gets the idea that all the boys should have sex with her so they all stay bonded. Bizarre. As I recall (haven't read it in over 35 years) it wasn't written to be erotic, but it was still weird.

But it doesn't make King a pedophile or evil person. It's fiction.

 

[Voboy]

OK, Confederate generals were on the side supporting slavery. That was bad. Got it. Slavery was Bad and still is.

To take it somewhat further?

There are many similarities between George Washington and Robert Lee. Both were rebels against a government they had sworn to defend, and which they had risked their lives for on many occasions. Both were, to those who revere them, the "right man in the right place at the right time." Both were wealthy Virginia aristocrats; hell, they were related.

But there were many differences. For starters, Lee was a far better military commander, both strategically and tactically. He was probably more effective as a leader, as well. We know that Lee treated his slaves with far greater compassion than Washington did. He never ordered a genocidal campaign against Native Americans, unlike Washington.

But then, of course, there is the only difference that matters: Washington was on the winning side. Lee was not.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I read It during the 80s, not long after the book came out, and I recall thinking it was a bizarre and contrived scene that made no sense on its own terms. A bunch of prepubescent kids, and the one girl among them gets the idea that all the boys should have sex with her so they all stay bonded. Bizarre. As I recall (haven't read it in over 35 years) it wasn't written to be erotic, but it was still weird.

But it doesn't make King a pedophile or evil person. It's fiction.

Absolutely agree, I don't hold the piece against him and I still read his work. Admittedly it seems in the more modern years he's running low on ideas and some of his plots seem to have very anti-climatic ends. My bias is totally personal with that particular scene, and it just seemed so out of left field... but who really knows, Stephen King has a very unusual process, and he states often when he's approached in interviews that so many people had an issue with the sex scene and not the multiple child murders and that baffles him a bit. I'm inclined to agree with him on that, as well, minor sex not okay minor murder okay? Bewildering.

If I had known it was in the book would I have avoided it? Probably not. Shit gets uncomfortable in literature sometimes, and like I said, I don't think it ruined the book for me. I just didn't quite understand the purpose behind it and I felt if he had omitted it or replaced it with something else, it would've been just as good a novel. Maybe he was gunning for controversy? Who knows. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

 

[djrip]

Djrip, I understand your point and accept that it is very common and hardly extreme, yet I’d be interested in taking this forward.

OK, Confederate generals were on the side supporting slavery. That was bad. Got it. Slavery was Bad and still is.

So let’s go 180 degrees and look at Abraham Lincoln. He led the side fighting against the pro-slavery side (not that it was anything near that simple), so that makes him a fit subject for statues, yes? The big one in DC is pretty impressive, certainly. I personally view him as the greatest president of the USA. I sincerely admire him. But…

Lincoln, like most in his time, dropped the n-word liberally. Today, that would be enough to cause protests. There’s no real evidence he accepted Blacks as equals, far from it. He argued against slavery prior to the war, yet was very clear that his priority was the preservation of the Union, not freeing slaves. True, that position shifted with theme, but the record is clear that many northerners felt him dilatory WRT abolition.

Lincoln’s treatment of natives was pretty dismal. He gave away huge areas of tribal land and ok’d the largest mass execution in US history, natives who had been fighting against that process. Today, it would be the political equivalent of riding a pogo stick into a minefield.

I could go on, but history shows Honest Abe as having done, said and thought some things we today would find horrifying - were it somebody else. My opinion is that one should not seize the bad, but rather consider the totality of somebody’s life. By that way of thinking, Lincoln was a great man, despite his flaws. And he remains popular (again, fine by me).


Lest anybody think I’m being antiAmerican, I could point out another example. Canadian society has in its heroic pantheon ‘The Famous Five’, five women who challenged Canadian law in what became known at ‘The Persons Case’, resulting in Canadian women being legally accorded full civic rights in 1929. Well, good for them and the world would be worse off had they not stood up to unjust laws. They are lionized in Canada - statues, images on currency, etc.

But, oops, there is some dirty laundry rarely aired. One of them, Emily Murphy, published hideous rants against Chinese, blacks and Jews and argued for much tighter immigration controls. She and others among the Five successfully argued for a eugenics law which resulted in thousands of women (generally minorities) being forcibly sterilized. Yet they remain heroes and nobody has defaced their images or such.

So, thoughts please. Is there some nebulous line of wrongdoing below which a person remains acceptable? Or is it one of willing societal blindness in the cases of certain very popular individuals?


Edit. My intent was not to damn or criticize or even question the heroic status of those I’ve mentioned, but rather raise a more general question of how our judgements are formed. Why do we ignore ills committed by some and focus on those committed by others?

This is long! I think it comes down to what we as a society want to amplify/glorify, and the intent behind the placement of the monument. Monuments are statements by the government in ways that art is not. Columbus did bad shit, but we don't display statues of him with the intent of glorifying indigenous genocide, we do it to glorify exploration or to commemorate an important part of history. So I'm fine with them. But I can understand why some indigenous people aren't. Southern governors or senators from before the war supported slavery, but a statue of one of them, erected during their era, is more about commemorating their service than making a statement about slavery. Alternatively, confederate monuments erected after the war was over, during Jim Crow, were understood by all involved to be statement by the state, an expression of their support for segregation and a warning to those being oppressed. We don't want to make those statements now. We can appreciate the artistry of the sculpture in a museum, we can even learn about the context and history of the piece in a museum, so we certainly don't need to erase history. But I can understand and agree with people wanting to take them out of prominent locations that suggest the official position of the state is pro- segregation. Though I don't feel strongly enough about it myself to protest or campaign for their removal or anything.

I personally don't think it's about finding every random bad think anyone has done and cancelling them over it; it's about what message do we intentionally express with our public works. What is the intended meaning of setting this in front of the courthouse, and do we want to support that now?

 

[alohadave]

I went to go see The Flash, not to support Ezra Miller, but to support everyone else who worked hard on that movie. It sucked, but quite honestly not because of him specifically.

I just watched it, and it was better than the reviews made it out to be. It was still kind of a hot mess, but I did like how it handled the time travel implications. Miller seems to be a wackadoo IRL, but his acting wasn't the worst I've seen.

 

[SimonDoom]

The confederate monument issue is a completely different issue, raising different concerns. Many of them were put up as racist propoganda rather than a legitimate attempt to honor a complicated past. Toss all Nathan Bedford Forest's statues to the bottom of the ocean, as far as I'm concerned. Or reduce them to rubble to use in making a new sidewalk.

But if NBF just happened to have written a great novel, I wouldn't refuse to read it because of his evil past. I'd probably look at it as, well, at least that evil SOB did something right, and I'd be curious to check it out.

 

[alohadave]

Just a guy who, at least at that time, was under some very impaired judgment.

And a boatload of cocaine.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

And a boatload of cocaine.

Is THAT why his writing is all over the place?! I suppose that would make sense.

 

[Djmac1031]

Is THAT why his writing is all over the place?! I suppose that would make sense.

He's admitted to having a... problem, back in the day.

 

[alohadave]

Is THAT why his writing is all over the place?! I suppose that would make sense.

In the 80s, for sure. He's stated that there is at least one book that he has no memory writing. He's been clean for a long time now, though.

I think he's at the point where he has enough clout that he can dictate how how his books are edited and publishers give him leeway because he sells so much.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

He's admitted to having a... problem, back in the day.

No judgement, I'm in the restaurant industry, that's pretty much all that's running most chefs. I'm glad to hear he kicked the affliction.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Can people think of specific examples? An example of someone you had heard was a great author, and the subject matter of whose writings intrigued you, but you chose not to read them because you had heard they were a bad person? I can't think of any examples of having done this, myself.

I'm not talking about if the writings weren't your cup of tea. I'm talking about deciding not to read something because you didn't like the author as a person even though the work otherwise sounded appealing and worth reading to you.

Orson Scott Card and Sergei Lukyanenko would be two of mine. In both cases, I expect some of their stories would be interesting to me in themselves (maybe not OSC's bonkers Hamlet...) but I have a lifetime supply of equally appealing stories written by less-awful people and I'm going to read those first.

I do think artist/art is very often a false dichotomy, since much of the point of writing is to express oneself and one's shortcomings as a human being are very likely to be reflected on the page. To go with Simon's example, it's hard to imagine somebody like Nathan Bedford Forrest writing a novel that did a good job of characterising its Black characters, and a novel set in Forrest's era that shies away from the existence of Black folk requires some heavy blinkers on.

Further, a lot of the cases that get represented as "art cancelled because the artist did something bad" are really more a matter of "artist did something bad, which prompted audiences to look more closely at how their art handles X topic, which led to recognition of its failings in that area".

 

[SimonDoom]

Orson Scott Card and Sergei Lukyanenko would be two of mine. In both cases, I expect some of their stories would be interesting to me in themselves (maybe not OSC's bonkers Hamlet...) but I have a lifetime supply of equally appealing stories written by less-awful people and I'm going to read those first.

OSC is an interesting example. The only thing of his I've read was Ender's Game, and I read it because there had been so much buzz about it, but I knew nothing at all about Card's personality or politics when I read the book.

It's been a while since I've read the book, but I can't recall anything in it that I would regard as anti-gay or as reflecting an anti-gay personal agenda. That said, there is an odd authoritarian strain of politics underlying the story. Ender's outstanding feature appears to be that he can be a violent, unfeeling sociopath when needed, and that's just what Earth needs to save it from its enemy. My reaction overall was, "meh." It was fine but it didn't rank among classic sci-fi stories, IMO. My guess is that if you were to read it you would find the politics a bit unsettling as well, and it would confirm your belief that, knowing what you know about the author, you would have been better off skipping it.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

I've had similar life experiences and feel just the opposite.

I saw a lot of myself in Bev and her portrayal there made sense to me because that was my headspace at the time. I've since learned better but at the time I read it, it made me feel a little less conflicted about my feelings around sex being a commodity that was traded for general affection from other people. Maybe that wasn't the best influence on me, but it also made me hate/berate myself a little less so it wasn't necessarily bad, either.

Now, I have a hard time reading such depictions and won't if given prior warning because I just can't handle it and I know I cant. But as a kid I do question if consuming such scenes normalizing fucked up senses of sex/sexuality kept me alive by reflecting my own thoughts at the time and making me feel a little less irredeemable. (I was also about 9/10 when I read the book.)

I’m happy to hear it had a positive place in your life, seriously, going through those kinds of things young can really fuck you up… my experiences in group therapy have led me to realize that a lot of women either go one way or the other with how they respond to it, and I was largely one of those sorts who shut down and pushed out any such material because I didn’t like the reminders of reality.

Nine to ten seems crazy young to me to read IT, I didn’t get to it until my later teens. All the same, I love to hear it brought you a bit of comfort… and I’m sorry that you’ve ever had to have such negative experiences to even feel so badly in the first place.

 

[bumpercars]

People do good and evil, and also they make good or bad art. It's not morally wrong to enjoy art made by people who have done bad things.

However it's worth considering whether the creator will use your money or support to justify or fund more evil shit. J. K. Rowling will use any money you give her to fund transphobia, while H. P. Lovecraft is too dead to spend your book money on racism.

Relatedly, whenever people talk about how Chick-fil-a tastes, I always think of Jules from Pulp Fiction:

"Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie. But I'll never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfuckers."

 

[Bramblethorn]

OSC is an interesting example. The only thing of his I've read was Ender's Game, and I read it because there had been so much buzz about it, but I knew nothing at all about Card's personality or politics when I read the book.

It's been a while since I've read the book, but I can't recall anything in it that I would regard as anti-gay or as reflecting an anti-gay personal agenda.

I did raise an eyebrow on learning that the main antagonists in that book are nicknamed "buggers". Yes, they're bug-like aliens, but OSC is a pretty well-read fellow with a long-standing interest in homosexuality, so I'd be surprised if he wasn't aware that it's a pejorative term for gay men. Even if one writes that off as just unfortunate accident, I gather the later books in that series get more overt about Hetero Good, Homo Bad, and I generally don't start a series with the intention of bailing halfway through.

The other consideration here is that these days, I don't need to settle for "not overtly anti-gay". I'm spoiled by having so many modern-day authors writing stories where queer people are visible at more than just a tokenistic/"queer-coded villain" level. That doesn't mean I'm only reading those modern authors, but it does raise the bar for the rest.

That said, there is an odd authoritarian strain of politics underlying the story. Ender's outstanding feature appears to be that he can be a violent, unfeeling sociopath when needed, and that's just what Earth needs to save it from its enemy. My reaction overall was, "meh." It was fine but it didn't rank among classic sci-fi stories, IMO. My guess is that if you were to read it you would find the politics a bit unsettling as well, and it would confirm your belief that, knowing what you know about the author, you would have been better off skipping it.

I'm fine with stories about authoritarian societies as long as they're not plugging that authoritarianism as a good thing, but it sounds like it's more the latter? If so, yeah, probably not my thing.

 

[MediocreAuthor]

Absolutely agree, I don't hold the piece against him and I still read his work. Admittedly it seems in the more modern years he's running low on ideas and some of his plots seem to have very anti-climatic ends. My bias is totally personal with that particular scene, and it just seemed so out of left field... but who really knows, Stephen King has a very unusual process, and he states often when he's approached in interviews that so many people had an issue with the sex scene and not the multiple child murders and that baffles him a bit. I'm inclined to agree with him on that, as well, minor sex not okay minor murder okay? Bewildering.

I can explain this conundrum super easily.

Within the context of the story... I mean from the perspective of the kids, without even acknowledging the viewpoints of the reader at all... murder is bad, but sex is good (even when the acts in question are being done to/by 12 year olds).

The Library Policeman has an absolutely disgusting child rape scene in it, but within the context of the story it is a bad thing. So as gross as it was, I can (somewhat) give it a pass. The same with all the child murder in IT. It's awful, but it's also painted as awful.

On the other hand, the entire Loser's Club running a train on Beverly? That's painted as a good thing (or at best a necessary evil). Steve King put his main characters in a deadly situation, and he decided arbitrarily that sex was the only way they could get out of danger. That's worse than child murder... because it doesn't even make any fucking sense.

I'm not claiming that King is a pedophile, (although if I found out that he was, I wouldn't be overly shocked) but I am saying that it makes perfect sense that people are bothered by the sex more than the murder.

For the record, I'd be more bothered by the murder, if for instance, the kids were trapped in the sewers, and they suddenly decide that they only way out was to murder Beverly. That would be more fucked than the sex too.

 

[Rob_Royale]

My father would buy me LPs of Bill Cosby's comedy, because he was good wholesome fun, and his early stuff is brilliant. I grew up on his stories of Old Weird Harold and Fat Albert and growing up in Philly. I could recite entire bits from memory. Noah! How long can you tread water? He was Cliff Huckstable, America's dad. I loved his work and what I thought he stood for.

The day I realized he was a fucking rapist, my heart broke. I still love his comedy, but it's hard to listen to now. It comes up on my Pandora comedy station and I try to enjoy it for what it is. But it's so, so hard.