I dunno. It’s valid to scrutinize who we venerate.
Whose transgressions we ignore and why.
I’d say it’s essential.
We’re swimming in the unconscious biases of long-dead humans. And the future we want to create or even believe in is the cost of avoidance and denial.
I only partially agree. The cult of personality has created an unhealthy system for both the idolized and idolaters, but “celebrities “ have greater influence and wider platform than ordinary citizens, and therefore need to be held to a higher standard.
It is unlikely a plumber’s racist views are going to have much impact beyond their immediate circle of family or friends, but the racist views of an actor or musician (say, Mel Gibson or Eric Clapton) have a far wider audience and potential to do harm.
Their orders of magnitude greater influence means we have to examine questions of whether the beauty they produced is a product of, and infused with their racism (misogyny, anti-LGBTQ±ism, etc.), or incidental to their ugly nature.
The notion of genius is in part a marketing ploy. If you liked this book, you’ll surely love this one, and this one, even though it’s completely different those styylistic tics you liked so much are starting to emerge in protoform, if you study them closely.
And if the “genius” behaves, great. If the “genius” doesn’t; well the very similar authors at the time are now obscure and out of print, and let’s face it, monsters don’t really get loving pastiches.
Yeah, fuck that guy.
That wasn’t hard.
I have this kind of issue with Ted Nugent. I don’t like most of his catalog save for Stranglehold which is quite good in my opinion. He is a decent guitarist who also happens to be a complete waste of space (creeps on young girls, sucks up to authoritarians, hates personal liberty expressed by lgbt and other folks, and the list goes on). So, it’s good to feel bad about liking his work at least for me I still feel bad but it should be understood that you’re not liking the person behind whatever art you love but also understand that maybe they don’t deserve praise either. And I think that’s the rub, if you like a thing a horrible person made it does feel bad to praise them for that thing.
Yeah that’s a tough one. Maybe because it’s harder to look past “this guy literally murdered his wife and son before killing himself”. There’s another level of nuance though. His brain had been reduced to Swiss cheese because of CTE. For every stiff blow or chair to the head he took, it drove him one step closer to what he ended up doing. He was so amazing at what he did, but it’s hard to watch in retrospect knowing what it led to.
From the school of “yes, and,” yes, and, once you’ve paid for he house, selling it to someone else isn’t changing anything. If anything, refusing to do business with someone like that in the first place would be the thing to do.
And to the other scenario @dwall0 presented, i don’t ask about that stuff beforehand, but if I saw my dentist went on a racist rant at a school board meeting, I would totally find a new dentist.
Then there is the opposite end of this conundrum:
Bad art created by people you love, admire or respect.
Now that is hard to navigate.
If you believe Michael Jackson’s accusers and I do then it is hard to separate the man from the art. The art involves people dancing around, having fun, and singing along with a child abuser; his victims are still alive and have to hear the songs they danced to with him on the radio in bars etc; and he specifically used his music and dancing to lure his victims.
The funny thing is nobody tries to separate the artist and the art when it is someone like Gary Glitter because his music was not really considered to be of much value. It has just become taboo. With MJ people have chosen to dismiss or. Ignore his victims because they don’t want to give up the music.
I mean Clapton’s always been a racist right wing prick. He’s never changed or repudiated his opinions from back in the late 70s when he was screaming at audiences that “Britain is for white people” and “get the wogs out.” Same person, been the same, the whole time.
For me, it’s easy to separate art from artist , but why bother? There are plenty of good people who want your attention and are making amazing things , and there are far more of them than shitty people like Clapton and (on the pandemic) the late Mr. Loaf.
It’s not so much that I actively campaign against the shitty people, I just don’t consume their works in favor of GOOD people.
What about still living victims?
For me, it depends on whether the reprehensible aspects of the artist are included in (and doubly so if they’re in the foreground) of the artwork. If, instead, they hold some cringe-y view that really doesn’t show up in the art, I’m fine appreciating that particular work for what it does, separate from its creator.
Where it gets tricky, though, is the idea of supporting a person (financially) who holds those views. If it’s an individual artist, sure, I can boycott them easily enough. Evil is punished. But if we’re getting into productions, large works that involved hundreds of people working behind the scenes, it seems ludicrous to nullify their artistry (and possibly their livelihood) because of the personal failings of one.
As usual, as with most everything, a single blanketing cut/dry answer is never going to resolve this to my own satisfaction. I have to take things on a case-by-case basis, and yeah, it can sometimes be imprecise and I have to be diligent about monitoring any biases in myself.
Ok now do Scott Adams and Dilbert! 
(yes, I searched the topic, he hasn’t been mentioned yet.)
Margaret Atwood is also in play because of her bizarre views on a variety of subjects, and then JK Rowling, though all that Harry Potter extremely british wizarding stuff never appealed to me one iota.
I think it depends on the degree of toxicity of the artist, personally. If they go full on crazypants, then I can’t even look at their stuff, no matter how good I might have thought it was back in the day. If they kinda screw up and try to do better (or they make minor transgressions), then I can revisit their work.
I recently read about Eric Gill’s diaries exposing him as a sexual predator. It definitely adds an ick factor to some of his works. Don’t think I’ll use Gill Sans ever again. Oh and Gauguin, F him too.
Exactly.
My personal position is: If the artist is still alive and profiting, that profit goes to helping them maintain the position of fame and power they use to keep spreading their hate or excusing their behavior. Not on my dollar…
You asked ‘why;’
Easy answer:
IMO it’s the toxic cult of personality combined the tendency to deify our “heroes” unto whom we have projected some of our personal identity.
Once when I was much younger, I had an argument with a rabid fanboy who insisted that Prince could not possibly be bisexual, despite all the (circumstantial) evidence to the contrary.
O_o
People are very susceptible to believing what they want to believe and then feeding into confirmation bias.
I heard my dentist yelling at one of his dental techs about some mistake that happened. Abusive yelling. I found a new dentist immediately, and never returned.
I walked into an auto parts store and as soon as I noticed the radio playing some asshole Fox commentator, I turned and walked out; again, never to return.
So yeah, I make choices like that all the time based on the limited intel I have.
But what if that auto parts guy is struggling for money at home because he has a daughter who needs chemotherapy? Am I a transitive asshole for not conducting business with her asshole father?
Alice Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., comes up in these kind of discussions a lot. I loved reading her fiction, but that suicide death pact where she killed her husband and then herself, oof.
He seems to treat women poorly. There’s an allegation he punched his (now) ex-wife in the face and also generally abused her, and he was absolutely horrible to the women of the main cast of Charlie’s Angels. That kind of pattern, in my experience, isn’t isolated to one or two incidents.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/la-et-billmurraydivorce-29may29-story.html
