The Problem with Problematic Creators
The Problem with Problematic Creators
How do you react when you find out one of the main creative forces behind something you love is, to not mince words, a completely shit person?
Article by Anime Feminist: "How do you react when you find out one of the main creative forces behind something you love is, to not mince words, a completely shit person?"
You're viewing a single thread.
If I stopped liking everything made by someone that was a douche to a significant degree, half of all music made in the last seventy years would be gone. A good ten + percent of literature would be. And movies would be right out the window because you can't make a movie without a dozen or more people being involved in the core creation process, and there's always going to be one douche in the mix.
Idgaf. Van gogh was a stalker, and he's still one of the most amazing painters ever.
If I hate the living artist enough to not be willing to pay them for their work, that's why living in the digital piracy era is so awesome. You don't have to go hunt down remaindered books, you don't have to dub tapes or whatever. I'm one of the rare writers that doesn't object to piracy of my own stuff to begin with, so I have zero compunction about it for anything else.
While I agree that pirating stuff is A-okay under such circumstances, consuming certain stuff is - IMO - also sending a message to other people and that's something I personally care about. YMMV
I think a lot of it depends on what 'aspect' of their person features most strongly in their work.
To pick a specific example: Ronald Dahl was a virulent anti-semite. And yet he was also clearly someone with a significant degree of empathy for children, after he himself suffered abuse at boarding school. His works come from this angle, seeking to provide children with the catharsis of seeing retributive justice done to evil adults. He also shows class conscience in books like "Danny, the champion of the world".
I would argue that it is the ideas conveyed in a work that make it worthy, or unworthy, of consumption, rather than the author themselves.
As an aside, you may be interested in the works of the writer/philosopher Iris Murdoch, who does have something to say on this topic, around 'can bad people produce good art'.
For me this has nothing to do with "good art". I know perfectly well that horrible people can produce amazing artworks that shape the relevant artform for decades afterwards. Aesthetics, ability and morality are not co-related.
My point is this: Many people assume that consuming/appreciating the art of "problematic creators" is - on one hand - about the "goodness of their soul" and - on the other hand - about how creators benefit from the consumption of their art (that's what the article is focussing on after all). But there is another layer and that is the message the consumer sends to the people around them.
Surely, in the case of Roald Dahl, nobody would assume that people would read Roald Dahl's books because they approve of anti-semitism. If I see someone reading one of Dahl's book, I do not assume they do so because they are an anti-semite.
But it's an entirely different case in - let's say - the case of the infamous black metal band Burzum. In that case everyone with even superficial knowledge of the band will assume that you are a neo-nazi, because the leader of the band is a neo-nazi who killed another black metal artist. Certainly, that is an extreme example, but it illustrates what I mean.
Even if someone is capable of separating art from artist, that does not mean that other people will do the same and therefore our choices will reflect on us, whether we want it or not.