I do my best to avoid art from controversal figures, but more importantly I avoid financially supporting them. Sometimes that’s difficult, because they have been involved in so many things and that involvement isn’t always obvious, but I try.
One of the recent, easier examples is J.K. Rowling, whose stance as a self-proclaimed “TERF” has caused me to avoid her Harry Potter franchise except for the books and movies I already own (although I have still not had interest in those lately as a consequence of her stance). This is an easy case to avoid because it’s (usually) obvious what she benefits from and what she doesn’t, there is no guesswork or Googling. If it says “Harry Potter” in the title it is probably financially benefitting her
Full agree, also the sins of the artist can sour the art in my mind. The art and the artist aren’t the same but they are linked. Understanding that is an important tool for media consumption. It doesn’t define what the art says, but it provides a lens through which to see it, and that lens may reveal ugly sides. Lovecraft’s xenophobia for example shows that it’s not just the horrors of a thassalophobe in New England afraid of what all could be beyond perception, but also a fear of that which is different and what you don’t understand as written by a xenophobic racist.
I mainly separate her and the work she’s connected to now because she has so much money that I feel it doesn’t really matter if she gets more from the franchise anymore. She’s a multibillionaire. She can keep contributing to whatever hate funds she wants to and still end up with more money at the end of the year because of her investments.
That’s a reasonable take, for sure, and it makes a lot of sense.
However, it is a bit of a rationalization to explain to yourself why you support her. It is analogous to not voting because you don’t think you’ll sway the election, that your vote doesn’t matter, in the sense that if enough people do it it does begin to have an impact.
Also, it isn’t about not giving her a lavish lifestyle, it is more about sending a message that her brand of hate isn’t welcome or tolerated. While she will make millions off of investments, if she sees that her bottom line was hurt because of her words she may, ideally, re-think them. Perhaps reflect on them, in a perfect world.
Admittedly, in reality she probably will only dig in deeper and feel victimized. But at least I’ll sleep better at night
In addition to this, money is power, money is speech. The more money she has, the more weight she has to throw behind her bigoted ideology.
For me it’s more of a rubber meets road issue. Whenever a Harry Potter franchise something is released it becomes a circus of highly performative transphobia that spills into trans spaces as certain people want to not just enjoy their Potter related paraphernalia… they suddenly find a wave of harassment to ride and do not seem content until they have hunted down trans spaces, people or allies to rub our noses in the fact they are having a really good time while spewing anti-trans sentiments everywhere as they do.
Being a trans person in public and seeing someone wearing Harry Potter related merch out and proud in the world can be a red flag in the sense that marks out a person as more than likely mildly anti trans on the safer side but a decent number of them who have held strong til this point are not nessisarily shy about being openly hostile in a very general - non fandom related sense. If I walk into a place with a bunch of people wearing wizarding house t-shirts and pins… I find away to excuse myself and leave.
The money isn’t even much a factor anymore. The inner fandom has become so toxic it basically just provides the mechanical structure of an organized hate group while nominally being about the franchise.
Tom Cruise is an incredibly talented actor. He also is the face of a horrific cult that has probably murdered people
Shelly Miscavige hasn’t been seen in public for almost two decades
It’s equally likely that Shelley is dead as she is living at the Sea Org compound.
I think it’s more likely she’s dead. If I’d been trapped in the Sea Org compound for 15 years, I’d have probably killed myself by now
Check out the story of Lisa McPherson, breaks my heart every time.
If he’s playing a villain, I’ll watch, otherwise I’m not interested.
You know what i am just gonna say it scientology is only as bad as all other religeons every religion has skelatons in their closed if you are gonna blacklist tom because of that consider blacklisting everyone who is christian,muslim or from any other religion . And no i am an atheist and doesn’t believe in scientology .
Officially, yes, I separate them. In truth, there are some artists whose I’m less likely to enjoy once they did that thing they did.
Like, I don’t really want to see Kevin Spacey movies anymore. But I’ll still watch everything Mel Gibson does. I could make arguments for why that is (Gibson was drunk, moment of weakness, whatever), but it’s really just about how I feel. I could make similar arguments for the ones I don’t feel like watching anymore.
I do think we’re all kind of dirt-meat struggling through a confusing nightmare, and art is one way we rise above it. The best art is often made by broken people. Broken people don’t act right.
Oh man Kevin Spacey outing himself as a disgusting predatory piece of sh1t ruined his movies for me forever! American Beauty was one of my favorites as was The usual suspects. Now I can’t watch them anymore.
My life too much of a mess to give a shit about things like this.
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Was I speaking to you?
No .I just felt that you were weasling out of answering but you could’ve just avoided answering at all .
*sigh*
You REALLY want an answer that much? My point is - my life is too fucked to care about frivolous bullshit like art vs artist.
It honestly feels like people get a sense of sick satisfaction out of shitting on different things cos “person bad”. I hate to use a term of the alt-right but it’s “virtue signalling”.
I ultimately don’t give a flying fuck. I’m SO fukcing sick of going into a music post on Reddit/Lemmy/whatever and seeing a ton of top comments saying “Oh this person is a wife beater/raper/pedo/druggie/fuckup/etc”. They’re fucking killjoys?! Why can’t people just enjoy the fucking music as-is?
But since you pushed me I’ll give it a go…
I used to be a Lost Prophets fan and even saw them live. But I’m now bored of them. I could say “I wouldn’t listen to them cos of the lead singers crimes” but really? I don’t care and I’ll never listen to it cos I’ve moved on from their music. If I found myself dancing to one of their songs without realising it and someone said - “This is Lost Prophets!! Don’t you know what the singer did?!”. I’d be like “Oh, ok. Thanks for ruining my good mood”. In other words - they’re the dick for bringing up a horror by the artist rather than just letting someone fucking bop along to it.
Michael Jackson? I was dancing to his Bad album a few months back in my living room. I don’t care about his crimes. I loved his music as a kid and still like it now. Nostalgia wins.
People like RHCP, Marilyn Manson, Aerosmith? I don’t care. It’s music, it’s not a lifestyle choice. Me listening to RHCP or Manson doesn’t mean I support their actions.
Do I care they get money if I stream their song?
Not really. Life’s too short and fucked for me to waste energy on that. Live and let live. Stop raging at things that happened in the past. It doesn’t change anything. It’s a waste of energy.
Did we ask about your life ? If you don’t have anything to add why bother at all ?
It depends… I wouldn’t say I cherry-pick, but if the art has a message that parallels the issues I have with the artist, it’s hard not to “separate” them. Like Kanye’s latest album… I can listen to College Dropout and Life of Pablo no problem, they don’t have any Nazi messaging. But his latest album is filled with very weird lyrics that just make me uncomfortable.
Another example would be someone like Dali, who was an avowed fascist. But his paintings don’t really have anything to do with that. And I quite enjoy them still.
Fuck, Dali was a fascist? I’ve been to multiple exposition that talk about his personal life but they never mention it
I mean he was just weird in general, but yeah: https://medium.com/the-collector/salvador-dalis-obsession-with-nazism-and-fascism-4769af704b96
Yes.
I quite enjoy the Tom Clancy books, and some of the film adaptations, but know he is right wing and it comes through in the books.
Similar to J K Rowling. Terrible person in general but the books were enjoyable when growing up.
I’m very saddened she shows these strong hateful opinions now. The books and films were so much a part of my childhood and I still really enjoy the whole world they’ve created. And watching her earlier interviews, she seemed like a nice, interesting, smart, softly spoken person, with a love for my city. Also through indirect personal relations, she was quite kind to us.
Far superior writers in the genre.
Alan Furst. Spy books set in the early days of WW2. For some reason they’ve been marketed as a series, but each book is a standalone with completely different characters. “Night Soldiers” and “Dark Star.”
Dan Fesperman. “The Warlord’s Son” is set in the days leading up to the US invasion of Afghanistan. Burnt out reporter and a self exiled Afghan search for bin Ladn.
Other things being technically superior doesn’t mean a thing isn’t worth your time, though. I listen to a lot of extremely talented musicians but a good chunk of my library could be learned in a Guitar 101 class, too
Back in the day, I started ‘The Hunt For Red October’ and noped out when the Soviet submarine commander wrote the KGB a litter telling them that he was stealing the most powerful weapon on Earth. It was so colossally stupid that I refused to read another line.
Unless you’re telling me that you actually listen to Guitar 101 students making all sorts of errors.
Here’s Ray Charles singing The Alphabet Song. Superior talent can take simple things and vastly improve them. Untalented people can take good ingredients and make an inedible mess.
They Might Be Giants wrote, “The sun is a mass of incandescent gas…” Still a good song despite being wrong (yes I know they’ve “updated” it)
People love Marvel movies even though they’re full of plot holes and formulaic stories but I’m not gonna say they should stop in favor of films which aren’t, ya know? Instead of saying “stop watching that crap,” say “you might also like [similar but ‘better’ film]”
For the record, I’ve never read a Clancy novel so I have no horse in this race
It’s apples and oranges. No one expects to get accurate scientific data in a pop song, and no one expects a comic book movie to be realistic.
People accept a lot of inaccuracies in a James Bond movie, but they’d feel cheated if Bond suddenly had the power to time travel or turn into a lion.
Since you never read the book I have nothing to add.
It’s not all that different. And I don’t think whether or not I’ve read Clancy is relevant here when my point is “people like different things about art and you shouldn’t pretend your preference is objectively better”
It’s totally cool to like things BECAUSE they’re hyper realistic but it’s also totally cool to not care about that. I am much more in-line with you in that regard…inaccuracies take me out of stories…But others aren’t bothered. Why tell them their preference is bad?
I quite enjoy the Tom Clancy books, and some of the film adaptations, but know he is right wing and it comes through in the books.
That’s the original comment I was responding to.
The books I cited are superior because they are not full of hard Right ideology.
They are also, in my opinion, much better written and far more enjoyable.
If you’d bothered to try and understand what I was saying, you wouldn’t have wasted all our time.
The books are better for the person who posted. Objectively better because they aren’t right wing screeds.
he is right wing and it comes through in the books
I don’t think it really came off as much in his original books, or maybe I was just younger and more naive when I read them and didn’t notice. But all the new stuff written under his name is just un-fucking-bearable.
Yea the books with Jack Ryan Jr as the main character aren’t as good.
Promoting an artist’s work is promoting the artist and their views.
The Harry Potter IP, for instance, is now the official flag of shitty transphobia, and hell will freeze over before I go waving it around or even stand under it.
It’s not just a question of financial gain, it’s a question of social impact and what we tacitly agree to tolerate.
Imagine, if you will, telling a rape survivor to just lie back and enjoy the masterful comic stylings of Bill Cosby, or at least to shut up while you watch it because they’re ruining the funny, and YoU hAvE tO sEpArAtE tHe ArT fRoM tHe ArTisT.
What kind of message would that send? It would be telling them who you side with, it would be telling them that a rapist can purchase your undying loyalty and support just by being entertaining, and that as far as you’re concerned, rape victims can just suck it.
It’s not a good look.
Obviously, the worse and more immediately problematic the artist, the more pressing an issue this is.
The further back you go, the more unpleasantness you’re likely to find, simply because social progress is a thing. But again in the case of JK Rowling, she’s riding her popularity and influence in an attempt to drive trans kids to suicide right here, right now, which is just a leetle bit more pressing than the fact that some Victorian author was caught up in the casual racism of their day. Which is also not good, granted - but you triage these things.
Since you mentioned HP: seeing all the shitty views of Rowling coming to light also just destroyed my enjoyment of these stories. As a kid I used to love HP but now it just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth
I feel bad for my sibling personally. I at best thought the series was kind of fun but they were a massive Potterhead. We are however both different flavors of non-binary trans. My sibling is the kindest and most principled soul and seeing them go through essentially a grieving process made me fairly furious at the author not just for the shit she was spewing but the pain she was causing my younger sibling.
The art is a separate thing from the artist so I can typically treat them separately in my mind. A bad person can still be correct. A person who has done wrong can still make something beautiful.
It’s cases of when the making of the art itself is what’s problematic that I have a much more difficult time with because now it isn’t separate. Kubrick’s treatment of Shelley Duvall for e.g., Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. The creation of the art itself caused harm, not some separate unrelated thing the artist said or did.
I’m not going to avoid A Bug’s Life, or even The Usual Suspects just because Kevin Spacey is in them. The Cosby Show was super important in breaking down stereotypes and improving race relations and is a great show. I’ll watch Woody Allen movies, probably, if I get around to it.
I’m not consistent about anything I do, including this.
I do acknowledge that some of the creators I appreciate are awful people. I don’t know if I would have picked up the art in the first place if I’d known then.
I don’t pay that much attention to the latest gossip or trending scandals. And when I hear that there is a scandal, I refuse to jump on the bandwagon unless I take the time to get a clear understanding of the situation and the context, which takes time I may not have. Sometimes torches and pitchforks are clearly justified, sometimes they aren’t or it’s impossible to know.
If something is a big enough issue that I hear about it, and it turns out that the artist is a confirmed shit head, I’ll avoid giving them money. But generally speaking, it only taints their work if it reveals things you didn’t see there before. Sometimes that thing which can’t be unseen is significant enough to ruin the experience.
Then again, I also have no problem with consuming media that has objectionable elements to it, as long as I know about it going in. I’ve read Lovecraft knowing he was a racist and more, and yeah, it definitely shows (sources of terror: madness, the cold indifference of a harsh universe, immigrants, the working class, and race mixing). But while I’m not a huge fan and don’t actively promote his work, I’m glad I read what I did, and would advise anyone interested in Lovecraft to go ahead and read it, as long as they know what they are getting into.
So, while I can separate art and artist, I don’t know how often I really need to. I can think for myself, I don’t need to have my content sanitized, and I certainly don’t need to purge my library based on nothing more than an association with someone who did something bad at some point.
Gene Roddenberry was often a shitty person, but that doesn’t change the positive impact that Star Trek has had on myself and others. We could throw the whole franchise out, but it would be a terrible loss if we did.
Shitty people can make good things. If the things they make aren’t connected to what makes them shitty people, and they aren’t using their position as a thing maker to spread shittyness, I don’t see anything wrong with supporting them. If their things are disconnected from what makes them shitty people but they DO use their position as a creator to spread shittyness, I might still consume their creations but I won’t support them. If their stuff IS connected to what makes them shitty people, I probably wouldn’t want to consume it in the first place.
For example, if a bigot makes good instrumental electronic music and isn’t using their somewhat wellknown face to preach bigotry, I have no problem buying their music and recommending it to others. If they were actively being shitty with the face of their music, I’d pirate it and not spread the word instead. If their music was bigoted, I wouldn’t want to listen to it to begin with.
Depends on the artist and depends on if they’re still living and/or making money off of their work. HP Lovecraft? Dead, so I don’t have any issues reading his work and still recognizing that he was a raging racist. Orson Scott Card? Still alive, so F him and his work. JK Rowling? F her and her work. Pirating their work would be a good way around it, but I don’t know that I even care that much to make the effort.
Like anything in life, there’s only so much that you can do, so I pick and choose my battles. The folks I don’t support, I don’t support. I don’t really worry about the others.
People are assholes. If you don’t want to monetarily support an asshole, you need to basically go off grid, stop interacting with any form of entertainment, or pretty much anything from any industry. It’s just not feasible in today’s society.
Yes. Bad people can still be good at things, right? You can admire what they are good at, without endorsing their bad behavior. This is a sweeping generalization, I know, but broken people often can do remarkable things because they are trying to fill a hole most of us just don’t have. So if you will only listen to/look at the works of people you consider virtuous, you will be so limited.
Strict if the artist is alive. Much less so if they’re dead. Much, much less so if they’re dead, and so is everyone attached to them.
I try not to separate the art from its context, I feel I get a more shallow experience by doing so. But, how much context, how I seek it out, etc are all up in the air. So when talking about a piece I’ll mention something of the context, the writer being living garbage is easy context to contrast/support against their work.
Ender’s game being written by a bigot is interesting because of the contrast. H.P Lovecraft being a bigot is interesting because it is so obvious in the work.
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Agreed.
It’s also hard for me because so many artists are pedophiles (for example) that it’s hard to remember who’s who. Being able to block artists on streaming services is helpful, though I will admit that I have a lot of music (and podcasts) to sort through that I may not get to anytime soon.
Now if I could block actors, producers, etc on TV/movie services, that would be awesome.
But I don’t pause my life to research everyone involved in a project. So unfortunately I assume many people slip through the cracks.
I don’t research every book, movie, album before consuming, but yes, if it’s by someone I recognize and have moral/ethical problems with, I will avoid it.
Same. If i see shitty news/stories about someone, then ill likely stop supporting them to the best of my ability. Sometimes its unavoidable, sometimes its too much effort, sometimes its so entrenched its impossible to eliminate (like nestle, tho i try hard AF to avoid them).
If someone i know tells me why i shouldnt support someone/something then i will take that more to heart and actively research & avoid it. It obviously means enough to them to share their concerns, and id rather support my friends.
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Its not communist thoughts. Its anti-capitalist thoughts. There are quite a few economic systems:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system
