Separating The Art From The Artist

[DireWolfSpirit]

18 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

You wouldn’t judge a writer who married a know molester and allowed the molester to prey upon their children?

I dont know any molesters, let alone a spouse of a molester who happens to be an author. So no, at this time i'm not judging anyone in such a situation. Were such a couple to be guilty of that behavior, I would support seeing them incarcerated regardless of whether they were artists, celebs, athletes, or any other station in life.

 

 

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I dont know any molesters, let alone a spouse of a molester who happens to be an author. So no, at this time i'm not judging anyone in such a situation. Were such a couple to be guilty of that behavior, I would support seeing them incarcerated regardless of whether they were artists, celebs, athletes, or any other station in life.

 

 

 

 

Well, why not take a gander at these links and then give us your opinion:

http://www.jimchines.com/2014/06/rape-abuse-and-mzb/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/06/27/re-reading-feminist-author-marion-zimmer-bradley-in-the-wake-of-sexual-assault-allegations/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6cba922195af

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse

Some things, sexually abusing children among them, are just beyond the pale.

[DireWolfSpirit]

It doesnt look like anything I want to read about Scott and I already gave my opinion in my first post. I noticed another poster quoted that opinion and commented they had the same view of it as me.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

It doesnt look like anything I want to read about Scott and I already gave my opinion in my first post. I noticed another poster quoted that opinion and commented they had the same view of it as me.

Hold on, are you saying you would actively seek to avoid damning information about an artist to make sure you will continue to enjoy their work?

 

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah that reminds me of the singer from Lost Prohets who tried to have sex WITH AN INFANT. Like, that's one way to ruin a song.

[mankytoes]

10 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah that reminds me of the singer from Lost Prohets who tried to have sex WITH AN INFANT. Like, that's one way to ruin a song.

I've always felt smug that most of my friends liked them and I didn't. Like I subconsciously knew there was something wrong with this guy. 

If anyone suggests they absolutely separate the art from the artist, I challenge them to wear a Lost Prophets t shirt out...

[Yukle]

It's always hard to separate art and artists when the artist is entirely unlikable. If they're merely very flawed it's easier. I have two examples that I can think of. But art doesn't just appear out of thin air, it exists in the mind of the person who created it first, and that's essential to how the art was created, and perhaps a little of what it means.

I have three examples of what I mean:

1) The Last Supper by Da Vinci. This artwork is made all the more beautiful when you consider the man who made it. The artist himself seems to have kept to himself what his religious views were. There are all sorts of inferences about him, but little is known. He didn't seem to write about his faith, if any, although he did make religious works. But it's also known that he had a gentle nature, an inquisitive mind and was part of a persecuted minority because he was gay. He was also ostracised - to a much lesser extend - for using his "sinister" hand.

I think that this does change how I see the painting. Jesus is painted as clearly majestic, and beautiful, and yet it seems the apostles as a whole aren't paying him much attention. I can't help but think that what I know of Da Vinci changes what the art means: as though humans have a habit of turning to themselves and ignoring something they could be observing instead. Jesus, the central figure, is also surprisingly passive. In a time when manliness meant action (and it still does) he is a contradiction to this, just as Da Vinci himself was.

2) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This book is unreadable to me now, as are the various versions of it. No matter what merits there are to the story, I cannot separate the book from the fact that Carroll was a paedophile (to be entirely fair, someone never proven but consistently accused of being one, and, if nothing else, he did make pornographic images of children, so he was still sick). Knowing that changes the whimsical idea of Alice changing size by eating food to a sick controlling sex game. He was known to give specific controlled portions of food to girls, to make some fat or some very skinny. That changes the art from a silly story of dreams into a sick and twisted fantasy. There's a reason he didn't publish the book under his real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

3) The BBC Sherlock. Like a lot of Sherlock fans who've read the books, I really like the first three seasons of the modern remake of Sherlock and I pretend that the fourth season doesn't exist. Its creators, though, are known to use being gay as - in and of itself - a punchline. But it's not done in the way that, say, Friends did it, where it's turning tropes on their head to show how silly they are (and Friends included a long-term gay relationship between two women who were married, before that was actually recognised in the USA), it's just meant to be the joke. "Ha ha! Sherlock and John look gay!" For the most part, I put it out of my mind as one of many frustrating flaws in art made by people in a position of privilege. And yet my enjoyment of the show has been muted somewhat by the discovery that the character Irene Adler, who I enjoyed as a really strange take on the character, was meant to show that gay women aren't actually gay if they meet the right man.

Similarly, once you ever read an interview with the show's creators, it becomes harder to like what they've written. Lots of their casual jokes made in the show initially seem to make Sherlock seem insensitive. Hearing their views on the world, though, and then rewatching the episodes changes it so that it feels like Sherlock is actually lecturing from a position of authority due to his intelligence.

 

In short (it's actually long), for me I can't really separate art from artists.

[DireWolfSpirit]

15 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Hold on, are you saying you would actively seek to avoid damning information about an artist to make sure you will continue to enjoy their work?

 

Quit trying to mistate what I would or wouldnt do. If something doesnt interest me im not going to read about it, whoever the fuck your going on about would fall into that (not interested/never heard of) category. The latter part of your question (to make sure you enjoy their work) is your bullshit interjection and arent my words. Quit quoting me and asking for responses if your going to use leading and reaching statements to form fit whatever point your trying to make.

[karaddin]

I'm of a similar opinion to Yukle I think. Art is political, and art is forwarding a thesis - the beliefs of the artist are going to form a part of the art and the idea that they can be separated is baffling. The question of whether the views/behaviours of an artist sufficiently taint your consumption of the art, and whether the views/behaviours influence the art to a point that you object to it, are something that need to be decided by each individual on a case by case basis. Some people will decide that they simply don't care, they're not affected enough to taint the blank slate in which an artwork is consumed and they don't care about what the art is saying, others are quite sensitive to it.

In all cases though the art is connected to the artist.

Personally I'm reasonably sensitive. I'm aware of the ways that insidious messaging can tug at my worldview and change what I think is right and wrong and thus I wish to avoid art that I perceive to make me a worse person. I also avoid financially aiding someone that is actively funding causes that are opposed to my view of the world, or are personally repugnant. Older artists that are no longer profiting from it are a harder choice, but I find that awareness often ruins the enjoyment of such art even without it needing to be a conscious moral choice. Similarly since I know the world is a diverse place, frequently art that fails to depict that without a narrative justification for why not is simply unenjoyable now - it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

MJ is one of the more complicated cases, but ultimately I feel he was harmed as a child himself and never grew up properly - I don't think that's separate from his art, but his mental state plays its part in his art as well and his almost naive belief in the capacity to improve the world. And that could well be self serving rationalisation on my part, because I feel the end art is so fantastic I can't rule it out.

MZB on the other hand? No.

[MercenaryChef]

as a metalhead this is something that stains the genre. lots of really great music produced by really shitty people. 

white supremacy and misogyny are common place in some brands of metal. 

while i can excuse a band like cannibal corpse whose earlier works were full of violent graphic sexual themes i know it is their schtick and i am cool with it. 

but a band who does nazi salutes and sports swastikas even when they say it is part of being extreme and edgy can get fucked.

one of my favorite bands was arrested for raping a woman.  they are done for me now.  i was going to never spend money again at a festival i really enjoy if a band whose member was convicted of child porn wasn't removed from the lineup. 

 

[mankytoes]

17 hours ago, Yukle said:

3) The BBC Sherlock. Like a lot of Sherlock fans who've read the books, I really like the first three seasons of the modern remake of Sherlock and I pretend that the fourth season doesn't exist. Its creators, though, are known to use being gay as - in and of itself - a punchline. But it's not done in the way that, say, Friends did it, where it's turning tropes on their head to show how silly they are (and Friends included a long-term gay relationship between two women who were married, before that was actually recognised in the USA), it's just meant to be the joke. "Ha ha! Sherlock and John look gay!" For the most part, I put it out of my mind as one of many frustrating flaws in art made by people in a position of privilege. And yet my enjoyment of the show has been muted somewhat by the discovery that the character Irene Adler, who I enjoyed as a really strange take on the character, was meant to show that gay women aren't actually gay if they meet the right man.

You know Mark Gatiss (co-creater and Mycroft) is gay, right? Are gay people in a position of privilege when they make jokes about being gay? This is where PC can feel like a minefield. I didn't feel those jokes were hateful, or even mean spirited. Childish at worst. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Quit trying to mistate what I would or wouldnt do. If something doesnt interest me im not going to read about it, whoever the fuck your going on about would fall into that (not interested/never heard of) category. The latter part of your question (to make sure you enjoy their work) is your bullshit interjection and arent my words. Quit quoting me and asking for responses if your going to use leading and reaching statements to form fit whatever point your trying to make.

That was a question.  I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.  I'm simply trying to understand your position here.

[Liver and Onions]

I admit, finding out a favorite artist/writer/whatnot committed horrible crimes would definitely make it hard to appreciate their art, even if I tried to. I'm lucky in that I'm not a fan of certain directors or singers- for instance, when people were wondering whether or not it was okay to go see the Ender's Game movie, I was all, "doesn't concern me! I don't even want to see it!" It's going to be interesting to see what happens if one of my favs becomes a problem. 

What really muddies the waters is when I bought a 2012 song off of iTunes, and then I wondered if that particular artist's then-producer, who has since been revealed as a garbage person, was getting any profit off of it. 

[Yukle]

7 hours ago, mankytoes said:

You know Mark Gatiss (co-creater and Mycroft) is gay, right? Are gay people in a position of privilege when they make jokes about being gay? This is where PC can feel like a minefield. I didn't feel those jokes were hateful, or even mean spirited. Childish at worst. 

I don't hate the show, I even said that I just put aside the parts that make me uncomfortable. For instance, Moffat (the other co-creator) worked on Dr Who and was pretty dismissive of the idea a woman could be Dr Who. It's not a silly argument, that's not the part that I minded. It's the idea that he seemed to suggest that some qualities are inherent to being male and others to being female, and that's just the way it is.

Mark Gatiss stayed mostly silent about accusations that the show was queer baiting. I liked his comment that Sherlock doesn't really have any romantic feelings, which Moffat then echoed - only to then have a more-or-less romance story between Sherlock and Irene.

I don't think the jokes were hateful, either, just a little on the nose. I think I just noticed them a bit more after seeing interviews with Moffat. Gatiss less so, he seems much more reserved. When it came to separating the art from the artist, I found that it did colour my views, if only somewhat.

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, Yukle said:

 was pretty dismissive of the idea a woman could be Dr Who.

Was he!? He's spent his entire tenure setting the possibility up.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 hours ago, Yukle said:

I don't hate the show, I even said that I just put aside the parts that make me uncomfortable. For instance, Moffat (the other co-creator) worked on Dr Who and was pretty dismissive of the idea a woman could be Dr Who. It's not a silly argument, that's not the part that I minded. It's the idea that he seemed to suggest that some qualities are inherent to being male and others to being female, and that's just the way it is.

Mark Gatiss stayed mostly silent about accusations that the show was queer baiting. I liked his comment that Sherlock doesn't really have any romantic feelings, which Moffat then echoed - only to then have a more-or-less romance story between Sherlock and Irene.

I don't think the jokes were hateful, either, just a little on the nose. I think I just noticed them a bit more after seeing interviews with Moffat. Gatiss less so, he seems much more reserved. When it came to separating the art from the artist, I found that it did colour my views, if only somewhat.

Was the “dismissiveness” distraction to make the new doctors reveal all the more impactful?

[DireWolfSpirit]

On April 27, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That was a question.  I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.  I'm simply trying to understand your position here.

Fair enough, I was a little stressed that day so sorry if I over reacted.

As far as understanding my position, I may not be of much help explaining it. But I do not connect the art to the person if I do not know the artist personally. I do not think I have a clue what impression various actors or musicians would have on me without spending time with them. Their personal nature is a clean slate to me and I am skeptical about most reporting of celebrities. I take the lines from Norma Jean to heart-

"Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
Even when you died
Oh the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude"

Point being the public had no inkling, no clue of the person. Thats clear to me, that I do not know that performer even though I may have a very strong like/dislike of their work.

[Lady Winter Rose]

I always though MZB's children have reason to lie about abuse. I'm not saying they do lie about it, just that they have a motive.

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Lady Winter Rose said:

I always though MZB's children have reason to lie about abuse. I'm not saying they do lie about it, just that they have a motive.

Which is?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, Lady Winter Rose said:

I always though MZB's children have reason to lie about abuse. I'm not saying they do lie about it, just that they have a motive.

What motive?  It isn’t as though Walter Breen wasn’t a well known and unapologetic child molester who MZB married knowing what he advocated.