Separating Art From Artist

[Three-Eyed Crow]

The fact is, while I enjoyed Lovecraft stories in high school, he's not an author who's ever held much attachment to me. Same with Orson Scott Card. I liked Ender's Game when I read it as juvenile fiction but it's not part of my personal canon.

I own "Thriller" on CD, it was one of the first albums I owned, and I think it's a work of great 20th century art. It was formative to me in a lot of ways and those are still some awesome tracks that there's no way to divorce from what pop music is today.

Still think Michael Jackson is a child molester who was hugely enabled and protected by the music industry throughout this life.

Not sure what to do with this, ultimately. I had experiences of Michael Jackson music that really are imprinted on my psyche in that way music gets with people when they hear it when they're young, particularly high school-age. I can't divorce it from this and it's probably the "art from artist" thing I most struggle with.

I guess my point is, there are a lot of artists it's very easy for me to "cancel" on a personal level. I'll never give Woody Allen money again but I only kinda liked "Midnight in Paris" and never got his appeal otherwise, so whatever. I'll never pay to see a Michael Fassbender of Sean Penn movie again but that's no great loss to me, I don't view them as culturally necessary and they don't speak to me in any particular way.

I have a lot of sympathy for the peopel to whom Lovecraft was formative and who're trying to reconcile his being a racist asshole, I guess is my point, because I'm stil trying to work out what I feel OK consuming and having genuine affection for and what I don't anymore. I'm still trying to separate what I think of Michael Jackson as a human who I think did awful things to other humans versus what I think of what he created and will probably continue trying for awhile. This does not feel easy with a thing that has large cultural and personal impact.

[Auspice]

@Pandora said in Separating Art From Artist:

Election day should be a federal holiday and the fact that it isn't smacks of a contempt for the right to vote for the poorer working class who have less control over their work schedules.

Unfortunately with the utter disregard for any other federal holiday anymore, I doubt it'd make a difference. It'd still leave issues, too, of transportation and childcare.

It's why I'm so very pro WA's election style. Sit down, take your time, drop it in a mailbox or one of the drop spots all over your town (postage already paid).

[Pandora]

@Auspice That just seems like a really easy way for batches of ballots coming from troublesome zip codes to mysteriously disappear. I prefer things done electronically.

[surreality]

@Pandora Yeah, we've managed to fuck that up pretty badly, too, though...

[peasoupling]

There are different ways to enjoy a work of art. I can enjoy prose (including terrible purple prose, particularly if it's old) and the writing craft for its own sake. On the other hand, I have read fanfiction that made me go "this person is a bad writer but they are adorably earnest, my heart". If the latter suddenly veered off into bigotry it would wreck my enjoyment of the work entirely.

Other times I can't even enjoy the first, either because it's too much, or because it hits me in an area that's not armored by privilege, or because I'm feeling particularly fragile at the time, or simply because I realize there's a world of works out there that I could be enjoying instead without grinding my teeth.

...

I try not to support living bigots and terrible people. I think some attempts at canceling people are an overreaction, even if understandable. I agree that some people want to apply absurd purity tests to creators that are seriously lacking in perspective and nuance. It really bothers me when it's weaponized against a random ignorant creator on social media rather than a big media conglomerate or millionare author. And you absolutely shouldn't attack someone simply for enjoying a work of art, even if the art is hateful and the author is terrible.

At the same time, I also feel like the actual impact of cancel culture is often overstated.

[Derp]

@Pandora said in Separating Art From Artist:

Election day should be a federal holiday and the fact that it isn't smacks of a contempt for the right to vote for the poorer working class who have less control over their work schedules.

That, and the fact that voting is restricted, is by design. It's working as intended. (Not that this is a good thing.) But also -- we should probably move this to the politics thread before someone gets mad.

[Lotherio]

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

voted against it being legalized in my state

You SOB, so depressed I'm gonna go to Colorado while listening to my Conor Oberst collection.

[Ghost]

@Lotherio said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

voted against it being legalized in my state

You SOB, so depressed I'm gonna go to Colorado while listening to my Conor Oberst collection.

You do that.
Because I don't live in Colorado.
And I wont accidentally have to hear Conor Oberst

lol

#notahaiku

[hedgehog]

Tangentially, I will always respect those artists who are willing to stand up and critique their peers, especially when they do it directly to their faces, a la Jairus Khan at Kinetik 5.0:

Ad.Ver.Sary - We Demand Better

Absolutely NSFW.

[Rinel]

@Derp said in Separating Art From Artist:

Despite may vocal voices to the contrary, there is not an objectively wrong belief or practice. For every argument against, there is almost always an equally valid argument for.

Ew. No. Good lord, no. Just because people disagree on morality doesn't make it subjective. Yech. This is how we get FGM apologia.

[Kestrel]

@Rinel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Derp said in Separating Art From Artist:

Despite may vocal voices to the contrary, there is not an objectively wrong belief or practice. For every argument against, there is almost always an equally valid argument for.

Ew. No. Good lord, no. Just because people disagree on morality doesn't make it subjective. Yech. This is how we get FGM apologia.

Yeah I wasn't going to touch that one but I'm glad you did.

There is no equally valid argument for genocide and other atrocious nonsense.

[Derp]

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Rinel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Derp said in Separating Art From Artist:

Despite may vocal voices to the contrary, there is not an objectively wrong belief or practice. For every argument against, there is almost always an equally valid argument for.

Ew. No. Good lord, no. Just because people disagree on morality doesn't make it subjective. Yech. This is how we get FGM apologia.

Yeah I wasn't going to touch that one but I'm glad you did.

There is no equally valid argument for genocide and other atrocious nonsense.

Try making the same arguments about male circumcision and watch how many people that love to talk about personal agency and bodily autonomy and self-determinism come out of the woodwork and point out how it is an important religious and cultural practice and how dare you.

Point being -- the validity of any argument has nothing to do with how you feel about it. It simply requires that the premises offer a logical justification for the conclusion. And that's actually a pretty low bar to meet.

There are arguments for nearly anything, and whether you find them acceptable or not is entirely subjective and rooted in beliefs and standards that are non-universal. And rach and every one of us have things we find acceptable that others are vehemently opposed to precisely because there is no objective standard, and logically valid arguments can be made for multiple avenues.

[Tinuviel]

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

There is no equally valid argument for genocide and other atrocious nonsense.

Valid according to whom?

There is no absolute morality, therefore it has to be subjective. Over the eons humanity has either known or learned that certain things are - for the vast majority - abominable. But heinous crimes happen for so-called moral reasons all of the time.

The mere fact that people disagree about morality and moral issues shows that it is not absolute.

ETA: I do not endorse, advocate, support, or recommend genocide, ethnocide, or any other crime against humanity.

[Ghost]

@Derp Right. Perspectives and cultural differences can result in a valid argument for most things. Some things are likely not to have a valid argument: sexual assault, genocide, domestic abuse, getting a baby monkey addicted to meth. Other things, the definition starts to differ and people take up stances that could only ever be the correct stance. Bias exclusions end up getting made, the goalposts shift, and some cultural differences then become about whose culture is more correct.

Example.

There's a hobby out there on the internet that hand-waves the existence of people roleplaying hardcore sex as-or-with minors and don't fight against it because doing so might result in their own ability to play on those games put in jeopardy. So despite the ABUNDANCE of people with stories about being minors on these hardcore sex games, Why rock the boat? Age is just a number and who are we to interrupt any of this? Be cool, bro.

Yet, if we can separate the art from the artist on these artistic online MUs where many people openly state that they play idealized versions of themselves and separate the pedophiles from the pedophilia roleplay, then maybe that's where the bar should be set on where people in the hobby accuse other writers of using their art to display their negative personal beliefs?

Worth thinking about.

[Kestrel]

Instead of arguing this nonsense I'm just going to drop my problematic fave Sam Harris on the table because he adequately explains how I feel about this topic. Or you could read his book.

But my short answer is: fuck no, religious sensibilities don't entitle you to mutilate a baby's genitals. 'God/tradition made me do it' is in no way a valid argument stacked up against a mountain of evidence. And believe me, coming from a Jewish family, I have had this argument to the death.

& @Ghost: I 100% do not separate art from artist in the context of paedophilia. And I have been pretty vocal about it.

[Tinuviel]

MSB is absolutely not the place to discuss the philosophical definitions of morality.

[Ghost]

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Ghost: I 100% do not separate art from artist in the context of paedophilia. And I have been pretty vocal about it.

Right. There are absolutely people (like you) that are on the "never accept it" meal plan for that and I really like that about you.

[Tinuviel]

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Kestrel said in Separating Art From Artist:

@Ghost: I 100% do not separate art from artist in the context of paedophilia. And I have been pretty vocal about it.

Right. There are absolutely people (like you) that are on the "never accept it" meal plan for that and I really like that about you.

Can separate the art from the artist and still think the art should be burned, man.

[insomniac7809]

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

So is Mark Twain in the same category as HP Lovecraft?

Mark Twain wrote a polemic on how slavery was wrong, and how, in fact, everything about the antebellum south of the United States was an ever-raging trash fire; the climax of the protagonist's moral development, and what I consider the most profoundly impactful moral moments in English literature, is when Huck rejects what he's been told is moral and Divine law by his society over the love and friendship with a fellow human being. The place of Huckleberry Finn in the Western canon is well earned.

At the same time, Clemens loved him a minstrel show. I can absolutely understand why someone, especially someone who happens to be black, wouldn't enjoy it as a work outside of its cultural significance. And, y'know, when Jim talks like a minstrel extra and grants n-word privileges to a room full of middle schoolers, I can understand the decision made by schools to bowlderize the work in their curricula or remove them entirely.

Lovecraft is so racist that it becomes cartoonish. The Shadow over Innsmouth was inspired by Lovecraft's discovery that what he had thought was his pure Anglo-Saxon heritage had been diluted through miscegenation with the Welsh and that isn't even a joke. His notion of cosmic horror has been key to the development of the genre since his life--you can talk about the fanfiction, sure, but just about anything with cults or gods unknowable and alien is almost certainly going to have some Lovecraft in its literary DNA. I'd put it at the level of Citizen Kane in terms of something that's very significant to a scholar of the work it's influenced, but what had been revolutionary has been copied to the point of being ubiquitous so a modern consumer isn't likely to get anything new from the reading.

Of course, Lovecraft died in 1937, so by buying one of his books you aren't supporting a non-profit dedicated to the removal of civil rights the way you are by picking up Ender's Game.

[Ghost]

@Tinuviel I had the pleasure once of watching an interview with Will Poulter about the release of Detroit. In it he plays a racist cop responsible for interrogations, beatings, murder (based on real events). It has become my benchmark that I keep in mind as to what seeing an artist separating themselves from the art should look like. I think about this when topics like "can someone write a racist character and not be racist?" come into play.

Not to go back to HP Lovecraft, but you dont see HP Lovecraft writings where he approaches his use of racial language like Will does in this clip. There's no "this was very cathartic for me, getting into the mind of this kind of person to generate that kind of dialogue" with HP, but there is with Will.

I am truly fine with any stone being turned in a story so long as there is a purpose behind it. Nothing so cruel or hateful should ever be fun, and on the other side of it any author/actor/etc should be able to explain the deep dive that they took to portray that kind of thing.

At that point, I can separate the art from the artist.

ETA: But those dudes asking for lolli scenes on PenDes and other games like that aren't some vision of Jeremy Irons or Poulter going "I was challenged by this role to the point that I sought therapy after writing this horrible, horrible role...". Nah, those guys are more like "let me do my thing".