Separating Art From Artist

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 7:53 AM

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread, that the Millennial/Zoomer Outrage Machine is going to banish someone's work to the outer dark over a minor infraction? Nah. Not a thing.

...except as someone working in the arts community, I can tell you, it's a thing. It's a thing people are talking about, are actively being threatened about (mostly older artists, yes, mostly boomers, but the point stands).

boneghazi · Jan 16, 2020, 8:11 AM

I don't know.

Call me a pessimist, but we are all pieces of shit. We are all human. We all have flaws.

Something something splinters, logs, and eyes.

If you're looking for someone perfect to author your stories, try the Bible. The writing in red or brown is usually the go to bit you're looking for.

... but even that ends up offending people so it just goes to show you can never, ever make everyone happy.

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 8:25 AM

@nyctophiliac I honestly fear the point that people are so intensely policed on 'oh this must insinuate <thing>' or 'when some people use the phrase <blah> it might be a dogwhistle!' or 'thirty years ago you said <crap> therefore anything you say now should be discounted immediately, even if you believe totally different things now!' that the backlash turns more people into the 4chan and 8chan crowd out of sheer exhaustion at and frustration with it all.

I believed Santa was real when I was five. I do not think I need to explain to a therapist that I no longer believe in Santa before my perceptions of reality as an adult are not dismissed out of hand because of it. This is the sort of problem society is presently having re: 'things people did at a different point in their lives' or 'during a completely different era in history'; we're essentially demanding that people explain their childhood belief in Santa and affirm they no longer believe in him before we'll take their adult perspective seriously.

A prime example: Sixteen Candles may as well be a horror film today. It absolutely wasn't when it came out, which was not exactly back in the ancient days of yore.

boneghazi · Jan 16, 2020, 8:35 AM

(LOL Now that you mention it... Sixteen Candles Ugh, never be able to see it in another light. Gotta rewatch it now.)

As for the rest of it, I completely agree. People change every day. I'm definitely always actively trying to improve and progress in a way that's positive and healthy.

Ominous · Jan 16, 2020, 8:36 AM

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 8:40 AM

@nyctophiliac said in Separating Art From Artist:

People change every day. I'm definitely always actively trying to improve and progress in a way that's positive and healthy.

I think this is true of most people.

I also think it will become less true of people if no one cares about that compared to something they said or did in 1965 that might have been 100% in line with the social mores of 1965, but is not at all cool today, and there are so many things like that.

Another movie reference: pretty sure we all remember Monster Squad for "Wolfman's got nards!"

...and not the dozens of times people throw gay slurs at each other, or that someone takes peeper pictures of a girl getting changed in it.

Watching it recently since it popped up on Shudder, those things stand out. If someone hasn't seen it recently and just remembers it from being a kid? We remember "Wolfman's got nards!" and that's probably about it.

GreenFlashlight · Jan 16, 2020, 9:12 AM

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

I... what?

Are you actually asking, or would I be wasting my effort?

Pandora · Jan 16, 2020, 9:13 AM

End of the day, circling back to the original point, I mostly just feel a bit of exasperation toward people that can't separate art from the artist. Every artist that has the good fortune of releasing multiple and varied works into the mainstream will inevitably transgress against pop morality, and its up to us as rational, thinking people (citation not forthcoming) to determine whether or not their works can stand alone to be appreciated divorced of the artist's beliefs - and in the case of modern artists, if in fact their beliefs are actually at all problematic as a logical conclusion as opposed to because the Twitter mob said so.

Ghost · Jan 16, 2020, 1:27 PM

@surreality You missed my point. Reread.

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 5:52 PM

@Ghost I got the point of it.

It's a point that's buried under the broad swath of accusation that could impact everyone in the hobby, regardless of their views of the content. That's a life-ruining accusation to make even outside the conversation about cancel culture, and it shouldn't be made lightly or as hyperbole.

Ghost · Jan 16, 2020, 5:56 PM

@surreality I hope no one's life gets ruined by that paragraph. Let me know.

I told Tin that was the last i posted about that topic on this thread.
jazzed to be off of block

Rinel · Jan 16, 2020, 5:59 PM

@Tinuviel said in Separating Art From Artist:

There is no absolute morality, therefore it has to be subjective.

Quite literally begging the question.

Your best argument here is the is-ought gap, and you're going with people disagreeing? Come the heck on. People disagree about observable phenomena (see, e.g., 9/11 truthers). Is reality subjective as well?

The answer is no. Things being difficult to ascertain does not make them subjective. It makes them topics about which a great many people are wrong.

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 6:04 PM

@Ghost I took everybody off that was on it for the new year. On the whole it's going relatively well, seems like a viable reset point.

Seriously, though. There's no better way to get an angry mob riled to action than 'people are harming children'. That's not a bad thing, obviously... unless the people in question are not engaging in those things. Most people here aren't, and want nothing to do with it, but also do not have time, know-how, or energy to harry the FBI into shutting those games down as a personal crusade. Claims that anyone not doing this is 'wanting to protect their kiddie porn they love doing' is not OK, and it's not OK to take people's accounts of being in the hobby period before they were 18 as 'we were all involved so we could play on hardcore sex games' unless this is what they explicitly said (don't think anyone has).

Ghost · Jan 16, 2020, 6:16 PM

@surreality

I told Tin that would be the last I posted on that issue on this thread.
Word

I will pre-pen an apology to anyone whose home is inadvertently stormed by the FBI and rounded up to be placed in people who disagreed with me jail as a result of the opinions in said paragraph. It was not my intent to drive the FBI to, without evidence, arrest people for behavior they are not partaking in based on my opinions alone.

I will endeavor to, in the future, hold myself to a higher level of accountability for the lives ruined by my MSB posts.

Moving on.

surreality · Jan 16, 2020, 7:06 PM

@Ghost said in Separating Art From Artist:

I will pre-pen an apology to anyone whose home is inadvertently stormed by the FBI and rounded up to be placed in people who disagreed with me jail as a result of the opinions in said paragraph. It was not my intent to drive the FBI to, without evidence, arrest people for behavior they are not partaking in based on my opinions alone.

Tell you what... when you can find where I said that's the potential problem, I'll stop believing this is the second instance of putting words in other people's mouths in this brief conversation. I will otherwise maintain my stance that doing that is Not Cool.

insomniac7809 · Jan 16, 2020, 7:27 PM

@surreality said in Separating Art From Artist:

@insomniac7809 said in Separating Art From Artist:

In terms of what you, @Pandora and @Ghost are decrying as "censorship" in this thread, that the Millennial/Zoomer Outrage Machine is going to banish someone's work to the outer dark over a minor infraction? Nah. Not a thing.

...except as someone working in the arts community, I can tell you, it's a thing. It's a thing people are talking about, are actively being threatened about (mostly older artists, yes, mostly boomers, but the point stands).

I see a whole lot more people talking about it and worrying about it than it actually happening. I mean, maybe I'm only seeing the most high-profile cases, but all the "cancel culture" I've seen is just people getting basic consequences for shitty behavior, which wasn't invented in 2016. (Or, at least as often, people suffering no real consequences except a few thinkpieces coming out about them.)

Yeah, sometimes a work ages like milk behind a radiator. And that shit sucks for the creator, but like, if the consequence is that people don't want to consume it anymore, that happens.

Again, maybe this is a whole lot more of a Thing in some smaller artist spaces, but all the examples I've seen are shit like Hart ("he joked about beating his son straight, wouldn't apologize, and didn't get to host the Oscars!") or Rosanne Barr ("so your twitter history is a decade of 9/11 trutherism and racist garbage, but you still have a nationally syndicated TV show as long as you can refrain from saying black people look like monkeys while the show is running. Okay? Rosanne? Can you handle that?"). Or, of course, Weinstein.