How do you feel about Tom Cruise?
He seems to get a lot of flack about Scientology and how he treated Katie Holmes…etc I still enjoy (most) of his movies and feel he works hard and puts a big effort into producing good films. However lots of people appear to hate him these days due to his private life.
Tom Cruise’s beliefs and how he treated Katie don’t have an impact on how I feel about him. That said, the only two Tom Cruise movies I have a good opinion of is a Few Good Men, and Rock of Ages. The latter mainly because he pulled off an Axl Rose character so well.
I also never saw Minority Report.
Magnolia doesn’t feature?
I may not have seen that either. I don’t really watch a lot of movies.
Agreed. I don’t get the love for Firefly either.
But that’s what made me even more surprised at how much I enjoyed Serenity. Since I didn’t like the show, I expected to hate the movie too, as I was being dragged to it by a friend who was a Firefly fan. But I ended up loving it so much, I went again the next week to see it in the theater again.
Huh, funnily enough I saw the film first (not knowing anything about Firefly at the time) and disliked it. Then saw the series and loved it, then watched the film again and enjoyed that too. Glad it mostly tied up the show too.
I avoided Firefly at first because I had no interest in following Confederates in space. Eventually saw it, strongest start ever for a Whedon series, ended before it got bad so still retains the what if factor.
So generally I separate the artists from the art. In the case of Tom Cruise his infractions do not materially impact my enjoyment of Mission Impossible, Minority Report, etc. In fact it slightly enhances my enjoyment of Edge of Tomorrow. This applies also to people like Orson Scott Card, or any musician arrested for public disorder, intoxication, drugs, you name it.
There are two main exceptions, though admittedly somewhat inconsistently applied by me. One is where the artist commits a crime beyond the pale. I’d never be able to watch a Roman Polanski movie for that reason. The other is if their work is inherently tied to the politics of the person, such that I can’t enjoy the work. Scott Adams of Dilbert meets this threshold for me, as it is hard to read his work without his politics altering how you interpret them. Similarly it would be impossible to (picking an extreme and obvious edge case) read Atlas Shrugged without having the politics of the author hinder the ability to read it as literature.
Now some people may put Enders Game on the same footing, but I personally don’t. It is ultimately an individual decision on things like this though. For Card it is easy, since I find his politics not only don’t alter how I view the work, but also that said work runs quite counter to those politics!
Cruise may be a bad person in a shitty religion that causes them to do harm to friends and family through emotional manipulation and blackmail. I don’t think I would particularly want to share beers with him because of that. But it doesn’t alter his performance, to me. And it would be too exhausting to try and track all the private lives of every author, musician, and actor to determine what media is worth it. So Tom Cruise can feel free to be all loony on Oprah, and I’ll still think Minority Report is one of the best adapted sci fi movies of the last 15 years. That Edge of Tomorrow may be the greatest example of video game influence in film ever made.
There is an element of not wanting to fund the unfortunate adventures of some of these folks. I’m sure some not-insignificant portion of Card’s wealth goes toward some truly deplorable causes, based on his public positions on a number of issues and rather twisted faith, so every dollar of mine that doesn’t go to him is another dollar he can’t spend advancing his various missions.
For a rather harsh counterexample, I’m not sure that being $1 richer enables Chris Brown to beat women any better. Not that I intend to give that fucker any of my precious dollars :)
This is what comes to mind for me when making purchasing decisions. If an actor, writer, or whomever is a crappy person that made a great product, I’ll probably still buy the product. However, if that crappy person uses their funds to actively advance awfulness in the world, that’s when I’ll pause and reconsider.
edit - I will say that an actor or singer makes it a bit tougher to enjoy than a writer or director, because I’m staring at the actor or listening to the singer while trying to absorb their product. With an author, I’m imagining the character instead of the proverbial pen in hand.
Yeah, I was shocked to learn about Card’s politics back when Shadow Complex came out, because the Ender’s Game sequels are explicitly about learning to grow in empathy and understanding for those whose ways of life seem strange or scary at first.
This is kind of where I draw the line as well.
Tom Cruise may be an unapologetic Scientologist, but I don’t get the impression that seeing his (generally great) movies will cause him to become any more or less a Scientologist. And beyond simply being their public, idealized, face I don’t get the impression he’s out there actively recruiting. I don’t agree with his views, and that’s fine.
I put people like Mel Gibson into a similar bucket. He may or may not be a anti-Semitic jerk, but I don’t feel like my going to see his movies assists other anti-Semitic jerks or elevates the anti-Semitic jerk cause in any meaningful way.
Adams and OSC are different cases because both of them use their fame to advance their odious views. Buying an OSC novel or a Dilbert compendium actively enriches the author and then they will spend some not-insignificant portion of my money in support of a cause that I deeply opposed.
Long as we’re getting this stuff off our chest, I don’t really pay a lot of attention to the private affairs of most public folks and even then I’m more focused on supporting the ones I do appreciate than avoiding the ones I don’t. So I’ll get in on a Kickstarter if I’ve enjoyed someone’s previous work, or buy their albums or go see their movies or what have you. There’s exceptions for sure - it’d feel weird to stay at a Trump hotel these days, ethically compromised even if my money is a drop in the bucket. But for the most part I don’t worry too much about that stuff, I just don’t have the time.
I wouldn’t let that stop me staying in Doonbeg, it’s a fabulous hotel in one of most beautiful parts of Ireland.
Plus, Trump tried to build a wall there, failed and it turned him bitterly against the EU!
I find it more jarring with (good) writers than actors, since I tend to associate intelligence and critical thinking with the former.
Take Gene Wolfe, for instance. Brilliant writer, ass backwards when it comes to politics. It was always there even in his best works, and he’s only gotten more crotchety over the years. It always stands out in my head as an example of how someone incredibly smart can have terrible judgement (or arrive in the same place as terrible judgement.)
Of course sometimes the loonies let you know early on with terrible writing (lookin’ at you, Goodkind).
At least Goodkind was polite enough to let us know though his shitty books that he’s pretty far off the deep end.
The problem with those books is they didn’t start shitty. They lead you down a path where like 5 books in you go “what the fuck is this shit?”
Also those books led to the Sword of Truth TV series, which to this day holds my highest respect for displaying the most stunningly attractive women wearing tiny leather S&M costumes of all time.
Well I only read one of his books and it seemed plenty shitty to me.
They started out as pretty generic but readable coming of age hero’s journey type fantasy, then a couple books in went to some very, very weird places.
I can unequivocally recommend the TV show, if you’re into the ladies. And actually guys too, the main character has his shirt off half the time.