Should we stop listening to Richard Wagner because he was an antisemite? Who gives a shit about personal life of artists, maybe the only good thing they do to the world will be their art, maybe the only way they can redeem themselves from being bastards/criminals … better than most people do, who are just bastards/criminals … if they break the law, go after them of course … that would not stop me enjoying whatever art was created (if it is something I actually enjoy) … I will always enjoy Kevin Spaceys movies, he is one great actor, his personal life I don’t care. If things about Bill Crosby are true, he should go to jail, but I enjoyed the Cosby show back then
I think dying and the passage of time is a potential redeeming factor. but not always. Jimmy Savile is being erased from British TV history, and I don’t have a problem with that.
My personal line is about whether my personal patronage of their work will allow the artist to continue to do or say terrible things that hurt others or diminish causes that I believe in.
My enjoyment of Wagner’s operas is very unlikely to bring him back from the grave and inflict his views on the modern world. It is also unlikely that it will give voice to others who share those views.
Mel Gibson has apologized and sought to make amends for his actions in a way that convinced me of his sincerity. I judge that if he ever makes anything that I like again (Hacksaw Ridge was terrible), my renting it will not provide him a platform to spew odious opinions.
By contrast, despite my appreciation for Orson Scott Card’s writing skills, I do not want to give him any money since he actively promotes views and politics that I abhor.
Kevin Spacey’s apology was not sufficient to me personally, and I am not convinced that my patronage of his work wouldn’t enable him to hurt others as he has evidently done in the past.
I find it really strange that you guys cannot separate the work from the person. I just enjoy the work on its own merits. Whatever they may or may not have done is completely irrelevant to their body of work.
I find it strange that you find that strange.
That’s true for directors and other behind the scenes people like producers. I’ll still watch old Miramax films. It’s easy for paintings, and music to an extent, because you can’t see the creator.
It’s harder for actors because the focus is on them and their actions.
Even music is tough. There was a hardcore band I listened to a lot when I was younger, Lostprophets, whose singer was revealed a couple of years ago to be a particularly monstrous pedophile who coerced and coaxed his girlfriends into letting him film himself raping their infant children on multiple occasions. Police reports this behavior went back half a decade or more before he was finally charged, and probably involved fans he used his fame to lure in. He was even calling up fangirls to brag about it all in the middle of his trial.
Like, Wagner’s anti-semitism is certainly difficult to see past 100+ years out, and I absolutely do see antisemitic groups even now holding guys like him and Heidegger as moral paragons of the white state to be praised and showcased as examples of white prowess. But he’s also super fucking dead, had views that weren’t entirely out of place for his era (from what I understand–you’ll forgive me if I haven’t spent a great deal of time reading up on how much various composers hated the Jews), and what he contributed to the world is certainly significant. I don’t spend a ton of time jamming to Wagner on my daily commute, but I can get into the headspace of a reasonably progressive person who does so.
But man, some guy who’s still in prison hitting on fans who are expectant mothers so he can fuck their kids after 10 years of making kinda shitty screamo music? I’m pretty okay walking away from that shitheel’s career entirely.
I will admit to having trouble listening to Guns N Roses after hearing an Axl Rose racial diatribe. You just can’t un hear some things.
It’s hard. I think I’ve just accepted there’s no right answer. I apply both perspectives inconsistently.
On one hand, it makes sense that you should be able to separate art from the artist. After all, the Netflix television show House of Cards didn’t assault or harass anyone.
But on the other hand, enjoyment of art is kind of a tacit approval (or at least oblique support) for the artist. Moreso if that enjoyment involves the flow of money from you to the artist.
Watkins is another good example. I only had some Lost Prophets single MP3s but I’ve still deleted them.
With Watkins and Savile you are talking about abhorrent crimes rather than evolving social attitudes and discussing in the same thread as Aziz Ansari issues demonstrates the folly of grouping it all up together.
A good example for me is the Naked Gun movies. OJ isn’t a big part of either movie, so I can still enjoy them, but I have to admit to being a lot less amused by his hapless pratfall shtick knowing what I know now.
I’ll admit to wondering if I’ll ever watch The Usual Suspects again. And I really love that movie.
I think society’s taking the opportunity to examine a lot of our basic assumptions of interaction and gender and power and kindness and love and sex off the back of the sheer shock and awe of the “big guns” like Weinstein and Savile. Their capacity to function at the level they did perhaps wasn’t purely based on their power; maybe society and our views as a whole helped enable the behavior.
Most of us don’t have any power to bring down a guy like Weinstein, insofar as most of us aren’t sexy enough actresses to get invited into his shower stall. However, most of us do have a lot of power in our daily lives to take stock of our behaviors and those of the people we’re closest to and interact with most. A bit of self-reflection goes a long way.
Which is why it’s good that Ansari helps us remember that we’ve all got a long way to go. Being more reflective, aware, attentive sex partners/daters/people makes the world a better place, and this is as good a time as any to have those conversations.
I don’t see using the momentum lent by the movement to kickstart those conversations as a bad thing. They’re hard to have. They’re embarrassing. They make a lot of us feel uncomfortable and worried and maybe even guilty. We may well need something bigger than any of us to force past that discomfort into healing as a whole society.
Calling Aziz as bad as Harvey is disingenuous as best and laughably horrible at worst. Thankfully, most folks, at least on the parts of the net I frequent (which include a lot of your most fearsome foes, the SJWs!), aren’t doing so. What they are doing is noting that maybe Ansari’s imperfect views on how to behave and conduct himself spring from some far lesser and less degraded portion of the same poisoned well of gender dynamics and interpersonal interactions that Weinstein’s did, and that correcting those imbalances brings us a step closer to correcting the larger, much more complicated and insulated ones. And certainly makes us better people for the effort, to boot.
The Naked Gun movies were on Starz a couple months ago and whenever OJ was on screen it just felt wrong.
Before, when I watched House of Cards, I admired the way Spacey would play a villain, smiling at one time and then being absolutely horrible to people. I called it fantastic acting, and loved it in great parts for that acting.
Now, learning of the accusations against him, I can’t stop wondering how much of it was acting and how much was channeling some hidden personality. It removes the enjoyment for me. I don’t expect or demand that anyone else feel like that. But nevertheless, there it is.
I watched Heat again recently and I was surprised at how little I was disturbed by seeing Tom Sizemore in it. I know what he did. I’d love it if he got killed for it. But it really didn’t bother me seeing him on screen.
Maybe it’s because I’ve already seen it many times before and I already have an emotional connection to those scenes? Would it bother me more to see him in a movie I hadn’t already watched? I’m not sure.
I didn’t even know Sizemore did anything worth getting killed for. I haven’t thought about him in years, so now I have to decide if I want to Google his deeds.
This goes to another point though doesn’t it. It’s not as if most of us heavily research every actor, actress, singer, song-writer, producer, director and general celebrity. Spacey is right here, right now, and I can’t see him without thinking… ugh. When I see Lance Armstrong in his little cameo’s at random places, I frown too. He doesn’t really star in movies though, so overlooking him
Werinstein… God, he’s even tainted Project Runway. This man has been behind stories and what we’ve seen for decades, influencing who knows how many people… it’s sickening.
Isn’t acting, by definition, channeling?
I loved usual suspects. I’ll have to watch it again to see if it has any new effect.
Dare I Google sizemoore?
I always come back to Wagner. The man was a rancid anti-semite and his music is glorious.
I listen to the music.
Granted, it’s easier when the artist is dead and you know your patronage doesn’t benefit them anymore. Also, Kevin Spacey is not an artist within miles of Wagner’s caliber.