For years, people have enjoyed the works of many a vile person, after knowing how terrible they were. Sometimes, these people, say that you should separate the art from the artist, as you can never enjoy anything if you don't.

First off this is not true, at all. There is content out there created or owned bu people who are not shitty people.

Second, you ever notice how it's really the people who are not affected by a person saying or doing vile things saying that you should divorce the art from the artist? People saying that people should be able to watch Mel Gibson movies despite his Antisemitism and the fact he never apologized for saying that if a woman was raped by a pack of niggers that she deserved it or that people should be able to watch Polanksi movies despite him being a rapist because he's a great filmmaker. The list goes on and on and on and on...

Especially in a personality based medium such as being a personality on the internet or some shit, it's difficult to separate art from artist. Very difficult.

Some, like me, have a line. A line that many cross by spewing hatred, doing terrible things, all being defended as having a "different opinion".

Thoughts?

I think everyone has a limit

I love Kanye's music but not really as a person but I don't think he's actively hateful (it was touch and go last year tho) so I can still enjoy it

It might be philosophically lame, but I'm perfectly comfortable making this judgment on a case-by-case basis.

In practice, I've yet to run across someone whose work I really appreciated who was also a shitty person. It's almost always someone whose work I wasn't all that into, and thus is easy to just stop supporting.

I have to come to terms with the feeling of wanting distance before becoming able to see their work with a stronger and more aware mindset. I might not have been able to watch i.e. The Pianist earlier in life without feeling upset, but nowadays i can and have seen it without that sense of discomfort.

This might have been the case at one point when there was less to choose from. But when it comes to art there is so much great stuff out there that it's easy to drop someone who sucks as a human.

When it comes to movies though it can be a little tricky since it takes hundreds of people to make a movie and you know some of them will have questionable views.

Case by case basis with bias on the quality of their work tbh.

Also dependent on how far their actions and words go.

Context is key.

There is a difference between Max Landis usual douchiness, and "Raped by a pack of niggers".

This probably sounds stupid and selfish but even if I violently disagree with somebodies views I'm not going to let it get in the way of my enjoyment of their content. Maybe I'll find a limit one day but as of right now I haven't found it.

Slayven said:

Context is key.

There is a difference between Max Landis usual douchiness, and "Raped by a pack of niggers".

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Nail on head

The line is dependent on the person, there's no universal thing to what that limit is to where someone can no longer separate the art from the artist and draw the line. A lot of things go into account (time passed, eras shitty things were done, personal beliefs, how far actions go, what role the person had in creating the art itself and when it was created, etc...) that allows for that to happen.

I respect Ender's Game as a novel, but I will no longer in any way financially contribute to Orson Scott Card since learning of his beliefs.

I do believe art itself can stand apart from the artist, but that doesn't not mean the artist him or herself gets a pass; I will do my part to actively discourage shitty behavior, and usually the best way to do that is economically. Thus, I will neither purchase nor recommend that artist's work to another, even if the art itself is decent.

I know for myself, I have a line and I operate on a case by case basis.

Mel Gibson? Nope
Terrence Howard? Nope
Nate Parker? Nope
JonTron? Nope
Eric Clapton? Nope
Orson Scott Card? Nah bruh

And so on and so forth

I think the quality of the art is completely independent of the creator. That much, I feel, is obvious. And when it comes to the subject of critically evaluating the work, I am very pro Death of the Author. However, critically evaluating the work is different from experiencing the work.

I don't blame people for allowing the outside knowledge of where content comes from to affect their experience of the art. Like, I would feel really odd, say, eating a meal by David Duke. Assuming he's a decent enough cook and didn't do anything weird with it, if he just made an ordinary meal, then you can't say that there's any racism in the food itself. But at the same time, it would feel off putting to eat even an ordinary meal served by David Duke.

I feel there is a certain symbolism to consuming the content of others that gives an implication of acceptance of them. Like guilt by association. That's a fallacy, but it doesn't change it being how you feel. And ultimately, how you feel experiencing art is a major component about how you feel about the art as a whole.



I've actually been lucky. The art I tend to enjoy and revere the most is stuff whose creators align with my own beliefs. Only a few have pushed the boundaries of decency and not that much. I haven't had anyone whose views I found completely abhorrent create work I treasure.

I wonder if it's causal. The things I value in art (Diversity, empathy, intelligent understanding of the world) don't seem to be the things that would bigoted people would want to write about.

It's weird, and for me often has to do with how much I enjoy the artists works. There are a few pretty problematic artists that I still consider myself a fan of, but have decided to not financially support their works. There are also artists that I have decided I will never support and can't enjoy their works anymore because I can't stop thinking of how much of an asshole they are, and in those instances the works are literally ruined by this. I feel like people might take issue with which artists fall into which categories for me, and that's fine; I think that the decision of who to support/enjoy the works of and who to not support/enjoy the works of is a very personal decision that is going to vary from person to person, and I think that's okay. That's a personal journey for each of us as we explore and experience art.

My personal artistic philosophy is that it's objectively best to try to appreciate as many things as possible, so if someone can still enjoy the works of someone despite awful things they've done, more power to them. Financially supporting those works is a very different thing, though. For instance, I can no longer bring myself to support the band teen suicide after seeing how lead singer Sam Ray lashed out at fans on Twitter who were bummed that they left the venue before saying hello to anyone. I still enjoy listening to their records, but I will never purchase another work from them nor will I ever see them live, or buy another t-shirt, and I encourage others to do the same.

LionPride said:

I know for myself, I have a line and I operate on a case by case basis.

Mel Gibson? Nope
Terrence Howard? Nope
Nate Parker? Nope
JonTron? Nope
Eric Clapton? Nope
Orson Scott Card? Nah bruh

And so on and so forth

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This is pretty much me as well. The line is roughly defined as, am I faulting them for reasonable human failings, or for being a bigot/sleazeball. There are many artists with traits I don't admire, but that's different from say, Roman Polanski, child rapist.

I'm usually able to do it unless the artist said or did something so impactfully negative that I can't really think about or experience their work without thinking about that thing.

Admittedly that doesn't happen very often to me, though. I think people can do whatever they want about this though; if someone feels like they can't enjoy any movies directed by a rapist then I'm not going to fault them for that.

Usually in general I don't really think about the artist much when experiencing a piece of art unless the artist themselves is so intrinsically linked to that piece of art, though. I wouldn't be surprised if I've seen and enjoyed a movie directed by a piece of shit and I didn't even know they were because I don't usually pay attention to directors that much, especially not up until a few years ago.

I try to watch a movie without thinking too much about the real people behind the scenes. I try to concentrate on the characters depicted by the movie. Besides... a movie is hard work by many people not just one, even if that one is the director or lead actor.

I suppose this is true for other media as well. Except for books, but i don't read books so...

I rarely know anything about the authors of books I read, same for movies, shows, etc. The art and the artist is rarely anything but separate in these things. I've got bookshelves of books, movies and games about the authors I know very little. There are a few exceptions, but even someone whom I enjoyed as much as Leonard Nimoy or Terry Pratchett? Never met either man, know nothing of what their politics were. I just know I miss their work.


However, today the artist very often is the art. YT or tv personalities are their shows, it's literally all about them. It becomes impossible to separate. And when you hate their message, it's a pretty short jump to hating them as well.

Art is the production of works of expression from an artist.

If I find the artist holds and expresses views I find abhorrent I am not going to find any value in the various forms of expression they choose, including their work.

The two cannot be separated, period.

Mathieran said:

This might have been the case at one point when there was less to choose from. But when it comes to art there is so much great stuff out there that it's easy to drop someone who sucks as a human.

When it comes to movies though it can be a little tricky since it takes hundreds of people to make a movie and you know some of them will have questionable views.

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Exactly, I mean what is the point in supporting something created by a person you find morally reprehensible when there are endless alternatives? When I was younger I did not really care, but as I have become more conscious, and the internet has allowed me to become more informed, I now choose what I support wisely. From clothes to games.

Slayven said:

Context is key.

There is a difference between Max Landis usual douchiness, and "Raped by a pack of niggers".

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And we're done here.

Mousnis said:

I try to watch a movie without thinking too much about the real people behind the scenes. I try to concentrate on the characters depicted by the movie. Besides... a movie is hard work by many people not just one, even if that one is the director or lead actor.

I suppose this is true for other media as well. Except for books, but i don't read books so...

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This is also a good point, though. I think that's why I feel a lot more uncomfortable watching JonTron videos (which are totally his creation) now, than, say, watching a Mel Gibson-directed movie, even though they're both terrible people and the latter is worse. Is that actually fair? I dunno, maybe it isn't. But I'm not gonna deny they've both said and done really shitty things.

Speaking to broadly, for me it depends on the art and how many artists are involved. Sometimes we're talking hundreds of people on a project and I won't ignore it because one of them is an asshole. I know others treat it as, anybody working with said asshole is willing to associate themselves, but that I don't agree with. And sometimes bad people can do good work, in the moral sense. So between those two, on a case to case basis, is how I try and go about it.

That's all to say: it depends. But I wouldn't say I separate the art from the artist.

'Enjoyment' of art is a subjective and personal concept. You don't need to have a mathematical theorem that you obey with razor-sharp precision to decide if it's okay to enjoy or not enjoy a piece of art. It's okay to be inconsistent. It's not hard science.

Feep said:

I respect Ender's Game as a novel, but I will no longer in any way financially contribute to Orson Scott Card since learning of his beliefs.

I do believe art itself can stand apart from the artist, but that doesn't not mean the artist him or herself gets a pass; I will do my part to actively discourage shitty behavior, and usually the best way to do that is economically. Thus, I will neither purchase nor recommend that artist's work to another, even if the art itself is decent.

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This is my basic point of view. If I talk about separating the art and the artist, I'm usually more talking about separating the quality of the work from the shittiness of the person that made it. I'll still make my own decision outside of that whether that art, or that artist, is worth spending my own money on. As to whether that person should be able to make art, that's a business decision that outside of my measly purchase or non-purchase, I don't have any effect on. Mel Gibson, for example, gets to make movies because his movies still make studios money, and I can't really do anything about that.

We're all only human, but there's a very solid line for me.

The way I consume art just doesn't let make such division, but I don't say it in a negative way. It often makes for more intriguing art in my eyes as I seldom hit pause on analysis. Sometimes it is just fun to look for things and not having the mind of the artist for consideration seems incomplete to me.

Well Roman polanski is a pos..But I love Rosemary's baby so idk


I usually don't think about it too much, for better or worse

It can be difficult, but for the sake of being able to continue enjoying Mike-era MST3K, which was a huge part of my teenage years and super influential on my sense of humor, I had to learn how to.

It is very difficult for me to separate the art from the artist be honest. That is why I sometimes avoid learning more about singers/actors/writers, etc..

I mean, the recent Jontron stuff doesn't make me hate my favourite moments of his.

But it certainly hurts my opinion of any future videos and content.

You do have to maintain some distance within an academic space. Turns out people who were allied with Nazis or were horrible people in general still can write good stuff and have good ideas.

For me, as long as they perform their chosen artistic form well, I can only judge it based on that.

Of course, I can also judge the hell out of the actual person. But it'd be intellectually bankrupt for me to reject any ideas simply because I don't like who gave it. I reject ideas that don't pass my scrutiny, regardless of how shitty the person is.

If the product of art itself is not problematic, it's totally okay to enjoy it and still think the artist is a horrible person.

Tho actually supporting said piece with your money gets trickier.

I hate the fact that Roman Polanski is a child raping scumbag doesn't make The Pianist any less powerful for me.

It's an incredible movie and I wish he didn't make it.

Despite me being a film lover and considering minoring in film, I have never seen a Polanski film.

LionPride said:

Despite me being a film lover and considering minoring in film, I have never seen a Polanski film.

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You'll notice that keeping the yet to occur events in mind make for intriguing reading of his very early films. In hindsight I can't stop but see a little bit more sexual everything even on what already are some pretty sexually charged films of his. I'm not saying that one should be playing Freud on these kind of artists, but boy do they make it hard not to.

Pretty easy personally considering my own family and friends believe in some pretty fucked up shit. Sometimes you just gotta take the good for what it is.

That being said there is a line

It's really tricky. I think the most important thing is to recognize that it's on an individual level, because when we start talking about "accepting the canon" or whether we should then disregard certain artists, it just turns into a giant unsolvable headache when you recognize how ingrained problematic works are in our culture and ask whether being an okay person is a prerequisite for having art critically considered and think about what the cutoffs should be.

Because on an individual level, you don't have to decide these things. You just have to choose what you experience, and it is incredibly easy to avoid things. You don't even have to make a conscious effort; there's just a ton of shit you're not going to watch or read or listen to by the time you die and there is nothing you will be able to do about it. A lot of it might even be Important.

So what that means is that, on an individual level, it comes down to whether you do or do not feel a little queasy whenever you see Mel Gibson's face onscreen or Roman Polanski's name in the credits, and I think a large part of that is going to come down to the work itself; does the work lend itself to separating the art from artist? That perhaps unfairly tilts things in the favor of directors who are not in front of the camera, but that's the way it is.

By the same token, viewing it on an individual level also means that your personal experience is not going to matter all that much in most cases. Whether you do or do not engage with something is not going to make somebody rich or meaningfully deprive them of revenue. It is also not going to show meaningful support for all those other people who worked on a thing alongside a controversial figure; Andrew Garfield does not care that you did not let Mel Gibson deter you from Hacksaw Ridge. Instead, it's just going to affect you.

So on my part I guess for my part I come down on the "what does any of it matter" side of things more often than not because I think for me personally it's really easy to view things removed from the context of the people who made them, though there is still some stuff I feel weird about. I do feel weird about renting any Roman Polanski movie and haven't in a while. I don't really have any desire to watch either Birth of a Nation movie.

Just curious, would it make any difference if Polanski wasn't the director and the piece of shit was the lead actor instead? How about the supporting actor? The writer? The composer? One of the extras?

Hundreds of people make a movie. Obviously, some of them are going to be terrible humans. So where do you draw the line?

Polanski films are marketed as "A film by Roman Polanski" because he is the most marketed aspect of those films. But what if he wasn't the most popular? What if the most marketed aspect was the actors? I just watched Manchester by the Sea today and was blown away by the actors but i have no idea who the director is. But if he turns out to be a murdered, i will still love the movie.

Mousnis said:

Just curious, would it make any difference if Polanski wasn't the director and the piece of shit was the lead actor instead? How about the supporting actor? The writer? The composer? One of the extras?

Hundreds of people make a movie. Obviously, some of them are going to be terrible humans. So where do you draw the line?

Polanski films are marketed as "A film by Roman Polanski" because he is the most marketed aspect of those films. But what if he wasn't the most popular? What if the most marketed aspect was the actors? I just watched Manchester by the Sea today and was blown away by the actors but i have no idea who the director is. But if he turns out to be a murdered, i will still love the movie.

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Lead actor? Nope
Writer? Nope
Composer? Nope
Extra? Who the fuck cares unless it's found out that the casting agency knew he was a child rapist and still hired him

I don't separate art from the artist. If I don't want to support an asshole artist, I don't have to. For every asshole artist there are plenty of other artists who are normal, decent, kind people. I'll spend my limited time and money on them.

This is definitely case by case for me. Like the Mel Gibson stuff sucks big time, but anti-Semitism doesn't have anything at all to do with Scottish independence or being a loose cannon cop or whatever. Maybe The Passion would make me uncomfortable, but I'm just not interested in seeing it either way so that problem sort of solved itself.

Then we have a case like R Kelly where the songs are lusty and like... knowing stuff about Kelly makes it pretty clear those songs are lusty about teens. Some of the Woody Allen oeuvre goes the same way.

My default position is to separate the two but every once in a while it just crosses a line. Usually when the thing that's ugly about the artist is the same thing that's ugly about the art.

Consuming art isn't the same as endorsing or validating it. Sometimes it's worth being challenged by something ugly to keep your critical faculties sharp. Usually in that case, the author will be dead or I'll be checking the thing out from the library or something, to minimize the financial benefit to them.

I think that you can never fully separate the two as ultimately anything a person creates is going to be affected by their worldview. Likewise, knowing what you know about the artist definitely makes you see their creation in a whole new light.

There's a limit:

Roman Polanski is a very talented filmmaker but a huge POS and rapist, so I won't watch his films (i had to in college).

Kanye is a bit of a douchebag, but his work is great so I can take his crazy

Lennon was a wife beater and asshole so I don't listen to his stuff.

Generally if the person has inflicted a massive harm to another person, I'm out.

Fans don't care as long as you can produce the goods, and we are "forgiving" to the point where everyone is a fan of the NFL/MLB despite the Redskins/Indians. So yea I separate the art from the artist and can still enjoy MJ's thriller, a Kobe highlight reel, Polanski's Chinatown, or Hacksaw Ridge despite the baggage. We're all exploiting Asian slave labor anyway, sure its whataboutism but godspeed grading people on purity tests after Trump vs Clinton

Safs Safs Safs said:

OP don't you eat chick fil a 🤔

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When I openly talk about my hypocrisy in eating Chick Fil A despite their gay hating stance? Yep.

It's not like I don't mention the fact I eat Chick Fil A despite ya know, the whole gay hating thing.

Bryan Singer is super creepy but Days of the Future Past is a fantastic movie.

Then again, I don't think I'll ever watch something from Polanski. That rubs me the wrong way.

I feel this way with most male rappers, to be honest.
Kanye, Future, Cole, Gambino, etc.

WillyFive said:

Bryan Singer is super creepy but Days of the Future Past is a fantastic movie.

Then again, I don't think I'll ever watch something from Polanski. That rubs me the wrong way.

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Doesn't Singer also fuck underage people?

KazenY2J said:

I feel this way with most male rappers, to be honest.
Kanye, Future, Cole, Gambino, etc.

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So you named:

A rapper with mental health issues who says wild shit
A rapper who isn't over his ex who he cheated on and is a bitch tbh
And two people with no negatives in their personal lives besides one is the cure for insomnia and the other was corny as shit in the past

What happens when an artist DOES something that is unacceptable, not just says it? I've found in those cases personally that I am unable to separate the art from the artist. People like Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, and Ian Watkins from Lostprophets are people I can't go back and admire their work ever again because of their actions.

I can't relate to this. I don't think I look at people in this mode of thinking. Regardless of how shitty someone is, looking at them as aone-dimensional Tolkien villains who exhibit nothing beyond evil and who gets up in the morning with the only purpose of being shitty is a really bad way to approach people.
I get that it is easier to not humanize the worst people. It's difficult to think of evil dictators as anything more than the embodiment of their crimes, but people are not born that way. They are molded, they grow up, things happen to them, ideas are put in their heads and they filtrate things to become beings of evil.

It's not that Mel Gibson has shitty ideas about other people or shitty belief systems that is interesting. What is interesting is; Why?. Babbling about my morales like it would mean anything to anybody else is complete futile and a waste of time. These things are completely lost and ineffective on people who believe like Mel Gibson, and it's a no-shit-sherlock to anyone who is not trapped into a conspiracy that Jews run the world.
So I don't see the point. Everyone is like Mel Gibson. Everyone has the same capacity for hate, prejudice and shittiness that he has. Don't count yourself out as someone that you wouldn't be exactly like he is, if you had been growing up in his shoes. And I think you can say that about the "evil" people throughout world history in general. Many of the most important people who ever lived did evil things. Many of the people who you can thank everything you have for today, destroyed and annihilated innocent people who hadn't done anything wrong.

It's really weird to me, for people to draw a line in the sand and chalk it up on who is good and bad in 2017 and keeping scores like their own duality based morale system is supposed to mean anything anything anyone else. It seems juvenile as fuck to me and it almost seems like a fetish based novelty idea that we can all be good guys or we can all be bad guys, when that is completely false. Everyone is a fucking walking nightmare of deplorable if reduced to their primal nature. It's intellectually lazy and idiotic to see people as such simple extremes. If you round out all people in GAF, chances are that 90% of people here has some views that are deeply offensive and disturbing to somebody somewhere for entirely legit reasons.

You cannot not be harmful or ignorant, when your level of understanding is simplistic limited and by just partaking in civilization in itself is an act of oppression you conveniently choose to ignore when it seems fitting because who gives two shits about those fucking things that are in the past. We all have our courses and crusades, and we all have our causes and crusades where we shrug on our shoulders and go "yeah it's too bad but cannot really do anything about that". Doesn't mean that is the whole story. Doesn't mean that is the end. Doesn't mean that bad people cannot be more or try to make up for it, or that many people who we see as good weren't fucking horrible in the past. It's a rudimentary selection bias to see so many things as a good and evil perspective thing.

What makes it uncomfortable is when you think about bad people as when they where children. People don't pop out of their moms pussies and start babbeling about zionism. The shit is learned and molded like a mental cancer. Doesn't mean they get a free pass, but I dont see the value in my condemnation or my own morale system. Human beings are complex and warped in good and bad elements of their beings simultaneously.

And this discussion goes way beyond art. It goes into other public figures; in sports, in religion, in politics. You can apply it to everything. ultimately, how many of my checkboxes do you have to cross out for you to be a catalyst of evil? It's the Fritz Haber conundrum. It just seems to pointless to me. Good and evil are man made constructs. And largely our perception and values we have in western style democracies today are heavily warped from Christianity- most likely out of a necessity. Couldn't have a society that functions if people live and die by natural human primal predatory urges used in many previous belief systems.

My line of thinking is that; Somebody is shitty. Okay then. But what then? It's not in my control anymore than when it rains. Does the shitty people I don't like have anything of value to humanity besides that? And if I partake in something is it at detrimental cost to someone else? It's a case by case basis. I don't need some website to give me a sermon if I have the moral right or obligation to watch birth of a nation. I can fucking make my own mind, and understand that's not a simple one way street. And so it is with a lot of things.



To clarify; I have nothing against anybody who refuses to watch Mel Gibsons movies because they cannot divorce the man from his art. I think that's a completely legit and humanist response to something. The frame will always influence how you see and interpretate the picture. the sender will always affect the message depending on who it is. These are universal truths.
I simply think we should be nuanced and recognize the capacity of evil within everyone, and that sometimes, the strings that make someone special or significant in a positive way, is also the same strings that makes them do or say fucked up shit. It's not a one-way street.

Sometimes people have hurt people too much for people to not have a strong physical reaction to even the mention of their name. I agree that people who are closer to an event will respond stronger. But I think that, that is the thing with everything. A car commercial or a louis ck joke might be deeply offensive and hurtful to you also because you're closer to it. Something that might seem slightly insensitive to others in comparison. But it goes without saying that we cannot mold society after everyone, hench why we have a case-by-case basis and everytime a new celebrity or public person does something we wrong, we end up with long 20-page threads about if someone deserves forgiveness, a pass or condemnation, scorn and consequences.



I'm trying to think of examples of where I've found it difficult to separate the art from the artist. One that comes to mind is Victor Salva who directed Peaceful Warrior; A fair straightforward sports film based on the real story of a Olympian gymnast who looses everything and has to spend the film achieving a comeback yada yada- Despite it's cliches the film deeply moved me, but I deeply disturbed when I learned that the films director was a convicted child molester.

It still to this day blows my mind that someone could make a film that touched a nerve in me, could be such a demon. It's equally disturbing to think about child molesters as more than evil demons who should be castrated, tortured and thrown in the river. It's disturbing to think that someone might have been a good person and then suddenly find out they are deeply sick and that they didn't choose to be scorn of society. How are you going to reconcile someone being both the scum of the earth and still- on a different level have something of value to say to the world or having a talent where they can channel something out that has meaning? Can those two extremes exist within one person?

It's not easy to think about. It's uncomfortable. Particularly when our world view often is "grown" into a framework of de-humanizing those who are the worst of our society. We always want to distance themselves from normal people because it is disturbs us too much to think that killers, rapists, pedophiles, murderers, abusers and others cannot be normal people. They all have to be psychologically insane, have PTSD, or something else. We seem to have a need to make bad people non-human in a effort to dehumanize it. Perhaps as a coping mechanism.

But I 100% believe that many "normal" people who walk around us exhibit various degrees of deplorable of behavior. We know that a statistical amount of people are sadistic or have sadistic tendenseis. We know that people are held back due to repercussions and laws we've set in place for them not to do bad things, not because they are good, but because they couldn't get away with it if they tried. The cruelty of humanity as a whole is deeply fucked up and sometimes we forget that the last 100 years of progress doesn't undermine or undo our true nature of eviscerating each other in endless conflict over and over. We're still just barely advanced primates who struggle with our primal nature.