Ask Lemmy

I can usually separate art from the artist, given that the media in question doesn't reflect their opinions/isn't influenced by their actions.

I struggle with it and am hypocritical about that.

Roman Polanski was convicted of a terrible crime, but I appreciate his work.

Weinstein’s production company made many of my favorite movies.

Kevin Spacey played some of my favorite characters.

Possibly controversial take: I get super turned-off by any content creator who seems to be in it mainly for money.

There are lots of people out there who decided they want to be a youtuber as their profession - and best of luck to them! - but I feel quite safe in saying that almost every youtuber I truly love began their channel not because they wanted to make money, but because they had something to share. They had a passion, or burning thoughts, or knowledge that was too good to keep to themselves, and youtube was a way to voice it.

And they might be profitable now, but that's not why they started.

So yeah. As soon as I get a smell that the content someone makes or the way they act or the things they say are dictated primarily by dollar signs, rather than by it being the thing they truly want to do, I very quickly lose interest.

It depends. The artist being a bad person doesn't automatically make the art bad. But I also don’t want to support bad people. So, relevant questions to me are: Is the artist still alive? Do they profit from my consuming their work? Do I promote them perhaps indirectly? The answers will be different for e.g. Lovecraft vs. Rowling, or rereading a book I already own vs. convincing my book club to buy new copies.

No. If I have problems with a creator, publisher, etc., I'll stop consuming. If I previously purchased and own some work (i.e. an album from a band that turns out to be shitty), I will still sometimes engage with that, but no new money is going to them.

My favourite book is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. My edition has a foreword about how Lewis Carroll really really wasn't a paedophile, he just loved children very very much. That foreword convinced me that he was a paedophile.

Most people, even those who scream the loudest about human rights, tend to wear sweatshop clothes made by kids who occasionally burn to death because it's slightly cheaper to not have fire escapes.

Not enjoying an artist who in most cases isn't even profiting off of my enjoyment just seems silly. I prefer to focus my efforts on the actual harms to which I, like so many of us, really do contribute.

I try not to enrich creators who are bad. Like Polanski and Weinstein and Whedon and Besson and Rowling and Gaiman. I might watch/read old stuff, but I'll avoid spending any money on it.

Then there's people who aren't rapists and abusers and virulently homophobic but are still not great. I'm thinking YT creators who pull dumb and mean pranks, or just revel in the more negative aspects of human nature. I don't watch them, but mostly because I don't enjoy that sort of content. It makes me depressed and sad. Since I don't like that sort of content anyway, it's hardly an effort. Same with MAGA bro podcaster types; I don't enjoy that garbage so "boycotting" it really just means going about my life per usual.

There’s plenty of good stuff made by decent people out there, I’m fine with dropping someone awful. I also like to think it helps me avoid picking up bad behaviors or internalizing shitty ideas.

It depends on what it is. I generally don't expect an artist/creator to be what I'd consider a good role model.

Some examples:

Dave Grohl (lead singer/guitarist of Foo Fighters) announced he fathered a child outside of his marriage. I consider this morally wrong, but it has no impact on my enjoyment of the music.

J.K. Rowling being an outspoken transphobe has had an impact on my ability to enjoy Harry Potter. Not that I was ever a super fan, but I enjoyed the movies well enough. But discrimination against an entire group of people is too significant to me to keep the art separate from the artist.

Once I think a creator is a bad person, depending on what they did, I have trouble enjoying their stuff.

There are a ton of comedians, for example, that have done varying degrees of bad things that I just can't listen to anymore. Louis CK, Cosby, any of the podcast bro comedians that got Trump elected, etc are all out. When I hear them perform it is all I can think about.

Same with bands, writers, etc. I just have a nagging feeling in the back of my head reminding me the person is shitty.

I was enjoying Sandman until shit went down with the author and it really left a bad taste in my mouth, just kind of dropped it instinctively

Usually if the person who made something is a massive piece of shit, that just puts me off it entirely. For example, Rurouni Kenshin might be considered one of the best animes of all time, but I cannot watch it without thinking about the fact that the guy who made it had so much child porn. Sours everything the fucker touched

Like, maybe I could learn to separate the art from the artist, but.. why would I? There's already more art than I could ever consume made by people who don't jerk it to kids

Depends...

TV Shows? Yea sure, they are only one role out of a big set of casts, and it's also the product of writers and film directors...

Movies where its centered around that actor's character? Slightly gonna less fun to watch... depending on the nature of their crime.

Books? Well the entire thing is the the work of that one person so its gonna be much harder to "separate art from artist" but at least you dont have to hear their voice and personality like...

oh... which brings us to Youtube videos....

Yea... no... this is where the separate art from artist doesn't work... their voice and personality is probably reflecting their character...

Like... I watched PewDiePie's intro and I already cringe so hard so I never got into it...

Then later I tried it again, watching the PUBG videos... didn't even need to looked up the deleted bridge incident... he constantly makes uncomfortable jokes

Same with another gameplay channel doing challenge runs in Resident Evil, not even gonna name them since its a tiny ass channel but dude keeps making "women bad" jokes and then he showed the maga hat on a shelf and claimed its just meming... yeahhh... nope out of there real quick

yes and so does everyone. you literally cannot avoid it, stop caring. you will drive yourself insane.

i try my best not to and limit supporting them as much as possible. obviously you can't cut out every single thing unfortunately because capitalism loves exploitation, but i try to redirect my efforts elsewhere. for example, if i like the music of an immoral artist, I'll download the music instead of streaming it, refrain from buying merchandise, stuff like that. my money and time can be going towards someone else who actually deserves it.

i explain it like this: i dont buy from Starbucks because it's not a good company (setting their bad coffee aside). does the lack of profit from just me affect them? probably not much. but that $7 or whatever i spend on a latte could make a huge difference to my local coffee shop. that one view, one stream, one social media post, could go towards someone else

i also don't think it's possible to "separate art from artist." part of what makes art, art, is who made it. who were they? what environment was the art made in? what perspective is the subject being depicted from? the artist is ingrained in each of their creations. songs i used to like, i can no longer listen to after discovering things the artist had done. its just not the same

It's almost impossible to do with music.

“Howl” is an incredible poem about the American condition that resonates even more strongly today. Allen Ginsberg, however, was a straight up pedo and wasn’t even that secretive about it.

So much of my early creative development was influenced by Beat literature, and Ginsberg’s work was a huge part of that. I have a hard time reconciling my fondness for his poetry and my intense disgust for his sexual vices.

I had my first run in with this in the tail end of highschool. Lovecraft was the first author that really hit me. The feeling of existential dread and the idea of forces beyond our comprehension that we only survive sharing reality work because we're too inconsequential to do anything about were both formative and comforting ideas to my anxiety riddled mind. It wasn't until deciding I was truely a fan that I found out he was so racist the kkk didn't want to be associated with him.

He's not my only brush with this, I find that any figure I grow to like inevitably fails to meet my standards. Neil Gaiman, Danny Masterson, Dr. Seuss, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Joss Whedon, Louis C. K., Jack Black, Walt Disney, Jane Goodall, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, and the list goes on. At this point, the only heroes I've had that haven't turned out to be bastards and sex pests are Weird Al and Bill Nye.

To this I've taken to the idea of the death of the author . In short, the essay states that you should ignore the artist's intention and biography when considering the merrit of the art. Awful people are just as likely to create something beautiful as anyone else. This doesn't hold entirely true and your mileage may very, Lovecraft's Xemophobia makes his inspirations far more obvious, but removing all of the overtly racist parts has no affect on the actual horror or conveys. That doesn't work for Scar Tissue by Red hot Chili Peppers which is explicitly about raping a minor.

Play it by ear. If it's not explicitly problematic then it's not on you to feel bad about it You can like a song without it meaning more than that.

Every physician in the world uses Nazi data collected using the corpses of Jews. Most anatomy books uses drawings mad by Nazis. Just the swastikas have been airbrushed out. The data collection was never repeated.

It varies.

I often give the example of HP Lovecraft. I'm a big fan of his stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. But it remains that he was a huge racist. How do I reconcile the two?

First, an author's works are separate from the author themselves. Second, in Lovecraft's case, he was a product of his time and upbringing. And third, and importantly in his case: he's dead. He has no ability to change beyond his passing in the 1930s. People can and do change all the time. If Lovecraft were around today he might have become to most left-leaning person in the world, but he never had that chance. There were indications, late in life, that he might well have changed.

But, he didn't. It remains that he was a racist in life, that will never change, and because of it there will always be people uncomfortable with his work. That is understandable, and I won't try to convince anyone that they should ignore it.

Sure, why not? Its not like I'm paying for it.

I try to avoid giving them more relevance, but I do occasionally revisit through means that don't give them money. I hate Dave Mustaine's guts, so I have the best three Megadeth albums downloaded (Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?, Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction).

I try to at least not give those people money.

I presume most everybody, myself included, does. Otherwise I doubt we'd be consuming just about any media.

Edit:

I mean this as things like old films, TV, books and the likes. I personally try to avoid controversial content creators and the likes, regardless of platform and media type. For books, I wouldn't wanna be caught reading certain alive authors.

If the content itself doesn't reflect the creator's shittiness, yes, but I won't pay for it.

In significantly smaller amounts, but yes. No Hitler ate sugar.

Anti-flag was one of my favorite bands ever. I am so pissed off at Justin Sane for taking that music away from me, and from all of us. Especially now, when that kind of message is so necessary.

I still listen to Kanye West music. Sometimes even the new stuff.

No, but plenty of other people would probably claim that many of them are.

If I find out about the artist before consuming any of the art, I will generally try to avoid it.

But if I already enjoy something and find out, I'll usually keep enjoying the thing. Occasionally I won't be able to, but I haven't fully figured out where the rules are yet. I think part of it is if the art is directly related to what/how they were a bad person. For example I can still enjoy ruroni kenshin, because it has pretty much nothing to do with what the creator was caught with

Im not sure. Its a bit easier when the immoral behavior is a historical blip at this point and harder when the person is alive and we are talking about things in the last year. That being said if it does effect me at all it has to be clearly something and not something being debated and pretty severe and not just that they are an asshole. A lot of famous people have been assholes.

Some of the bands I like are comprised of literal murderers