Edit for reasoning-I tend to enjoy mean spirited funny stuff sometimes. Creators are typically kind of shitty/immoral people but I still enjoy it. I feel conflicted sometimes but still end up watching and enjoying.
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.
This is why I dropped Harry Potter. And also, I did drop Disturbed (aside from one song, that being Decadence) cause I don’t want to support a band whose lead vocalist literally autographed bombs that were used in children in Gaza.
Sucks bro
That’s the deciding factor for me.
I stopped listening to Lizzo so fucking fast because her actions and her art were in direct contradiction with each other.
Being innappropriate with children will also make me stop consuming media from that person.
Totally agree.
Thats pretty fair
Hitler was, if I’m being 100% honest, an OK painter. Terrible human, could have been a decent architectural artist.
Woody Allen would be more topical and recent.
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.
EDIT:
And then there is Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson. I love the Naked Gun Movies and both are pure gold on screen.
Bill Cosby’s Chicken Heart routine is so fucking funny it was making me laugh my ass off until the mid 2010s… Now I when I ever I see the album it just makes me sad….
it’s 100% unavoidable. Hollywood breeds psychopathy and Celebrity Status attracts the worst of us and corrupts those with shaky morals.
Power breed psychopathy.
No, power doesn’t breed the mental illness, but it does attract those with that deficiency and give them a massive advantage. When you don’t give a shit about people because of a fundamental lack of empathy, it’s easier to step on everyone around you to make it to the top.
Yeah thats all true and a tough thing to swallow I guess.
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.
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.
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.
Dr Seuss couldn’t stand children, so he’s at least got that going for him, but he was the standard level of 1950s racist.
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.
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.
Can’t watch Seinfeld because Jerry is a vocal zionist. BUT, I can watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and just skip and Seinfeld feature, so far
Neil Gaiman
Same. I once heard a song I really enjoyed by a band called LostProphets, got the album, and then almost immediately learned that the lead singer was an enormous POS.
Oh yeah that’s such a terrible one.
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 being the thing they truly want to do, I very quickly lose interest.
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.
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
Yeah I did finish it because he wasn’t a part of season 2 but still left a bad taste in my mouth.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I suppose thats true.
it sucks and i hate it, but evil people can make great art. the art itself is innocent (unless it portrays the artist themselves) and deserves its own reputation.
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
Wait what? … fucking hell man. I think there’s levels to me no longer watching an artist’s work …
Some, I just overlook or if the stories aren’t substantiated or major. Child porn is just something else … man, I really like Kenshin too.
Yeah I’m really sorry you had to learn it here. At least Oda and Araki are still cool
Wasn’t Oda friends with a paedophile and aware of it?
Seems like it. In total fairness, he didn’t say the pedophilia was cool, he just enjoyed working with the guy. Also it’s Japan, so he’s gonna have to work alongside pedophiles at some point
Yeah 😄 This is where putting boundarys becomes interesting. Do we avoid Oda as well?
Yeah, it’s hard to draw a line, which is why for me it’s just a matter of whether the artist puts me off the work entirely or not. I can watch One Piece without my mind interrupting me about Oda being kinda problematic. But I can’t, for example, read Sandman without thinking of all the rapin Gaiman did.
And sorry if anyone is learning about ol Rapin Gaiman here
