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.
Thats pretty fair
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.
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
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.
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.
generally, no.
and if I do, I make sure not to share/promote it
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
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Sure, why not? Its not like I’m paying for it.
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.
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, I choose to watch news from all oulets… for better or worse
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.
using the corpses of Jews
Making the corpses of Jews. The vast majority of Nazi “medical” “science” was just an excuse to torture people, and has no scientific use because they didn’t follow scientific practices like “writing stuff down”
While I agree with the core of your statement, the OP is asking about media. I don’t think comparing medical or scientific breakthroughs by unethical means to art/content made by unethical people makes sense…
The Japanese got in on it too; google Unit 731. Among the outright torture and biological warfare they did some genuine if extremely unethical experiments, learning a lot about several diseases. In a similar case to Werner Von Braun, the US granted the leaders immunity in exchange for their research data.
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.
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).
