So Your Favorite Artist Sucks As A Person - What Now?

A couple of weeks ago, at one of those social events where people always seem to pair off, I ended up in a conversation with someone I had never met before. And for some reason, this virtual stranger decided to list off all the books he had read since high school. (I don’t remember how it came up. I suppose it’s possible that I asked, but it seems unlikely.) After a bit of the usual name-dropping - Hemingway, Steinbeck - my conversational partner told me that he has read “everything Stephen King has ever written,” a claim which I find I find dubious since I’m not even convinced Stephen King has read everything he’s written. Here his monologue took a turn: “Of course, the guy’s nuts. Total liberal wackjob. He should just shut up and stick to writing books.”

Now, I have a couple of responses to this. My first reaction, admittedly, was shock that I was actually, in real life, talking to someone who would use a phrase like “liberal wackjob” unironically. But northern New Hampshire is Trump country, after all - even though where I live is only a five-minute walk (or a quick, frigid swim across the Connecticut River) from uber-liberal Vermont. So my surprise faded pretty quickly to mere amusement.

But partisanship aside, I also just find it odious to suggest that people who have certain jobs should not weigh in on politics at all. It implies that these people exist only to serve a particular function rather than being full, invested members of society themselves. (And it’s even worse when there is a racial dimension to it, as in the condemnation of the NFL players who participated in the “take a knee” protests, or in this clip of Laura Ingraham saying that Lebron James should “shut up and dribble” after he made negative comments about Trump.) We don’t necessarily have to listen to what entertainers have to say or treat them as authorities on political issues, but we also shouldn’t deny them a voice. Pre-2016 Donald Trump wasn’t wrong to express his thoughts on immigration because he was a businessman and reality-TV star; his thoughts were just dumb. Actually, I’d argue it would be a sign of a healthy, robust democracy if every citizen had and expressed opinions on the issues that we face. Politics is not something that should be left only to politicians.

I also find it remarkable that my interlocutor could have read every book King has written and not gotten any sense of his political leanings. That he was apparently surprised to find out that King was a liberal. This makes me suspect that he is not a particularly careful or close reader. I’ve heard people say similar things about Orson Scott Card: they loved Ender’s Game and/or Speaker for the Dead, but were disappointed to find out that he is opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. To which I have always wanted to reply: “FOUND OUT?!” I feel like Card’s predilection for traditional social and family structures is baked right into his writing, to the point where he sometimes starts to sound preachy.

Apparently it's a theme for her.

And so this brings us to the relationship between art and artist - an issue that our society has been grappling with for quite some time now, and one that is only becoming more crucial, since it seems to be turning out that pretty much every man who has ever created art is a piece-of-shit sexual predator.

Usually, this debate is framed by the question: “Can you separate the art from the artist?” This, to me, is the wrong question to be asking because it’s a question with only one possible answer. Of course you can’t. Once you learn something about an artist - especially something negative - that knowledge is bound to impact your experience of his or her work to some degree. Just a few minutes ago, for instance, I learned that the painter Paul Gauguin didn’t just go to Tahiti to be inspired by island beauty but also to rape children. And I know that fact will cross my mind the next time I’m at a museum and I see painting by him. Even my new friend from a few weeks ago can’t pretend that King’s political leanings never cross his mind when he’s reading one of his gory murder scenes. If he claims that the two are completely separate in his mind, I’m saying he’s full of shit.

I think the more important question for us to consider is: what should we do when we learn something distasteful - or even despicable - about an artist whose work we enjoy? Often, we tend to assume that “separating” the art and the artist is necessary for continuing to appreciate the art; that if they can’t be separated, then we are morally obligated to boycott. Take Roxane Gay’s recent piece on the new Roseanne. Her whole thesis is that the show is funny (which I can’t vouch for, personally) but she won’t watch it because of its politics. She thus aligns herself with what I would consider the dominant view, at least in liberal spaces: to watch Roseanne is to support Roseanne. To read Ender’s Game is to support Orson Scott Card. And to continue to engage with art created by perpetrators of sexual or domestic violence is to implicitly support both those people and their actions. Ultimately, I don’t believe that. I don’t think we’re morally compromised by the art that we choose to engage with. We can still watch chuckle at reruns of The Cosby Show without being complicit in Bill Cosby’s crimes; we can still enjoy a nice existential crisis to “Jesus Christ” by Brand New even though Jesse Lacey has been accused of rape.

Of course, anyone who wants to boycott a work because of what they have learned about its creator should absolutely do. Though it may not do much to actually impact the artist’s success, I think that sort of symbolic self-identification is extremely important and worthwhile. What I am responding to is the idea out there that we all ought to do so, that we are somehow being unethical if we continue to engage with a work made by someone whose actions we condemn. It is present in Roxane Gay’s article, when she discusses how she once gave herself permission to be "flawed but feminist.” But I don’t agree with the premise that engaging with a flawed work of art makes you flawed. That we can be guilty by association.

Let me be clear: it’s not that I think it’s too much of a burden to think about the ethical implications of our small, day-to-day choices. My point is that there are many different ways of interacting with a work of art. We are not simply passive consumers (which is why I insist on using the phrase “engage with” rather than “consume,” even though it is clunkier). We can approach a work critically; we can “hate-watch” a TV show; we can listen to a speaker we abhor in order to better understand our opposition. On Twitter, it is said that Retweets are not endorsements. I think the same principle applies here. Engaging with something does not necessarily mean supporting it, or supporting the people who created it.

(The only sense in which we are supporting them is financially - if we are spending money, that is - and I would argue that’s the least important form of support.)

I always hear "let me be clear" in his voice.

You can watch Cops with the mindset that police officers are heroes who preserve order and deliver justice to criminals. Or you can watch Cops with the mindset that the police force perpetuates white supremacy and the dehumanization of the mentally ill. This will lead to two very different experiences of the show. And only one of them can really be classified as support for its message.

*

I consider myself a fan of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Sure, his writing is hard to understand, but I think he offers some profound insights into the nature of existence. Heidegger was also a Nazi. Both of these things are true; one does not negate the other. Now, it is possible to appreciate his philosophy in spite of his Nazism (just like we can admire the Founding Fathers in spite of their being slave owners). To “separate” the two, that is - or experience them as separate. But it is also an open question whether there is anything in his philosophy that leads to Nazism (or allows for it) - and in order to even consider that question, one has to read it. And reading with that question in mind is fundamentally different from the naive picture of all engagement as support for the work and its creator.

What we must look at are the particular experiences that people have when they engage with a work of art. For instance, there’s a song by the band Lostprophets (whose lead singer, Ian Watkins, was convicted of some of the most awful things imaginable) that I still listen to from time to time. It’s called “Last Train Home.” I loved it when it first came out and I still enjoy the way it sounds. But now, when I listen to it, I always find myself thinking about Ian Watkins and marveling that the same person could have written something I find so beautiful and yet also do things that are so disgusting. I mean, listen to it. Or better yet, watch the video. It’s an anthem. How could someone have the experience of singing that chorus, in unison with friends and fans, and then go on to abuse children? The two behaviors seem fundamentally incompatible to me, and thinking about their coexistence within the same human is what I find fascinating - the same way a lot of people find serial killers fascinating, I suppose. (And we’re hardly ever dumb enough to conflate that interest with support.)

So yes, my knowledge of Ian Watkins’ crimes and character does change the way I experience the song. But it does not poison it entirely. It is not an all-or-nothing thing. I don’t have to pretend that knowing about Watkins as a person makes “Last Train Home” any less enjoyable to me from an aesthetic perspective.

"You couldn't do that to someone /
No, your music is too good"
- Camp Cope, "The Face of God"

Moreover, we don’t even have to judge people holistically. It’s possible to condemn one thing someone has done without condemning the rest of their actions; it’s even possible to condemn them as a moral agent while still appreciating the things they’ve created. I think of Dave Chappelle’s nuanced take on Bill Cosby from one of those stand-up specials he released last year. Or how Alfred Nobel both invented dynamite and established an organization to promote peace. Or how FDR created life-saving social programs and OK’d the internment of Japanese-Americans. Or how Thomas Jefferson - well, I’m sure you see where I’m going with that one. The point is: people are complex and multifaceted.

I mean, it makes no more sense to believe that doing something terrible makes everything else you’ve done bad as well than to believe that one good action makes the rest of your projects good as well. There’s a guy who spends his weekends volunteering at the soup kitchen and reading to the blind, but the songs he writes are awful. Colin Kaepernick isn’t all that great of a quarterback, you know? The Dalai Lama probably doesn’t make the greatest spaghetti bolognese.

Besides, I think there is a lot to gain when by exposing ourselves to speech that we disagree with, even speech that we find reprehensible. Obviously, a boycott is not censorship - it’s voluntary - but I think it does have some of the same effects. It puts us in a bubble. We should have enough faith in ourselves and our own morality to understand that we will not be compromised by reading, watching, or listening to something. And I think this applies not only in cases where we can mentally keep the art and artist separate but also in cases where they are united. Where the work itself is reprehensible. Reading Mein Kampf does not make you a Nazi; agreeing with it does. And there is a world of difference between those two things.