Do you think character affects how art should be seen?

Nowadays and honestly for awhile, there are people constantly taking the actions or thoughts of someone and using that to destroy their past works and contributions. Sometimes it’s not even clearly “bad” like abuse and it’s moreso opinionated based like oh this person is a ____ supporter so I’m not going to read or watch their stuff anymore or this person said this and I don’t like it so I’m going to boycott them. And so on so forth.

Do you as authors think that a character of a person should affect how their work is seen?

Personally, I always disassociate work from the person behind it. If I stopped watching or reading everyone I disliked or did a bad thing, I would have nothing left to entertain myself. And I think you can have a great book written by a bad person and I don’t think the book should be not read just because the author is a shitty person. But that’s my take. I’m interested what you guys think especially knowing that we’re all adults here.

 

The decision to separate art from the artist is kind of a false step. The issue is that you know the creator is an asshole, or racist, a sexual predator etc; but you really enjoy the work and want to continue to enjoy it. To claim that you are separating the art from the artist is thus inaccurate: you can't forget that they're a bad person, you just want to try and justify your continued enjoyment of their work without publicly engaging with the fact that they're an asshole.

The thing is, you don't need to justify your enjoyment of a work, or the work of any particular creator, to anyone except yourself.

When we talk about "cancel culture" and whatnot today, where people do shitty things and the populace of the internet decides collectively not buy their products - that's just capitalism. It's the right to change the channel. No different than buying ethically-sourced coffee or diamonds that aren't blood diamonds. It's a conscious decision that some people make to not consume certain goods or use certain services, and the economic impact of that decision is a form of ostracism and social pressure that might get the shitty person to make amends or change their ways or at least to stop spreading their shittiness around.

Which doesn't work on, say, dead authors. Mark Twain used the n-word in some of his books, but it's not like Mark Twain can come back to life and write less problematic books; and it isn't like people are going to stop publishing them - because he's in the public domain and can be read for free. So the social pressure aspect doesn't work. You don't have to read Mark Twain, but you not reading Mark Twain can't stop anybody else from reading and enjoying him.

So...this is going to come down to: do you personally want to support a shitty (living) author? How much does it mean to you that J. K. Rowling is transphobic? If you don't care, or don't care that much...hey, it's your money. You have a perfect right to do what you want with it, and nobody can tell you what to do with your own money, or to read or not read.

You shouldn't get twisted up in trying to say that the artist is separate from the art, because very often that's not accurate. Most creators encode or express their own views into their works on some level - however, this is fiction. It doesn't mean Rowling believes in magic and witches or practices the occult, any more than any of the authors on this forum commit rape and incest just because they write about it. If the creator being an asshole is something that bothers you, then you should acknowledge that - and even acknowledge that it might have influenced their work. That doesn't mean you can't still read and enjoy their work, it just means you aren't trying desperately to come up with a reason to justify why you're still reading their work.

You can just enjoy it. That's allowed. With full knowledge that the creator is an asshole. You don't have to be best friends with the creator, or defend their assholeness, or be an asshole in the same way.

 

I don't think there's any particular moral imperative around consumption of art with awareness of the artist's misdeeds, debatable or otherwise. A book is just a book. It's not personally responsible for its writer's actions, but at the same time, it has no feelings to be hurt. It's not actually immoral to judge a book by its cover, nor to read it regardless - the saying implies doing so is foolish, not evil. Realistically, the wrong decision might mildly affect your intellectual satisfaction at absolute worst. If watching Joker turns a man into a serial killer, that speaks to the psychological fragility of the man far more than the mind-warping capabilities of some villain's backstory film.

I'm not following. If you decide to consume an artwork without paying any mind to the artist, then you are separating the art from the artist. If you are defining the phrase "separate the art from the artist" in such a way as to make the action of separation impossible, then not only is that a purely semantic argument, but it is quite irrelevant considering the phrase had not been mentioned previously.

Discussions of cancel culture, in my experience, refer to more severe backlash that simply boycotting, so I wouldn't consider it relevant to this discussion. I've only really heard the description of cancel culture as 'just capitalism' when a person arguing in favour of cancel culture is constructing a strawman and pretending worse examples do not exist, although it's common enough that I wouldn't blame you for just operating under the assumption that that is the scope of cancel culture. Skai Jackson and the Dixie Chicks come to mind, but there are plenty more: if you ever feel the need to publish someone's address, you are not merely withdrawing support.

When it comes to assessing the ethics of a historical figure, it is important - and I'm sure this is a tired statement, but it is important - to acknowledge the circumstances of their time. It is simply impossible to entirely free yourself from the shackles of your environment, and to most the thought does not even occur. Nobody here would fare much better in pre-abolition southern US. That is not the same as claiming it is not racist to, say, claim the French are all deceptive and selfish, but if your country has been at war with them for decades then it's not as though you woke up one morning and decided to be a dick. It's only a matter of time before someone recalls Billie Joe Armstrong's choice of lyrics twenty-ish years ago, and by then defending him would be out of the question for many, but right now, you're probably wondering what I'm even talking about. I also have no doubt that in a few centuries the mere notion of farming and eating animals will be repulsive; someone will look at CHYOA Rule 2 and wonder how the site could be so dehumanising to non-humans. I do not say this in spite or jest but mere observation. Time is the greatest social divider.

 

Yeah, I wasn’t really trying to ask about cancel culture. I was moreso asking if you don’t like an actress/actor or you don’t like an author, would that affect your consumption of their stories. For example, if you don’t like Angelina Jolie, and she starred in a movie with someone you did like such as idk Hugh Jackman, would that affect how you perceived the movie. Likewise, if you didn’t like an author, and you read a story and later found out they were the author, would that affect your opinion of the story?

But since you brought up cancel culture, the problem for me arises when accountability turns into no redemptions allowed which is what a lot of cancel culture revolves around. The idea of bringing up what someone said 10 years ago and holding them to today’s standards without settling with an apology or acknowledging that that might not be their current opinion. I’m not talking about in cases of abuse or something like that, but sometimes a joke was meant as a joke and is then taken seriously a decade after it was already told. But yeah, I wasn’t really talking about that.

 

And btw I have no beef with Jolie, I was just using an example. There are some actors/actresses I’m not keen on but that doesn’t usually affect my opinions of their movies or shows. If they can perform the role, that’s good enough for me even if I don’t like them personally. Likewise with authors.

 

No, that's just ignorance of the artist. If you have no idea who the artist is, you can't have any moral opinion of them beyond their work. It's like how Disney used to have all the artists on their comics work in a house style and wouldn't sign their names - if you can't identify the creator of the work, you can't have an opinion on them separate from their work. By the time you start talking about separating the art from the artist, you already have to know something about the artist beyond their work!

 

But I wasn’t really referring to that. I’m talking about now where it’s very easy to separate an artist from their work. Like what they say on social media vs what they say in their movies or something like that...

 

If you have to say you're separating the art from the artist, then you're not. If you're that aware that the creator is an asshole in real life that you have to make that distinction, then you're not separating the art from the artist at all, you're trying to justify - to yourself or others - that you still like this art even though you know the artist is a shitbag. You see the distinction? You can't avoid moral judgments, if you have sufficient awareness to make one; all you do when you say you're separating the art from the artist is trying to create a justification for why you still like the art even if you don't morally approve/like the artist.

 

I think you’re taking separation of art and artist too literally. The idea of it is to judge the piece whatever it may be as is and not based on outside knowledge of a person’s character. You can not like Dwayne Johnson but still appreciate what he does in his movies. It also doesn’t mean they’re an asshole either that’s taking it to the extreme of what I was asking.

 

You are suggesting that it is impossible to separate the art from the artist by definition; that is, separation is not a moral decision but a lack thereof, according to your theory. You either know who the artist is, in which case separation is impossible, or you don't, in which case you are ignorant and separation is still impossible, no? You can operate under this definition if you so choose, but firstly, it is not a particularly useful definition and makes discussion of the issue difficult, and secondly, you are the person who first brought up the exact notion of separating art from the artist.

The behaviour that Humilatron describes seems perfectly possible to me, and I find it strange that you would label it as "separating art from its artist" only to redefine that phrase and remove its actual relevance to the point raised by OP.

 

It could be as simple as them liking a sports team that you don’t support. It doesn’t have to be a racist or asshole thing.

 

My point is that you shouldn't let yourself be tied in knots because you like a work by an author who is problematic, neither should you try to pretend that the author isn't an asshole just because you like their work. You can like the work of a bad person without being a bad person yourself, but you should still acknowledge that they are a bad person.