I find I can’t in good faith financially support more people that I can’t actually read or watch. When it comes to what I can enjoy, it does take something like Cosby to do it. I thought I couldn’t watch the Nostalgia Critic after his bad treatment of his fellow reviewers came out, but I find I can, and still enjoy it. But I also will never support the man without an apology.
I also think it matters more if I actually liked them before. Then the effect is bigger. Again, with Cosby, I liked him, so it bothers me. But Kevin Spacey? Meh. I never paid much attention to him, so I still barely pay attention to him when he’s in stuff. Tom Cruise? Same deal.
I also find myself not caring if they don’t make it public. As in, I don’t actively wonder about any performer. And I find that it’s easier if I can’t see their face or hear them talk. I mute Home Alone 2 at that one part, for example.
So, again, has anyone who’s commented so far considered their role in financially supporting the people in question, extending their spotlight and influence? What have you concluded? Or do you consume in ways that don’t directly benefit them (e.g. used bookstores)?
After all, one reason Cosby got away with it for so long is that he was a popular, bankable star whose audience gave money (to him and his studios) for his work, making it easier for everyone to look the other way.
Well, if sticking strictly to how the OP question is worded, about personal dislike or reproach, I would have to say “it depends” – on why is it that there is dislike or rejection, both on kind and degree. Not everyone is Cosby/Weinstein. Some people may be just eyerollingly stupid or unpleasant company or simply insufferable dicks/bitches and that doesn’t preclude a strictly-business relationship.
For me, it depends on how tightly tied to the artist the work is and how bad whatever it is they did. For example, stand up comedians and a lot of TV show characters are clearly tied into the performer’s real self. The Cosby Show, for example, would have been completely different with another comedian at the helm, so when I watch it it’s clearly Bill Cosby on the stage. Other works are more distant; if an actor is playing a part in Hamlet, I don’t see the actor nearly as ‘themself’, and musical acts generally feel disembodied to me, I can hear Cat Scratch Fever without remembering it’s Ted Nugent singing. I’m also squarely in the ‘don’t have to like, but can’t hate’ camp - back in the day I knew that Cosby was supposedly an ass in person, and I wasn’t a fan of his politics, but that didn’t put me off from his work, but with the drug-rape revelations I can’t put that aside to watch him be a warm, comforting father figure.
That actually put me off about Louis CK before the revelations about his aggressive masturbation came out. The stuff of his that I saw seemed way too far on the side of ‘let me work out my ongoing personal issues on stage’ than ‘let me turn this embarrassing personal thing that happened in the past into something funny’.
In many cases, I don’t know the person’s real-life personality, so it’s not an issue. In cases where ugly revelations come to light, it depends on the revelations and the person. I still can enjoy Kevin Spacey’s acting work (which is usually brilliant), even with the revelations. But I lost interest in Louis CK before the story broke, simply because he was too hit or miss – occasionally great, but often mediocre.
Sometimes, what people think are a person’s personality is just a myth. Tom Cruise is evidently a decent and friendly guy, but people are influenced by an out-of-context video clip that went viral.
I can’t think of a single movie or TV show I’ve boycotted because of an actor’s outside behavior. I CAN think of shows I’ve boycotted because an actor was a terrible actor.
Have some past shows been retroactively tainted a bit because of an actor’s misdeeds? Sure. But I’m not really a repeat viewer that much (especially TV shows).
I’d be heartbroken if Mark Hammil (for example) turned out to be a pedophile though.
The only unreasonable enmity I had for any actor was for Paul Reiser, in the way he betrayed his shipmates in Aliens. Since then, whenever I saw him in another role, I was convinced he was going to backstab somebody again. I’ve since gotten over it, mostly.
Tom Cruise doesn’t really interest me unless he’s playing a douchebag like in Rain Man and Tropical Thunder. I think it’s his real personality coming through.
I didn’t watch the *Roseanne *reboot. Not because of her political views, but because I thought the show’s previous era had been concluded and was effectively dead. I had already come to terms with it and didn’t want to watch what I thought would be dead people acting. Besides, Laurie Metcalf has now etched herself into my psyche as Sheldon’s mom, Johnny Galecki will always be Leonard, and Sarah Chalke will always be Dr. Elliot.
This was, IMO, used to good (and I think deliberate) effect on Stranger Things season 2. I was totally convinced almost to the very end that he was secretly a bad guy.
The short answer for me is “No” for actors. When I watch a TV show or movie, I’m not watching the actor, I’m watching the character he or she is playing. I can still laugh at OJ Simpson in the Naked Gun movies, e.g. His wretched life thereafter is irrelevant to the performance.
For singers and comedians, a lot would depend on whether their obnoxious personality is part of their performance. If, for example, a misogynist sang songs loaded with misogyny, I wouldn’t like them, but if the songs were on different topics, were catchy and well performed I’d be fine with that.
Another example would be authors. I love Orson Scott Card’s fiction, and am appalled by most of his commentary. It’s hard to believe that the man who wrote Speaker for the Dead could be so xenophobic when writing about his fellow human beings. When you consider that most writers really pour their souls into their works, it makes me wonder if his commentary is really just a big put on. How could someone with such feelings write such thoughtful, caring, understanding works?
I should also note that I pay very little attention to celebrity writing, gossip columns, etc., so most of the time I would have no idea what kind of person the artist who’s work I’m experiencing is.
By “actor”, you mean that human that was used to portray the character in that movie I liked?
Why would his/her/its personal life have any relevance at all on my appreciation of the movie?
People in this thread complained about Charlie Chaplin’s “perversions”… Did it in any way show, affect or detract from his onscreen performance? Not in any way that I can see.
Did Leonardo da Vinci’s homosexuality factor at all in any of his creativity, his inventions, his art?
I judge a movie, an acting role, music performed, art created, not by the person behind it but by the art itself.
OP: If I enjoy something, I enjoy it and it gets filed in my brain as enjoyable. Short of becoming associated with severe personal trauma it stays there. Cosby will always be the standard for anecdotal standup for me, and I will always laugh at his work. But I will probably not give that person my money AFTER deciding I find them horrible and unredeemed. What really pisses me off is people telling me that makes me a bad person.
And the crazy thing is, he talked in his book about how if you really want to defeat your enemies you have to understand your enemies, and you can’t understand your enemies without learning about them, and you can’t learn about them without loving them to some extent.
And then he goes off and does Rush Limbaugh style rants about liberals and homosexuals and how they secretly want to destroy America.
How does that square with his books? And the thing is, it’s pretty clear from what he’s written that he, well to use the religious right term, “struggles with same-sex attraction”. So you’d think he’d be able to use his understanding of homosexuals to cogently argue for his principles. Instead it’s all “the gays are destroying America”.
most showbiz people are liberal like me but I don’t worry about their politics. For guys that are conservative I don’t care as long as I like the show/movie/music.
For actors and musicians I can almost always separate what I think of them and what I think of their work.
But the Cosby thing…
For his stand-up to work for me, he has to actually BE that guy who is telling the stories of his past. Or, at the very least, never let me know he isn’t.
I see that some people’s bad behavior comes out of either a substance abuse problem, simple ignorance or having been misled by others. People like that, I can usually overlook what they’ve done enough to enjoy their work (alt – maybe it’s a bit of denial, but I can enjoy their work in spite of any personal feelings about what they’ve done. Then there are people like Bill Cosby, for whom I have absolute disgust and disappointment, in spite of my having been a bit of a fan. I don’t think I could watch his standup comedy or any old TV episode of his that I used to enjoy without feeling disgust.
I also have very strong feelings about most TV doctors, especially Doctor Oz who is infamous for pushing supplements that his in-laws manufactured, in spite of there being no evidence of their efficacy, and in some cases, actual risks involved. I recognize that he was once a very reputable surgeon (I’ve met an older gentleman who claimed that he wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the heart surgery that Doctor Oz performed on him). Doctors have a special place in our society as far as trust is concerned, and thus ought to be held to a much higher standard. He violated that trust repeatedly. I have a difficult time reconciling that. On the one hand, I wish there were a hell so that he could burn in it. On the other hand, once upon a time, he wasn’t all that bad.
On the other hand I wish the laws were different so that Jenny McCarthy would spend the rest of her life for the deaths she is at least partly responsible for, because of her anti-Vax activism.