There’s a picture doing the rounds on Bluesky of a bookshop in Islington with a Gaiman quote above the door. The picture shows a couple of guys with a ladder and a tin of paint removing said quote. That gives me mixed feelings.
I was going to bring up the same example. Hypothetically, i found a painting i really liked in a rummage sale, and didn’t know the painter. I hung it on my wall. Years later, i learned that it was actually painted by Hitler. What do i do?
- i disbelieve. I’m sure it’s go through a period of time thinking, “no way, that new info i got must be fake.”
- ?? Honestly, it might matter whether my friends knew the painting was by Hitler, or whether the painting was in a public or a private place. I wouldn’t leave a painting that everyone knew was by Hitler in my living room, because I’d be afraid of what people would think of me. (Related: i own a lovely tablecloth my grandmother embroidered when she was a child. It’s covered with hundreds of little swastikas, which were an innocent symbol of good luck in her childhood, when she chose to embroider them. I never use it, because it’s just too awkward to explain. But i treasure this piece of decorative craft that my grandmother lived enough that she did use it. I ate breakfast on it when i stayed with her. We’re Jews. She hated Hitler and feared the Nazis. But she loved her tablecloth.)
- so if no one else knew, would i still enjoy the painting? I’m honestly not sure. Knowing Hitler has painted it would certainly color it.
So yes, I’d feel differently about it. It would be easier to keep a landscape than a painting of people. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll watch Good Omens 3. I may have to look into who gets how much residuals, first.
“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand”
In what universe should they have left that quote there, even if it wasn’t so shallow? I assume they want to stay in business.
This universe still has numerous Eric Gill sculptures all over London, but a shallow quote gets removed within days. Just feels a bit knee jerk, which is rarely a good response.
My feelings are mixed as I can’t bring myself to consume any Gaiman works now, so I get people feeling the need to censor, but censoring never sits well with me.
Removing a single quote they put up themselves is not censorship any more than removing a statue has anything to do with forgetting or re-writing history.
Now, if they sponsored a burning of his books, I might be more amenable to the idea they are engaging in such.
It’s not censoring. It’s a business making the only logical decision if they want to not lose sales. If you can give me a list of businesses that feature Eric Gill sculptures, you might have a point. (I’d never heard of him until I did a search but damn).
If you mean that it’s (hypothetically) actually a painting that Hitler painted himself, donate to the Holocaust Memorial Museum or some equivalent organization. If you just mean that it’s a duplicate that somebody painted at some more recent point, who cares? Having a painting on your wall that happens to duplicate a Hitler painting doesn’t benefit any neo-Nazi organization.
Anyone with a sense of decency.
It’s one thing if you continue to enjoy something like the Naked Gun movies, which were created by a large group of people that included a man who subsequently did a terrible thing, and continuing to enjoy a replica OJ jersey you have in your closet.
Saying it’s not a real jersey, or that it never really benefitted OJ after he murdered two people is beside the point.
I think there is always going to be a murmur of suspicion, in cases like this, that the people reporting as victims are just attention-seekers, maybe compensation seekers, jumping on a bandwagon - and whilst that is possible in some cases (people are really weird and some people will indeed do anything for attention), it doesn’t make a great explanation for cases where all of the victims independently reported what happened, and the whole picture only came out after that.
OTOH, the physical evidence of rape or sexual assault is really ephemeral and the nature of rape and the social matters surrounding it are such that victims don’t typically find it super-easy to present the evidence while it still exists. I imagine it is a totally understandable and natural reaction to want to scrub yourself clean after such a thing, but all of this (plus the fact that the assault itself is very often unwitnessed) means it is also completely normal and expected that genuine victims of rape would present their accusation long after the fact, and without any tangible evidence to support their genuine account.
It’s a shitty situation (for the victim).
The way OJ gets treated in those movies helps.
A painting that’s a recent duplicate of one that Hitler painted at least 103 years ago in no way helps any current neo-Nazi organization. It’s very unlikely that any random person who comes into your home has memorized all the paintings that Hitler did, and it’s almost as unlikely that they even know that Hitler was a painter from 1908 to 1913. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who come into your home who know that O. J. Simpson was a football player and even know what his team was. And they know what Simpson did.
Go to Wikipedia and take a look at Hitler’s paintings. I can’t see anything in any of the ones there that has anything to do with Naziism. Tell you what though; if you put an unlabeled duplicate of a Hitler painting on one of the walls on your house, here’s what you can do if someone comments favorably on it, not knowing that it’s a duplicate of a Hitler painting. Put a piggy bank or some similar money collection object below the painting. When they say that they like the painting, tell them that it’s a duplicate of a Hitler painting. Tell them that they have committed a great sin in liking it. Tell them that the only way that they can redeem themselves for liking it is to put some money in the piggy bank. Every once in a while, send the money that people put in the piggy bank to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
There is quite a difference between liking art and deciding to hang it in your home (or keep it hanging after learning its provenance).
And really, you’re torturing my analogy beyond recognition. I mentioned “a painting by Hitler” because I thought it was an example of something so extreme, it would be beyond debate. I didn’t realize people here would be looking for loopholes to allow them to retain their Hitler art.
Yes, that is astounding.
Tell you what, if I ever found out that you knowingly kept a Hitler painting on your wall, I personally would just assume your views were at least Nazi-adjacent.
How do I square that with my respect for the works of HP Lovecraft?
Well, he never brought about a genocide, for one thing…
Admittedly, it’s a moral argument, and therefore entirely subjective.
Well, there is one reasonable loophole I’d accept - slightly spoilery clip from the TV show Justified.
For that matter, even if they do take measures to have the evidence documented and preserved, then what? It’s not like the police actually do anything with rape kits.
HItler is extreme, but his paintings aren’t extreme at all, if you separate the art from the artist. Which, again, you seem to find inconceivable that anyone could do, but I don’t.
I read it the first time you posted it, and I don’t agree with it any more the second time. All the tortured analogies still show people rationalizing why they might still like a piece of art, not separating it completely from the artist.
I think your inference is a fairly reasonable one. Many people probably defend the artist because they like the artist, or the art, and want to carry on liking the artist, or the art. They might not have consciously prioritised that over the seriousness of the things the artist did, but a priority has been set nonetheless.
I suppose another possibility is that people defend the artist because they hate the victims in some categorical sense.
Or maybe people think that the art a person creates, stands apart from the artist once created and can therefore continue to be appreciated even if the artist is despised. That sort of fits in cases where the artist is long dead, but it would be a poor explanation where someone is still looking forward to more works from the artist.
This. For most art, i really don’t think about the artist much. It varies. A first person YouTube video is all about the artist, and there’s no way i could enjoy one of those if i despised the artist. A painting is the other extreme. I know absolutely nothing about the life (or morals) of most of the painters who produced works i enjoy. I literally never think about it. This is why i can look at a painting by Hitler and think, “that’s a pretty picture, if a bit cliched.” Even though i literally googled “Hitler paintings” to find it, i just don’t interact with painting by thinking about the artist, and that was my first impression. A novel is in between.
And there are two other issue.
- am i supporting this person by enjoying their art?
- will other people think i admire the artist if i enjoy this art?
The first is why I’m not very concerned about consuming the art of dead people. Especially for something I’m likely to enjoy privately, like a book. If the author was dead, i don’t care much if the author was a monster.
But of course, Gaiman is alive, and presumably gets residuals from the use of his works. And the satisfaction of knowing people are enjoying it.
In at least one recent and well reported case, police took DNA from the victim and ran it against DNA evidence collected from unsolved crimes. They then used that match to charge and prosecute her.