And I questioned the black-and-white nature of what you deem an “ally” and you evaded the question.
I’m not offended. I just think it is a stupid strategy to alienate people who may be on your side or, at least, sympathetic to your side unless they meet some really high standard and, if they do not, should be called out for not meeting those standards.
Of course, to each their own. You and Sterling (or whoever) are free to decide who is on your side as you please.
there is even a neat little term for this phenomenon.
The Narcissism of small differences. Pointing out the pointlessness of that approach since 1917.
Bradley was a pedophile, not just married to one.
I see, I’ll still read her books, but if she write some more, posthumously, I may ask you for proof before I buy it.
Not that I doubt you.
That’s why I take it on a case by case basis. I weigh the enjoyment I receive from the art against the level of evil the artist committed. If I learned that a stand-up comic, whose routine makes me chuckle a little, committed serial rape and murder…I’m ok with not paying to see him ever again. However, If I learned that Ludwig Van Beethoven once shoplifted an electronic keyboard from Walmart…I’m not going to throw away my ticket to the next performance of his 9th Symphony.
I mean, it is black and white in that if you don’t have someone’s back, if they can’t depend on you, then you aren’t an ally. It’s a pretty binary definition there.
Just because I’m not giving you the answer you think you deserve doesn’t mean that I’m being evasive.
Right, you think that it’s stupid to not rely on people to have your back who have demonstrated that they don’t have your back. If someone is alienated over it, they were never and will never be an ally, they were just looking to virtue signal and are upset that they aren’t being congratulated for it.
And you are free to decide whether you want to be supportive of people, or if you just want to be recognized for being supportive of people.
If the fact that this person said that they didn’t consider you to be an ally “alienates” you and changes your perspective on trans rights, you were never an ally.
Let’s say that you want to rappel down a cliff. You have the option of two people to belay you.
One is a great guy, family man, donates to charity and is always there to help out.
The other actually pays attention to the rope in their hands and the climber coming down.
If the first person gets offended that I choose the second, then the first person’s actually not that great a person.
When it comes to trusting your life to someone, small differences matter.
Now, what your aside is appropriate to is those offended by this. They still may be your friend, still enjoy your company, they just don’t trust you to support them on these issues. If you are alienated by this, it is you that is succumbing to the narcissism of small differences.
Especially if someone claims to not be offended, but then goes on to say that they feel alienated. Two sides of a mouth flapping away, there.
I think this is true, and, for me anyway, there’s really no rhyme or reason to what I can and cannot abide. I have a slight tendency to avoid living shitheels while embracing the art of dead ones. There were a lot of shitheels in history who made great art. Some people just can’t stand the cognitive dissonance. I’ve learned to live with it. But what you will never see me do is minimize a bad act just so I can feel better about the art I consume. In therapy we call it “Yes, and.” Yes, Rudyard Kipling was a racist fuck, and he wrote my favorite poem that I return to time and again when I’m facing life’s difficulties. Living with that conflict inside you I think is a part of life.
And there is a difference there as well, as no matter how much you spend on Kipling merchandise, he won’t get a cent of it. You aren’t supporting him in any way, as he’s dead.
Maybe when Cosby dies, I’ll feel more comfortable pulling out my dad’s old albums of his stand-up. Maybe.
Lawrence Block is an odd case.
Early in his career he wrote a bunch of “erotica” novels under pseudonyms, with titles like “A Strange Kind of Love”, “Campus Tramp”, “Circle of Sinners” and “High School Sex Club” (I was unaware of the existence of this stuff until today). Rarely, even his “mainstream” fiction occasionally has creepy bits of the author’s sexual perturbations peeking through the plot.
He’s still one of the outstanding detective fiction writers of his time, and the Matthew Scudder novels are well worth reading/re-reading.
Incidentally, one should avoid consuming art regardless of how appealing it is.
But that’s the highest form of flattery!
The Highest Compliment Maurice Sendak Ever Received | Mental Floss.
This is the correct take. Some people have strict, idealized definitions of “ally” and are highly critical of efforts that they see as insufficient. If everyone listened to them, there would be little volunteerism and allyship at all. We have to do what we do, independent of whether we get head-pats.
Exactly.
Like I said, you’d have to be a really fragile snowflake to get seriously “alienated” from a cause you support just because somebody who supports the cause more uncompromisingly than you do feels less trust in you as an ally because of your more modified support.
It’s not like anybody’s coming around demanding to inspect your bookcases or your video game library to see if you have any “unapproved materials”. If you happen to be somewhat more lukewarm about a particular cause than someone else, and for some reason you feel sensitive about the possibility of their judging your lukewarmness, you can just refrain from getting into it with them.
If you give money to help trans people and then turn around and give money to a high-profile transphobe, how do you think that moral calculus works out?
Especially if your only reason for giving money to the transphobe is that you wanted to play a videogame?
Everyone does not and cannot have strong principles on every subject. I do not. But if you give money to JK Rowling, this means your principles on transphobia have lower priority than your desire to be entertained in a certain way, meaning that your principles in that area don’t mean much at all.
For me, a big part is how much of the art is built around presenting the artist as someone likable. I’d have a lot more trouble getting into a Louis CK routine than a Kevin Spacey movie, despite the accusations against Spacey being objectively much more terrible, because a big part of (a lot of) standup is the comedian trying to get you to like them personally. Most movies don’t rely on you forming an opinion about the actor, and in a lot of his roles, Spacey was playing a creep anyway.
Or, on a similar, note, Stanley Kubrick was an abusive asshole. But this was never a secret: he used to be applauded for it, like traumatizing your actors so they’d act more terrified on screen was some sort of legitimate “method” directing. I don’t think that sort of thing is acceptable, but it doesn’t interfere with my ability to enjoy his movies. Joss Whedon, it turns out, is also an abusive asshole. But he spent a considerable amount of energy, outside of his shows and movies, projecting this image of himself as a good dude. And now that the truth is out, I’m really “meh” about watching his stuff any more. I’m not boycotting him by any means, I’m just… not interested now.
I just want to bring up the above example because we’re tending to fall into positive/negative ally/non-ally (not enemy granted), when I feel there are shades of gray to the discussion. In the example above, @k9bfriender makes a great case for why for trusting your life, you need performance in a specific skill, as opposed to performance of social virtue.
But, if we were to change the circumstances, you may (and this of course depends on a huge number of variables) trust the first party more on different aspects: say you wanted tax advice and they were a CPA, while the second guy was a fireman. Not that they aren’t still a vital part of society, but the skills aren’t applicable.
Back to the main nature of the thread, when it comes to ART though, we often admire the technical skill of the performer/creator in a way that is very hard to separate from said creator themselves. Leaving out the enriching factor, if that persons actions taint them to the point it affects your appreciation of the art, then it makes perfect sense to avoid said art entirely.
But I know individuals (leaving out popular artists) that I find opposed to me on one or more issues, but aligned on entirely different but still important-to-me issues. So it’s almost always a balancing act.
I bring this up not to cast shade on anyone, especially not k9, but because again, looking at everything without considering the huge depth of any specific individual (even in our polarized world) weakens all of us.
Last aside, I promise. The above is for the more or less ‘normal’ range of human interests and activities - if you’re a monster, you’re a monster, and I don’t want to deal with you. Different people draw the lines differently, granted, but if you’re a murder, or rapist, screw you and your art. It’s one of the reasons I’m extremely conflicted when I hear, as a not random example, Michael Jackson come on an 80s stream. Sure, he was not convicted of the allegations against him, but the evidence is enough to taint my enjoyment of what was a huge influence growing up.
Well, if Rowling indirectly gets 2¢ in licensing off my game purchase and I donate $100 to trans causes, then I guess I care 5,000x more in one direction than the other. Not a good as infinite times but I’m okay with the math.
Sounds a lot better than because I thought she had great points. Otherwise, I might directly send her a hundred bucks instead of the couple pennies she eventually gets from Warner.
Everyone is going to have their own position on this; for me, the answer is “it depends”. It depends on the nature and severity of the dislike or disagreement and the transgression that caused it, and also to some extent the degree to which the artist’s faults are or are not evident in the artistic work itself.
For example, if a person of reprehensible political views wrote a book opining about politics, that would be a non-starter for me. But if the same person composed beautiful music or produced beautiful paintings, I might be persuaded to overlook their politics.
One of the things that has irked me in recent years is all the hate directed against Woody Allen, including Hachette Group canceling the publication of his bio that they had already contracted, and Allen reportedly having to move his filmmaking to Europe where the cancel culture is less rampant and less vicious and trigger-happy. I’ve been an Allen fan for many years, and the man makes well-crafted movies that are often very funny and sometimes brilliant. I’m not going to stop watching them, or throw existing ones out of my collection, because of some allegation that was not just unproven, but for which investigation turned up no credible evidence, and which allegation furthermore came from an unreliable source that was motivated to damage Allen.
OTOH the things that Bill Cosby was convicted of, and served time for, were especially heinous. I’m just not comfortable listening to his old comedy routines (which I haven’t listened to in decades, anyway) or watching reruns of the Cosby Show, if anyone is still running such things.
Bill Maher is another one that deserves comment. I’ve heard some people say that they can’t stand him because of what strikes them as arrogant smugness. Others object to his silly views on vaccines, and to some extent, medicine in general, or to his occasional extremist guest. I find I can overlook the first part, and consider the second part as being more nuanced than he’s often given credit for, and instead often taken out of context and exaggerated by his haters. So, while I’m not quite as avid a fan as I used to be, I still watch his show and feel that those who don’t are missing out on what is often well-researched information, interesting guests, and witty discussions.
Every case is different, and every one of us makes our decision about it, but I maintain that those decisions should be fact-based and rational, not knee-jerk virtue signaling in what seems to have become a fashionable cancel culture, the kinds of things that have wrought major damage on Woody Allen and nearly so on Chris Hardwick, who survived allegations of abuse only because his network put time and money into investigating and defending him.
That said, there are certainly many individuals – some of whom were mentioned in this thread – that I would avoid because of the egregious offenses they committed, not to impress anyone, but simply because I find such people toxic on a very basic level.
That’s your choice. But it still means that you’ll support transphobes if your desire to be entertained is strong enough.
Yeah, certainly, I don’t think anyone in this thread is advocating withdrawing any support from artists based merely on exaggeration, rumor, etc.