Well, Wagner is dead…I suppose Eastwood gets residuals for Rawhide. I never bought a new Clapaton album. Practically, I believe it doesn’t matter. Clapton and Eastwood wouldn’t miss the money if I boycotted them.
Are you just interested in learning more about these people or are you doing a purity test to make sure it’s okay to spend money on their products? I might be a weirdo, but I’ve never really cared about the personal beliefs of the artist whose work I consume. I don’t really care what Stephen King thinks about global warming, vaccines, or who he votes for. I’m intersted in what he thinks about writing, horror, and other things directly related to his work, but little else.
Really? I know she said some things I don’t agree with, but has she gone that far?
In this case, the “enrichment” argument seems so insignificant that I can’t really see it influencing me. Rowling is already rich and her platform isn’t going to go away based on this game. Everyone can stop buying every Potterverse thing tomorrow and she’ll still be a billionaire TERF yelling on Twitter. The game has been a runaway success (deservedly so, in my opinion) with the top spot on the Steam sales list and a peak of over 850,000 people playing simultaneously today. That’s just on Steam and not counting PS5, Xbox, Switch, Epic Games Store and whatever other venues it’s being sold through. It’s sitting at a 93% positive rating on Steam.
Simply put, my pennies (or fraction thereof) that Rowling may receive are utterly insignificant in the scheme of changing anyone’s opinion. On the other hand, a bunch of other people who put the work into a delightful game will have their salaries and bonuses materially affected by the game sales (though, again, not really by my individual sale).
I think it’s a completely valid ethical choice to decide that you don’t want to buy/consume something made, however tangentially, by someone who you disagree with or think is harmful. I don’t think it’s a rational choice to think your sale makes any difference whatsoever in this case.
I can’t tell anyone else what to do. And there are certainly cases where I will always love the art, but I have to disdain the artist because I’ve learned they’ve done bad things and refuse to fully apologize or make amends.
What I will not do is signal demand for their product. I’ll watch my Louis CK DVD and enjoy it. But I don’t consider his half-ass apology adequate atonement, nor the fact that he was involuntarily sidelined for making money for a year or two (and then came back with tired transphobic material). So I won’t stream or download any of his stuff, or click on his ads or sites, nothing that anyone could interpret as a market signal meaning “I want more of this guy.” Not until he truly makes things right.
This kinda sounds like you throwing a piece of trash out the window of your car does not matter. In the grand scheme of things one McDonald’s cup is almost nothing. Therefore, it is ok to do it.
Polanski is a weird one for me–what he did was reprehensible but you don’t hear any ongoing reports of him being a sexual predator, he seems to have cleaned up his act considerably. Then I stop to think what it must do to a person to have their pregnant wife murdered and your baby cut out of her–nobody has the innate mental strength to weather that unscathed and it’s pretty understandable for someone to become nihilistic and think that basically nothing matters when measured against such an atrocity. I think he took stock of himself and while he’s not gonna turn himself in to the mercies of the American criminal justice system (and I can’t fault him for that either–I don’t care WHAT you’ve done, American prison is not the place for you, it’s a cesspool of slave labor and abuse) it does seem he’s done the work to come to terms with the Manson murders and has produced some fairly solid work since then.
I’m not excusing the man, I’m just saying that I can understand where he was coming from. Hurt people hurt people.
My usual method for dealing with problematical people whose work I nonetheless want to check out is that I pirate it. No money for them, keeps my hands clean and no, I do NOT consider pirating IP to be inherently sinful. Don’t bother to take me to task, I’ve done my work and I know where I stand on the matter.
I’m glad you asked this, because it’s a conversation I have often with friends and family. My conclusion is a firm, “It depends,” and “It’s a personal decision.”
The truth is it’s difficult to impossible to only patronize/buy/consume products or services from those you agree with. If that were the case, you probably wouldn’t be buying much.
That said, I do my best to not give money to companies I don’t like: Chik-Fil-A and Walmart come to mind. Needless to say, I haven’t hurt them, but I feel good knowing they don’t get my money.
For Rowling, I turned against her when the first HP books came out, and my daughter thought Rowling’s advice was good (she was12 or 13 years old).
[quote]“And it was all wrinkly and covered in rubbish and the cover was
falling off. And I made her go and get him because that is exactly the
state I want to see my books in. I have no track with these people, these very anally retentive people, who don’t crack the spine when they read a book. I say crack the spine and read it because that’s what it’s there for.”[/quote]
I was taught to take care of books. Read them, but not treat them like that.
The trans stuff just makes her that much worse.
More like throwing a napkin (or declining to throw a napkin) onto an existing mountain of napkins doesn’t realistically matter. Which it doesn’t.
Throwing a soda can into the creek has a tangible effect on that portion of the creek. Buying this game does not have a tangible effect on Rowling’s finances.
Edit: More to it (and better expressed, I think) is that there is no win condition here attainable by buying or not buying this game. A vote is worth it because a politician will either win or lose. Not littering may be worth it because you want the creek to be clean (or to help it get clean in the future). Those don’t apply here where, again, Rowling is a billionaire and each Potterverse product can crash and burn from now until the end of the world and will make no difference in how Rowling will act, feel or express herself. Not buying this is an act you take to feel good about your act (which is legitimate) but not a way you’re going to influence or change Rowling.
When Polanski skipped out, he forced the victim to go through the hell of reliving her experience against her will. The state compelled her to testify. Nobody with any soul would force a victim of child rape who really just wanted to get on with her life to have to revisit over and over how Polanski violated her.
Sucks what happened to his wife and baby. It’s unspeakable and incomprehensible and yet none of it justifies not only raping a thirteen year old girl but refusing to take accountability for it, so that the only one who suffers, in perpetuity, is his victim.
If you take physical books out from a library, which almost certainly bought them before she said anything in public about trans people, Rowling will neither profit from it nor know about it.
@NinthAcolyte, would that work for you? – I understand if it doesn’t, but wonder whether it would change your opinion of the person who does that.
– I will read things bought used at yard sales, or taken out of a library which bought them some time ago, that are by authors I won’t buy anything new by.
I’m also not researching everything; but I don’t buy many new books anyway, for financial reasons. I’m not entirely consistent in what I’ll buy at the grocery store, either.
I’ve got a couple of old Clapton CD’s. I’ll probably keep listening to them occasionally. I might buy another from the used-goods store, if I see one there.
Mark Twain was actually doing his best to be anti-racist. He was unthinkingly sexist in the way of his time. I have no problem reading Mark Twain; though I wouldn’t any longer hand Huckleberry Finn to a twelve-year-old without a good bit of explanation.
I know Scott Adams is a Trumpist nutter, but what’s the story behind the creators of Zits? I haven’t heard.
Nothing to add to the above except I always loved the HP franchise, but I have too many trans friends, and friends with trans kids, to even comfortably share memes about it on FB any more (there are some great ones). I have the BluRay box set and I think I’ll be able to watch the movies again without thinking about Rowling’s in-your-face bigotry. I used to revere Roger Waters and I love his previous work; it sucks that he’s gone so far off the deep end, but I guess I won’t be buying anything new that he puts out.
I think I said this in another similar thread last year, but it’s easier for me when the creator of the source material is the problem than it is when a performer is front and centre. I have a hard time watching Mel Gibson movies these days; if I throw the disc of Lethal Weapon in, I can’t help but watch his performance and wonder if he was glancing at Joel Silver on the set and mentally reciting his favorite bits of The Protocols while the camera was on him.
I lived through those years and all I can say is that current views and attitudes were not in place back then. That kind of sexual abuse was incredibly common and universally winked at–there are some men out there who, if they did to a child what was done to me back then, would be facing stiff prison sentences but back then nobody really wanted to look at it or do anything about it. And as a result, a lot of us kind of filed our SA under “Well, that sucked, glad it’s done with” and went on with our lives. Times change, morals change, social attitudes change and while I welcome the increased sensitivity to sexual abuse victims, especially children, I can’t help but think that it’s not exactly fair to use an increased sensitivity lens to view an act that, at the time it happened, was not viewed in the same way. *shrug*
So I’ll go right ahead and pirate Polanski’s movies because whatever else he’s done, he can turn out some very interesting films.
The OP’s points above and MrDibble’s take largely follow my own.
If I find out someone whose works I enjoy / have enjoyed are on the hook for thoughts or actions I find disagreeable (wide range of possibilities), I do my best to avoid further enriching them. 100%? No, because sometimes they’re tangentially associated, or the work is good enough that I hem and haw and compromise. But it is still -A- factor.
If the party in question is dead and thus the funds aren’t going to enrich them directly, then it’s generally an easier ask, but even then, you sometimes have a moment of discomfort when you are otherwise enjoying their works.
The second section is where things can get wonky, because some people go Out of their Way to embrace works because of the ideas the creator espouses. I know several ‘Christians’ who were in arms about Harry Potter because witchcraft, but then embraced Rowling due to her stated beliefs. So they made a point of uncancelling her works all of a sudden.
So like most human activity, it’s nuanced. Intent matters for the creator, and also the participants in the art. If you’re willing to acknowledge the issues of the creator, and like something despite their attitudes, I won’t judge you harshly. If you support their art because of their attitudes, I’ll generally look upon you with extreme displeasure. If you’re ignorant of the issues, and consider all the facts but still enjoy what you like, well, I may or may not agree, but won’t judge.
Nitpick: the baby wasn’t cut out. Atkins later said she thought about it, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. [/hijack]
Why not both?
Wait, is “purity test” supposed to be some kind of bad thing? Not when it’s for things I put inside me, it’s not.
My bad. So not unthinkable, just garden variety horrific then.
I think the easy part is taking your own moral stance on whether to support or not support the artist in question. The not so easy part is making a judgment on other people. If they know the controversy and still buy the product anyway, then I’d say it’s worth calling them out on it, but that’s probably no a hill worth dying on either.
In this particular case, Rowling has internalized support of her works as also supporting her trans-phobia. Anyone who buys it to virtue signal their own trans-phobia also deserves whatever is coming to them. The same goes for people who eat at Chick-fil-A specifically because they donate to anti-LGBTQ causes. Frankly I’m with Steve Shives on this one, there’s little excuse to be made for buying the game if you actually support the trans community.
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
― Voltaire
That’s where I fall on this. This isn’t (to me, YMMV) like watching a comedian or reading a book by an author or listening to an album by a musician who has turned out to be a real shit. Rowling’s connection to this game is that she licensed the IP to WB Games. She didn’t write the story or create the characters (aside from a few tangential side characters in there as Easter Eggs for the HP fans) and it’s not a Rowling product – for those not familiar the game is set about 100+ years before the Harry Potter stuff. It’s licensed fanfic. So I do approach it differently than I would a new Roger Waters album or a Rowling book or Louis CK comedy show. For that matter, there’s game developers who have turned out to be real shits and I wouldn’t buy their games but that’s because they are actually making the games.
The avalanche is long over. Now people are just yelling at snow drifting onto the buried landscape.
The problem is not watching or enjoying some controversial person’s art, it is these rationalizations for doing so that inevitably follow. We seem to have a hard time liking the things we like without minimizing the badness of the bad thing that was done. That in turn minimizes it the next time it happens to someone. If it wasn’t a big deal back then, why should it be a big deal now?