Again, most of the novels and stories involving Darkover do not revolve around sex. There are other interesting ideas to explore (survival in a harsh environment, severely limited land area, what if psionics/magic were a real technology?, interactions with intelligent but non-human species, conflicts between high tech/low tech cultures, etc.) in that particular universe. Unfortunately, the MZB scandal can give a false impression of the overall series. A lot of people have contributed in a small way, some in a moderate way, and I’d hate to see the work of people who had nothing to do with the abuse to be thrown out.
Some of the non-MZB works have female characters that want pretty normal and traditional things like heterosexual marriage and children, something largely absent from MZB’s work except as cardboard cut-outs on the periphery. Some of the more recent works dealt with the Dry Towns culture in such a way that you could start to see it as more than just a caricature of Arabs and misogyny. (The Dry Towns are a desert culture and married women in the Dry Towns wear literal chains.) Again, I don’t want the worthwhile efforts of people who had nothing to do with MZB’s real life crimes to have their work destroyed as well.
It’s rather like when The Cosby Show was yanked from the air due to Cosby’s misconduct - it also removed the work of everyone else involved in that show who had nothing to do with Cosby’s misdeeds/crimes/whatever. It deprived the other lead actors of whatever income they were getting from the re-runs. I don’t see that as just for all those other people.
If someone commits a heinous crime should we eliminate all the good they may have done as well as punish them and try to eliminate the bad?
No one here is talking about banning anyone’s books or stuff like that. It’s perfectly reasonable to hear about an artist’s conduct, weigh it against their work and decide if you wish to continue to consume their work or promote it to others. There’s no special nobility to not caring about an artist’s conduct nor is there any to abandoning an artist you find reprehensible as a person. It’s just a choice.
Women are not being held to a different standard. It is just the worst things that female artists do pale in comparison to what males do.
If you ask it for the men we’d get beatings, murder, rape, with being an asshole way in the distance.
On a scale of 1 to 10 being adulterous and abandoning their kids would be around a 9 or 10, while for men it would be a 5 or 6 because men have a lot more shitty things they do that occupy the 7-10 places.
If the question was about all artists women probably wouldn’t even scratch the surface of shitty behavior compared to men.
That has nothing to do with the idea that having an affair ranks a woman a “10” on the Terrible-o-meter.
That there’s fewer examples is likely a combination of women being less likely to perpetrate rape, domestic battery, etc (and men less likely to report such attacks) and fewer women of prominence in the arts compared to men.
She certainly qualifies as horrible, but artist? For what? Taking her clothes off? Making fart noises on MTV shows? Her “acting” resume certainly isn’t art.
I would nominate P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books. When I saw Saving Mr. Banks, it pointed out how difficult she was to work with. They didn’t come close. She was so intensely disliked that Walt didn’t even invite her to the opening. She managed to finagle her way in anyway, hated the movie and was quite vocal about it.
She had twin boys. On the advice of her astrologer, she kept one and gave the other away.
The comment that got me was the one made by one of her grandchildren at her funeral: She died alone, loving no one and no one loving her.
Azealia Banks seems like a horrible person. Getting into countless feuds with other artists. Calling people faggots. Calling Zayn Malik a “curry scented bitch”. She also got thrown out of a party for threatening to cut someone with a broken glass, then said she was the victim. It’s a shame. She’s so talented.
If that accurately captures the sentiments of her family, then you wonder why they bothered with a funeral, or why anyone attended.
I know …funerals are not for the dead, but for the survivors. So maybe it was to provide closure, and to help people process their complex feelings about the deceased.
Since this has been revived, I suppose Roseanne goes on the list. The woman has “issues” which probably don’t need to be repeated here.
I know people who did singing masterclasses with Schwartzkopf near the end of her career. She was described as being a patronizing snob to poor music students who had been hoping to gain some insights from her experience but who instead got an earful of insults and put-downs for having the temerity to sing at, well, a student level. Or, as they say in the vernacular, she was a stuck-up bitch.
Since people adding athletes I thought I added two:
The Fabulous Moolah. Aside for being a professional wrestler, she basically controlled women’s wrestling in the United States from the mid 1950’s up until the mid 1980’s. She has been accused by other female wrestlers of basically “pimping” them out to local wrestling promoters-sending them out to have sex with the promoters and male wrestlers if they still wanted to work in wrestling. In March 2018, the WWE announced there was going to be “The Fabulous Moolah Memorial Battle Royal” at Wrestlemania 34 this year, but there was enough backlash as these allegations resurfaced that the WWE removed her name from it.
Sexy Star. A female professional wrestler from Mexico. In a match involving her, Rosemary, Lady Shani, and Ayako Hamada, she put in Rosemary in an armbar and refused to release after Rosemary tapped out. The referee had to get physically involved in order to get her to release it. Rosemary suffered a discolated elbow and triceps tear. This was not a wrestling storyline or angle. It was an act of unprofessional conduct and numerous wrestlers and promotions refused to work with Sexy Star as a result.
I know this is an old thread and nobody really cares about it anymore, but I just feel the need to point out that Ray of Light was actually based on an earlier song from 1975 called Sepheryn, by the obscure British band Curtiss Maldoon. Because how often do I get the chance to point this out?
I learned of this factoid from the book Rough Notes, by Bruce Thomas (bassist of The Attractions, i.e. Elvis Costello’s band), which is a long and interesting memoir about the British music scene of the 1970s. I will take this opportunity to plug this book because it’s very interesting, and also Bruce is my friend and how often to I get the chance to name-drop someone that cool?
I know this has nothing to do with anything else in the thread, which is old and which nobody cares about anymore, probably, though you never know. I do find it ridiculous that Barbra Streisand is being compared with serial rapists. That’s really reaching.
I think when it comes to bad behavior from male artists, what’s usually being called out is bad sexual behavior, and I think women are just less likely in the main to be predatory sexually in the way that men are, just because men and women are generally different in how they express themselves sexually…whether it’s due to biology or due to cultural conditioning, I don’t know - probably some of both.
You’re just not going to find female celebrities who have ever done anything like what Cosby, Polanski, etc, have done. There also don’t seem to be quite as many female artists who have gone off the rails with drugs and alcohol, as their male counterparts.
Well since this thread is being revived, how about Allison Mack? She’s an actress from the series “Smallville” who was (allegedly) recruiting women into a sex-slave cult under the guise of a “women’s empowerment” group. She (allegedly) thought up the group’s practice of branding the women who were there to service the cult’s leader Keith Raniere. Deliberately luring women into a cult where they would be used as sex slaves (and branding them as if they were cattle) certainly ranks a 10 on the above-mentioned scale.
