Why don’t we separate the art from the artist?

Just want to point out that the so-called critics of cancel culture are the most obvious and strictest advocates for it, they just want to have unilateral authority to do it.

For me the art pays the artist. So i enjoy my right to exercise my small but still there economic power. The artist also use their image to heavily market the art so for me they are intertwined. It did get ok for a while for actors, we understand they play a role, however if the make decisions that entangle themself in unacceptable behavior then bad luck. You don't get to only play and profit from the hero whilst acting like a arsehole.

Art is political.

If they use their money to do evil shit, like funding wars against queer people, then giving them money actively supports funding wars against queer people. That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is throwing away/destroying decades old media becsuse it was discovered last week that the artist who made it was, in fact, a piece of shit. That's not hurting them nor is it sending a message. Just don't buy any new shit from 'em.

They say art is a conversation between the artist and the viewer.

I don't want to have a conversation with a rapist. I don't want to associate with people who hate trans people.

If I had a friend and found out these things about them, I would cut them out of my life.

Did you cheat on your wife or commit tax fraud? Maybe it changes the interactions, but I'm not going to cut you out entirely.

That line will be different for everyone

There's so much art, its so accessible with the internet, why am I going to waste time enjoying stuff made by pieces of shit? I want them forgotton. I can enjoy art made by good people instead.

I just can't. I'll strive for immersion into some fantasy world and suddenly I'm wait? Wasn't that the actor who was accused of dismembering their spouse? And that's very distracting. Same for re-reading Harry Potter and always being on the lookout for some red flags. It just takes a good amount of fun out of it.

And while being a liberal, there's some people who aren't on my side. I don't listen to right-wing metal. Why would I? And if someone cancels them, I'd give those people a round of applause. I mean I don't want to set the band members on fire. But they can do a different job?! Their art sucks.

Why are conservatives always so upset at the consequences of a free market?

Separating the art from the artist is usually meant for academic settings when discussing works from people who were flawed (I'm using very mild language) or who we see through a modern lens as problematic. It's how we can talk about the themes and IP that Lovecraft created despite him being a truly garbage human being in his life.

I think we have collectively co-opted the phrase to try and engage with entertainment we like when the artist is problematic. I think that's generally okay if the artist is no longer alive or does not own the IP anymore.

If an artist is alive and actively a shitty person, then it's not really possible to separate their art from them in my opinion (again, non-academically). Doing so can give money, clout, or other forms of power to further enable them. That's why we've been seeing "cancel culture" grow, because boycotting is one of the few ways to limit an artist's reach if they are using their art or status to hurt people.

As an aside, depending on the artist's actions or reputation, it is genuinely seen as suspect to engage with their art outside of academia even if they are dead. This can be especially true if the art itself espouses dangerous or very hurtful ideas. A common example is stuff like Mein Kampf, which has been studied academically/historically in order to understand it. I think anyone would be wary of someone saying they are a fan of it though.

There's the money but also by engaging with work from an artist, even if you don't pay, you are usually increasing their cultural cachet. This can be through things like engagement statistics (making them more likely to be recommended by algorithms, get more royalties, and be more likely to get further investments) or even just word of mouth. This can both help them financially and make their behaviour seem more acceptable in society (even when the issues are acknowledged).

How this interacts with forgiveness and growth is tricky because we need that for people to not reject the part of society that is critical of them but earning back trust on such a large scale is very difficult. I don't think there's one solution but it is good to be aware of the problems.

i just find it hard to watch louis c.k. without thinking about him jerking off in front of his employees. it makes him less fun to watch i guess.

I think it’s (at least in part) instinctive: humans have probably been listening to storytellers for hundreds of thousands of years, and their stories shape our worldview and society. Rejecting the narratives of storytellers with destructive views would have had real survival value.

Well take JKR, for example. You consume Harry Potter content and a portion of the royalties go to her. She then funds anti-trans movements like For Woman Scotland.

Thus, if you consume Harry Potter content you're supporting anti-trans causes. Personally I can't have that on my conscience.

"Separate art from artist" is one of those vague phrases that can mean very different things depending on context.

From a media analysis perspective, it can mean to simply evaluate the work on its own without considering who made it or authorial intent. Another way of saying Death of the Author. This is a valid lens of media analysis, but it should not be the only lens.

More often though it gets used as a way of saying "I'm just going to pretend any controversies surrounding the author don't exist and enjoy it anyway." Now I'm not going to tell anyone they can't enjoy anything by problematic creators, because I certainly have my share of such works I still enjoy. I'm not pure and I think anyone who claims to be is lying.

But I still think it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with those controversies - especially when it comes to financially supporting such creators or boosting their platform. You have to decide for yourself where to draw the line, but you should make that decision without plugging your ears and sticking your head in the sand.

The worst way of using this phrase though, is when people use it to mean "You should pretend any controversies surrounding the author don't exist, stop bringing it up, don't even talk about it. I don't want to do any introspection about it, so it makes me feel insecure when anyone else does." When people try to use it as a conversation stopper in response to controversy, that's complete bullshit.

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Consider H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a hugely influential writer who spawned an entire subgenre of horror. He was also a horrible racist, and that puts his body of work in a different light when you recognize how much of it is ultimately about fear of Other.

As far as media analysis goes, it's not like his work is inherently racist. Just because he was a bigot doesn't mean his writing is. But his bigotry certainly did influence his writing, and it's necessary to understand this to truly understand Lovecraft. Lovecraft is tied to his work in a way that can't fully be separated.

From a financial perspective, Lovecraft is long dead, and all of his work has passed into the public domain. Reading his work won't fuel further bigotry, and so I don't think it's something anyone has to feel bad about.

We can't. We never could, and never will. Art is inextricable from the context that created it, which includes the artist(s), the time, the place, the culture and acquaintances and ideas that are all woven into the fabric of the work.

When we say "separate the art from the artist" we mean we elect to ignore a part of the art that makes us uncomfortable, but ignoring a thing neither makes it not so nor prevents it from influencing us. Art has ideas and subideas the same way a musical note has overtones, but on a million different ontological dimensions. The artist is only aware of some of these; the others are assumptions, biases, cultural and personal blindnesses, prejudices, coincidences, and bursts of artistic genius.

Side note: you don't have a one-way relationship with art. If you think you can experience art without that art changing you in some way, you are merely blind to its influence. Art changes you. Not always in big ways, and not always for the better. Your options are to either acknowledge and explore the nature of that change, or not. Even refusing to engage with a work of art is an acknowledgement of that work's influence on you.

Back to the main note: even though it's impossible to really separate art from its context (like where it came from), ignoring the context does flatten the appearance of the art and make some of the ideological overtones of the art invisible. We do this for all kinds of reasons: art as unchallenging entertainment is easier to consume passively, so ignoring the challenging parts of it feels good. Like enjoying the rhythm and melody of a pop song without dealing with the misogynistic lyrics, or the political affiliations of the artists. Thinking about those things is hard. Not thinking about them is easy, and it gets easier with practice. Practice ignoring the uncomfortable parts of art long enough and it becomes habitual. Eventually you ignore them without even thinking about them.

They don't stop affecting you, though. Those overtones seep into your brain and influence your thinking in ways you will never be aware of, because you have lost the ability to detect them. It happens gradually. After ten thousand subliminal messages, you'll hold beliefs you neither understand nor can even fully articulate, and you won't know how to change them. It's possible, but it takes almost as long to undo as it takes to do, because they're hard to find.

Second side note: Propagandists are well aware of this property of art, which is why propaganda works, more or less, even when the audience "knows" its propaganda. It's a quantity over quality thing: the overtones slip though unobserved even if you are aware of the main gist of the piece.

That's why you don't separate the art from the artist. You can't, and pretending to do so denies what art does, much to your detriment.

I can. After the artist has been dead for 50 years.

An item covered in the blood of the innocent is still an item covered in the blood of the innocent even if the person who smeared the blood of the innocent all over it is now dead.

Even if you substitute the largely victimless "excrement" for "the blood of the innocent", many, if not most, people are still going to find the stench and the filth impossible to ignore.

You can attempt to reclaim, repurpose, wash or paint over or whatever you like to diminish the effects, but it'll still be there, lurking, giving off unpleasantness on a hot day, whatever that means in terms of the metaphor. Heated discussion, when people learn about the originator, perhaps.

I won't go hungry without creative works, I always have a choice whether to engage with them. I consume them in order to feel an emotion. Those emotions can change and become tainted by controversies or the actions of the people involved, but not always. Because my relationship to the art is and always was about how I feel, if I don't like the feelings it gives me I get rid of it.

If the artist gives 25% of their income to fund the orphan crushing machine, I'm incentivized to give them 0% of mine.

My personal opinion, it's about not wanting to support evil. I really want to watch the Harry Potter series and listen to the full cast audiobook, but I don't want to give money to Rowling to fund things that hurt transgender people. If it weren't for that, I'd watch the series. I still love Harry Potter

I think a big part of the "rise of cancel culture" has to do with the Internet and how fast information can spread. Like if a director is a huge asshole to the crew and makes the actors stay on set for 18 hour days re-doing a scene for thousands of times without breaks, in the past no one outside of the cast and crew would have really known about that, maybe there'd be some rumors getting spread by tabloids. But now, you'd get a 4k smartphone camera video of the director flipping out and screaming at a gaffer for 15 minutes straight because a light is 0.001mm out of place. Or before all you knew about a musical artist was what they put in their songs and their sanitized personality for an interview, but with social media they can put their entire stream of consciousness on display for the world. It's kinda weird when all of someone's songs are about partying and having a good time, but on an average Tuesday the same person tweets out 174 times saying a certain group of people don't have the right to even exist. I don't need to agree with someone 100% to support their art, but there is definitely a point where they cross a line and I just can no longer justify supporting them. I know my choice to not watch a movie or listen to an artist is a drop missing from an ocean, but at least I get some piece of mind that I'm not supporting those actions/views. And even if the person is dead, it still matters who we idolize and who we vilify. If some celebrity is only talked about positively and everyone loves them but they married a 16 year old when they were 38, that might lead some people to believe that a relationship like that isn't so problematic.

Any celebrity is still a person who has their own thoughts, opinions, and flaws. I don't believe anyone should be put on a pedestal have their misdeeds be forgotten because they made a good painting, song, or movie. Art is an extension of a person who shaped that art with their thoughts, opinions, and flaws. I don't think it's unreasonable to say, "Even though I like this art, I think the person who made it is an asshole and I am taking my time/energy/money elsewhere." But that's just how I feel. I may not agree with this thought process, but I also don't think it's unreasonable to say, "I don't care who made this art or what their thoughts and opinions are, I like this art and I want to support it." You do you

There's a term I'm drawing a blank on just now that refers to one's tendency/ability to think of things as separable. It's something like high vs. low segmentation/delineation/compartmentalisation/discretion individuals. For some people, different aspects of a person/concept/etc. can be more readily separated in their consideration. For others, the associations are too strong to be ignored.

Some people have low (word I am having trouble remembering). These are people who cannot or have difficulty in separating different elements of consideration. These are people who say the only way to understand, say, The Lord of the Rings is to understand Tolkien, or that one cannot separate the mysogyny of Tomas from the music of Nightwish. They are also the kind of person who, if they met Ted Bundy in the office, would then have great difficulty reconciling that friendly experience with new information saying he was a murderer.

Some people are high (word). They split concepts frequently and easily. These are people who can look at things which are connected by being parts of the same whole but consider each part separately, like say, looking at the beliefs of Ted Kaczynski and saying he was right about this one technology but wrong about bombing as the optimal solution, or that it's wrong to murder but eating the dead is fine. These are also the kind of people who are more capable of meeting someone, being their friend for years, trusting them, but still having the cognitive distance to see the evidence in front of them and realise their friend is abusing his daughter, even if that doesn't comport with how they have previously seen that friend.

Each way of thinking is as alien to the opposing end of the spectrum as introverts vs extroverts or the religious vs materialists.

If someone sucks I think about that when observing their art. There is so much good stuff in the world by good people that I don't see a need to support bad artists.

Ignore what everyone else says. They're applying their own moral judgements to what is ultimately your own personal decision.

Whenever someone posts this they're usually feeling guilty for enjoying the Harry Potter series. Personally, I can't enjoy Harry Potter anymore because the author is transphobic and awful. It makes me sad to watch it anymore because of that. If I found out later that something I enjoyed is also made by an author I dislike, I similarly stop enjoying it.

You might think that's silly, but think of it like Nestle. You can enjoy their chocolate, it's genuinely good chocolate. But they're one of the most evil companies on the planet. It's your personal decision, nobody else's, whether you're willing to ignore that, and still eat their chocolate and support their business practices. It's a psychological phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.

As for dead people… it's more nuanced. If it's from 100+ years ago; basically everyone was racist etc back then, so it's more a sign of the times changing. If they died yesterday, that doesn't fly.

So my moral framework can be summarised as:

• I don't like financially supporting evil
• I don't like culturally supporting evil subtexts or evil authors
• Historical works get a pass

You'll need to find your own moral framework, something you can work on and stand by with pride. Don't just copy others'.

I very much do. Mostly accidentally by simply not knowing/caring what shitty thing they might have done. But even when I know, I can still enjoy the art.

Don't forget that Hitler was a painter. Have you been enjoying any of his pieces lately?

There is a varying level of separation dependent on whether the artist is still alive, their contribution to the work, their prominence in how it is presented, and personal emotion about what wss done.

Kevin Spacey was in a lot of great movies and those where he is the lead role are off putting to me. Especially if there are any kind of sexual related themes that are sketchy, like in American Beauty. His relationship with a minor is too close to his actual crimes and that is too much for me. But him voicing a robot in Moon doesn't ruin the movie for me, although I wish they made an alternate cut with someone else's voice.

Lovecraft being dead and his works being in the public domain means he is separated from his works because he gains no benefits and his works don't promote racism. Hitler can't be separated from mein kampf because it promotes horrible ides of the author.

Other people will have their own lines or none at all if they separate everything.

For living people, money is definitely a big factor.

For both dead and living though, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The emotional connection becomes a lot more difficult once I know that the creator did something heinous. This especially goes for music and books, since it's more intimately connected to the creator(s). For things like movies and games though, due to the way larger crew, it's easier to do so (given it's not auteur driven).

But also, just giving it attention is a form of currency. It kind of gives legitimacy to the person, especially over longer periods where the bad stuff gets forgotten.

I think the most crucial part of the context in which a work was created is the mind it was created from. If that mind has the personality of an irredeemable asshole, that affects the way I perceive the art.

I'm more surprised that/if historically people separated the art from the artist. No art is created in a vacuum, their creators live in the world along with everyone else. I guess the only justification I can see if someone believes that art solely comes from divine inspiration or similar.

I feel I do to some degree. Thing is if a thing is good but not great then I might avoid it do to the artist and a lot of things don't make it to great.

For me it's like this: some art I really like, and if there is no good alternative I will still enjoy it even if the artist may be a criminal or promoting hate. If I can avoid the art somehow, then I'll do that.

Because you cannot have art without the artist.

Art isn't some product. A thing. An item for a consumer. It is something that is created from the inspiration of a person, and that person's experiences and world views directly effect their inspiration.

The artist is inside the works of art they create. So trying to separate the art from the artist means you're not appreciating the art. Just the "thing" that it is.

For me it depends on the consequences of consuming the art today.

PDF Michael Jackson made incredible and catchy music, but listening to his music (streaming service) puts money into the hands of people who were in close association with him. Those likely knew about his pedophilic nature, and still didn’t intervene.

Having a painting of hitler would be ok, a bit questionable, but ok, because nobody profits off that anymore. (This is lemmy so I will add more context: the aspect that if hitler would have been accepted in the art school he could have gone through a different career, away from politics is kind of interesting.)

I do, especially for music. I couldn't care less about the personal lives of musicians, because pretty much every great musician is a shit person. Being a tortured soul is almost a prerequisite.

Hell, even Mozart was a bit of a cunt.

I think it's more complicated than yes or no to separating the two. Sometimes I cannot, sometimes I don't want to, other times I don't but still somewhat enjoy the work of the dubious artist. Michael Jackson was probably a child molester. I don't listen to tons of his work but I also don't shun it. When I hear it, it makes me think about people being complicated. I don't know for sure he fucked kids, but he probably did. He was also creative. Will I be defending him? No.

With JK Rowling, I didn't like Harry Potter from the beginning, so yeah now that I know she's a hateful bigot I won't be giving it another chance. Picasso, apparently was a piece of shit. His artworks still impress me. I literally think about him being a shitty person while enjoying the art. Not everything is simple or black and white. I don't think anyone (at least on the left) is defending what Picasso did nor should they. He was abusive and misogynist. I don't celebrate him and rarely think about him. When I see his stuff in an art museum I think about the full spectrum of his life. I don't see anything wrong with that at all. In fact it for me provides another glimpse into people being complicated. Somebody out there has probably cured a disease and also murdered someone. It would be interesting to learn about that rather than simply dismiss them as evil and get angry if they are brought up. There almost certainly has been a somewhat famous artist who was secretly a serial killer, just statistically.

I know making this comment that someone will tell me I'm excusing someone's bad behavior but I'm not. My house doesn't have any Picasso displayed. I don't knowingly celebrate any bad actors or demonize their artwork unless the artwork itself is full of bad ideas. Either the art sucks or it doesn't. If you like artwork that you find out was made by a shitty person, I don't think you have to start hating the art immediately. But on the other hand if you remain really into that artwork, it's a weird look. There's nuance in this topic and I think prescribing how people should think about it is not a good thing to do.

Our society shifted. Before it was more socially acceptable to be able to ignore these things, and they were more hidden. Now people judge you for it.