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Sometimes terrible people make great things. This is disconcerting! But also a part of life!
There are lots of examples. The one that comes to mind as applying to the most people is the creator of Harry Potter, who is a truly hateful and bigoted person, but who created something that brought a lot of people joy.
I'm curious about a) what creations you love from creators you hate and b) how you think about them.
There's a spectrum of feelings about the creators. For instance, I think Aaron Sorkin is an asshole and he irritates the heck out of me, but also I love The West Wing and many of the films whose screenplays he wrote. But the dissonance isn't that intense because I don't know that I think he's a bad person, just a really privileged and full of himself white dude who isn't great at looking at things from others' perspectives.
Further along the spectrum towards reprehensibility is our old friend Joss Whedon. I think he's pretty terrible! I judge him a lot for how he treated the women who worked for him! He was clearly a bad husband! But boy do I ever love Buffy Summers and her universe. He hasn't really made anything since the early 2000s that I actually care about, so it's relatively easy for me to just ignore his existence and instead continue to love Buffy and Dawn and Cordy and Dru and whoever.
On the far end of the spectrum is Orson Scott Card, who is a truly terrible and dangerous person. Wow, he's awful! And yet, he wrote Speaker for the Dead, which is a book that speaks deeply to me about empathy and our common humanity. (I also liked Ender's Game a lot as a kid, though I think I've outgrown it as an adult.) I will literally never understand how he was able to write something so deeply moving and then also be...himself. I just remind myself that sometimes the art is greater than the artist and that this is mysterious and a gift.
I'm pretty easily able to separate out of my feelings about these creators from their works. It's harder with actors, where you see their faces--for instance, I can't watch the Mia Wasikowska version of Jane Eyre no matter how beautiful it is, because I can't handle watching the face of a man who beats women. Like, no thank you!--so there are absolutely actors whose work I simply will not watch.
And I am very happy to draw a hard line for myself about not giving money to people who are terrible. I've seen several Polanski films, for instance, but always borrowed from the library. I would never, ever, ever give that many a dime. Ever. Nor would I ever pay for anything by Card. I personally feel that for art that I want to encounter but don't want to support the creator, I can just pirate the hell out of it and feel no guilt whatsoever. And if the creator is long dead, then it doesn't matter!
A more complicated question is the question of public engagement with the works of someone hateful. I find it easy to not interact with Harry Potter in any way anymore because, while I liked it, it never meant as much to me as it does to other people. But there's a lot of conversation in fandom about whether it's okay to continue to participate in Harry Potter fandom now that we know who She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named truly is.
I don't know the answer! When I hear people argue, "You shouldn't engage with Harry Potter stuff at all because doing so promotes She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's brand and gives her more power," I think, "Yeah, that seems correct." But then when other people argue, "The creation is always greater than the creator, and fans have taken this world and made it their own and that community's love and time have made it into something that cannot be tarnished by its origins," I also think, "Yeah, that seems correct." So as long as people are defending Her or giving her any money, I don't judge how people choose to engage or not with Harry Potter. I leave that to others' consciences.
I've been lucky so far in that no piece of art that is deeply a part of me has origins from the really terrible end of the spectrum, so I haven't had to really grapple with anything thorny in the way that Harry Potter or Big Bang fans have. But I know it's just a matter of time before I find out that one of my most beloved and formative pieces of art was created by someone who is actually, objectively a terrible influence on the world, so I think about it quite a lot even now.
So I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts about how they deal with these questions. Tell me about a creator you can't stand who made something you love! Tell me about how you think about that! Tell me what decisions you've made about how to engage with that kind of art! Anything at all!
Just be respectful that other people draw moral lines in different places than you do and that these things are complicated and almost never black-and-white.
There are lots of examples. The one that comes to mind as applying to the most people is the creator of Harry Potter, who is a truly hateful and bigoted person, but who created something that brought a lot of people joy.
I'm curious about a) what creations you love from creators you hate and b) how you think about them.
There's a spectrum of feelings about the creators. For instance, I think Aaron Sorkin is an asshole and he irritates the heck out of me, but also I love The West Wing and many of the films whose screenplays he wrote. But the dissonance isn't that intense because I don't know that I think he's a bad person, just a really privileged and full of himself white dude who isn't great at looking at things from others' perspectives.
Further along the spectrum towards reprehensibility is our old friend Joss Whedon. I think he's pretty terrible! I judge him a lot for how he treated the women who worked for him! He was clearly a bad husband! But boy do I ever love Buffy Summers and her universe. He hasn't really made anything since the early 2000s that I actually care about, so it's relatively easy for me to just ignore his existence and instead continue to love Buffy and Dawn and Cordy and Dru and whoever.
On the far end of the spectrum is Orson Scott Card, who is a truly terrible and dangerous person. Wow, he's awful! And yet, he wrote Speaker for the Dead, which is a book that speaks deeply to me about empathy and our common humanity. (I also liked Ender's Game a lot as a kid, though I think I've outgrown it as an adult.) I will literally never understand how he was able to write something so deeply moving and then also be...himself. I just remind myself that sometimes the art is greater than the artist and that this is mysterious and a gift.
I'm pretty easily able to separate out of my feelings about these creators from their works. It's harder with actors, where you see their faces--for instance, I can't watch the Mia Wasikowska version of Jane Eyre no matter how beautiful it is, because I can't handle watching the face of a man who beats women. Like, no thank you!--so there are absolutely actors whose work I simply will not watch.
And I am very happy to draw a hard line for myself about not giving money to people who are terrible. I've seen several Polanski films, for instance, but always borrowed from the library. I would never, ever, ever give that many a dime. Ever. Nor would I ever pay for anything by Card. I personally feel that for art that I want to encounter but don't want to support the creator, I can just pirate the hell out of it and feel no guilt whatsoever. And if the creator is long dead, then it doesn't matter!
A more complicated question is the question of public engagement with the works of someone hateful. I find it easy to not interact with Harry Potter in any way anymore because, while I liked it, it never meant as much to me as it does to other people. But there's a lot of conversation in fandom about whether it's okay to continue to participate in Harry Potter fandom now that we know who She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named truly is.
I don't know the answer! When I hear people argue, "You shouldn't engage with Harry Potter stuff at all because doing so promotes She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's brand and gives her more power," I think, "Yeah, that seems correct." But then when other people argue, "The creation is always greater than the creator, and fans have taken this world and made it their own and that community's love and time have made it into something that cannot be tarnished by its origins," I also think, "Yeah, that seems correct." So as long as people are defending Her or giving her any money, I don't judge how people choose to engage or not with Harry Potter. I leave that to others' consciences.
I've been lucky so far in that no piece of art that is deeply a part of me has origins from the really terrible end of the spectrum, so I haven't had to really grapple with anything thorny in the way that Harry Potter or Big Bang fans have. But I know it's just a matter of time before I find out that one of my most beloved and formative pieces of art was created by someone who is actually, objectively a terrible influence on the world, so I think about it quite a lot even now.
So I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts about how they deal with these questions. Tell me about a creator you can't stand who made something you love! Tell me about how you think about that! Tell me what decisions you've made about how to engage with that kind of art! Anything at all!
Just be respectful that other people draw moral lines in different places than you do and that these things are complicated and almost never black-and-white.
