Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

A while ago, a coworker and I had a conversation about the topic of when an entertainer does something truly terrible and how it affects their works. The pretty recent scandal involving Woody Allen and the not so recent scandal of Roman Polanski. We both agreed that, despite doing some awful things, the films that they created were still cinematic masterpieces. I personally feel that no one can really trash Chinatown just because of Roman Polanski's indiscretions.

So I ask this: Should anything unethical done by an entertainer be applied to their work as well? Also, do you think that there are any points where that should, or even must, be done?

I believe it should be depending on the seriousness of what they did. Because i think having their art and hard work tarnished is the ultimate punishment.

I'm a pretty firm believer that the personal beliefs/actions of an artist should be separate from the art itself. Separation of business and personal life, you know? As long as those controversies/actions/beliefs are not represented in their work then I don't think we should stop ourselves from enjoying masterpieces just because the hands that made it were shit stained. For example, a lot of people were making a stink because it went public that the author of Ender's Game was a homophobe, but (as far as I know) there were no homophobic messages in the book itself, so I think it shouldn't really affect ones enjoyment of reading it. When you have an example of someone putting those controversial things in their work like Chris Brown, where every song he makes is basically to remind us that he beat up Rihanna and is not sorry about it, then yeah nobody can blame you for not wanting to enjoy his music anymore.

But that's just me. I can't entirely blame someone for letting their emotions and beliefs influence their perceptions of art. Hell, the entire point of art is to express emotion and beliefs. I'm just putting out my stance on situations like this.

Great thread, by the way.

In the original run of Ender's Game, the aliens were called "Buggers", which is a british slang term for Homosexuals. They changed the aliens' names in later copies and in the movies.

I guess there's a difference between should we enjoy their work and should we support the creator.

Let's say you enjoy music of an artist who has done some controversional things in the media. Leaving aside your taste in music, let's just say you really do enjoy it. With his current negative behavior in the media, that might cause some issues for you. Like the people who posted before, I believe you should still be allowed to enjoy his music. What he does in his private life should not affect your tastes in music.

But when it comes to how you support him as a musician, that's where I think you are allowed to look at it differently. Instead of buying his songs, feel less guilty about torrenting them. Don't give the person postive reviews anymore, because you're judging the person behind the music there and not the music itself.

You're free to listen to the music, but that doesn't mean the creator should be supported alongside that. Tarnish their reputation, but not your own tastes.

I agree with a lot of what's said here.

Now whatever work of art, especially movies, usually aren't created by one person. The idea, concept, and story maybe, but a full team of writers, directors, actors, and designers give everything they have to create something special. Doesn't apply as much to music, literature, and other forms of art that require less people, but it still may be valid depending on the situation. We're all humans. We all make mistakes, but we can also create masterpieces.

I think it depends on how much their problems come out in their work. When Ian Wattkins was found out to be a pedophile, a lot of lyrics found a whole new context and people became extremely uncomfortable listening to his music. On the other hand I have no qualms whatsoever in admitting that Hitler was a good painter. It all depends on the relationship between their crimes and their work.

I enjoy the song "Rooftops". I hate the lead singer of Lostprophets. Chris Benoit's life ended horribly, but fuck me if he wasn't greatest technical wrestler in the WWF/E in his time. Hell, I like some of fucking Shadman's art. The point being, separate the art from the artist.

And admittedly, Chris had the mind of an 80-year-old with Alzheimer's and Shadman's just a jerk at times and draws some offensive shit, but my point stands.

Except for you, Dahvie Vanity. I hate your music and I hate you.

I think people doing bad things should have absolutely no impact on how good their art is.
Carl Ruggles was racist and antisemitic. Richard Wagner was antisemitic. Although I don't agree with their views, I still respect and enjoy their music.

personally, i mostly separate the person from the art.

dispite the fat kanye west can be a complete douche and self absorbed asshole it would be stupid to dismiss his great abilities as a producer.

Like Crimson Locks mentioned, you can't talk about fantastic works by controversial people without talking about Orson Scott Card.

Recently, he was slated to work on a special issue of SUPERMAN comics, but people hate him so much (because of what he's said about the LGBT community) that they protested, and the comic he wrote will never be published.

Which is a shame, because he IS a VERY good writer, especially of science fiction, and his take on Superman would have been pretty neat, I think.

For the sake of trying to keep an (in my opinion) interesting conversation alive, I want to play devil's advocate here. What about the idea that entertainers often are viewed as role models? True, many may not set out to be role models but often end up becoming as such in some fashion. Since they are in the public eye, they often do have an influence on not just their fans but on the rest of the surrounding culture in general.

The idea of making entertainers/celebrities role models was always idiotic to me. If you wanna make yourself a role model to kids like Mr. Rogers that's fine, but the fact that the general public expects public figures to be moral guardians to kids is ridiculous. If you want their creative work to inspire and motivate you that's fine, but a lot of the time you'll find the person you looked up to is a pretty huge jerk in real life.

Sometimes this can work the lther way around. For example, I don't like Marilyn Manson's music. It's just not something I like taste-wise. However, I like him as a person. What he tries to do and what he stands for I find to be very honorable despite what people may think of him at first glance. I've seen a few interviews with him and he legitimately is a pleasant person. This also ties into the "role models" argument because Manson is often targetted for "corrupting" children. For starters, he doesn't try to be a role model, and secondly, I don't think kids should be listening to this guy in the first place. Like with Miley Cyrus, she's not a Disney star anymore. She's an adult. She's not trying to be a role model. Get over it. Same with all the other child stars "turned bad".

As an example of someone I look up to, I really love just about everything that Henry Rollins has been involved with. But I also realize that back when he was in Black Flag in the 80s, the guy was an asshole. Hell, this was him not being as much of an asshole. He also had the tendency to beat the shit out of fans while he was performing. This is probably the most famous video of that. During my graduation ceremony, one of the keynote speakers talked about how, in the mid 80s, he booked Black Flag to play a show at my alma mater. During said show, some kid threw water at him and Rollins promptly beat the crap out of the kid. In short, I know the guy's had a reputation for being an asshole.

But Rollins has definitely mellowed out since his time in Black Flag and, judging by his spoken word stuff like this reveals that he is actually pretty intelligent. This article inspired me to take my weightlifting much more seriously than before. Basically, I feel that, despite some of our heroes being terrible people at times, they can still bring us great art and even positively influence us in ways that doesn't have to do with their behavior and/or beliefs.

My view on this should come as a surprise to no one, but if the average person got as much opportunity and attention as these people get, they'd act like just as much of an asshole. The only reason people look down on them for this is this bullshit idea that celebrities have to be held to a "higher standard", which involves them somehow managing to do absolutely none of the mean and selfish things that everyone else does on a near daily basis. Yeah, good luck with that guys.

also, maybe when they are hypocrites about the things they sing about, like lennon.

In my personal opinion, people's social lives, opinions, and actions should never be connected to their works.

For example, Tom Cruise can be a crazy nut that goes on and on about the strangest, most off-the-wall shit. Same goes for Jon Travolta, and both of these guys are devout scientologists. Yet, although I may not accept or respect their lifestyles, I can appreciate them as entertainers, for both of them have been in fantastic movies that I've watched countless times.

The same goes for people off-screen or people that passed away long ago. A good example is H.P. Lovecraft, who is hands down my favorite writer. I absolutely love all the stuff he writes about cosmos and giant, behemoth-monsters wreaking havoc and causing insanity within different planes of the universe. However, while I highly respect Lovecraft as a writer, he was definitely not the best of people when it came to morals.

He despised Christians, and believed that non-Ayran people were inferior and were ruining the United States' greatness by immigrating there. His racism did transcend into his works, as some stories alluded to what he called "the folly of man" involving Blacks, Mexicans, and Italians ruining the white man's efforts with the American Dream. Hell, he even named one of the characters "Nigger Man". I tend to avoid these stories when I can and focus on stuff that involves the Necronomicon and the Cthulhu mythos. I can respect the racist stories for the effort Lovecraft put into making an interesting story with a mysterious plot and interesting events, but I do not respect the way he looked down on certain people for their ethnicity.

tl;dr – Don't let someone's actions or opinions take away from their artistic value.

As most people said in the topic, I usually don't let negative aspects of a person affect whether I like their works or not. But sometimes though, I might be inclined to stay away from them for some time. This was the case with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth when his political views in 2012 went off the wrong side, culminating in a bs conspiracy rant about shootings being staged by the government. That rant left me on the wrong side that I literally had to remove Megadeth's discography off my music folder (into a temp folder though) and not listen to them for several months. Though I started to listen to them again several months later and still like several of their albums, the incident kind of left me sour.

Same thing with Lostprophets as most people in the topic have mentioned already with Ian Watkins…though it was a longer time before I got them back in my library…but because of Ian's sick behavior, I found it even more difficult to listen to Lostprophets and only listen to a few songs once in a while.

And several punk rock bands I listen to seem to have a little too far left of me beliefs (some are alligned with PETA), but fuck that, it ain't gonna affect me listening to these bands.

I was just talking to one of my friends when strangely enough this subject kinda sorta came up. We were talking about the Attack on Titan english dub and my friend says she refuses to watch it because not only did she hear it just wasn't that good but apparently the voice actor for Levi is notorious for treating his fans terribly. Now I was going to bring up my opinion that I don't think the person's actions should affect one's enjoyment of the work, but then I thought in a way a person's actions towards fans can have a lot of connections with the works they make. For instance, when Justin Bieber, known for singing romantic songs meant for making girls swoon, allegedly calls one of his fans a whale that can kinda break the magic of listening to his music to begin with. A lot of fans like to perceive that the works they enjoy were made for the fans' enjoyment, so when a creator treats their fans like shit it can kinda make one wonder "well, why the hell should I even bother?". I hope that kinda made sense. Either way, what do you guys think?

Yeah, I get what your saying. For the most part, even if an entertainer shows that they're not that great a person, they're often at the very least nice to their fans. Occasionally, you get that one entertainer who is, to put it bluntly, a complete and utter asshole to their fans. I've given it some thought and I'd have to say that if a favorite author, musician, actor, etc. treated me, as a fan, like crap, I would probably continue to use their entertainment but I don't think I'd be able to say that I wouldn't be left bitter from the experience of one of my favorite entertainers being disrespectful to me.

False. Bugger is rarely ever used to as a derogatory word for homosexuals, only really anal sex. The word has wide variety of meanings and is more commonly used for for fools or foolishness, basically another way to say fuck and as something that causes an annoyance among many other meanings.

In fact in Halo they use the words buggers for the Drones. In fact it in the series they use bugger and Formics interchangeably. Plus they were called buggers because they are meant to look like bugs.

So infact he didn't really use anything against homosexuals I am aware of.

As for the actual discussion I am basically with everyone else.

the writer of ender's game was a homophobe???

that is very hard to accept, considering all the naked boy on boy action that happened in the book… just sayin…

Chris Benoit was a murderer, but he was a hell of a wrestler. so yeah that shouldn't impact his preformance as a wrestler.

Well, I have another example just because. I like Egoraptor's animations and I can enjoy his commentary on Game Grumps, but I'm his polar opposite opinion-wise. I disagree with him on almost everything he says in this aspect. Sometimes it sort of keeps me from watching his stuff, but as this thread has shown, I try to get past it and watch anyways.