This originally appeared in the Greatest American Band thread and my reply was going to go there, until I realized that I'd kind of sprawled. If it belongs in "Speak Your Mind," mods, please feel free to move it.
To be fair, I did also say that I'm no longer sure how appropriate this is. I've been getting older, which has seemed to do nothing so much as make me certain I know less about the world than I ever could have imagined when I was young, and the past few years in Trump's America have forced me to reconsider a lot of my positions. And this issue of art and its artist is very much something I've been reconsidering. I'll kill the suspense now: I don't have any hard and fast answers. But it's a discussion I know I'm glad I'm having with myself and one that I think I wish a lot of other people would have, too.Originally Posted by GulDukat
1. A Righteous Course Correction
Sometime after I turned 21, I began to work hard to not know anything about my favorite bands. I didn't even want to know what they looked like. I wanted a good record to be a good record because it was good, and a shit record to be a shit record because it was shitty. I grew up a massive fan of Marilyn Manson and I wanted to be done with all the cult of personality nonsense—which definitely affected me more than I wanted to admit. So, I course-corrected. I didn't even want to know what anyone in a band I liked looked like because I didn't want to favor someone more or less because they had a killer image or were drop dead fuckable or whatever. Same with filmmakers and authors. In high school, I think I'd simultaneously over- and under-appreciated Garbage because I wanted to never stop having sex with Shirley Manson. Art and artist needed to be two separate things and Americans in general were terrible at this. So, way back in 2001, I decided that I would be above it. Over the years, two advanced degrees in English Lit. convinced me of the righteousness of my cause.
Starting in 2017, I think, I began to have a problem with Kanye West.
I'd actually been some degree of a fan since I bought his first record in 2003. (I'm the weirdo who hated Fantasy and adored Yeezus.) How I tolerated Kanye West for so long: I didn't know shit about Kanye. During the brief time I was on Twitter, he either wasn't, or Twitter was just that much less active. Same with Insta. When I was on Facebook, Facebook was mostly just a social network—there were barely corporate accounts and people didn't really share news. I don't read gossip magazines or watch tabloid TV. So, up until 2017, I had the same low-grade problem with Kanye West that I did with Quentin Tarantino: they were both unremitting assholes who I wouldn't let in my house if, for some reason, that very unlikely situation ever came up. Both of them had appeared multiple times outside the context of their art and behaved in ways that made me want to gutpunch them. A lot. Kanye, over the years since the initial Taylor Swift ordeal, being more vocal in more spheres, repeatedly broke through my deliberately built firewall of ignorance and proved to me that he was a cunt. But the art was good.
So I kept listening. In 2016, I figured that, for example, if I didn't know he'd done whatever he'd done, which I'd been by chance unable to ignore—like when he screamed to everyone that Cosby was innocent and I only caught it because, at the time, I was managing my bar's social media and had accidentally tabbed somewhere I hadn't meant to—I'd be much more enthusiastic about Life of Pablo, and it wasn't fair to the record, to the art, that I was considering this extratextual nonsense. Fuck noise. Was the record good? (A little from column A, a little from column B.) Besides, a lot of his shit didn't make it into the music. I don't think I like him as a person. So fucking what? We're probably not going for coffee any time soon. Further, if you look closely enough at almost any artist, he/she/they will probably turn out to be an insensitive or deranged prick of the highest order.
I've heard bits about the personal life of Kurt Vonnegut. Guys a literary hero of mine. I certainly would've told my sister not to date him. So to speak.
So, around 2017, Kanye went out of his way to praise Trump, Candace Owens, not taking meds for your bipolar disorder, &c. As if Americans need an excuse to up the stigma surrounding seeking mental health treatment. It's not a superpower, dude. It's not. But I'm glad it's working for you. Anyways, I couldn't keep him out of his art anymore. And I had to ask myself if that was because I was ethically and intellectually too weak to keep the two separated, or if maybe there was a flaw in my argument. Because, by 2017, I could certainly see his bullshit in his art. Then, #metoo happened.
So, for me, the ethics of Kanye turned out to be simple: I no longer support him politically; he puts his money and considerable platform to use when he believes in something. He has influence. Therefore, I choose to no longer support him financially, or consider his new art. The ethics of ignoring his…general asshattery became irrelevant when they were trumped—pun intended—by greater concerns, and I chose to speak with my wallet.
But it was the fact that I had even been wrestling with an ethical question of him. Artists are often asses, as I said, and for a long time, that was essentially his biggest crime—a dearth of likeability—and it was actually part of his brand. In that first winter of #metoo, it became clear that I couldn’t be done; I needed to discuss more than Kanye. Maybe fifty? Sixty? Some whom I loved. And I had to ask: If I'm willing to ethically wrestle with supporting someone who is often an unremitting asshole with some questionable and influential political opinions (which may in part be due to an unmedicated mental disorder), why am I unwilling to at least consider that Jimmy Page knowingly fucked a fourteen-year-old before listening to “Battle of Evermore”? That’s an actual sex crime and we’ve all known about it for decades.
With my original argument—never consider the artist, only consider the art—I had been in the clear. But I’d already clearly been considering the artist in the case of Kanye, and I had been doing so because it seemed difficult not to. So, why the fuck wouldn’t I consider the artist when he/she/they have done something much worse?
2. Oops. Okay. Sorry. There Were Always Exceptions.
There had always been artists whom I'd considered ethically off-limits. Roman Polanski, for instance. Gary Glitter, for as often as that came up. Ezra Pound. But in most cases, I took shelter behind my church and state views on artists and their art. Everyone's got one story that makes them look like Hitler and one that makes them look like Mr. Rogers, I'd always said. The sheer magnitude of people cited as some flavor of grotesque during the first big wave of #metoo actually didn't surprise me. I've been assaulted a few times in my life; I know statistics. Later, I'd be forced to admit that I'd just chosen to never consider them. The sudden smashing together of those two worlds—known sexual criminals and artists on my iPod or bookshelf—posed an ethical dilemma of a size I'd naively never expected to personally have to do anything about.
If you hadn't guessed and didn't already know, yeah, I'm white and male.
Somewhere around this period of time, they took R. Kelly off of Spotify playlists and someone affiliated with him asked a valid question in a surprisingly calm manner: Regarding the "Mute R. Kelly" campaign, will Spotify also be banning these 19 artists? They supplied a list of musicians with some kind of suspected or confirmed sex crime in their past. I owned records by more than half of them. Deciding I was done with Musician X or Y as new information came in had been easy, in previous years, as I'd discover issues one at a time and then have the luxury of forgetting and resetting before starting again.
But the sheer magnitude of this six-month period. Fuck. The numbers made it pretty clear to me that it wasn't just a long list of individual artists whose bodies of work I was going to be forced to consider in a different light, or admit that I was going to exercise the privilege I have to not give a shit. I was instead going to be forced to at least consciously reaffirm my entire ethical approach. Because I couldn't deny the probability that—given the likelihood of occurrence or intersection of any of the following: drugs, alcohol, ego, sex, awkward power dynamics—a great big giant fucking number of the artists whose work I admire, who weren't on the list of 19 or previously exposed over the winter, are guilty of at least one instance of sexual harassment, sexual assault, straight up racism, and who knows what else.
Again, if you don't already know or haven't deduced, I'm the kind of person who struggles with the ethics of everything. I've agonized before over whether or not it's ethical to force my cats into collars. So, you know, no issue too small, I guess.
I came to at least one conclusion right quick. Like I said, the scale of this particular issue didn't surprise me. In the back of my mind, I always had the pieces to put this together before Kanye hugged Trump or anyone added a hashtag to anything. And the conclusion I came to was that part of the reason I'd avoided considering this before was that I am a great big giant fucking coward. I don't want to feel uncomfortable in general, and I really don't want to have to feel awkward about enjoying something I can't deny that enjoy. Which is a pretty shitty thing to consciously realize, but doesn't mean it's any less true.
3. Never Ask A Question to Which You Don't Already Know the Answer
Because I'm also the kind of person people like to call Type-A, I started asking where I should and could draw lines in the sand. I started with sex criminals, since that was what had pinged my radar the most. Another thing I'd always been wary of were bands in genres where, um, all the kids at the shows had red shoelaces and the same haircut. Sure, it's sometimes just bad fashion. Usually, even. And I listened to punk, some metal. But that was one of those exceptions mentioned above—because I'd been burnt when I was young, I checked before I went all-in on anyone. You know what would've helped me in the 1990s? Not Parental Advisory stickers. Stickers that let me know right off the bat if the band would be happy to find their record was being spun at a Klan rally. Before the internet, I ran into that issue maybe a half dozen times. Which is a lot more than I should have in upstate New York at the end of the century. But anyways. Sex criminals.
Scouring my iTunes library. Sexual harassers? Fine to ignore? A weird thing to say when you lay it out like that. I wouldn't stand for it in an elected official. Am I okay saying, in the case of people who fall south of "just a creep" on the sliding scale, "I'll consider the art and not the artist?" If a pervasive environment of sexual harassment happens backstage at Musician X's shows is that a thing I should think about when buying the studio album? Let's assume there's no 1980s hair metal-style songs celebrating fucking young groupies on the record; let's say backstage sexual aggression doesn't make it into the art itself. Is it okay to not consider it when choosing to purchase? What about choosing to just listen? Would this rule out half of hip hop? I can't tell you how many records have a celebration of fucking a fan—how hard do I ponder whether it's A) if it's based on a true story or B) consensual?
Okay. Wait.
What about if they were young and drunk when they did shit like that and now they're sober? What about if they died in 1972? At what point do I admit that every male I have ever met who's been in a position of authority—including, unfortunately, me—has at least once created a situation in which a female colleague is wildly uncomfortable in a way that legally qualifies as hostile environment harassment? What the hell does that mean for my separation of male artists and their art? Ethically speaking, just because something is a lost cause doesn't mean it's not also the right course of action.
Okay. Wait. Things are spiraling. This is about art. If it's good art, if it's a good record, should it matter if it was made by a flawed man—especially in a culture where all men are flawed? I mean...within reason. Am I the right person to ask what level of sex crime is "within reason"? Laid out like that, it seems like a pretty shitty argument.
What about if I found out Musician X never hired Black roadies? What about if they didn't hire Black roadies, but the musician died in 1972?
What if they don't work with Black session musicians? How would I even find something like that out? What if they just happened to have not worked with Black session musicians because they haven't met someone with whom they vibe? That's ridiculous. It's the music industry. That would almost have to be deliberate, wouldn't it? How many Black studio techs are there working in places that specialize in country or death metal?
Okay. Say that, without trying to look for the information, I found out that Musician X deliberately passed on Black session players and studio techs who were willing to work on his new record, and this record was allegedly transcendent, genre-defining, and included a shitload of feminist lyrics. And I'd already bought it. What level of engagement with this record is ethically appropriate? None, right? But what if I'd already been listening and I thought it was great? Does this information—reflected nowhere in the aural scope of the album—affect how much I appreciate it? And if it does, is that because I understandably lack the capability to be objective in the face of such information? In a case this clear cut, I know I'd abandon the record. But what the hell does "clear cut" mean when it comes to something like this?
When John Mayer said "my dick is a white supremacist" while playing in a band with Black colleagues on a record that had precisely zero racial content, do I continue to listen to the record and say, "That has nothing to do with the art." It doesn't, does it? Is that "clear cut" racist enough? They cancelled the Roseanne reboot for nonsensical racist comments about Islam and Valerie Jarret that, unless I missed something about the plot of the show, had nothing to do with anything in the art. That was definitely "clear cut." And I think most people agree that they were right to cancel the show—even if they only did so because it would be financially nuts for them to stand behind it. Is it just a matter of precisely determining proper tipping points, then? That seems insane.
Okay.
I can imagine anyone who's made it this far screaming "Enough!" at the page, over and over again. I can imagine this whole section being under the heading of Libtard Cuck of the Day on some right wing site. Or floating around on Black Twitter as an example of white people not getting it quite right. And I know 95% of people who read to this point—so maybe both of you—will say, "Dude, you've got too much time on your hands." Which is an expression I've always hated, because people always say it to someone when they're being thoughtful, even if the thoughts themselves aren't particularly headed anywhere world-changing. Maybe save that shit for people in moments where they're watching anything that starts with Real Housewives, eh?
Point being, even I feel like these are all insane semantic questions. And they're also very much not at all stupid or irrelevant questions.
4. Okay. Wait. Breathe. I Have to Know Something
Let's escalate the sex crime. Is a thing I would not have believed I'd say today when I woke up.
If Musician X turns out to be a rapist, I won't buy any new music from that person because I'd consider it unethical to continue to supporting them. That's a thing I've always felt—another of those initially extant exceptions. I listen to a wide swath of music—from classical to alt-country to jazz to hip hop—and no matter how fresh anyone says a track is, if I find out Chris Brown is involved, I'm out. I've never heard anything he's done (though I'm sure they play it in supermarkets or whatever). And I've always been surprised by the number of people from all walks of life who say, "Hate him, but this shit is fire." But that has nothing to do with art and artist separation; that's more about the ethics of commerce.
Since the late 'aughts, I've not allowed R. Kelly to be played on a shift in a workplace where I'm in charge. I once threw a cook's stereo into the fryer after putting "I Believe I Can Fly" on repeat to spite me; I've told DJs that I'll fire them if they spin R. Kelly at my bars. In my opinion, Kelly's music kinda sucks and is pretty creepy in retrospect. And I think I'd be ethically remiss to not consider the artist when it came time to buy, play, or evaluate his music. So, maybe this is also more about the ethics of commerce, but it's also a case where—even if some entity on high came down and told me that You Must Consider the Art Without Considering Its Artist, I'd stand firm and say, "Nah. I'm fine breaking that commandment, thanks."
So, wait. Is the rule "Don't consider the artist unless the artist is really shitty?" That can't be right, can it? I'm asking. I'm honestly asking. How the fuck would one apply a rule like that?
Okay. Let's strip the commerce out of it. What if I find out about Musician X was a rapist after he's already died? His relatives have disowned his actions and they donate the proceeds of sales to RAINN. Is it ethical to pay for records then? But when I listen to them, am I obligated to remember the artist was a rapist?
Or take the Roman Polanski example: As I said, I've never felt comfortable separating the art from the artist in his case, even when that was my Life's Mission and I wouldn't shut up about it. Indeed, I've never seen one of his flicks because I don't want to even consider the art as part of the conversation about great films. But will it be okay to watch The Pianist after he dies? What about 100 years later? Ostensibly the flick—divorced from a known author—wouldn't be an obvious celebration of pederasty?
Wait. This is the internet: Surely reducto ad Hitlerium will prove to me something? I've seen some of Hitler's artwork. It's not great. It's not terrible. If someone brought me a high-quality print of a Hitler painting, I'm not in the right to hang it on the wall and enjoy it, right? If I didn't know it was a Hitler and I liked it, and then found out it was a Hitler, I have to consider that and at least remove it, even if I can't stop reflexively enjoying its aesthetics.
I know that much.
Seriously? This is as far as I've gotten in 2,500 words?
Continued in the post below. I had no idea there was a post length limit on ETS...
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