Ask Lemmy

Kanye. Piece of shit narcissist through and through.

Lost Prophets. Lead singer fucked babies.

whenever I see a meme with art from stonetoss (a neo-nazi) in it, I have a visceral response

Hitler

John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy. That man is a demon.

"DJ" Khalid. I've heard that he's actually a very talented musician. I've never been shown proof that the claims are true.

Why would I try to do so in the first place?

Imagine someone telling you "you have to separate the product from the corporation. Yes, they lobby to permit slave labour and are directly funding the genocide in Palestine, but they make one fine chicken sandwich - and if you don't put down your silly objections to focus on that, you have failed as a human being".

Fuck that, fuck everything about that.

Art is political. Fiction doubly so. You cannot and should not try to rip art free from its cultural context, because that context is the perspective that gives it meaning in the first place.

And extra-splintery fuck the idea that the onus is on the audience to sweep everything under the carpet for horrible people.

We're in no danger of running out of art. We have an unlimited supply of artists just waiting for a break in the canopy to sprout up and grow into something new and exciting. If a handful of toxic assholes get canceled despite being popular, then so much the better.

JK Rowling. Fuck Harry Potter.

Ian Watkins, lead singer of the band Lostprophets. Never read the court transcripts of his crimes, they really are that horrible and will ruin you for some time.

Ian Watkins. Leaf singer of Lost Prophets.

Convicted baby rapist.

I still listen to Michael Jackson but I won’t listen to R Kelly.

Marlon Brando

After hearing from Maria Schneider, and confirmed by Bertolucci, how he and Brando treated her filming the rape scenes in Last Tango my Brando crush instantly withered on the vine. She was only 19.

Roman Polanski and by extension Jack Nicholson

Eh, not really.

Now, there are some examples where I won't/can't actively seek out their work, and would never contribute to them by buying anything at all, ever.

Cosby falls into that category, just as an example.

But, I have a complete separation as far as the work itself being valid/good despite the origins. Using Cosby as the example again, if I'm somewhere and one of his performances is on, I'm not going to care enough to change a channel or leave, or even say anything.

That's pretty much anyone and everyone. I just don't have that thing where a given item, piece of work, whatever, is "tainted" just because the person that made it is a piece of shit. I don't form an association like that. It's that I choose to not seek out some things as a matter of principle.

But, as a general rule, if they're dead, I don't care at all. And, if the person in question is only one person involved in a group effort, that group effort is fine by me. Like, if the guitarist of a band is a piece of shit, but everyone else is not, why would their work be a bad thing?

Now, this isn't to say that I ignore any bad acts when interacting with a given work. Take van Gogh as an example. His excesses and disturbing behaviors are part of his work to an extent. It's a thing where knowing the person's flaws informs the interaction with the work. Kinda like "gee, I wonder how much of this work stems from the same root as the bad acts did?"

But, I can enjoy the work of people I personally despise with no issues. I just don't have whatever it is that other people have that makes a thing tainted based on the creator.

Part of that is knowing how shitty humans in general are, and how hard it is to find any artist that didn't/doesn't have massive flaws. In music and painting in particular, you run into a shit ton of artists that were abysmal people. If I did have that whatever it is that causes a connection between the art and the artist's flaws, I wouldn't be able to listen to much music at all.

George W. Bush

Bill Cosby.

Terry Goodkind.

Can't separate the work from the author since both are pretty bad.

It takes a special kind of person to require a pinned "please don't celebrate deaths" reminder on Reddit when you die...

Rammstein is terrible. Clear cut allegations of systematic exploitation and lawyers who tried to silence big newspapers.

Kristian Vikernes

I certainly won’t listen to Gary Glitter’s music