Caravaggio was a murderous thug. Ezra Pound was a pro-fascist and pro-Nazi anti-Semite. Virginia Woolf had an anti-Semitic streak of her own. T. S. Eliot out-and-out hated Jews. Picasso treated the women in his life abysmally; two killed themselves. Norman Mailer stabbed his wife. Walt Whitman likened the “intellect and caliber” of blacks to that of “so many baboons.” William Golding tried to rape a 15-year-old girl. The list could go on.
Of course, all those people are dead. Disreputable living artists present a more complex situation: Can we avoid having their behavior shape how we evaluate their work? How much should we be bothered that they stand to profit further by having their movies and books in circulation?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opini...&smtyp=cur
ive thought a lot about this for a long time tbh; a lot of the musicians whose music I really like are douchebags at least, or at worse outright fascists
in my mind I always thought of it this way - do the crime, but that doesn't or shouldn't stop the work. obviously this doesnt really work with hollywood stars bc they're going back from prison into being millionaires again, but should art as work suffer wholly because the entertainment industry is laid out as it is?
like
Gaahl, who as other black metal dudes, is a cultural supremacist (an elitist, which flirts with white supremacy at times) and very likely a sex abuser? but he's not... a hotshot star or anything, he's a somewhat accomplished musician, and I don't feel particularly disturbed by the idea of sending him to jail while enjoying the music he makes. this of course if his life story wasn't all made up, not unlikely in black metal because it's black metal so who cares
idk