How do you separate the artist from the work?

[Comic-Reader Lad]

For me, it's very case-by-case specific. And, I'll be the first to admit that how I felt about the person BEFORE the scandal heavily weighs into things, so I definitely don't have a "fair and impartial" system. However, if a person does bad things, I don't completely overlook it, but it often does NOT cause me to "cancel" them.

For example:

- Mel Gibson - I never really cared too much about him before his drunken anti-Semitic rant years ago, so I had no problem avoiding any of his future work, but I would still watch the DVDs of his movies I have like Mad Max.

- Nick Cannon - His anti-Semitic comments were a lot more recent, and he's already been forgiven and is back to work with Sony. Quite frankly, he's getting away with things that others have not -- like the country singer, Morgan Wallen, who recently used the N-word and has been dropped and canceled all over the place. We can't have a double standard, so I do have to question why Cannon was so quickly uncancelled. Is it because prejudice against Jews isn't considered as big a deal as prejudice against people of color? If so, that's a bad message Hollywood is sending.

- Bill Cosby - Again, I never really cared about him, and because he committed actual CRIMES, I'm ok with canceling him. I have a couple of Bill Cosby projects in my collection that I'll continue to own, but I don't see myself getting anything I don't already have.

- Harvey Weinstein - Like Cosby, he committed crimes, but since he was not an on-camera actor, I can overlook his name in the credits and enjoy his productions that I already like. As a person, he was terrible, but as a producer, his taste was unparalleled in Hollywood, so he did produce a lot of art-house flicks that he turned into mainstream blockbusters, and a lot of people put a lot of hard work into those movies, so their work should not be flushed down the drain with Harvey. Like Cosby, he's actually receiving punishment in the justice system, not just losing his job, so I think there's nothing more that I need to do.

- Joss Whedon - I can enjoy Buffy and Angel and Avengers, again it's easier because he's behind-the-scenes, but if committed any actual crimes (Michelle Trachtenberg's tweets are hinting in that direction, but she's being very cryptic and needs to understand proper punctuation), then it would depend on how serious things get to see how much effort I need to make to overlook his name in the credits.

- Alfred Hitchcock - gotta admit this is the toughest for me, as I'm a big Hitchcock fan and he's not an anonymous behind-the-camera guy. His image and persona are very well known. I don't see that he's committed out-and-out crimes, but if he were in Hollywood today, they would have canceled him for the way he treated his actresses. The fact that it was decades ago and it's not on social media right now makes it easier to overlook. That's not fair to the actresses affected, but as I said, my system is very much "what benefits me most." That being said, I'm not going to forget what's been said or make excuses for his behavior. He was wrong.


However, some recent cases seem a bit of an overreaction to me based on what little I know about the situations:

- Armie Hammer - So, he allegedly has cannibal fantasies and texted a woman or women about them. You know what? I think it's unfair that he's been dropped from projects and by his publicist and management agency. We don't have Thought Police in this country, and if all he did was have fantasies and express them, then I don't think things need to go to that level. It seems that he hasn't ever hurt anyone or pressured a woman to indulge in his fantasies (if true), so I think this is a case of social media running amok and then Hollywood overreacting, but that's what happens when a "zero tolerance" policy is first instituted. You don't want to be the one who is seen as covering up for someone, so people are getting thrown under the bus a lot more easily these days. I will still absolutely watch his movies and hope his career recovers. I was pulling for him to be Batman over Robert Pattinson, and I still think there's a place for him in a superhero movie (no, not as Dracula, you wiseasses).

- Gina Carano of The Mandalorian - Don't know her, but from what I understand of her situation, she compared expressing a conservative political viewpoint to the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. It does bug me that people sometimes throw around a Holocaust comparison in order to make their point (she's not the only one who's done this). It's lazy and has the side effect of diminishing the historical power of that event, but if that's ALL she did, then I wouldn't have fired her from the show. A sincere apology would have been enough. If she's done other stuff, then that might change things for me.


So, there you have it, a lot of this is emotion-based rather than set-in-stone rules. But that's how things are going to be when discussing people that I've never met and don't really care about.