How do you separate the artist from the work?

[DanMad1977]

but I'm glad your uncle was good to you.

When I was young parents weren't overprotecting like parents are today. For better or for worse.

[Iron_Legion87]

Ah some actors I don't like personally like Will Smith or Marky Mark. But I still go see their movies because I like the genres they work in.

If you don't mind me asking, why don't you like Will Smith? I haven't heard many negatives stories about him being an awful person to folks on set or off set. He seems to be a nice guy overall. Of course, I know about the beef he had with the original Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince but they recently patched things up. I also read like two stories on Reddit from people who claim to have ran into him in public or served him as a waiter at a restaurant and he allegedly kinda of a jerk to them ( but again take that with a grain of salt). It just rare to hear anyone saying anything bad about Will though. Marky Marky had some past incidents in his youth of being racist or saying racist things ( I think).

[Mia]

Like others here have said, you just separate the artist from the work. If if comes to a situation where I don't want to put money in their pocket. I buy the DVD/box/book/CD second hand. Or I just borrow the DVD from the library.

[Kirby101]

If you don't mind me asking, why don't you like Will Smith? I haven't heard many negatives stories about him being an awful person to folks on set or off set. He seems to be a nice guy overall. Of course, I know about the beef he had with the original Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince but they recently patched things up. I also read like two stories on Reddit from people who claim to have ran into him in public or served him as a waiter at a restaurant and he allegedly kinda of a jerk to them ( but again take that with a grain of salt). It just rare to hear anyone saying anything bad about Will though. Marky Marky had some past incidents in his youth of being racist or saying racist things ( I think).

I don't know about Smith, but Wahlberg attack black people and a Vietnamese man and permanently injured his eye. He wen to jail for it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a9554191.html

[thefinalguy]

The art often allows the artist to get away with whatever they're doing behind closed doors. The reality is the two are inseparable, too much of it is rooted in whatever bad that's being performed.

[DanMad1977]

I don't know about Smith, but Wahlberg attack black people and a Vietnamese man and permanently injured his eye. He wen to jail for it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...-a9554191.html

He changed. Thats what he said. He was a teenager when that happened, so I believe him until proven otherwise.

[Zauriel]

I wouldn't watch a Siegfried & Roy show if they were caught mistreating or abusing their animals. I also wouldn't attend any circus or zoo that mistreats animals.

Is it weird that I don't mind seeing an artist's works, when the artist was known to hurt people, but I would not see their work if the artist was caught abusing a pet dog or cat.

[CentralPower]

That gets to the 3-point scale I mentioned. The nature/scale of the bad thing matters. In your case, you see abusing cats/dogs are serious enough to blackball someone.

The art often allows the artist to get away with whatever they're doing behind closed doors. The reality is the two are inseparable, too much of it is rooted in whatever bad that's being performed.

Generally, I agree. But, some art (an actor's work) is easier to separate than other art (a writer's work).

Of course, some people (such as some people earlier in this thread) use that natural ambiguity to argue that it does not matter st all.

[Cyke]

Something's gotta be said about holding the wrongdoer accountable because that, too, allows a separation between the artist from the work. Rewarding brilliance by helping them escape accountability is only to encourage that behavior, but acknowledging brilliance while or after they pay their debt to society (not necessarily jail) allows that appreciation again. The two are not mutually exclusive.

With that said, the thing about Whedon I've found is that it's actually increasing the appreciation for the cast and crew who worked under him, since now their fans are aware that they had to churn out good work in spite of and persevere under Whedon's reign. No one should have to work under those conditions, but the fact that they did and came out of it is a big FU to him. Heck, it's one of the reasons why Tina Turner became such an inspiration after Ike Turner.

[GozertheGozarian]

He changed. Thats what he said. He was a teenager when that happened, so I believe him until proven otherwise.

He said God forgave him. Never apologized or showed any real remorse for doing it.

[DanMad1977]

He said God forgave him. Never apologized or showed any real remorse for doing it.

Did he? Thats lame. Maybe he is one of the guys who can't apologize because of their manhood or whatever keeps them from saying it.

[maninthemacintosh1606]

One thing that is left out of this discussion is the arbitrary nature of 'boycotting' an artist for whatever action or view they hold because cognitive dissonance allows a person to highlight someone who for various reasons captures their attention at the exclusion of all else. For instance, if you don't like an actor because they hold views you disagree or find reprehensible, that's all well and good but what exactly are you doing by refusing to see a film with them in it? You are trying to have 'clean hands' or feel better about yourself, but that movie wasn't made by that actor, the actor was a cog in a large machine where typically a large amount of people and their creative efforts are involved. Not only that, the property itself is typically owned by a huge corporation. Why is the thoughts of behaviours of a single person held out above all else and used to judge something they simply had a part in? Should the grip who worked on the set be made to suffer for their role in the production of the film? The costume designer? And usually we are talking about something made and owned by huge conglomerate corporations which represent far worse and far more heinous and reprehensible - systematic - abuses and horrors but everyone who wants to single out an individual seems to be fine with the workings of monopoly capitalism and capitalism in general. It seems that this motivation to not taint oneself by supporting an individual is rather myopic and more about personal mental hygiene than anything like social justice or even 'ethical consumption'. Which also makes me wonder why things considered as part of entertainment media or art are taken to be expressions and extensions of particular individuals, but no other commodity that is bought and sold is given this same kind of 'fetishistic' quality. If you found out that one of the workers on an assembly line of workers at a factory responsible for the table you have in your living room had beliefs in his head that are reprehensible, you wouldn't throw away the table because you didn't want to be infected by that worker's ideas or because you didn't want to support the livelihood of that worker. But if you don't like JK Rowling's personal views and everyone deciding to boycott her work means that some guy working some low-level job at a publishing house loses their job due to the financial consequences of the boycott, then this is justified so that consumers can feel more ethical about the choices they are making, determined in a completely arbitrary fashion? I think the problem is the ruling ideology has primed people to believe in a very specific, idealistic conception of artistic creation and the singular creative function of the 'artist' and as a result people are primed to view things through this prism of artistic creation and the purchase power of the consumer mediated by the market. We need to actually just get outside of this paradigm and start to view things more as an interrelated structural network of production and consumption and start to analyse how these things function accordingly.

[Alan2099]

I think another part of the problem is that people want things to be either good or bad. They have trouble accepting that sometimes good people can do bad things and that sometimes bad people can do good things.

[batnbreakfast]

I think another part of the problem is that people want things to be either good or bad. They have trouble accepting that sometimes good people can do bad things and that sometimes bad people can do good things.

It seems they haven't learned a thing from Game of Thrones

[Bunch of Coconuts]

He said God forgave him. Never apologized or showed any real remorse for doing it.

Doesn’t saying God forgave him imply he asked for forgiveness?

I do understand that this doesn’t always mean much to those inflicted, and possibly less so to those that don’t believe in “God”, but for people of faith it can be a turning point.

This is from the point of view as an Atheist, for what that’s worth.