Can we still enjoy art if we know the artist has been immoral?
Can you separate the art from the artist? The age-old question has become a lot more difficult in the Me-Too era.
Hi everyone, I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and you are listening to Plain English, the best podcast for learning English. Check out today’s episode transcript at PlainEnglish.com/126. And don’t forget, if you’re interested, you can connect with us on WhatsApp. The phone number is +1 312 967 8757, and don’t forget the plus-one ahead of the number. Send me a message on there and add me as a contact. If you do so, then you will get the occasional special message from me—like I said on Thursday, I’m not exactly sure how I’ll use it, but I’m excited to connect with some of you on WhatsApp. +1 312 967 8757.
Today’s episode is really long, so let’s not waste any more time!
Can you separate the art from the artist?
Here is a partial list of entertainers and artists who, in their personal lives, have been found to have either abused or sexually harassed the people around them: most famously last year, director Harvey Weinstein; comedian Louis CK; actor and comedian Bill Cosby; actor Kevin Spacey; comedian and former US Senator Al Franken; journalist Charlie Rose; journalist Matt Lauer; singer Chris Brown. Singer R. Kelly has now been dropped by RCA records after the release of a six-episode documentary series called “Surviving R. Kelly.” You can Google that if you want to know the exact content, but I bet you can guess.
All of this puts us, the consumers of entertainment, in a somewhat awkward position. We don’t want to support the kind of behavior we read about in these cases. But it’s also hard to sit down and enjoy their work without thinking about what we know in the back of our minds. So how should we deal with this as consumers?
For a long time, the easy answer was: separate the art from the artist. Just put it out of your mind. As a listener, you shouldn’t have to evaluate everything you know about a singer before you can just enjoy his or her songs. This view says that you can punish the artist, but the actual artwork should enjoy a special place separated from the morals of the person producing it. You’re free to enjoy, criticize, think about a piece of art—whether it’s a movie, a song, or a painting—without having to weigh the personal morals of the artist. Art enjoys a special place in society, and performs a valuable service to our culture. We should be free to enjoy, or not enjoy a work of art without worrying about the people behind it. You can pass judgment on the person separately.
The opposite reaction is to erase everything a disgraced artist has produced from memory. It’s not right anymore, this view says, to watch the movie Shakespeare in Love, produced by Harvey Weinstein; or to binge on the Netflix series House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey. Surely, we can all live without these works: there are other movies, other TV shows, other recording artists we can enjoy without supporting the work of people found to have abused their positions of power. And besides, wouldn’t it be hard to enjoy certain works of art, knowing the bad stuff about the people behind them?
Media companies are taking sides. HBO, for example, has erased all Louis CK content from its archives. Netflix, by contrast, has kept House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, and its Louis CK archives available for streaming.
Totally erasing all previous works of art by a scandalous artist doesn’t sit well with me. Take the movie Shakespeare in Love. Yes, it was produced by Harvey Weinstein. No, we don’t want to support Weinstein or enhance his legacy. We certainly don’t want him earning additional royalties when we stream his work. But it starred Gwyneth Paltrow, who was actually one of Weinstein’s victims; she won the Oscar for Best Actress that year. If we don’t watch Shakespeare in Love because of Harvey Weinstein, aren’t we at the same time punishing everyone else who collaborated, including Gwyneth Paltrow? Same goes for Judi Dench, who also won an Oscar for her performance in the same movie; she had nothing whatsoever to do with the Weinstein scandal. Should we discard all her work in that same movie? Hundreds, if not thousands, of people collaborate to make a Hollywood film. Do we have to approve of every one of them before we relax and enjoy the show?
Neither one of those two extremes is satisfying to me. There is a tentative middle ground, though, which I think actually works for me. Here’s where some people draw the line: does the content of the work have anything to do with what we know about the person?
Louis CK had a semi-biographical show on Netflix, which I thought was generally funny and well-done. But if I watched it again today, knowing what we do about his off-screen personality, I don’t think I would find it funny anymore. I won’t go into details, but a lot of what’s in that show seemed funny and even endearing at the time, but would seem quite different today. So I think I’m done with Louis CK. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Kevin Spacey movies and I still think I want to watch House of Cards. After all, he plays a villain in House of Cards! It might even enhance my enjoyment knowing the villain in the show was a villain in real life. But I think the movie American Beauty would be hard to watch again—if you’ve seen that movie, then you know what I mean. Google some of R. Kelly’s or Chris Brown’s lyrics, and you’ll see that some of those become even more problematic, knowing what we do about his life off-stage.
We also have to take into account that (a) people can change and learn from the past; and (b) it’s easy to pass judgment on famous people, whose lives are in the spotlight, when none of us is perfect, and none of our personal failings are broadcast on Twitter for everyone to see. We always have to keep both of those things in mind. Everyone will draw the line at a different place, and that’s okay. I guess the unfortunate thing for me, as a consumer, is that I even have to think about drawing the line at all. I can hope that the recent revelations cause the entertainment industry to reform. If that happens, then consumers of entertainment can spend less time parsing the moral failings of the artists and more time just enjoying the show. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Time to say hi to a couple of listeners. Anavi from Guatemala has been listening for a few months, and even shared the podcast with her peers in an online English course she’s taking. Thanks for the free publicity Anavi! Natascha from Austria is a twenty-five year veteran of English, but still listens to keep sharp on her skills. Thanks for listening Natascha. Also, hello to Carlos from Mexico, from the State of Mexico, in the middle near the capital.
Plus, here’s something funny. I don’t think I’ve ever met or talked to anyone named Igor in my life—and then I heard from two listeners named Igor in the same day. The first one to send me a note, Igor M., works in international logistics and says that Plain English is fundamental to his English learning. The other Igor, Igor S., is from Brazil and works in biotech and has been speaking English more and more at work. Thanks to both Igors for your notes this week. Also Michelle in Stuttgart, Germany, says she loves listening to songs in English—and even likes them better than songs from her native China. Now that’s saying something!
Actually Michelle brings up a good point in her email to me, which is that she also listens to full-speed English podcasts, but listens here to concentrate on the words and listen to the phrases. I do the same thing in Spanish. I listen to one for Spanish learners, called Hoy Hablamos, and it’s good for building vocabulary and learning how to say things in Spanish. But at the same time, I watch TV and listen to programs at full speed. So having both is a good mixture. I bet some of you do the same thing.
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