Can you still like the art if the artist is tainted?

[robertff]

Of course, when we can choose the ones we want to be morally outraged about, especially the ones we don't like.



.

[Count Machuki]

R. Kelly's just handed himself in, the dirty fucker.

He's pleading "not guilty"

RIIIIIGHT.

[BARON CORNY DOG]

My answer to the question is "basically, yes."

I've always said that if we got rid of all the records in our collections made by deeply flawed individuals, our record collections would probably be pretty pisspoor.

That’s about it for me.

Also, I’m not one to be particularly indignant or outraged by human wrongdoing/transgressions. After 20 years of being on the internet, I now know this is abnormal.

I guess the only close call for me is when the variety of sin is particularly close to the subject of the work. So the gross hypocrisy of Bill Cosby as a moral avatar probably makes the Cosby Show a tougher case.

[Quaco]

My answer to the question is "basically, yes."

I've always said that if we got rid of all the records in our collections made by deeply flawed individuals, our record collections would probably be pretty pisspoor.

Indeed, though Goat Boy's is anyway.

[Hightea]

In most cases I would still listen to the music but wouldn't buy live concert tickets or future albums or merch. Although now with streaming services I'm not sure I would stop streaming them? It also depends on the crime or charge or if its just someone spewing crappy politics (ie: Roger Waters).

[C]

I still like Jim'll Fix It





.

[joels344]

Absolutely, there are plenty of cases where a favorite artist of mine has questionable politics or immoral personal actions. It may drive me away from them as a person, but I can still appreciate their music on a purely artistic level.

[Count Machuki]

I was never a big Mamas & Papas fan but I really can't listen to them since...

I try to separate art from artist and usually succeed but I can't get around that one.

[Sneelock]

I was listening to "Creeque Alley" only yesterday and didn't think of John Phillips’ pervertedness at all when I did. maybe I should have?

my honest answer is that sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. "Rock and Roll Part Two" is part of my insides the way that the "Happy Birthday to You" song is. Gary Glitter doesn't really seem to have much to do with that song - not the way I react to it.

Woody Allen & Cosby are different. In Woody's case - there was something in his work that seemed more innocent than it seems to me now. I've watched and enjoyed some of his stuff since the Soon-Yi story broke. the other accusations haven't really deepened this discomfort but it's certainly kept it alive. things that seemed pretty glib or good natured seem really creepy now. Most movie critics in America just PLOTZED over Manhattan. His on screen relationship with Mariel Hemingway struck many as somehow "innocent". wtf? finding out that MH says he kept calling her and asking for dates doesn't help but, the fact of the matter is, that movie was made in an America where wanting to bang high school girls was not really seen as a very big deal.

Cosby will always be good comedy but I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to it again. I was already souring on the guy when he became grumpy and moralizing after his son was killed. Hearing him compare himself to Mandella and shit is pretty repulsive all by itself.

I guess it bothers me when it bothers me.

[zoomboogity]

This is one of my favorite TV theme songs ever, and I simply refuse to give it up because of what we now know, and despite my own instinctive response being the exact opposite (this song becoming the "Yeah, but what about...?").

[algroth]

I believe it's harder to enjoy the music when the intentions either directly support whatever "taints" them, or is directly opposed to it in a fashion such that might paint the artist as hypocritical. If Gary Glitter had made a song around the time he did what he did that openly denounced paedophilia (he may have, I honestly don't know since I never bothered to listen to him), that hypocrisy would inevitably distract from whatever musical merits the track may have, or worse, render it a rather hateful song even - but so would a track openly defending his actions and the likes. With tracks and works that don't directly deal with these matters it's much easier to overlook the artist behind.

[bobzilla77]

The revelations coming out about James Brown are pretty horrendous. But I don't know if I can apply the revulsion I feel toward him personally, toward the music.

It bothers me when it does, I guess is also my answer.

In the case of R Kelly doing a song called "Do What You Want With My Body", I just can't even.

[NMB]

I didn’t buy a Gary Glitter best of until I’d checked that he wouldn’t get any royalties from it, but any issues I have are with him not with the music. Unfortunately, apart from Rock n Roll Part 2, which is what I wanted it for, the music is shit.

To be honest I can’t keep up with who’s alleged to have done what, and I certainly don’t know whether the allegations are true or not. I do know whether or not I like a record and that’s good enough for me.

[Samoan]

I can't, I feel my hackles rising...
Perhaps that's me being Miss Prunes and Prisms, I don't care, I now don't like or indeed love what I used to and that saddens me but there it is.


Jackson and The Jacksons (by association) couldn't feature in my current BCB 80s Cup list.

[Geezee]

As with most others here i think there is no hard and fast rule, moral or otherwise. Part of it is based on what precisely the offending person has done, or alleged to have done, and part of it is based on how much the music means to you. And part of it is timing I guess as well - at certain periods of your life you are more likely to react to certain things than others. Sometimes it's not even that the person has done something wrong per se, just behaving in a way that grates with you.

Woody Allen is a tough one. My wife and I would pretty religiously watch whatever new movie he came out with, however mediocre some of them were - but it was a nice little tradition we had since our first date was to go and watch Match Point. But the renewed allegations have come at a time when we were growing a bit tired of this anyway, and right now I don't feel like watching any of his movies. Similarly I was beginning to have a break from any Nick Cave music when he started vocalising alot of things that I personally have great difficulties with on playing concerts in Israel, and I haven't listened to a note since. There's a convenience there, but I'm pretty sure there will come a time when I'm in the frame of mind of wanting to watch Annie Hall again or listen to Tender Prey.

Recently I discovered that an artist I admire greatly was pretty strongly pro-Nazi in the 1930s - I knew next to nothing about his life before that, and inevitably it creates a distance between myself and how I interact with the artwork.

[Geezee]

To be honest I can’t keep up with who’s alleged to have done what, and I certainly don’t know whether the allegations are true or not. I do know whether or not I like a record and that’s good enough for me.

This is definitely also part of the problem - and there can also be a potentially unfair assumption that pretty much every artist in the 60s and 70s were doing very bad things, when actually many of them were not at all, or conversely concluding that since everyone was doing it in the 60s and 70s, it gives them a carte blanche.

It is hard to keep up - in the same way that it is hard to buy and consume ethically. At some point it becomes exhausting and almost impossible to draw a firm line. But for sure, for me it does have an impact, and it's rare that I fall deeply for an artist where I haven't also deeply cared for their character one way or another, which usually means that the bad things they've done are normally limited to abusing themselves.

[bobzilla77]

There are aspects of Norwegian black metal I find kind of musically interesting. But knowing that some of the acts are tied to actual killings, and the general whiff of white supremacist rednecks who make up that scene, makes it hard to get into it.

[Sneelock]

when you watch a movie somebody might ask you if you liked it. you'll have a look inside yourself and tell them if you did or did not enjoy it. well, what if somebody told you somebody DIED making that film. you'd probably have a different reaction. which is the correct reaction?

maybe both?

[C]

What about Elvis Presley...?

Jerry Lee Lewis?




.

[bobzilla77]

when you watch a movie somebody might ask you if you liked it. you'll have a look inside yourself and tell them if you did or did not enjoy it. well, what if somebody told you somebody DIED making that film. you'd probably have a different reaction. which is the correct reaction?

maybe both?

I never saw Last Tango In Paris,widely considered a great movie. Knowing that the director was deliberately trying to traumatize Maria Schneider gives me a real squicky feeling about ever seeing it.

And yet "those were different times", you hear about directors putting actors through all kinds of shit to get "method" performances out of them. Maybe at the time it was no big deal to do that, after all they got the shot & the film was a hit?

I just feel like there are a lot of other movies I could be watching that would not creep me out like that.