JCC IMDb for Hollywood/Celebrity/Famous sexual predators

Yeah, people who made significant, positive contributions to culture also did horrible things. Who needs culture?

 

From destruction comes innovation.
Also, you're sounding like my mother.

 

You have strange conversations with your mother.

 

We have good conversations.
But she is an Anglophile.

 

So tell her she needs to throw out all of her Beatles albums...

 

My mother is from the same month as Paul McCartney and even looks like him a bit. But she leans Victorian. Beatles are nice but newfangled.

 

Avengers: Infinity War bombing at the box office, amongst other high-profile disasters at the box office?

(Don't look at me like that, it could happen.....)

 

I very much agree with this. As someone who studied art and continues to make a practice of it, I can say that there's plenty of great art past and present. Art by terrible people is not needed and can safely be tossed out. They are not so special (and their work not so important) as to be necessary to keep around.

Look for and make room for work by people who don't harm others and live with at least a minimum of respect for others.

 

Imagine having bought tickets to the new Louis CK movie...

 

Alternatively, guys, this isn't the first time a problem like this has come up. For instance, there was the great problem of what to do with avowedly Orientalist--and otherwise racist--works of art during the surge of anti-colonial movements. The answer that leading intellectuals like Said, Fanon and others settled on was not discarding those works. Rather, it was teaching them in conscientious fashion with complimentary readings that highlighted the inherent flaws of the work.

 

If the ultimate revelation is that "everyone in the entertainment industry is a handsy creep" then that really isn't much of a shocker. My entertainment value is paramount.

 

All through the day - I me mine I me mine I me mine

 

Danthe this is a conversation for you to listen and learn in.

I for one haven't forgotten your Traci Lords suggestions.

Josh's take, which he advocated when Cosby allegations were surfacing by the minute, makes it seem like there is no art nor joy he can be close to.
I like the music of Richard Wagner. I'm not an anti-Semite. I found Louis CK hilarious. I'm not a sexual predator. Spacey was sublime in a number of films (HoC was typically American nonsense, so I'm not counting that) - and so on, and so forth.
I think the only caution you need to exercise is that you don't support people because of their behaviour.

 

This is fair point.

What about Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" instead? It's hailed as an anti-colonial work. However, Achebe pretty effectively shreds Conrad as the racist he was. That more closely mirrors the dynamic where CK was apparently making work people considered supportive of feminism while being misogynist in his personal behavior.

 

Sex Scandals take out hot yoga company.

 

Cheese-on-rice, are some of you people serious? You're actually going to stop reading/watching creative works because the artist in question happens to be immensely flawed/downright criminal?

It's laudable not to reward said artist with your money, but why not just procure it through the library? How far are you going to take this?

 

Yeah, I agree with much of what has been said here. I think we have to accept that artists are, like all other people, massively flawed. There is a difference between having flaws and carrying on decades long careers of sexual abuse for sure. But there's a lot of great art created by people who did horrible things, just like a lot of great historical things happened because of people who did horrible things. If you broaden it to horrible beliefs, then it's an even more dire situation. You basically have to toss everything before a certain date if you want to only indulge in art made by people who weren't racists or misogynists or homophobes or what have you. Are you also going to get rid of your car because Henry Ford was one of the most repulsive anti-Semites in American history? Of course not. It's called nuance and it is hard sometimes, but it has great rewards. Better, I think, to learn to appreciate great art while also learning, through the stories of the artists themselves, about what is and isn't acceptable. The impulse is often to paper over things, but that isn't the ideal in my opinion. Learn to hold two things in your mind at once. Someone brought up James Brown. Learn to live understanding that more than one thing is true: his music is electrifying and essential and breathtaking; his personal life was filled with real atrocities and tragedies. Those simply are both true statements. And if you're introducing yourself to an artist or exploring an artist or trying to get someone else interested in an artist, don't try to hide the bad stuff. Learn to live with it. Accept that, as Alison Kilkenny used to say on Citizen Radio, "your fave is problematic." And the art now gets to have two meanings and two lessons, the message of the art itself and the message about the artist. It's a more complicated and nuanced and difficult way to look at the world. But, hey, it's the world we live in. And, in a way, it's choosing to let the good prevail over the evil. If I let the "evil" stuff an artist did destroy the art, steal the art away from humanity, then the evil won. If I can learn to hold on to the good things and be enriched by the good things in spite of the bad things . . . well, that's kind of just a good way to live in general.