JCC [Woody Allen, among others]Can you separate a person's art, work and/or career from their actions?

Crap that's what I thought.

 

3) I think this is the easiest question, The way both the films we discussed are handled is pretty exemplary. Faced with objectionable content, you simply bury the things. The technical achievements they made are of course employed elsewhere, but they are rarely if ever credited to their source, instead just presented as "having developed" in the passive voice. The material is not to be publicly lauded or enjoyed. It is mentioned only to be condemned, in the closest thing to damnatio memoriae we have.

1) Allow my to reframe this. You answered about what would happen. I know that. But I'm asking about what should happen. To clarify, consider a murder. If someone asks, should the family or the victim be kind to the murderer, you can of course point out that they will be angry. But that has nothing to do with the ethical question of whether they should resist their natural impulse or engage it. So yes, people will judge celebrities based on information in their private lives.

More thoughts will emerge at a later date.

 

I won't go out of my way to boycott any persons works, especially based off of rumours alone, but I don't care either way. If I like something of his, I'll buy it or what not, and if I like his work I'll go watch it, but I'm not a Woody Allen fan.

And obviously, with someone like Ian Watkins, its definitely not a shock to anyone that his album sales have gone down and people no longer listen to his music, but its not like it really matters anyways because he's rotting in jail for the rest of his life.

 

Jabba W. wipe your mouth after.

 

Yeah, it all depends on the situation. I don't condone what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to his family in the slightest. Doesn't mean I still don't enjoy his movies.

 

Ess Ell Gee, what do you mean? I guess you just proved the accuracy of your one word description thing, because I can't follow at all.

 

I voted yes. An example... John Lennon was a wife beater... still respect him as a musician.

 

This makes me think of the movement to boycott Ender's Game because of Orson Scott Card.

 

I was thinking about this earlier, actually.

I love Richard Wagner. His music is brilliant, innovative and emotive; but there's troubling connotations. Wagner was a socialist and typically for his time, he expressed strong anti-Semitic sentiment (whilst maintaining Jewish friends, go figure) which is part of what, I think, made Hitler appropriate him (that and his soaring greatness could be transcribed as Germanic in nature).

I don't care about any of that when I listen to his music. I just don't. I don't care that he was a radical, Jew-hating lefty or that right wing Jew hating monsters adopted his music as the soundtrack to their Reich. Immaterial. I do care that the leitmotif concept and his general sound reminds me of John Williams, suggesting an influence.

I also listen to Megadeth, and Burzum. Dave Mustaine's view are simply bat**** crazy - he's a right wing born again nationalist, sprouting conspiracy theories like a homeless lunatic. And Varg from Burzum? A self-professed national socialist, murderer and racist. But I don't let that affect me at all when listening to them.

Tunick another good example you could have brought up is Scarlet Johansson and SodaStream.

 

I didn't know wtf SodaStream was before the whole thing started. It's easy to not buy something I only just found out existed.

Hey, Coke and Pepsi are doing us a public service by maintaining an oligopoly on store shelves. Protecting us from **** produced by Palestinians in an illegal Israeli settlement. Thanks, guys!

 

"But we have excellent pay and conditions for the Palestinians!"

 

I, too, like Wagner which makes me self-loathing, I suppose.

And I can't stand Bob Orci for being a Truther. Go figure.

 

I can't stand Bob Orci for his writing.

 

This is actually putting a lot of stuff about Allen and other artists in perspective for me. Thanks for the assist.

 

Yeah but how do you reconcile liking an artist who has repugnant views?

I listen to Burzum, but a visit to Varg's website yields chilling insight to all kinds of racial right wing beliefs. I share none of them and find the man to have wasted his talents and genius in pursuit of hate.

Yet I am no national socialist by virtue of association?

 

I'm pretty sure she's saying that you are talking out of your ass.

 

Ah.

Well, do you also feel that way? I guess I'm not sure what was said that was terribly controversial. The general public does not, in fact, celebrate things with objectionable content that happen to be important in some other respect. It's also what would be suggested by her earlier position that we not try and separate art from either its particular subject or maker. Otherwise I just clarified a general question. In light of that, I have a better understanding of what she meant but I'm confused about how I earned such a remark.

 

But like I said; Wagner maintained close connections with a lot of Jewish friends (Hermann Levi, Carl Tausig and Heinrich Porges) and I recall Theodor Herzl was a huge Wagner fan. I don't mean to excuse this - it's not ok - but being an anti-Semite prior to 1945 was essentially, in the context of the time, "no big deal". It was considered normative practise; Walter LaFeber asserts that American anti-semitism was never higher than the period 1939-1945 for example. Wagner writing about das Judenthum in der Musik and talking about Jews like that (if you ever read any 19th century anti-Semitism, it makes your skin crawl) didn't impact on Jews being friends with him nor on the founder of Zionism being a fan. It just meant Hitler could co-opt him for his own ends and ever since, we think of Wagner as a Nazi.

 

I haven't really been following the conversation you're having, to be honest.

I'm in the process of reading Farrow's letter. I'm finding it to be particularly triggering, so I'm reading it in small sections and then walking away. I 100% believe her. The thing is, I've never really respected Woody Allen--his movies have always bored me to tears, and he has always given me the creeps (not unlike Dick Van Dyke). I remember when the sexual allegations hit the news years ago... I wasn't particularly surprised.

 

Ender, I think you are getting at sort of a different idea. Your argument seems to basically revolve around cultural/historical context being somewhat exculpatory or mitigating for Wagner. If that is the case, then there's not so much he needs to be judged negatively for in the first place. I think that's a separate case from something like Albert Camus, who was certainly taken to be pro-colonialist by the leaders of the other side of the intellectual divide. There's not a great deal of excuse to be made for some of the positions he took (or in a much more extreme example, Rudyard Kipling). There was no particular reason either had to be the way they were, and alternative views did exist healthily in the public debate. You just have to deal with the reality of both their wrongness and their art.