Separating the Art From the Artist.

[Norman Bates]

[Kiki]

If an artist does something I don't like I won't listen to them. What I don't like is open for me to decide

[Skinny]

[undefined]

Generally speaking I can separate the art from the artist to a point, but more often than not I feel art is at its core a form of personal expression, and I think it's left up to interpretation just how much of an individual's personal subjective moral deficiencies are reflected in their music; and even then (I shall tread very lightly here), if music can be seen as a reflection of various forms of the human experience, then even if certain music doesn't explicitly reflect hateful views or moral vacancy, could the fact that the individual may hold such views affect the actual structure of the music? Like would Burzum be able to craft the same hellishly eerie atmospheres without being the reprehensible human being that he is? Obviously I don't condone murder (or whatever the fuck else Burzum has done), and please nobody mistake this as "well if evil acts cause people to make good music then bring on the evil", but is it too much of a stretch to suggest that the same intrinsic characteristics that define an individual's unique musical expression are heavily intertwined with those that can make said individual commit utterly reprehensible acts?

EDIT: also let me clarify that I don't let any of this dictate what I will and wont listen to

[Kiki]

[Skinny]

[benpaco]

[Gershyn]

[satiemaniac]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's kind of hard. I don't see "controversy" as a reason to drop an artist or something, but I do genuinely think there is an ethical question raised (not one that I have a clear answer to) when an artist does something atrocious and we continue to financially/intellectually support them. Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Phil Spector, David Bowie, and so many more have been involved in egregious crimes - rape, murder, and pedophilia, in these examples - and yet we tend to allow them a free pass. The questions that come up to me are:

Where do we take these problems? Do we discuss them in the public sphere loudly and then relent and acknowledge the artistic legacies of these artists? In what situations are artistic legacies tarnished? If Woody Allen's films like Manhattan demonstrate pedophilic tendencies, do we moralize the film and drop it in our critical estimation?

What do artists do to atone? Is an acknowledgment of what they did necessary? Retreating from making art/massive amounts of money? Jail time? This is the most interesting question for me, as it seems a lot of people who advocate for prison to be more about rehabilitation than punishment seem to want to just individually antagonize public figures who have done things wrong without giving them the ability to make up for it. That said, many refuse to atone for their sins, too, so maybe I just have a selective perception.

Which artists do we pursue over this and why? I don't think it's a big secret that prosecution and public scrutiny for such matters falls unevenly across racial lines. Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Chris Brown, and Michael Jackson (allegedly or not) committed atrocious crimes and have rightly been skewered for participating in such activities, but it seems odd that they all live in perpetual shame with scarred legacies (at least in white America's estimation) while Woody Allen makes a movie a year with no fuss from anyone.

Going off of the tarnishing question in that first set above, if we are to separate art and artist, can individual art objects be too politically/ethically disgusting for consumption? I ran into this question the other day while I was listening to Regis in my car. I was driving around with a friend of mine who is herself a rape survivor, and though the music didn't immediately illicit any negative reaction, upon being informed by someone else in the car that the name of the album was Penetration and it had song titles like "Her Surrender," "Slave to the Inevitable," "It's a Man's World," etc., she was very perturbed and triggered and could only perceive the music as a really graphic, visceral aestheticization of rape, so of course we changed the music.

These are a lot of open questions, but I do think that it's important to have these hard discussions and come to difficult answers instead of just pretending art and artist are wholly separable.

[Silver]