Obsolete Would a misconduct of a creator/author/actor affect your enjoyment of their work?

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winstein

winstein

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This topic does not necessarily encompass TV/Film/Music, for it could also apply to anime since it's also TV.

An artist, actor, author or creator of a work had produced something you admire and enjoy, so you would immediately come to admire and respect them since they are capable of making something that inspires your enjoyment. It is clear that they have the skills and talent to make their work work.

Perhaps one day, you found out that a certain creator or whatever producer of the work you admire did something that is considered inhumane. In other word, they performed a misconduct worthy of disrespect. Perhaps it could be that they don't respect their fans, showed prejudice to a certain group of people (who might not even deserve it), did something criminal or showing hypocrisy. I am not saying that all artists would eventually have a misconduct, but there are certain creators who did.

In the case the artist did have a misconduct, does that affect your enjoyment of their work? Or, if you take one step further, would you stop supporting said artist if you found out?

If you ask me, if a work is enjoyable, I would savour it since its art is finely crafted. If I found out about a misconduct, it might affect my enjoyment, but not enough to make me want to condemn my previous enjoyment. I would be somewhat wary of future attempts by the creator, though.

Thanks for reading.
 
That depends. When I really like a person's work, that usually leads me to like the person to some degree. Depends on what the crime or belief system they held was. For instance, say I was a fan of the band Lost Prophets, after the recent paedophilia charges on the lead singer, I would definitely dislike the guy as a person. I wouldn't stop listening to their songs necessarily, not if I really liked their music. (As it happens I don't, I'd never even heard of them until he was on the news)

Certain things wouldn't impact on my opinion on someone, things like drugs and DUI's etc. The only thing that I really judge people on strongly is pedophilia, rape and animal cruelty. Obviously murder but that almost never happens.

I know some people who refuse to play the Gary Glitter Christmas song at Christmas which I find a bit childish. It's a good song and avoiding it because of what he did in his personal life doesn't reflect on you condoning it.
 
There are multiple factors that would affect my answer, like what the person did and how much I enjoy their work.

There are some artists I would refuse to support starting from the day the misconduct happened. Madonna is a good example of this--I was already pretty irritated by her prior to this incident to be honest, but she officially lost me as a fan when she used the n-word in one of her Instagram posts and and then later gave that not-apology for using it. At the same time, Confessions on a Dance Floor is such an influential album for me that I just can't not listen to it, and "Girl Gone Wild" is one of my favorite songs for various reasons. So I just decided to stop supporting her post-MDNA. (I also won't support anything prior to Confessions because, well, I never started listening to Madonna until "Hung Up" so I don't have any real attachment to her songs/albums before that.)

Then there are artists who I will constantly criticize, but (at least for now) I still ultimately support them by buying their works. Like Lady Gaga--I really really really wanted to stop supporting her after she released "Aura" 'cause her sexualization of burqas in that song was just too much for me... but that song, and ARTPOP in general, are just really good that I keep coming back to them even though I don't want to. We'll see what happens with her next album--'cause she has really pushed my buttons since her rise to fame--but for now I just can't stop my addiction to her songs.

And of course there are the artists who I just stop supporting altogether, like Chris Brown. I can't ever listen to... well, anything of his at this point after that whole situation with Rihanna a while back. Granted, a lot of my anger is towards how other artists/the media responded to the situation, but also his reaction was just as bad if not worse in many cases, and so I just erased him out my music collection as much as I could. (I'm a little more lenient with his songwriting credits--I just love Rihanna's "Disturbia" too much.) I literally combed through the Internet for hours--hours--trying to find a solo version of Ester Dean's "Drop It Low" because I love the song so much but I refuse to have the version with Chris Brown on any of my music-playing devices (and I succeeded, thank you very much).

I don't have any strict rules I follow or stuff like that, so everything is by a case-by-case basis. Like Gaga is way more guilty of cultural appropriation than Katy Perry is, but I find it easier to not support Katy for example. It just depends on a lot of things.
 
Not at all. The first two people that come to mind when I think of this topic are Roman Polanski and Burzum. Polanski is a director who is obviously talented, but whenever someone mentions him, you know that at some point there's going to be a joke about his rape accusations from 1977. I'm not exactly a scholar on the case, so I won't comment on whether or not I think rape is what happened, but the girl was 13 at the time, so it's an uncomfortable matter to discuss anyway. However, the girl (now a woman, of course) who was the subject of the case has handled the whole ordeal very well, I feel. I distinctly remember her saying at some point that Polanski's movies should not be judged with his criminal history in mind, and I completely agree. Polanski is not an upstanding citizen, but he's a talented director and I appreciate his work no matter what history says.

Second, there's Burzum. He's a black metal musician, and although his production values completely spit in the face of what I think music is about (he records all of the instruments himself and has never performed live, which I frankly think is stupid), I can see why people like his music. It's black metal with an atmospheric edge to it and he pulls it off pretty well. Now, the elephant in the room that presents itself whenever someone mentions Burzum is that he's a murderer. He stabbed the guitarist of the band Mayhem to death in 1993 and recently completed his prison sentence because Norwegian criminal "justice" is more like criminal "wrist-slapping". He also took credit for the death of a guy in Sweden that one of his friends committed like it was an achievement or something. Unlike Polanski, I can tell you exactly what I think of Burzum (he's a waste of life on this planet and I hope he dies slowly and painfully), but even still I don't hold that against his music. His music, like I said, is a good mixture of violent heavy metal and atmospheric ambiance.

Although, maybe "not at all" isn't entirely true. No matter how much I might like a Burzum song, I never buy anything of his on iTunes or what have you. I refuse to give my money to a piece of human garbage like him. I'll listen to it on YouTube all I want, though.
 
i guess it depends on what you mean by misconduct. if it's something like drug abuse or being a sex addict? ehh no big deal (the latter's a little weird but not too serious). an author's misconduct, if it's something along the lines of racism, homophobia, or misogyny, though, is definitely going to affect the way i consume (and possibly enjoy) their work. i don't endorse their views in the slightest, but i'll still listen to them if i think their work is meritorious enough for me to appreciate it in spite of how vile i think its creator's views are. i'm still going to hold them accountable for these attitudes though, since their views on these subjects likely show through in the work and attempt to see where they manifest. generally don't and can't support the oeuvres of rapists, pedophiles or murderers; the first two are non-negotiable (and i won't consume anything from any artists who defend them in the slightest, either), but i make one exception for murder—caravaggio killed a man, but i find his paintings fascinating.

used to listen to burzum too but then i just couldn't take him seriously anymore after like three days
 
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There are numerous people who insist that Lewis Carroll was a paedophile. Miles Davis was allegedly a wife-beater and rumours will forever persist about some of Walt Disney's personal allegiances. Hasn't stopped their work from ranking among the most widely admired in their respective fields, however.
 
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Like what others have expressed here, it really depends on what they are guilty of and how much I like their work.

Al Pacino is no saint, but I still enjoy watching his movies because the crimes that he committed in the past were just the result of him being with the wrong crowd of people. He didn't really hurt a whole group of people, at least with his views or whatever. Being arrested for DUI or drug use is also probably not going to stop me from enjoying a person's work, unless they killed somebody from their recklessness, but that's usually not the case.

However, if the person turns out to be a blatant pedophile, an abusive asshole towards a spouse or significant other, a misogynist, a racist, a murderer, a homophobe, or even a person who condones one of the following, then I will probably not be able to enjoy their work as much or just completely forget their existance. A lot of musicians fall into one of these categories (especially the abusive part), and it really is no big deal to me if I stop supporting them by no longer listening to what they create. While I wasn't a fan, I could tolerate Chris Brown before, but after what he did to Rihanna, I can't stand the guy anymore and I hate hearing his music. I also cannot watch Daniel Tosh anymore after what he said to a heckler regarding rape. While the heckler was a moron, the way Tosh handled it and what he told her was way over the line. He should have just called security, but no, he had to be a total douche regarding the heckler, and that was disgusting to read about. There's making jokes, and there's being malicious.

As for the likes of Disney (who was rumored to be a Nazi supporter), I still enjoy his works because those were just rumors. Are they true? I don't know. If there is 100% proof he was a Nazi supporter, then yeah, that would turn me off to his works, but it takes more than rumors to get me to start disliking someone's work over what kind of person they were.
 
I make a concerted effort to differentiate my views on a person from my views on their work.
Even a cursory glance into the history of any of your favorite creators is bound to yield something objectionable.
For example, many well-known producers have some conviction or another under their belts--Dr. Dre was charged with assault on another rapper, and Phil Spector killed people.
 
I know that a lot of people won't even touch H.P. Lovecraft's works, since he was a fuming racist even for his time period. In Israel, they refuse to play Richard Wagner's music because Wagner was popular with the Nazis. (Wagner himself had slight anti-Semitic tendencies, but I think his were average for the time period. His wife Cosima, however, is another story - she was MUCH more anti-Semitic.) Orson Scott Card has lost all respect because of his right-wing opinions. Then again, people still buy Coco Chanel products even though Ms. Chanel was a Nazi collaborator.

I myself cannot watch any movie with Brigitte Bardot because of her anti-Muslim comments, and Mel Gibson is hard to watch for me because of his atrocious anti-Semitic and misogynistic behaviour.

People can be forgiving, and sometimes they can't. It depends...
 
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zakisrage said:
Many white people won't listen to Lauryn Hill's music because she bashed white people.
Click to expand...

If you're talking about the allegations that she publicly stated that she didn't want white people to listen to her music, then no she didn't. That came from a prank call made to the Howard Stern Show.
 
I love a lot of Woody Allen movies, but the man is a creep. I can usually separate him and his movies, but I just will not see a movie of his that features an older man and a young woman having a romance, which means I am NEVER seeing his latest, Magic in the Moonlight. It features Emma Stone (25ish) romancing Colin Firth (50ish). Just, GROSS, especially given the context. I don't even want to explain why he's so creepy, look it up if you want to, it's easy to find.
 
It depends.

John Lennon was a horrible bastard, but I still like his music. I separate the art from the artist. On the other hand, if it comes out that John Lennon abused kids, I'd stop listening to the Beatles. There are some crimes that I can't separate from the art, and to continue to enjoy it whilst I know about the reprehensible acts a creator had committed, to me it feels like I'm saying that if you create something I deeply enjoy, then go ahead and commit heinous crimes, it won't affect my opinion. Well, it does. There are lots of past behaviour I can look past, such as spousal abuse, manslaughter, etc but there are crimes I can't look past, like child abuse.
 
It definitely depends on the level of talent the artist has and the level of the crime (whether that be a true crime or in a more metaphorical sense) that has been committed. I think it also has to do with how they respond to what they have done wrong. Using Cee Lo Green as a recent example, he got called out for his awful, awful comments about rape on Twitter, he made a half-cocked "apology", saying he was sorry for the comments "attributed" to him. That kind of behaviour combined with that cowardice is just inexcusable to me, and I can't listen to much of Cee Lo Green's work without cringing.
 
Kanye West is probably a good example for me. While I was never that into him, I refuse to listen to his music now because of his egotistical attitude towards pretty much everyone around him and his rude comments - the biggest one was probably him interrupting Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech.

Part of the reason why I really hate One Direction is their behaviour (particularly Harry Styles' behaviour) which falls nothing short of trashy. They're rude to their fans. My cousin said he remembers when they were in Australia and they were appalling towards the girls who liked them.

I can't enjoy Tobey Maguire's movies that much either because he is well-documented as a douchebag. He recently told a woman playing poker with him to “bark like a seal who wants a fish” for a chip.

While Mommie Dearest was probably not entirely true, Joan Crawford was known in her lifetime as being a diva who was notoriously difficult to work with, which was why she kept changing studios. Her rudeness and arrogance is pretty well-documented. Her attitude towards her children certainly didn't help. (Bette Davis was also quite nasty towards others...she and Joan had a lot in common despite hating each other's guts.) While I like classic movies, Joan Crawford is one of the few classic movie stars that I find hard to watch. The child abuse angle has a lot to do with it too.

Inflated egos can put me off to stars if they're that severe.
 
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To be fair, the whole issue with Joan Crawford and child abuse is rather hazy, largely because Cindy Crawford's allegations on the matter have always been kind of controversial. It doesn't help that reactions amongst Joan Crawford's friends and family to the claims were so divisive. Odds are that she wasn't a fantastic parent, though whether she was the complete monster that her adoptive daughter made her out to be has long been up for debate.
 
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To be honest I don't think it'll affect me. Like yeah it would affect my general view of the person in question and it is something I'll probably recall, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching/listening/reading their work just because of that. No one is perfect and we're all human, some are bigger jerks than others but what they do and who they are shouldn't really intertwine. Now, if what they do is something that goes against who they are (say a writer that writes about how wrong racism is but is a racist) then that would bother me more cause it's a clear act of hipocrisy.
 
Meh, not really. I mean, most Doctor Who fans probably heard about the whole thing with Karen Gillan being drunk and nude at a hotel back in like 2011-ish? And it didn't affect my love of her on the show at all. As long as they're playing the part right or sounding good in their music, I don't care much about their mistakes, especially if they haven't made any strong negative impact on people or society in a big way.
 
There actually is one musician who I like a lot less because of some bigoted and generally rude comments she's made (I don't want to name names because she's kind of a polarizing figure, and I'm not in the mood for starting an argument). I'm not going to stop listening to any of her music that I currently own - it hasn't magically changed because it was sung by a jerk, after all - but I've decided that I'm not going to continue supporting her. It just makes me too uncomfortable.
 
With music artists it usually does, but less so with things like TV shows. Although the incident with the creator made me more hesitant to watch Clarence, I don't want to penalize the hard work of lots of great crew members, so I'll probably watch it when I have time.
 
It probably would... especially if it was something pretty serious. Which is why I try not to become one of those people that are borderline obsessed with media like it's their life.
 
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