Kits Fool
Yoko's Asterisk 🏳️⚧For my latest newsletter, I wrote a thing about JK Rowling and "separating the art from the artist." I have thoughts!
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/jk-rowling-and-separating-the-art-from-the-artist/
Ragnell the Mildly Unpleasant@charliejane "You just pull at the top right corner and tug gently, and the artist just sort of peels away from the art, leaving the art sticky and ready to adhere to whatever surface you desire. "
I think I've seen this with Star Trek.
Michael W Lucas 
@charliejane yes, yes, all of that. I am not a celebrity, I'm just a shmuck who sits alone in a room and writes.
Wearing my "English Degree" hat, I also feel obliged to throw out: "separating art from the artist" is a postmodern critical tool, intended for literary analysis. Using it routinely is like saying, "I hear hydraulic jackhammers are way cool, I need one for my apartment."
For most of history, art and artist were one and the same.
For people not engaging in literary analysis, SAFA is misuse of a professional tool. Which, fine, play with literary tools all you want, talking about art is cool, but don't claim that this tool is the unimpeachable cultural standard! It just isn't.
@mwl @charliejane OH, but THIS literary tool can be used to separate ethics from consumption, which is what people REALLY want. They want to have what they want without having to be responsible for its effects.
John A. Underwood
Reboot Robotnik@mwl @charliejane Separating art from artist is implausible, as part of the artist, however small, is indelibly infused in each work.
@DrOtto @charliejane that's why it's a literary analysis tool.
@mwl @charliejane Agreed! I just hate when people around me use it as a dodge to justify their own indifference.
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen@DrOtto @mwl @charliejane it could be argued the art is separated from the artist when it enters the public domain. I mean, people still know Will Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, but the public domain means Troma could make Tromeo and Juliet out of it.
@charliejane @DrOtto @mwl yeah, it took just fractions of a second from Winnie the Pooh entering the public domain to someone releasing a horror movie based on him…
John Colagioia@mwl @charliejane It's interesting, to me, because as a tool, it feels like the idea is to say "this work says harmful things, no matter what the artist wants us to read in it," which seems entirely unrelated to "it doesn't matter what the work OR the artist says, as long as I like it."
Granted, it's motivated reasoning, like deciding that the jackhammer will be used to open windows, because you REALLY want that window open.
@charliejane How do you want me to reply to this? Should I apologize to the shallow metaphor for my lack of precise conformity? Delete my response for daring to disapprove to people willfully misusing ways to think about things in order to defend destructive behavior? Block you? Call myself an ally to prove to you that I'm secretly not?
I mean, you replied TWICE, neither reply having any meaningful content, other than that you believe that I'm wrong in some abstract way.
Megapenguinx@mwl Barthes really intended it to be for works whose authors were dead and gone. I think he specifically says that
@megapenguinx I believe you're correct, but didn't want to claim that without the cite and I was too lazy to walk upstairs to that library.
SonomaLass@charliejane I do it all the time. I have good friends, lovely folks, whose art is not at all to my taste. They are still my friends. But if they tell me that they think members of my family don't have the right to exist, I cut them off and would not give them a cent.
🐚 Undo Influence 🐚I liked this a lot.
I think Stephen King got stung a few months by someone who got him to praise some dead Nazi asshole, because I guess it was too much for him just admit he had no idea who the fucker was and to ask for help.
[sigh]
Dinah 🕊🇺🇦@charliejane And you reminded me I should put on Charles Earland's album 'Black Talk!' so now I'm feeling great. 💖
Andromeda Yelton@charliejane “You just pull at the top right corner and tug gently…” 😂
(Btw you said “intruding trans creators” where I think you meant “including” but I do kind of love this version)
@thatandromeda Whooops fixing <3 Thanks for the heads up!
Kristen M@charliejane I know the timing is predictable because of the public dialogue at the moment but my young adult asked me last night about this very subject and I said some of the same things but I’m going to forward your newsletter to him too because it is really clear and simple. Thank you for being such a great communicator and for just being you.
@klpm omg I'm glad it was helpful 💖
Kenley Neufeld@charliejane Good piece. Thank you. Although I’m not of the Potter generation (I read the first book), it does bring to mind O.S. Card (more my generation). I did stop reading for a while due to his bigotry and at the same time find it really difficult to completely write off the literature. Especially Enders Game. So I have read some since my stance was made a decade or so back. Definitely complicated. As you say.
@kenley that's why there are libraries and used book stores 💖
@charliejane I knew you were a library lover. Yay for libraries.
mrkvm@charliejane I really appreciate your thoughtful take. Thank you.
Victoria Venery HAS MOVED@charliejane a point you hit on that really makes a difference for me is that she uses the money and influence she still gets to actively hurt people.
If HP Lovecraft were still alive and using his prestige to push his racist agenda I wouldn't be reading his work either.
But it's all academic for me, the first book came out when I was a senior in high school so I missed the whole thing.
David Comay@charliejane An excellent, thoughtful essay. One minor typo in the 11th paragraph. I believe “serious” should be “series”?
Maria Alexander@charliejane I had so many thoughts while reading your newsletter. Before the media "made" celebrities, nobody knew much about artists. We really just had the art. But those times were problematic in other ways for marginalized artists. Anyway, it's not a new topic for me, especially since I saw Polanski's The Pianist. Probably shouldn't have seen it, but I did, and it created so many conflicting feelings and ideas.
@lamaupin I do think these issues are muddy and complicated because they involve human beings.... That's sort of why I wanted to frame them in terms of real world harm. I definitely listen to music by horrible people all the time and it's hard to know where the line is.
AccordionBruce@charliejane
Separating the art can happen after the paychecks aren’t going to the artist
When the paychecks are paying to hurt real people, the art is causing harm, and it’s hard but it’s an ethical choice to participate in that harm, or not
I might have liked Orson Card or Rowling or john wright’s books but there’s lots of others I’d say are doing less harm now
They might disagree and are free to buy other books
felix (grayscale) 🐺@charliejane Star system I think is unavoidable. My thought experiment is, what if the human population were 8 trillion, 1000x more than today. There are 1000x more creators, books, movies, etc. An individual can't consume 1000x more, and making a choice like that is impossible. Even if nobody reads off bestseller lists, network effects will crown some winners, which will have 1000x the success (and revenue) of anything today. I don't know anything that can balance this.
Anna S@charliejane This is really insightful. Thanks
Ben Evans@charliejane Huh. Why did I not know you have a newsletter? Anyway - fixed now & subscribed!
Aileen@charliejane I especially liked your comparison between way the Rowling makes sure that she is identified with with her work and the way other authors send their work out into the world to stand for itself - and then I noticed that I saw this post twice (apart from reading your newsletter in my RSS feeds), because @marthawells boosted it. For me, Martha Wells is a wonderful example of someone who promotes other people's work, which I appreciate very much (and yes, I'm a big fan of @murderbotbot too)
mancusoscifi@charliejane thanks for this - it's surprising (and a little sad) how much demand there seems to be for trans pundits to write "both sides" pieces on this situation aimed at absolving folks supporting the game of complicity... and equally and oppositely unsurprising that so few are actually willing to write such things because of literally all of these reasons
thepoisontart@charliejane I am unable to separate art from artist, and I expect creators to act accordingly.
I know that's not going to happen, so I will continue to weed my media collection.
I know that's not going to happen, so I will continue to weed my media collection.
emptyother@charliejane Sorry that I have to critize a tiny part of your article:
That review from Wired that you linked to, it didnt give any rundown at all of how the game actually is. It barely touches the game, with only a few subjective statements like "a tangible absence" and "without any attention to making it actually worth playing".
Other than that, your article has given me food for thought. Thanks.