Hermione is a total transition goal, so sure!

I also wrote a HP fanfic where a trans squib connives her way into Hogwarts :p

The art itself has its own problems, eg slavery, protectors of the status quo, but the excellent sense of place/wonder will always be part of my childhood nostalgia :3

As long as you’re not supporting the artist financially, eg by pirating any media associated with it, I say enjoy what you like and condemn the artist as a separate person 🤷‍♀️

The best answer I can think of is it depends, and it’s always on a case-by-case person-by-person basis.

It’s like finding out that a famous painter whose art you really like did a murder suicide.

In some cases, that could actually add to the allure, even though it’s horrible.

But in the case of a musician that used their musical career to coax underage girls into performing sex acts for them, like the singers of the Lost Prophets, it’s a lot harder to separate the art from the artist.

I struggle with it and am hypocritical about that.

Roman Polanski was convicted of a terrible crime, but I appreciate his work.

Weinstein’s production company made many of my favorite movies.

Kevin Spacey played some of my favorite characters.

EDIT:

And then there is Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson. I love the Naked Gun Movies and both are pure gold on screen.

Bill Cosby’s Chicken Heart routine is so fucking funny it was making me laugh my ass off until the mid 2010s… Now I when I ever I see the album it just makes me sad….

I think I can but I don’t really know. I can’t think of any examples of things I no longer like after knowing what fucked up thing the artist did nor I can otherwise, stuff I still like regardless.

I guess it will depend mostly on how much is the artist involved, for example, I think I could read a Neil Gaiman book but I don’t feel like listening an audiobook narrated by himself.

Depends on how dead they are for me, honestly

If the artist in question is actively campaigning and spending their wealth to support the things I oppose that’s not great, but if they’re dead then it’s a lot easier to justify, since they’re not capable of hurting people, unless whoever owns the rights holds the same opinions

There’s also willful ignorance where if you like an artist’s work in a genre known for having problematic artists you simply choose to not look into them, so you don’t have to deal with the moral implications, which I admittedly am somewhat guilty of for music

If they’re still alive and still benefitting from said art and still harming people, no. Any time, money, or attention you give to them enables them to hurt other people.

A couple years ago I saw a band I really liked live. They were really important to me because their music helped me get through the collapse of one of my past relationships. Then it came out that the singer had hurt multiple people in multiple cities on their tour. So now if I stream their music, or buy their merch, or even just listen to their music alone, it’ll be materially supporting a person’s ability to hurt other people.

It’s much easier to separate art from people who are no longer around to hurt other people. I don’t feel bad for appreciating Guernica or reading Infinite Jest because doing so doesn’t support the artists behind them causing harm.

in my opinion, no. an artist’s worldview informs their art, so things like racism/misogyny/ableism etc etc seep into the works they create. consuming media like that uncritically can be harmful by reinforcing biases, conscious or unconscious.

there’s also the more direct harm that can be done by financially supporting certain artists. jk rowling, for example, is funnelling any wealth she gets from the harry potter franchise into funding anti-trans organisations.

in my experience, people who want to separate art from the artist just want to continue uncritically consuming everything, without feeling guilt over the harm they could be doing by “voting with their dollar”.

Either you can or you cannot. It’s highly situational.

Michael Jackson’s music didn’t stop sounding good once I learned more about the person behind the songs, but I stopped eating Caesar salad dressing after I found out it contains anchovy. Maybe comparing a musician to salad dressing isn’t the best analogy, but the point is: in one case, more information changed my subjective experience of something, and in the other it didn’t. I didn’t choose that - it just happened, for no reason I can point to.

“Can you” as in “are you able to” or “should you”?

Anyway, yes on both counts personally. It’s like reviewing resumes with identifiers removed.

Otherwise, one would be judging the content with preconceived bias. IMO it’s a slippery slope to, and belong in the same subset as, so many other identity-related issues in society e.g. tribalism, identity-based politics, discriminition based on identities like race, etc

I’m tired of this nonsensical argument so here it goes:

Ofc. I love some things about Kanye, the things that make his music just straight bops and his lyrics so fun and ridiculous at times, and I hate other things that are not related to his art. I know his weird anti-“Semitic” (Polish/Ukrainian people are not Semites but Anglo/Western cultures find any reason to hate other people, lol) rants are off-putting at the very least but I don’t know what that part of him has to do with “Flashing Lights” or “Guilt Trip”. They’re completely unrelated.

Now, when the art is a reflection/in praise of the artists’ ideology and takes, and those are morally and/or intellectually fucked, and you liked them, then that certainly says something negative about you. You can love or hate that one painting by Hitler and it would say nothing about you, but if you enjoy Mein Kampf you’re an immoral dummy, certainly.

Sure, unless the artist is a tattoo artist and uses their own body as their canvas.

But as long as money is flowing to an artist who pulicizes what they will use that money for, your choice to give the artist that money is supporting the causes that artist supports.

If the artist died a long time ago, absolutely. Lovecraft for example has been dead long enough that his horrible views can be looked past.

If they are still alive and causing problems, then not really. Fuck Rowling and Cosby.

Anything in between depends on what they did, whether they reformed, or if the art is completely separate from their behavior.

Only when:

• The art isn’t significantly tied to the artist’s views/publicly spouted opinions/decisions/etc (e.g. if the artist is a Nazi, you can’t really separate an artwork they made with a swastika from the artist. If they painted a nice flower field 10 years ago, it’s hard to say that it is likely to carry any Nazi-adjacent themes, and is probably pretty distinct from whatever they’d make if they made art now)
• Consuming the art doesn’t financially support the artist (so in the case of J.K Rowling, you could pirate the books, or read a copy you already have, but you can’t buy new ones (or get them on loan from somewhere that could compensate her, like a library), pay to stream the movies, go to a theme park based on the work, or buy any licensed merchandise, assuming you want to not give her money and thus separate her from the work)

Some things are more-fundamental:

the artist was expressing something that many know/understand/mean, & they were just the renderer of that meaning, in a recognizable way.

there’s a poem by Robert Frost which many people automatically recognize as him having experience induced understanding of depression.

many insist that that’s just projection, baseless…

but the problem is that if people who’ve experienced depression recognize that that-rendition honestly-does represent it well, & that is consistent, then the deniers are maintaining that there is “no basis” for that correlation.

Sometime’s it’s simply skill-of-artist: there was a writer who wrote about abused-children, & everybody who’d experienced it concluded that the author, too, had been abused, but that was mere-skill, & he found it frustrating that people woudn’t accept that…

but either can be.

Representing a meaning can be of-one’s-self, XOR can be of-one’s-skill, without any deep inner-recognition or experience-induced-meaning/understanding.

So, to the degree that meaning can stand on its own, yes, art can be separated from the artist.

But to the degree that art can’t stand on its own, because it is only expression-of-skill, or expression-of-someone/inner-meaning, it can’t.

& THAT is a spectrum, which different works occupy different locations on.

_ /\ _

I’d LIKE to think so, but then Woody Allen did this:

www.simonandschuster.com/books/…/9798895652381

“A middle aged Jewish journalist turned novelist and playwright, consumed with anxiety about everything under the sun, Baum’s turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews and his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him. His third marriage is on the rocks and he suspects his handsome and successful younger brother may have seduced his Harvard-educated wife. He is uneasy with her close relationship with her son, a more successful author than he, and suspicious of her closeness with their neighbor in Connecticut. And in a moment of irrationality, he has impulsively tried to kiss a pretty young journalist during an interview that she is about to go public with.

Is it any wonder Baum has started talking to himself? Strangers shake their heads and walk around him on the street. Meanwhile he learns a startling secret that could cause havoc should he expose it. Should he keep it to himself or reveal it and blow up his marriage?”

It depends. Take Morrissey, for example. Do I have to hate the smiths because he’s developed some political views I disagree with? I’d argue no.

But then I’d also be suspicious of anyone enthusing about Hitler’s water colours…

“Can you truly separate an artist from their art?”

Is much more a personal question of one’s ability to overcome a challenge. It’s much like “are you racist?”

No.

Speaking as an artist and a writer myself, I put my entire heart and soul into my work, especially the characters I make and the setting I put out. My work is inseparable from my mind.

You can say that the quality of the work is good, that they’re skillful in their craft. That’s a very different thing from saying that its content, its heart and soul, is something that stirs you. That the story resonates with you, makes you want to embrace the artist’s ideals and understand their view.

Do not separate art from artists. Describing their skill and making excuses for their broken moral compass are two VERY different things.

No.

And you shouldn’t.

Art, “true” art, is not merely some product. It’s a personal expression of the artist. An artist cannot separate themselves from the art they create; it’s always based on their experiences, their outlook, their opinions, their own ways of expressing emotions, or reacting to events however fictional.

Yes, a writer can create characters with opinions or behaviours that aren’t their own, but things that are personal to the artist will always be the benchmark. You do that automatically. There’s no other way to make a character unless they’re a plank of wood with a face on it.

I myself am an artist and I have many original characters.

It depends what you want to do with the art. But an easy answer for me is: the author dies when the author dies. Buy things after they die. Before that: pirate, second hand (I’d reccomend second hand everything though, within limits).

That’s not typically how I want my art though. Knowing what informed the art is interesting to see where it’s supported Vs contradicted in the piece.

Two examples: knowing jk Rowling is bigot then reading HP, well how did we not see it sooner, the series becomes a lot more sinister knowing who wrote it.

In contrast Ender’s game, how is that series written by that man?! It’s about love and the limits of love. It’s about life and the limits of life. Reading the series knowing the person who wrote it is baffling.

In general, knowing what informed the piece is interesting to me. Like Saturn Devouring His Son, it was painted directly on the wall of Goya’s house… Why, who paints that directly on the wall of their house?! Wait, Black PaintingS? There’s more?! Not knowing the story of the Black paintings, it’s just an interesting interpretation of a greko-roman myth. But, what hat did Goya see in his past to see that? What did he see in the present to need to materialize it? What did he fear for the future?! Fuck.

Yes.

Liking this painting does not make you a Nazi.