No.
So should the crimes or misdemeanours of a performer or artist change how we consume their work?
………….
Is it wrong to wear a John Galliano designed dress, to enjoy a Roman Polanski film? Does time alter things, when it comes to reading a novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline or a poem by Ezra Pound? Or does your moral compass stretch to say, Bono’s alleged tax avoidance making you refuse to listen to U2?
And a question to which the answer is “yes”:
…could you separate someone from their creation?
Simple really. So simple only a simpleton would ask.
Not sure they “should”, but I think they do. Bono really pisses me off, and it definitely puts me off U2. Ditto Roman Polanski, I’m just not interested in anything that man has done. Mind you, that’s more the appalling way the entertainment industry rallied round on of their own, sick-making.
I think time does make it easier, but would I buy anything by Gary Glitter? No way. Shame cos I like his music, but part of the enjoyment of an artist is your view of that person (even though you don’t know him or her). I know for sure my enjoyment of David Bowie’s music is 80% its brilliance and 20% what an utterly awesome dude he was, is and always will be. Ditto Tom Waits and numerous others.
Same with actors – Sean Connery lost his lustre for me after the wife-beating thing, but for some reason Mel Gibson gets a pass, perhaps because he is so clearly unhinged and unwittingly starred in one of the best South Park episodes ever written.
On a personal level whatever you decide is the right thing. That isn’t what the folk at CiF are asking, though, is it?
No, it’s never what the Komment Macht Frei team want to know. They want to know what should be done, ideally to protect cheeldren and the vulnerable, like a bunch of 25-year-old actors and actresses in an American TV show.
Wagner anyone? Not that he had any bad qualities. At all. Ever.
Funny, but I have no problem whatsoever separating the person from the role.
Possibly because I don’t tend to read any of the celebrity magazines where they spout their ‘beliefs’.
So what did Ezra Pound do wrong?
Too chummy with Mussolini and Hitler.