The morally tainted artist, part two
Answering some of the leftover questions from — you guessed it — Part One
A few weeks ago I posted a story discussing whether or not it’s right for us — the proverbial, society-wide “us” — to engage with works of art created by morally tainted artists.
R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein, here’s looking at you. Again.
I got some really thoughtful and provocative comments, which of course I loved and made me think harder. But it also made me feel like maybe my original article was lacking, even if I spent lots of time on it trying to cover a lot of bases. (Obviously, there’s no way to cover such a huge topic in an article-length space. But one can try!)
Here, I’ll try to weigh in on those specific things that made me question my original conclusion.
Comment #1: Just separate the art from the artist!
Despite the fact that by the end of the initial article (spoiler alert…sort of, ish) my argument leaned toward the side of still being able to enjoy the work of artists who’d done really egregious things, one of the comments that grabbed me was this:
I still want to enjoy the art, so I’ll just ignore the fact that the artist is a moral monster.
“BUT!”, I say. Isn’t this just committing another moral wrong? Isn’t ignoring something that’s immoral also a decidedly WRONG thing to do?
Especially after you gain full knowledge of what was done, a knowing which can’t be undone?
Isn’t it akin to knowing someone was raped and turning the other way?
Let’s make it closer to home:
If your mom was mugged and punched in the face repeatedly by Pablo Picasso (er, ignore the anachronism, please), would you still go see that Picasso show at The Met?
If I have to answer that, I’d probably say no: I wouldn’t see the show. I wouldn’t want to engage with the work of this bad person because of the harm he caused my mom. It’s personal to me.
But should this choice to boycott the artwork be limited to when I know the victim personally? Someone — rather, many people — were terribly harmed by Harvey Weinstein. Does it really matter that I don’t know them personally? I very well could have, couldn’t I have?
Comment #2: Should the innocent suffer with the guilty?
Some commenters noted that perhaps it’s easier to boycott the work of an artist who is working solo (R. Kelly, Michael Jackson) than one who is working with others (Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby). That is, we shouldn’t punish the innocent along with the guilty. After all, wouldn’t it also be wrong to make the innocent suffer?
I would generally agree with this, as long as the innocents truly didn’t know the transgressor was a monster. (If they knew all along, however, I don’t see why they shouldn’t also be punished for hiding a major wrong.)
There’s a big “BUT!” here, too, as it’s a slippery slope of specifics: maybe it’s not just about how many people he collaborated with, but perhaps also depends on how egregious the wrong was (repeated rape v. harassment, for example), and how many people were victims (1 or 7 or 48 or 192 or…). It might depend on who the victims were: women? men? children? If children, toddlers or teenagers? the elderly? muslims or christians or jews? gays or lesbians? trans people? some or all of the above?
It might also depend on how the law has dealt with these people: were they convicted or not? After all, sometimes there are allegations that are never proven before the law, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen or that they still weren’t wrong. So sometimes the person was punished in jail, and sometimes they simply had a stained reputation.
Like applying a code of ethics to any circumstance, it depends on where you want to draw these lines.
So, I’m not sure that judging whether or not to engage with a work by a morally tainted person — either in whole or in part by him — should be judged by whether or not there were also others involved in the work’s making. Malcolm Jamal-Warner, who played Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show, said back in 2015 (before Cosby was convicted) that the show is now “tarnished”. He has a lot to lose by stating that, both financially and reputationally, and yet he did so anyway.
And it’s true: once again, you can’t separate the artist from the art, just like you can’t separate one artist from his collaborators. If there’s one bad egg in your muffins, you ruin the whole batch. They don’t all suffer in the same way, but there is necessarily a stain against them.
Comment #3: But you’re judging from a high horse!
One or a few commenters mentioned that the moral judgements I made in the initial story were from the standpoint of an individual in 2019 in the United States.
I can’t argue against that. Those are the facts. I can’t be anyone else at any time in any other civilization.
What I can argue against is the fact that just because I am who I am, when I am, and where I am, doesn’t mean there aren’t things that are wrong no matter who, when, and where I live. You don’t have to agree with me and you may even see things that I do as morally wrong, and it’s possible they are.
So, I could say that actually, in addition to my original conclusion where I said it would be permissable to engage with or enjoy the work of a tainted artist because the benefit to the masses over time is greater than the harm to the few in the moment, I would also say that it is still wrong to engage with or enjoy that work, period.
This is not a logical fallacy. (At least, not in my head. Let me explain!)
I say this because sometimes you can do a bad thing in order to prevent even worse things from happening, but it doesn’t mean the first thing isn’t still bad, or wrong. To clarify: the question is whether bad things are always wrong, or if bad becomes not wrong when there’s a even worse thing knocking on the door. Or, is the bad thing is still wrong, it just becomes a necessary thing to prevent an even worse bad from happening?
In other words:
Does “bad” always equal “wrong”, or does “bad” only equal “wrong” when there is not a “worse” lurking behind?
Here’s an example:
I think it’s always bad to torture an innocent baby, no matter what, no matter what culture or year you’re from, no matter your norms. But if we must, for some inexplicable reason, make that baby suffer so that 200,000 others can live peacefully for 1000 years or they’d ALL suffer for that many years, I’d say it’s probably necessary to torture the baby. (Talk about a bad hypothetical.) It’s the classic utilitarian answer: go with whatever will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
But I’d also say it’s still bad, and still wrong to torture the baby, a more deontological answer. There’s just a worse wrong that will happen if we don’t.
Same goes for sexual assault, or slavery. It’s just plain bad and wrong no matter who, when, or where you are. And just because it’s a norm doesn’t make it right, it just makes it a norm.
Right now, most of us think of eating factory-farmed meat as a norm. In 100 years (give or take), we might all find that to be a horrible thing akin to genocide, and wonder at what kind of society would allow that kind of thing to happen in the first place.
If we look at the facts of factory farming, it’s pretty horrendous indeed; we are just so used to it that we don’t give it the attention in our daily lives that it probably deserves. And those of us who do know of its horrors and still choose to eat factory-farmed meat (if I dare say so as I am one of them) are probably in the wrong for doing so.
Thing is, there’s no immediate repercussions for eating factory-farmed meat. There are no laws against it, and any harm done to oneself is in long-term environmental damage. There’s also a herd mentality about it, where I might say, “why should I give up meat when I don’t see anyone else doing it?” It’s just a norm. Doesn’t make it right. Just makes it not illegal today, in this place.
Finally, I want to add a point I didn’t talk about the first time around, but that has come to the forefront of my mind.
Is it about the punishment fitting the crime?
You might say that the proper thing to do with artists who happen to have committed wrongs is to simply punish the artist: obviously, the person did a bad thing, so jail time, a forever-stained reputation, and financial oblivion are punishment enough for their wrongdoing. Others should still able to enjoy the work he created: it’s not the work that needs punishing, or the public, but the person who committed the wrongs.
And yes, punishment is important for committing these acts, no doubt.
But punishment doesn’t answer the moral question, and we can’t simply conflate morals with laws.
While the law is indeed informed by right and wrong, they’re also informed by the society they come from, and they don’t cover everything. And of course, R. Kelly and Michael Jackson and many others were never actually convicted of a crime. Even if they had been, it’s never going to be illegal — at least not in an open, democratic society — to listen to their music, despite them forcing sex with a child (er, multiple times), among other things.
So while the penal onus is on the judicial system, the moral onus is on us, the public, those in control of what we put into our heads and hearts. If we continue to reward the artist’s legacy by listening, watching, reading, or looking at his work, aren’t we condoning wrongdoing in a sense by saying yeah, he did bad things and went to jail, but it’s OK for artists to do bad things because their work will live on in perpetuity? There’s an argument to be made about what we want our society to value, and that depends on each of us to choose for ourselves.
Then again, there is much good to be gleaned from these works, too. Haven’t many good artists been inspired to create equally incredible symphonies from Wagner, a notorious anti-semite?
I guess the jury’s still out.
Check out the original article here. Or, you might be interested in reading about whether or not it would be wrong to rape a sex robot!
Danielle Mund is an art historian by training and moral philosopher by nature. She writes from Puerto Rico, sometimes holed up in a cool dark room and sometimes beachside at the Ritz.
