Similar to the recent question about artists where you can successfully separate them from their art. Are there any artists who did something so horrible, so despicable, that it has instantly invalidated all art that they have had any part in?

  • Tetra@kbin.social
    11414·
    9 months ago

    Very boring answer but JK Rowling.

    Her books already had some questionable shit in them but witnessing that shockingly venomous transphobia really recontextualizes everything. I used to re read the Harry Potter saga every few years, but never again now, this whole, very nostalgic for me franchise is forever ruined now.

    • Hyperreality@kbin.social
      391·
      9 months ago

      Can I recommend reading/listening to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earth Sea books?

      They’re also coming of age books about a young wizard, which almost certainly heavily inspired Rowling (although AFAIK she never admitted it), but the author is far less problematic. Also arguably much better books, so they’re more enjoyable to read for adults too.

      • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
        321·
        9 months ago

        And the cherry on top is this. You may notice a bit of misogyny built into a first couple books in the series, which is surprising given that Ursula is a woman. She not only noticed, admitted, and confronted that patriarchal slant, but corrected it by writing later stories in the same world that reversed that course. Those stories end up being much better than the foundational works in the series. I have become an instant fan of any author that can confront the flaws of their earlier writings and deliberately alter course to do better in their life and their writing.

        • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
          3·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, I actually read her last book in the series first, (it’s a distant sequel, very far removed from the rest of the series), and I can attest to the fact that she grew tremendously. I went back and read the first book, and was surprised at how different the last book was.

      • dragonfly@lemmy.world
        9·
        9 months ago

        Another great choice is The King Henry Tapes by Richard Raley. It’s a take on HP, but the magical kid from a dysfunctional family is a juvenile delinquent with a foul mouth. One of my favorite series.

      • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
        4·
        9 months ago

        Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books are also great alternatives (and a gateway to the rest of the Discworld books, which are also great).

        • groucho@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          Yep! Harry Potter doesn’t teach you how to be a wizard, but Tiffany Aching teaches you how to be a witch.

            • frokie@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 months ago

              Yeah if I recall correctly it was basically a mix between Squid Game and Hunger Games? Before either one existed.

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Her vehement and vocal hatred for trans people is pretty strange to me. She just won’t let it go, no matter the fact that her very vocal opinions on the topic are destroying her own legacy.

      I get that people are entitled to their opinions. But most people keep their thoughts to themselves if they start getting a lot of backlash. But she just keeps picking at it and making things worse for herself. I don’t know if it’s some sort of resentment born out of deeply hurt feelings, or unbridled arrogance that as a very rich and successful person people need to accept her opinions. Or maybe both. But it’s not working and she’s doing more harm than good, including to herself.

    • TheCannonball@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      Try the Mage Errent series by John Bierce. It’s a full fantasy world with a hard magic aystem that’s about kids going to magic school.

    • Centillionaire@kbin.social
      2670·
      9 months ago

      I looked up all her tweets, and I don’t see much to disagree with.

      If you go to Thailand, trans men are called ladyboys and if you ask them if they are women, they say, no, I’m a ladyboy. There’s nothing wrong with having the opinion that trans women will not be real women. She’s not saying she hates trans people, just that they will never be the same as biological women.

      • 520@kbin.social
        357·
        9 months ago

        Yes, but Thailand is not the entire world, nor was it even the target audience of those tweets.

        In the west, when you transition to another gender, it is because you want to identify as that gender. Thus when you say shit like ‘trans women aren’t real women’ you’re denying the identity of thousands of women worldwide.

      • snooggums@kbin.social
        194·
        9 months ago

        Just because one group that has a passing resemblance to another group says something doesn’t mean that it applies to every group with a passing resemblance. Especially when the group is from a completely different culture.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          What is a human? What is knowledge? What is virtue? What is justice?

          We have known for 2500 years that some words are very difficult to define in such a way that every single edge case is handled, it is complete, and short. The most famous example, 2500 years ago, was an academy defined human as a featherless biped. The next day someone released a plucked chicken.

          For those words that are very difficult to define we develop criteria and gradually alter the criteria as time goes on, mostly based on the idea of ordinary language.

        • 520@kbin.social
          33·
          9 months ago

          They mean people born with female bodies. So Cis women or FtM men.

          • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
            81·
            9 months ago

            I want him to define it.
            Even cis women might not be ‘biologically female’
            It comes from a high school level understanding of genetics.

            • 520@kbin.social
              31·
              9 months ago

              I do get what you mean, it’s oversimplifying a complicated subject.

      • chitak166@lemmy.world
        515·
        9 months ago

        A major issue is that she isn’t loyal and has her own opinions on the matter.

        Independents are seen as enemies in the eyes of tribalists. Eventually, they become enemies.

  • gzrrt@kbin.social
    921·
    9 months ago

    Kanye West. Maybe he was never ‘all there’ mentally to begin with, but the guy was clearly a role model to a lot of young people and utterly destroyed his own legacy.

    • drasticpotatoes@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      81·
      9 months ago

      I honestly wonder what happened to this guy. It was like a switch was hit and suddenly he was spouting nonsense and getting in trouble.

      • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
        131·
        9 months ago

        His mom dying on the table during an implant surgery was 100% the catalyst that thrust him towards what he is today. Totally unexpected, and she wasn’t anywhere near the age that her death would have been a thought.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          2·
          9 months ago

          I am just thinking about something my wife told me, she is a nurse in cardiac unit mostly. She told me the ones that are the most devastating to the families is when there is nothing wrong until there is. Grandma was fine yesterday, she is not fine today.

    • Monz@pawb.socialEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Yep, I was a young person that loved Kanye back in high school when Graduation was the CD I had on me all the time.

      Can’t listen to it anymore. It’s ruined. :{

        • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          97·
          9 months ago

          The point is that we should try to stop using euphemistic language around rape. It happens all the time, and it lessens the impact of the act for the reader. We should be explicit.

        • DessertStorms@kbin.social
          1118·
          9 months ago

          You mean the distinction between engaging in intercourse (aka “fucking”) vs committing a heinous crime?

          If you think pointing out that babies can only be raped, is the problem, not saying he “fucked” them, this is a you problem…

            • DessertStorms@kbin.social
              424·
              9 months ago

              I’m making the point that babies cannot be fucked, only raped, which obviously isn’t “inherent” to the person who said “he fucked babies” which minimises the reality of the “scenario” as you call it (more minimisation, why do you do that? To preserve your own comfort of course!). Words matter, and if you think pointing that out is “splitting hairs” (when you’re literally the only one making a load of fuss over this valid distinction), then again, you’re the one with the problem here (and taking issue with someone pointed out that babies can only be raped, not “fucked” is definitely a problem that needs addressing, like seriously - imagine being the person dying on the hill to defend the use of “fucked” to describe baby rape… smmfh).

              • blazeknave@lemmy.world
                12·
                9 months ago

                Lemmy sucks. This isn’t a you thing. Nobody IRL would ever spend the energy debating you on this. And of course a follow-up of “whoa relax don’t get triggered bro”

                There is no understanding that words matter round these parts at all. This place is a dangerous bubble bc it started as a place where one assumed everyone was on the level. So if you were the outlier opinion, maybe it really was you: I’d challenge myself and question my opinions. Now, if I’m downvoted, I dig in and entrench.

  • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
    34·
    9 months ago

    “DJ” Khalid. I’ve heard that he’s actually a very talented musician. I’ve never been shown proof that the claims are true.

      • TheLadyAugust@lemmy.world
        141·
        9 months ago

        For anyone thinking about listening to this podcast, it still platforms a lot of her crazy ideas. The following excerpt is from near the end of this article.

        March 2023: A new podcast, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, produced by Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and hosted by prominent former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper, featured interviews with Rowling. In its fifth episode, Rowling begins discussing the modern trans rights movement, calling it “a cultural movement that was illiberal in its methods and questionable in its ideas” and insisting, “I believe, absolutely, that there is something dangerous about this movement and that it must be challenged.” She then compares the movement to Death Eaters — the villainous supremacists in her books, analogous to Nazis…

        • Zoolander@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          9 months ago

          Bari Weiss is not someone to give your time to so thanks for posting that. Nearly everything she writes now is dishonest and she pretends to espouse liberal ideas while constantly taking conservative positions and then calling herself a “left-leaning centrist”. It’s hot garbage.

      • lameidunnowat@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        I listened to the podcast. The interviewer doesn’t challenge Rowling at all and simply lets her speak/answer with her incorrect assumptions. However it also shined a light on how badly thought out her ideas are and how informed she is, not by empathy, but by her own prejudice. After listening, I became even more confident in my opinion of Rowling.

        I also think it’s worth a listen is you can swallow your bile for the first few episodes.

    • Kalash@feddit.ch
      221·
      9 months ago

      For me he is the perfect counter example. I despise that cunt as much as the next guy, but god damn he is a good actor.

    • DessertStorms@kbin.social
      7·
      9 months ago

      Same. Guy gives me the creeps. As do far too many others from Jack Nicholson to James Franco (not sure why those came to mind first, and I was going to continue listing, but honestly there are just too many, some, like Russel Brand it was obvious way before any public allegations were made, so there are those as well, where we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are also those who I can’t stand seeing/hearing because they’re bigots, so I really could be here all day).

      I’m not claiming any purity by the way, there are far too many to flat out avoid them all, but some simply make my skin crawl more than others, and I just don’t need to consume something that makes me feel that way. ¯\(ツ)/¯

  • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
    4922·
    9 months ago

    Why would I try to do so in the first place?

    Imagine someone telling you “you have to separate the product from the corporation. Yes, they lobby to permit slave labour and are directly funding the genocide in Palestine, but they make one fine chicken sandwich - and if you don’t put down your silly objections to focus on that, you have failed as a human being”.

    Fuck that, fuck everything about that.

    Art is political. Fiction doubly so. You cannot and should not try to rip art free from its cultural context, because that context is the perspective that gives it meaning in the first place.

    And extra-splintery fuck the idea that the onus is on the audience to sweep everything under the carpet for horrible people.

    We’re in no danger of running out of art. We have an unlimited supply of artists just waiting for a break in the canopy to sprout up and grow into something new and exciting. If a handful of toxic assholes get canceled despite being popular, then so much the better.

    • DaDragon@kbin.social
      233·
      9 months ago

      I disagree. You can both admit that the company makes one damn fine chicken sandwich and still not buy it because they support slave labour. Them supporting slave labour doesn’t make it a bad chicken sandwich, just as them making a damn good chicken sandwich doesn’t stop them from supporting slave labour. It’s the method that’s important, not the reason itself.

      • squiblet@kbin.social
        101·
        9 months ago

        That’s the point though, that some people will use the ‘but chicken sandwich is good’ as a justification to overlook the other problems and still buy them. My ex and Hobby Lobby, for instance - she’d want to go there and shop for paints because they ‘might have a sale’, and I was just uh, no? Fuck Hobby Lobby.

        • Kalash@feddit.ch
          61·
          9 months ago

          Continue buying products direclty supports the company, that doesn’t necessarily apply to art. Me simple enjoying a piece of art doesn’t support the creator. Only when I buy or licence it.

          • squiblet@kbin.social
            2·
            9 months ago

            Sure, but overlooking moral misgivings is the similarity. Just like I wouldn’t tell someone ‘hey, I love this sale at Hobby Lobby!’ I wouldn’t feel right about endorsing a star or director or artist or musician who was found to be a terrible person. The same applies to enjoying it in private - my knowledge about the creator would somewhat ruin my enjoyment of their work.

            • Kalash@feddit.ch
              1·
              9 months ago

              I wouldn’t feel right about endorsing a star or director or artist or musician who was found to be a terrible person.

              I don’t think enjoying or even endorising a piece of art is equivalent to endorsing the people that produced it.

              For example I will always enjoy Firefly and will keep recommending it to people, simple because it’s a amazing show. What ever Joss Whedon has done doesn’t change that. Hell, I wouldn’t care if it was directed by Hitler and produced by Jeffery Dahmer.

              • squiblet@kbin.social
                2·
                9 months ago

                That seems to be the topic here… some people do feel uncomfortable about works having a connection to a terrible person, others don’t. Personally I do think about the creator of artistic works when consuming them or as a fan, and I don’t really want to be thinking “huh, I wonder what Hitler and Dahmer were thinking when they made that decision”. On the other hand, some people love thinking about awful people like serial killers.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        I am a fat guy, there sandwich is only marginally better than the lowest end stuff, any fast casual local place is going to do it better. You can trust a fat man about fried meat.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 months ago

      Right except we can’t apply this evenly. You can go right now to any big museum, see elegant wood carvings from like 800 years ago, and we know nothing about the artist except his name. How do you know he wasn’t a murdering psychopath? You don’t. What you do know is Rowling said some shit on Twitter. We are holding more modern work to a higher standard compared to older work simply because we can document the lives of modern artists better. If you can’t enforce a moral principle with anything resembling consistent application I question how good it is.

      Also comparing it to Chick-fil-A is bullshit.

      • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
        11·
        9 months ago

        A good moral principle is ‘don’t do things that needlessly harm people’, but unintended consequences are everywhere. By delaying a passerby two seconds while you give a homeless guy $5, you might end up causing them to get hit by a garbage truck that would otherwise have missed them.

        You can’t enforce the principle consistently, but that doesn’t make it worthless; you give it a good-faith, best-effort go, and that’s all you can do. If your best efforts turn out to be disastrous, that’s shitty, but life’s unfair like that.

        Also, whatever else was going on with the person 800 years ago, JK is right now causing ongoing harm in her relentless campaign of hatred for trans people. Waving her IP around is promoting her cause, and so harming more people, right now.

        If nobody knows whether the 800-years-ago guy was a piece of shit or not, then promoting their work isn’t supporting some piece-of-shit cause and harming people.

        As for chicken sandwiches - without explaining why you think my analogy was inapt, calling it bullshit is no more of a slam-dunk rebuttal than if I called you a poopoohead.

        Entity X makes product Y and does shitty horrible thing Z. By being a product-Y fanboi and promoting Y all over the internet, you’re expressing approval for X and condoning Z (at least enough to cut them slack for it).

        What difference does it make whether Y is a media IP or a food product?

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          Fine your analogy is in apt because you can get a fried chicken sandwich anywhere. It isnt exactly intellectual property.

          Also you are muddling the difference between not being all knowing with not being consistent. Not the same thing at all.

          • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
            12·
            9 months ago

            Don’t muddy the water: you were talking specifically about chick-fil-A, even though I was using it as a generic example of a product people might get attached to. The ‘separate the art from the artist’ crowd would have you ignore any unpleasantness on the part of the producer, so long as the product is enjoyable in isolation - and hold it a moral failing not to do so.

            And your entire point was that you couldn’t be consistent because you werne’t all-knowing; not knowing the character of your 800-year-old artist is no different in this instance from not knowing the future: to perfectly apply the principle would require full knowledge of every situation where it could possibly apply (which is of course impossible). This does not, I contend, render the principle, or attempts to apply it as consistently as your knowledge allows, worthless.

            Do better, and try again.

  • Pendulum@lemmy.worldOP
    201·
    9 months ago

    Ian Watkins, lead singer of the band Lostprophets. Never read the court transcripts of his crimes, they really are that horrible and will ruin you for some time.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
    17·
    9 months ago

    Not as if I’m a fan, but Eric Gill is/was a prolific, respected and internationally renowned artist. You’ll his work across the UK, perhaps most notably on the BBC’s broadcasting house.

    Also designed the Gill Sans typeface, which I think everyone’s heard of or even used. Used all across the world on signage or stores.

    Here’s why I have a hard time taking his works at face value:

    Although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Gill as “the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century: a letter-cutter and type designer of genius”, he is also a figure of considerable controversy following the revelations of his sexual abuse of two of his daughters and of his pet dog.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gill