3 ms·

She said: The question is whether we condition our consumption of what artists produce on their moral purity. Here she answers it I want the stuff, and i

She said: The question is whether we condition our consumption of what artists produce on their moral purity. Here she answers it I want the stuff, and in truth I wouldn’t be all that bothered if the director were an axe murderer. For me things are not black and white like that. Art is a form of expression -that's my opinion. My assumption is that, artist's create art from out of their own convictions. With that mindset , if I find out that artist is a heinous person it automatically makes me think same about his art- may be that's a wrong way to think about it. If Sorkin wrote a play and a would be serial killer was cast as the protagonist , I will have a hard time liking the play when the actualities play out. This is probably wrong and contradicts what i wrote before because i am attributing the integrity of the play with one single actors behavior. Its not easy. Does some one have a better way to deal with this.

thanatropism 8y ago
> Its not easy. Does some one have a better way to deal with this. A boycott. Don't buy the stuff. Seriously, the core of the problem is not moral judgement (although that may be worthy discussing at a second, non-fire emergency, time. The problem is automatic moral contagion. A publisher may make the approximate market or moral guess that it should suspend its relationship with an author. But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd, the "They". And the "They" is structurally incapable of thought, let alone moral thought. The consequence is bookstores getting caught in the wave and erasing traces of the author's existence. I never thought Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, which seemed so overwrought and sanctimonious ten years ago, had this much wisdom about human nature. Search wikiquote for some choice rambling about "second handers". It's really badly written too, so it's a shame human behavior is making it more prescient and deeper than, say, 1984.
- mcguire 8y ago
  See also Rand and William Hickman. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    Rand's heros are bullshit, yes. In reality nothing happens from isolated individualistic initiative, everything takes place in the space between people. Howard Roark is a fictional version of Martin Shkreli. That said, her acute pessimism about mob human behavior appears to be dead-on.
- c8r7sn8mo 8y ago
  > A boycott. Don't buy the stuff. > But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd Is that not the same thing? Boycotts affect distributors, producers, agents, etc. Who wants to hire an agent that represents X, Y, or Z? That public radio station could leave his recordings online, and suffer the consequences of donors not donating. I can not-watch a show on Netflix that I don't like, or I can cancel my subscription. These are the effects of a boycott.
leftyted 8y ago
> Its not easy. Does some one have a better way to deal with this. The argument made by the article is that each of us ought to be able to choose our own way to deal with this. But, instead, we are denied that opportunity because publishers/distributors/editors/agents/directors/producers/newspapers/etc are "severing all ties" and going further by expunging the existence of the guilty party as far as possible. I agree with the article. I don't think much of Roman Polanki as a human being, but I've watched most of his movies and I think many of them are spectacularly good. And, no, I don't think his movies are permeated by some kind of inappropriate lust for teenage girls. Bad people can make good art. Bad people have made good art. If it came to light that Shakespeare had been an abusive husband, would you think less of his plays and poems? Would you support publishers if they chose to stop printing Shakespeare? What if they stopped distribution of what had been printed? What if amazon stopped selling Shakespeare? I support your right to boycott, but I think restricting my ability to not boycott is going too far.
- voidhorse 8y ago
  Of course—but the issue at hand is that or present situation is more complex. Today, a person’s success (because our culture has been reduced to basically only valuing popularity (visibility) and wealth and not intelligence or moral rectitude) tends to grant them degrees of social immunity and prevent the appropriate application of the law. People have begun realizing this. This realization causes them to strike at the defense these artists have—namely, their popularity via their distribution. That’s why people call for censure and put pressure on distributors. The révocation of works is not some abstract association between morals and the value of artworks as such—it is the concrete fallout of our particular situation and the realization that in our particular society wide distribution grants you some form of power that plenty of assholes have used to abuse other human beings and skirt the legal repercussions. Shakespeare might have been a douche. He might’ve used his success in the theatre as an effective means to abuse others and get away with it. We don’t know. What we do know is that that does happen in our society—and it is a social dynamic we ought to change. This inaccessibilité of some works is a consequence. I doubt it will last indefinitely. I don’t think anyone is actually making the straw man argument Shriver is attacking on the article—people aren’t interested in saying there’s some innate connection between the moral quality of artists and the quality of their work—they’re realizing the power of popularity and attempting to bring justice to those who have abuséd that power.

thanatropism 8y ago

> Its not easy. Does some one have a better way to deal with this. A boycott. Don't buy the stuff. Seriously, the core of the problem is not moral judgement (although that may be worthy discussing at a second, non-fire emergency, time. The problem is automatic moral contagion. A publisher may make the approximate market or moral guess that it should suspend its relationship with an author. But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd, the "They". And the "They" is structurally incapable of thought, let alone moral thought. The consequence is bookstores getting caught in the wave and erasing traces of the author's existence. I never thought Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, which seemed so overwrought and sanctimonious ten years ago, had this much wisdom about human nature. Search wikiquote for some choice rambling about "second handers". It's really badly written too, so it's a shame human behavior is making it more prescient and deeper than, say, 1984.

mcguire 8y ago
See also Rand and William Hickman. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman
- thanatropism 8y ago
  Rand's heros are bullshit, yes. In reality nothing happens from isolated individualistic initiative, everything takes place in the space between people. Howard Roark is a fictional version of Martin Shkreli. That said, her acute pessimism about mob human behavior appears to be dead-on.
c8r7sn8mo 8y ago
> A boycott. Don't buy the stuff. > But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd Is that not the same thing? Boycotts affect distributors, producers, agents, etc. Who wants to hire an agent that represents X, Y, or Z? That public radio station could leave his recordings online, and suffer the consequences of donors not donating. I can not-watch a show on Netflix that I don't like, or I can cancel my subscription. These are the effects of a boycott.

leftyted 8y ago

> Its not easy. Does some one have a better way to deal with this. The argument made by the article is that each of us ought to be able to choose our own way to deal with this. But, instead, we are denied that opportunity because publishers/distributors/editors/agents/directors/producers/newspapers/etc are "severing all ties" and going further by expunging the existence of the guilty party as far as possible. I agree with the article. I don't think much of Roman Polanki as a human being, but I've watched most of his movies and I think many of them are spectacularly good. And, no, I don't think his movies are permeated by some kind of inappropriate lust for teenage girls. Bad people can make good art. Bad people have made good art. If it came to light that Shakespeare had been an abusive husband, would you think less of his plays and poems? Would you support publishers if they chose to stop printing Shakespeare? What if they stopped distribution of what had been printed? What if amazon stopped selling Shakespeare? I support your right to boycott, but I think restricting my ability to not boycott is going too far.

voidhorse 8y ago
Of course—but the issue at hand is that or present situation is more complex. Today, a person’s success (because our culture has been reduced to basically only valuing popularity (visibility) and wealth and not intelligence or moral rectitude) tends to grant them degrees of social immunity and prevent the appropriate application of the law. People have begun realizing this. This realization causes them to strike at the defense these artists have—namely, their popularity via their distribution. That’s why people call for censure and put pressure on distributors. The révocation of works is not some abstract association between morals and the value of artworks as such—it is the concrete fallout of our particular situation and the realization that in our particular society wide distribution grants you some form of power that plenty of assholes have used to abuse other human beings and skirt the legal repercussions. Shakespeare might have been a douche. He might’ve used his success in the theatre as an effective means to abuse others and get away with it. We don’t know. What we do know is that that does happen in our society—and it is a social dynamic we ought to change. This inaccessibilité of some works is a consequence. I doubt it will last indefinitely. I don’t think anyone is actually making the straw man argument Shriver is attacking on the article—people aren’t interested in saying there’s some innate connection between the moral quality of artists and the quality of their work—they’re realizing the power of popularity and attempting to bring justice to those who have abuséd that power.