It can sometimes be hard to separate the artist from their art. Are there any artists who were bad people but whose work you still enjoy?
Feel free to answer if you’re in the opposite scenario: an artist who you love personally but don’t enjoy their artwork.
Feel free to respond more than just music artists!
Tom Cruise. I don’t know what weird pathways cross in a brain to get that deep into Scientology without realizing what bullshit it is, but he is an amazing actor. He understands the craft, he is not shy about poking fun of himself, and by all accounts he is a consummate professional and treats the film crew well and has given gifts/thrown parties for them, etc.
But Scientology, yeesh…
HP Lovecraft - great writer, horrible racist
Similarly, Orson Scott Card - Ender’s game and its sequel are great, but he’s a raging homophobe.
HPL actually repented his start conservatism and racism in his later years but yeah.
I didn’t realize this.
I’m convinced that Orson Scott Card suffered a traumatic head injury at some point. I don’t know how you could go from writing something as beautiful and intimate as Ender’s Game to shit like Hidden Empire, which is creepy right wing Christian disaster porn (from what I can remember of that trainwreck).
Yeah, I don’t know how the person who wrote “Speaker for the Dead” could be such a bigot. It doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s pretty simple: the bugs weren’t gay.
I mean, by present standards, most people historically would have been pretty racist.
He was certainly above that. Hell his story “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” also known as “White Ape”. Is literally a book about the “one drop rule” to the point its actually funny because of how absurd it comes off as. Its so insanely racist, it fucking becomes funny based on the character’s reaction. Its not a great short story but basically he find out his great great great great grandmother was a “white ape” (which is not human per say but lets read between the lines since the white apes come from the congo region), his response to this news was pouring gasoline on himself and burning himself alive. Like yes its fiction but the fact he made a fucking short story where the focal point is discovering that you are mixed race and learning that is so mind breaking, death was the only logical option is god damn hilarious.
Indeed, though Lovecraft has the distinction of being pretty racist even for his time.
JK Rowling 😔
I really enjoyed Ender’s Game, but even while reading you can tell there’s some weird racist shit going on in Orson Card’s head.
I missed it, but I was in my early teens when I read it. What did you spot?
It’s been a while so I don’t remember anything concrete, but I remember characters being described with a strange amount of detail in racial or ethnic features, like height or nose shape. I don’t think he ever explicitly describes any race as superior to others, but some of the passages felt like it was going to devolve into some weird analysis of skull dimpling or something.
Yeah he donates a lot of money to anti-lgbt (or “homophobia-adjacent”) “special interest groups”.
So that means a hard no for me paying for anything he gets royalties for.
Removed by mod
I searched it up a bit, and apparently Card is pretty vehemently homophobic. Which really sucks and is really strange. It sucks because i do enjoy his books, and they were honestly part of what got me into sci-fi. It’s really strange though since the moral of pretty much every single book of his is understanding, empathy, and compassion.
I would say Kevin Spacey. The man can act: Usual suspects, Seven, first season of House Of Cards. Shame how he turned out.
Billy Corgan.
The music of Smashing Pumpkins got me through some very dark times as a teenager, but finding out he hates me because I’m gay snapped that personal connection. I’m usually able to separate the art from the artist and still enjoy good stuff made by bad people, but I’m not able to enjoy them anymore. The connection was too personal and the betrayal was too great.
Billy attempted to sell an Alesis SR-16 that was used in his band for $30k. It’s a $100 drum machine. He was selling it himself. No charity or anything; he just tried to hyper-inflate a very common drum machine that is still produced because he thought he added that value to it by owning it. That was pretty weird.
I mean, in the sense of music history it is worth more than any other random one you can find on the street. But maybe somewhere around $500 - $1000 if it was signed by the band.
Joss Whedon
I love Tom Cruise. The man is an amazing, committed actor. He doesn’t need flashy CGI or visual effects and he does insane stunts for our entertainment. Too bad he’s a fucking nutjob.
Except his movies use a lot of flashy CGI and visual effects. Sure, he does his own stunts, but there isn’t any less CGI in his movies than any other.
Oh, Ayn Rand!
Wait a second, no, I hate her work too.
I’m out of the loop, what did she do?
Johnny Craig, the former lead singer for the band Dance Gavin Dance. Dude has repeatedly fucked up and ripped off fans, but damn did he have a great singing voice.
And for the opposite, T-Pain and Post Malone. Both of them just seem like the coolest, and most chill people but their studio music is just not for me.
A lot?
Tom Cruise is the easy answer for obvious, cultist, related reasons. And as much as I love Donnie Yen in basically everything he has ever done, he is a hardcore CCP shill at best and there is a LOT of really creepy and questionable shit in his casting and “writing” that makes me wonder when he fucks up so bad that even China cares.
But, generally, the rule that a friend “coined” is: How bad are they compared to Mel Gibson? And while that is mostly a “funny” way to look at stuff, it is also useful to keep in mind regarding the different scale of assholes. And it also depends on what they are bad about.
Also, I still like pro wrestling. That shit is a minefield.
But to provide an answer that didn’t seem to come up yet:
Nobuhiro Watsuki. Creator of Rurouni Kenshin and such a pedophile that even the Japanese government gave a shit (and… just spend five minutes on the fifth floor of any manga shop and you’ll understand how massively fucked of a scale that is. Or walk down the streets of Akihabara at night).
But also? The Rurouni Kenshin anime is still one of the GOATs… for the Kyoto arc. Even if there is a lot of shit in the arcs surrounding it and the overall story of Kenshin that REALLY makes a lot of sense when you understand how evil the creator is… And the live action adaptations are a must watch for any fan of action movies because it is probably still the greatest blend of wire work, fight choreography, and “style” to ever exist (I hear the Yu Yu Hakusho live action taps into the same vein).
One of those things where I will be a lot happier when that piece of shit is dead and unable to benefit from sales.
Graham Lineham was controversial for years before he was ‘cancelled’. A prime example of a talented writer who needed a PR team to keep him away from the general public.
Father Ted, Black Books, IT Crowd. These are all gems that I always enjoy rewatching.
This one is really a shame. Anything with his name on it used to be guaranteed laughs, but now I see the name and it feels tainted.
Marilyn Manson - he had a slow slide from alcoholism to lecher creep to serial abuser. he spent 2009-2011 doing the worst shit to women that you can imagine.
Brand New - turns out that Jesse was a groomer of underage girls.
Arcade Fire - Win Butler is a sex pest.
Smashing Pumpkins - not at all in the same category as the others, but goddamn does Billy Corgan suck. he was always known as a first-class egotist, but he just kept being an asshole long after his prime had become a distant memory. then the weird shit started: crackpot conspiracy theories on Myspace, palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews. the latest album is an extended allegory on cancel culture. worse, it’s mostly unlistenable.
palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews
That saddens and actually kinda shocks me.
I would have expressed ZERO surprise to news of him going so far to the LEFT that he ended up miles beyond hippie dippie new agey and founded his own Heaven’s Gate cult (The central belief of the which was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven)…but this is…honestly weirding me out.
Wasn’t he going so far into eastern spirituality that he was recording himself reading the entirety of the Bhagavad Gita at one point or something?
Idk if its authors count as artists, but I’m a fan of the US Constitution. A lot of its authors were slave holders though, so nearly the worst a person can be.
This is probably a controversial one. As someone who studied modern political history, the U.S. Constitution is - taken completely subjective for its time, authors, situation, etc. - an amazing piece of human achievement. It’s a shame that so many people view it was some static command from the past, rather than the living document that it’s authors intended it to be.
John Lennon was pure asshole. He abused his first wife, who he only married because his manager didn’t want one of these new starts to father and illegitimate child. And that child, he tormented and ignored. Second wife, second child, both wanted and given everything.
Not saying he’s a saint, but isn’t an alternative interpretation that he was young, inexperienced, and had a bad relationship, then grew up, learned some things, and had a better relationship later? Julian Lennon was on Bill Maher’s podcast recently and described a reconciliation between him and his dad right before he died.
Again, not trying to excuse all his bad behavior in his first marriage, but I also don’t think that a failed relationship is enough evidence to judge a whole life by, especially one that was under extraordinary pressure.
He himself admitted he was an abuser of people in his life. Both male and female. Sure, people see that as him atoning for those past abuses. But it is clear he wasn’t this nice person people think of when they think of his anti-war and peace stance in life.
Iirc, while Beatles management did encourage Lennon and Cynthia Powell to get married, they were instructed to keep the marriage and child private for a
period of time. They were trying to lean into the “boy band” desirability, and they must have figured a married father isn’t someone young women feel comfortable pining over. Of course, Cynthia and Julian didn’t stay a secret forever though.
