{"id":1938,"date":"2021-02-25T18:11:40","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T18:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexet.wpengine.com\/?p=1938"},"modified":"2021-03-02T12:01:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T12:01:28","slug":"cancel-culture-and-separating-art-from-the-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=1938","title":{"rendered":"Cancel culture and separating art from the artist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of the biggest perils of living in 2021, besides\ncoronavirus, is finding out regularly that your favourite artists or actors are\nawful people. Everyday, another person puts their foot in their mouth and says\nsomething awful, or it is revealed that they did something awful. What\u2019s even\nworse is being the actual victim of such a person. Sure, the thought of what\nyour favourite artist did or said is unfathomable to you, and maybe you\u2019re\nwilling to look past that, but would you feel the same if you were the victim?\nNo? Well, that\u2019s why you can\u2019t separate the art from the artist. Amongst\nseveral other reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, this debate falls along a very clear line. Either\nyou wont come within ten feet of anything associated with the offending artist,\nor you blame cancel culture for every insult thrown the way of your favourite\nartist and can\u2019t understand why people won\u2019t watch a TV show featuring a woman\nwho thinks being a\nRepublican today is on the same level as being a Jew during the Holocaust<\/a>.\nIn the case of Gina Carano, she has since lost her role on The Mandalorian so\nperhaps the debate doesn\u2019t lie here, but rather with celebrities who still have\nsome semblance of a career after their supposed cancellation. J.K. Rowling, for\nexample. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.K. Rowling came under heavy fire for her frequent attacks against trans people<\/a>, colouring them as either violent predators or as confused children, completely ignoring the fact that trans people are just normal people. What has followed is a mass of people now refusing to support any content created by her. Has she been cancelled? Well, you can hardly say that given that she continues to have wide support from the TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) community and was recently given an award from the BBC<\/a>. Rowling\u2019s ability to shoot herself in the foot doesn\u2019t end there, with her only ever declaring a character gay after the release of a book, featuring Goblins to embody every greedy Jewish banker stereotype<\/a>, having barely any ethnic diversity in her books while naming one of the only Asian characters \u2018Cho Chang\u2019<\/a>, and finally having a token Irish character to blow things up. Rowling\u2019s other pen name, Robert Galbraith, is also the name of a pioneer of conversion therapy<\/a>. All of that is contained within her books, meaning that even if you can separate Rowling\u2019s essays and tweets from the books you love, you still can\u2019t escape how deeply ingrained her views are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, people are still going to read Harry Potter. It\u2019s one of the most famous book series of all time and so many people have grown up with it. However, what we shouldn\u2019t do is justify the negative beliefs expressed in those books or completely ignore the harm that may be caused. Of course, you can still read the books, but be mindful of the deeper meanings of some choices within the book and don\u2019t try to pretend that there is nothing malicious contained within the books. More than that, if you say you don\u2019t agree with Rowling but still enjoy Harry Potter, don\u2019t use that as an excuse to financially support her. If you want Harry Potter merchandise, there are plenty of talented fan-creators out there who could almost certainly do with the money more than a woman who is already a millionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blaming cancel culture for Rowling\u2019s decline also won\u2019t get\nyou anywhere. People don\u2019t want to associate with her due to her own actions.\nIf she\u2019s been savagely cancelled for no reason at all, she wouldn\u2019t be getting\nheadlines and awards still. It\u2019s as simple as people don\u2019t like what she says,\nso they don\u2019t want to consume her content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, perhaps people who have said awful things is the easy part. The pop-punk scene has a serious problem with band members turning out to be rapists. That\u2019s a whole other ballpark to famous people just saying stupid things about large groups. Brand New\u2019s Jesse Lacey, for example, has confessed to sexually assaulting multiple underage girls. Girls who were fans of his music and trusted him. Should you still listen to Brand New? Well, no one is going to stop you from listening privately and enjoying music that has meaning to you, but have a think about what impact your listening has. Are you streaming the music and therefore helping fund the rapist? How would someone who has been victim of sexual assault feel if they overheard you? No one can stop you from personally separating the art from the artist and continuing to listen, but you\u2019re not free from any consequences that may come as a result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s always someone who wants to play devil\u2019s advocate\nand ask about if perhaps any allegations of this nature are false, as if women\nhave anything to gain by opening themselves up to the abuse you receive online\nas soon as you speak up. However, it\u2019s important to note that men are\nsignificantly more\nlikely to be raped than falsely accused<\/a>, and you\u2019ve also got to question\nwhy someone would lie about it. Especially when looking at the amount of abuse\nthat the victims receive from the fans of the accused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, people need to stop blaming cancel culture and\nstart considering why it is that their favourite artist is being \u2018cancelled\u2019. If\nyou do something bad, you should expect consequences. That\u2019s not unfair\npersecution of conservatives, it\u2019s responsibility. People are free to act in\nwhatever way they desire, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re free from consequences.\nIt is absolutely possible to separate the art from the artist, but the debate\nis much more complex than that in the sense that the questions also exists of\nwhether we should and how this varies between situations.<\/p>\n

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One of the biggest perils of living in 2021, besides coronavirus, is finding out regularly that your favourite artists or actors are awful <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,42,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-podcast","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}