The ethics of enjoying large collaborative works of art and entertainment

[Travis B.]

Knowing that an artist holds (or held) controversial opinions makes it somewhat harder to me to appreciate their work, but as long as those controversial opinions are not expressed in the work in question, I still can appreciate that work. For instance, Richard Wagner is well known to have been a German nationalist and an antisemite (which probably was the main reason why he was Hitler's favourite composer), but that doesn't mean that his operas ought to be banned. Wagner is not my favourite composer, though, but not as much due to his antisemitic statements or to Hitler liking him, but because I feel that most of his operas are too pompous to my taste (which, however, may have something to do with his nationalist mindset, but then, such pompousness was just typical of his time), and my music taste lies elsewhere. Yet, I do consider Wagner's operas works of great artistic value and importance to the history of music, even if I there are things about them I do not like.

Even in the case of Wagner, though, while he did express some antisemitic views (e.g. he expressed them in resentment of the success of individuals such as Mendelssohn), much of his association with the Nazis is really thanks to his widow Winifred Wagner after his death, who was a strong supporter of the Nazi party.

[Raphael]

Even in the case of Wagner, though, while he did express some antisemitic views (e.g. he expressed them in resentment of the success of individuals such as Mendelssohn), much of his association with the Nazis is really thanks to his widow Winifred Wagner after his death, who was a strong supporter of the Nazi party.

Disagree. I could quote some pretty vile stuff he wrote if that wouldn't risk me getting banned here; that's not just "some" minor, unimportant statements. His nationalism and bigotry were a pretty big part of who he was.

[Travis B.]

Even in the case of Wagner, though, while he did express some antisemitic views (e.g. he expressed them in resentment of the success of individuals such as Mendelssohn), much of his association with the Nazis is really thanks to his widow Winifred Wagner after his death, who was a strong supporter of the Nazi party.

Disagree. I could quote some pretty vile stuff he wrote if that wouldn't risk me getting banned here; that's not just "some" minor, unimportant statements. His nationalism and bigotry were a pretty big part of who he was.

I looked into it some more, and while his antisemitism originally seemed to start out as simply resentment of people like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, this evolved into attacking Jews in music in general, and apparently Wagner came to believe that Jews as a whole must be assimilated into German society. Yes, advocating forced assimilation does count as "pretty vile stuff".

He also had an association in his later years with Arthur de Gobineau, an advocate of Aryanism, but how much influence de Gobineau had on him is debatable. For instance, he came to have anxieties about "miscegenation", but at the same time did not seem to share de Gobineau's belief in the superiority of a Germanic or "Nordic" race.

Still, the association with Nazism is something that came about after his death, and while he should be criticized for what he did say and believe in, it is not fair to paint him as guilty by association with an ideology that did not exist in the form we know it today during his lifetime.

[WeepingElf]

Even in the case of Wagner, though, while he did express some antisemitic views (e.g. he expressed them in resentment of the success of individuals such as Mendelssohn), much of his association with the Nazis is really thanks to his widow Winifred Wagner after his death, who was a strong supporter of the Nazi party.

Disagree. I could quote some pretty vile stuff he wrote if that wouldn't risk me getting banned here; that's not just "some" minor, unimportant statements. His nationalism and bigotry were a pretty big part of who he was.

I looked into it some more, and while his antisemitism originally seemed to start out as simply resentment of people like Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, this evolved into attacking Jews in music in general, and apparently Wagner came to believe that Jews as a whole must be assimilated into German society. Yes, advocating forced assimilation does count as "pretty vile stuff".

He also had an association in his later years with Arthur de Gobineau, an advocate of Aryanism, but how much influence de Gobineau had on him is debatable. For instance, he came to have anxieties about "miscegenation", but at the same time did not seem to share de Gobineau's belief in the superiority of a Germanic or "Nordic" race.

Still, the association with Nazism is something that came about after his death, and while he should be criticized for what he did say and believe in, it is not fair to paint him as guilty by association with an ideology that did not exist in the form we know it today during his lifetime.

Yes. Wagner cannot really be blamed for being courted by the Nazis; he was long dead by then. And his resentments against Jews were quite common in his time (which doesn't really make it better, but you can hardly judge 19th-century people by 21st-century standards). Also, there is a difference between advocating assimilation of the Jews and having them murdered.

[Torco]

on the one hand, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism blabla, but there is logic in treating movies books and so on differently from how we treat, say, sandpaper. then again, I myself enjoy a lot of stuff by some pretty questionable people: borges, the best writer in spanish i'll die on this hill don't @ me, was prominently pro pinochet, for example. and heinlein, one of my faves in scifi, was... well... he was heinlein. one problematic sonovabitch. and it's not like who they are as a person doesn't influence their works, you know, it totally did.

still, I agree on the purity thing in sentiment, plus i dislike this intellectual property fueled notion that culture is and forever remains, age of the author plus infinity years hence, the property of the author... or the megacorpo that was paying the authors money every month, anyway. I don't disagree with, say, boycotting harry potter cause rowling's a transphobic ghoul or whatever, but it's easy for me to do so, I don't like her books. it's good to participate in whatever collective action we can to reduce by a few iotas the wealth and power of the most reprehensible of the world-owning lords but, then again, I would probably still get starlink if the alternative was no reliable internet, despite world owner musk being a nazi... i guess the same way I buy sandpaper made by child slaves in sri lanka or whatever.

i guess my take is boycotts are nice but superogatory? and private boycotts are probably pointless... just torrent their stuff if you're worried about giving bad authors money. there's certainly no fault in deriving enjoyment from the work of an impure author, that's for sure.

[Travis B.]

To me, much of the time boycotts against this sort of thing are a way of making oneself feel good about "doing something" even if it does not actually do much in reality. For instance, if I boycotted Harry Potter and The Sandman or the Toy Story franchise or the works of Borges or the works of Heinlein, I could claim to myself that I am at least "making a statement" about J.K. Rowling's transphobia or Neil Gaiman's treatment of women or John Lasseter's treatment of women or Borges's support for Latin American dictatorships or Heinlein's being a problematic Libertarianoid. But what have I done in reality? Not much. Such symbolic actions are highly unlikely to change the beliefs or behavior of the people in question (especially in the case of dead people like Borges).

[alice]

A$ for financia£ $upport, I actually paid for the first of the Left Behind books and after reading it published a highly critical review on the internet. What does that make me - an unwitting pawn of the religious right, or a principled critic?

As for lazy naming of foreign characters, the authors of these same books take some beating: one of their later works features a French woman called "Cendrillon Jospin", where "Marie Lefevre" would have been just fine.

[Travis B.]

A$ for financia£ $upport, I actually paid for the first of the Left Behind books and after reading it published a highly critical review on the internet. What does that make me - an unwitting pawn of the religious right, or a principled critic?

Obviously the only ethical way to do this would have been to download a pirated copy of the book off teh Interwebs and review that.

[Torco]

you're right, travis, that individually boycotts aren't very important, but it's still the case that if enough people either boycott or, even less severely, have their feelings of "yeah i could buy that" reduced by this or that news, that does matter to enterprise decisionmakers. I pay my rent via doing market research these days, and I've seen it first hand. you know, sales managers concerned that, for example, some big corruption case in the news might make people less likely to give them money. they pay good money to know if that's a risk or not.

[Travis B.]

For the sake of full disclosure, I must state that I have been boycotting Starbucks since my daughter informed me that they were suing their union here in the US for the union's expression of support for the Palestinians. And yes, my doing it by myself is probably not doing much at all, and I am fully aware of this. But I figure that there are other coffee shops I can get Arnold Palmers (what Starbucks calls "black tea lemonades"...) from, and I am losing nothing by simply buying them from other places (for similar prices too), so I might as well help fund a coffee shop other than Starbucks.

[zompist]

For the sake of full disclosure, I must state that I have been boycotting Starbucks since my daughter informed me that they were suing their union here in the US for the union's expression of support for the Palestinians. And yes, my doing it by myself is probably not doing much at all, and I am fully aware of this. But I figure that there are other coffee shops I can get Arnold Palmers (what Starbucks calls "black tea lemonades"...) from, and I am losing nothing by simply buying them from other places (for similar prices too), so I might as well help fund a coffee shop other than Starbucks.

I'm glad you allow yourself to take a moral stand. Yeah, it doesn't do much, but it's good to support local coffee shops anyway.

Now maybe you could extend some charity to people who feel bothered by certain artists? It's the exact same logic: there are stories and movies from all over the world, we can buy from the less-scummy artists.

Right-wing protests about this sort of thing are projection: when they can, they ban books and get them removed from schools and libraries. So they have to pretend that the left wants to do the same.

Pretty much every left-wing discussion I've seen on this subject has emphasized that people can and will read what they can handle. Some people may be throwing out their Neil Gaiman books but they're not asking anyone else to. No one is patting themselves on the back for their morality; they're disappointed and feel betrayed.

(It's not like leftists are perfect— in all such discussions someone will prance in and say that they never liked that particular artist, which is both rude and irrelevant. It would be like someone listening to your story and proclaiming that they never drink coffee.)

As for dead authors, we can't change the past, but we can reexamine which bits of it are lionized and which are forgotten. Decisions about who are the really important authors are not given by God, they're made by people who were themselves products of their time. People have been disagreeing with Socrates, on all sorts of grounds, for 2400 years, and it's no scandal that people are still doing so.

[Travis B.]

For the sake of full disclosure, I must state that I have been boycotting Starbucks since my daughter informed me that they were suing their union here in the US for the union's expression of support for the Palestinians. And yes, my doing it by myself is probably not doing much at all, and I am fully aware of this. But I figure that there are other coffee shops I can get Arnold Palmers (what Starbucks calls "black tea lemonades"...) from, and I am losing nothing by simply buying them from other places (for similar prices too), so I might as well help fund a coffee shop other than Starbucks.

I'm glad you allow yourself to take a moral stand. Yeah, it doesn't do much, but it's good to support local coffee shops anyway.

To be honest, boycotting them was really my daughter's idea, but even if she hadn't suggested it I still would have knowing what I know. After I'd pick her up in the afternoons we would previously go to Starbucks (because it is close to where she lives and open at the right time of the day), but then one day she told me she did not want to go to Starbucks and why, and I looked it up, and lo and behold they indeed were suing their union, and from further looking there happened to be another coffee shop not too much further from where she lives that was open in the correct time range, so I suggested to her that we go there instead. It's still a chain but a smaller chain (we regularly go to a local coffee shop in the town where I live on Saturdays and Sundays, but unfortunately they are closed by the time I generally pick her up).

Now maybe you could extend some charity to people who feel bothered by certain artists? It's the exact same logic: there are stories and movies from all over the world, we can buy from the less-scummy artists.

There is a slight difference. These are people who already enjoyed Harry Potter or The Sandman or like who have now decided that they must reject them by their association with their creators who turned out to be scummy, even if they would not have given J.K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman another cent (due to having bought their complete works and having no need to buy any more), whereas in me and my daughter's case, we still very much enjoy Arnold Palmers and smoothies, respectively, but we have just chosen that we should get them someplace other than Starbucks so we do not help fund a company which sues its union. A closer analogy would be if me and my daughter decided that we now hated Arnold Palmers (or in Starbucks-speak "black tea lemonades") and smoothies (or in Starbucks-speak "frappacinos") through their association with Starbucks despite the fact that we enjoy them.

Right-wing protests about this sort of thing are projection: when they can, they ban books and get them removed from schools and libraries. So they have to pretend that the left wants to do the same.

The difference between right and left here is that they right wants to keep other people from reading or watching things that they don't like or claim to not like (even if they themselves actually enjoy it as a guilty pleasure, cf. porn), whereas the left feels guilty on a personal level about having enjoyed things that they see as having becomes stained morally due to having come to see their creators as immoral.

Pretty much every left-wing discussion I've seen on this subject has emphasized that people can and will read what they can handle. Some people may be throwing out their Neil Gaiman books but they're not asking anyone else to. No one is patting themselves on the back for their morality; they're disappointed and feel betrayed.

Yes, I have not heard of any leftists trying to ban Harry Potter books or Neil Gaiman comics from libraries.

(It's not like leftists are perfect— in all such discussions someone will prance in and say that they never liked that particular artist, which is both rude and irrelevant. It would be like someone listening to your story and proclaiming that they never drink coffee.)

Yes I am guilty of this in this very discussion (I did watch a few of the Harry Potter movies, but I just never really got into Harry Potter as some kids did).

As for dead authors, we can't change the past, but we can reexamine which bits of it are lionized and which are forgotten. Decisions about who are the really important authors are not given by God, they're made by people who were themselves products of their time. People have been disagreeing with Socrates, on all sorts of grounds, for 2400 years, and it's no scandal that people are still doing so.

Just like authors who are still amongst the living, they must be seen as complex beings and not as superficial all-bad or all-good people. Take Torco's example of Borges - he can be seen both as the greatest Spanish-language author since Cervantes and yet as having objectionable political views, and one can separate the two rather than seeing him as all good (the former) or all bad (the latter).

[rotting bones]

Honestly, I'm weirded out that "problematic" has come to mean "unethical" in the activist sphere. My understanding is that the humanities disciplines which introduced the term deliberately set out to "problematize" everything. That was their alternative to a safe, superficial, bourgeois life. The critical theorists still talk about analyzing the problematics of a given situation. Meanwhile, their students are out on the streets boycotting problematic things.

I agree that boycotts can be effective in making our lives better. I have even heard NCommander say that Richard Stallman was so mean to him and just about everyone else that he deserves to be canceled. What seems strange is the idea that something being problematic means that it needs to be boycotted. Everything is problematic by design.

[malloc]

Honestly, I'm weirded out that "problematic" has come to mean "unethical" in the activist sphere.

Quite. It seems weirdly euphemistic if anything to characterize a raging bigot as "problematic".

Regarding my own experiences, it seems like my favorite artists keep getting exposed as bigots and sex pests. One time my favorite paleo-artist was caught promoting eugenics and racist pseudoscience, not to mention drawing Nazi dinosaur porn on the side. Every time I find a new band, it seems only a matter of time before I learn they're actually racists or sexual predators or something. The whole experience has left me increasingly weary of seeking out new artists in general lest I get burned again.

[xxx]

that's just the way life is : nobody's monochrome,
and often the most interesting people have hidden, repulsive sides...

when you know this, you avoid both unconditional praise of anyone
and frightened rejection of what you've appreciated...

in truth, maybe that's why I've always preferred dead authors,
and why I pass by when I meet a celebrity, even when I appreciate their work...

for all that, I disapprove of both censorship and moralizing;
certain cases must be judged by the courts, and only by the courts,
others should be ignored...

I can only understand how this works for people who have had direct dealings with such individuals...

digital activists and other lobbyists who use all kinds of means of influence to bend the law to their advantage
seem to me to go against the very nature of democracy...

[Torco]

isn't it an obvious part of democracy that different competing interpretations of the law are not only normal but desirable? of course, some interpreations of the law will benefit or align with the values of those who suscribe to the interpretation, cause duh.

[Ketsuban]

Obviously the only ethical way to do this would have been to download a pirated copy of the book off teh Interwebs and review that.

I have mixed feelings about the prevalence of piracy-as-activism on the modern internet. On the one hand: you successfully avoided financially supporting a person with whom you disagree. Good for you. On the other hand: if you pirate a game, talk about it on Reddit, write guides and post them on GameFAQs and so on and so forth... that's all word-of-mouth marketing. Some proportion of people who see the discussion of the game online or the guides you wrote will decide to buy the game. Aren't you still financially supporting the creator?

Obviously writing a negative review is different, but in my experience the people who are most vocal about piracy-as-activism tend to want to have their cake and eat it too. They're not pirating Black Myth Wukong because they want to be well-informed when they tell people not to buy the game because the developers are disgusting bigots, they're trying to assuage their conscience and conquer FOMO at the same time.

[Travis B.]

Obviously the only ethical way to do this would have been to download a pirated copy of the book off teh Interwebs and review that.

I have mixed feelings about the prevalence of piracy-as-activism on the modern internet. On the one hand: you successfully avoided financially supporting a person with whom you disagree. Good for you. On the other hand: if you pirate a game, talk about it on Reddit, write guides and post them on GameFAQs and so on and so forth... that's all word-of-mouth marketing. Some proportion of people who see the discussion of the game online or the guides you wrote will decide to buy the game. Aren't you still financially supporting the creator?

Obviously writing a negative review is different, but in my experience the people who are most vocal about piracy-as-activism tend to want to have their cake and eat it too. They're not pirating Black Myth Wukong because they want to be well-informed when they tell people not to buy the game because the developers are disgusting bigots, they're trying to assuage their conscience and conquer FOMO at the same time.

I should have put a /s in there... clearly "teh Interwebs" wasn't obvious enough...

[Torco]

I unironically take the position travis takes ironically. it's not some heroic thing one is doing, but it is, given the circumstances, the choice that avoids the most bad while still doing good. copyright laws are big bs anyway. and let's not be puritans, there's nothing wrong about saying a work is good if it's good -and the evil of writing a bad review is trivial.

Aren't you still financially supporting the creator?

sure but you're also doing another good: recommending good games to people, or books, which they will hopefully enjoy. i think the interest of the producer of the works gets centered too much in this kind of discourse. ultimately books or whatever else are for people to read and get happiness out of em, or entretainment, or a reprieve from the tedium of commuting. People should be able to enjoy good things bad people make.

[xxx]

I unironically take the position travis takes ironically. it's not some heroic thing one is doing, but it is, given the circumstances, the choice that avoids the most bad while still doing good. copyright laws are big bs anyway. and let's not be puritans

stealing from someone because you don't agree with their opinions
cancels out any moral stance you might take against them...

it's not because it's easy and practically impossible to be accused of stealing on the web that it's morally sustainable,

even less so with a lame excuse that wouldn't recognize intellectual property,
the only one that isn't taken from someone else
and that couldn't be equated with property which would be theft according to Proudhon...

so go to the end of your opinions
and rather than steal from those you don't accept,
call for, or perpetrate, their murder...