How do you disown a creator from their work and why?

[announced]

Unless you are a very small minded person, you can easily separate the art from the artist.

It's really not that difficult. The problem is when you have stupid people that can't wrap their heads around this concept.

[Soliloque]

But for those who are the subject of the author's hatred, or for those who are aware of how things affect those who are the subject, and at least care about those issues. It can be a constant nag in the back. "Oh this monster... this this supposed to be a black person, or dirty Spanish guy?"

If you're gonna go into a fantasy story asking yourself stuff like this instead of trying following the events I'd say the bigger problem lies with you, not the author.
Unless the comparison is right my your face I don't see reason why I should twist my panties wondering "is this monster a secret representation of my ethnicity???".
Sounds exhausting, and also a waste of time.

As a member of those "subject to the author's hatred", let me tell you most of us don't give a damn. We just want quality stuff.

[Saltysquidoon]

Here's something that's interesting irrespective of people's perspectives on creators you know to be questionable. How do you reconcile that position with the almost inevitability that you have consumed media by monsters that never got found out?

What about works by people who are fundamentally irreconcilable with the modern-day? I just lent my father a book by Cicero, who was a rich, male, slave-owning, sexist, racist member of an expansionistic, militaristic, colonial authoritarian regime that dictators have been apeing for literally millennia. Are his books intrinsically devoid of merit?

What about if the subject itself? Herakles was just about the worst person in the history of people (although I guess he was bi), does this make Disney's Heracles innately devoid of any artistic merit?

Lovecraft is a popular target lately. How many companies are using his ideas but at the same time decrying him as a person? Smite comes to mind since they’re adding Cthulhu and made a big to-do about him (ctrl+f “one final note”). Then there is pen and paper game Fate of Cthulhu that uses Lovecraft’s works. They call him a racist and anti-Semite but monetize his ideas anyway. If companies were really against him and his racism they would stop using his ideas in their fiction, but they’re not doing that are they?

Companies are completely amoral entities that exist solely to generatee profit for the stakeholders, to the exclusive detriment of all others. The fact people can be made to forget this by them tweeting good boy words is a damning indictment on our society.

[Themius]

If you're gonna go into a fantasy story asking yourself stuff like this instead of trying following the events I'd say the bigger problem lies with you, not the author.
Unless the comparison is right my your face I don't see reason why I should twist my panties wondering "is this monster a secret representation of my ethnicity???".
Sounds exhausting, and also a waste of time.

As a member of those "subject to the author's hatred", let me tell you most of us don't give a damn. We just want quality stuff.

Why do you accept rozz but condemn me when we both have the same opinion on this?

[Aurgjelme]

Joss Whedon...J.K. Rolling...



Would that be Heidegger?

Knut Hamsun

[Fencers]

You don't. Art is made by humans. Art without context is meaningless. Art only exists because of context.

[Monster Hunter]

im gonna be honest and say i actually rarely know who the fuck makes the things i enjoy, i don't know band memebers real names, i dont know half the names of the actors i watch or give much a fuck to find out, if i see a repeating one its usually known in my head as "oh its that guy/girl from the [insert other media or sometimes prono i watched]" and its pritty much the same for everything else.

unless some one specifically tells me who the fuck they are and things about them i literally wouldn't know shit about artists. and to be completely honest i have exactly 0 interest in the personal life or political views of a some cunt who can write a novel about magic boys playing with there wands.

they only people worth knowing or noting down there views are the political, medical, scientific and engineering authorities from the past and present. making some media and owning a twitter account doesn't suddenly qualify some one enough to make me give a fuck about who they are, what there opinions are or what naughty consensual or non-consensual things they like to do with there cock or mutton flaps, in there own time.

i would like to say if i liked a thing and then found out the person making it raped badgers on nights when the full moon was up i would boycott them. but in the interest of complete honesty my disinterest in who they are as a person would likely lead me to forgetting there name and just boycotting some poor person who has a name that kinda sounds like them.

put it this way i remember my dads favourite book series "Sharp" but for the life of me all i can remember of the authors name is it sounds something like burnt cornbread.

[Shadowferal]

Knut Hamsun

Ah..dude was a far bigger influence in several fields.
But yeah, he had issues that would be seen as "problematic" by today's standards.

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You don't. Art is made by humans. Art without context is meaningless. Art only exists because of context.

If only humans were that simple.

[Saltysquidoon]

You don't. Art is made by humans. Art without context is meaningless. Art only exists because of context.

Art can be designed to provoke a reaction or to inform (through metaphor or allegory), if it cannot do those things without the viewer having the full context of the artist then it has fundamentally failed at its explicit stated goal.

[Monster Hunter]

So you say.

The Animal Rights Movement traces back to the animal protection movement in Victorian England, which was initiated by aristocratic moral crusaders in response to the poor treatment of urban workhorses and stray dogs. Other early influences include: Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which drew attention to obscured slaughterhouse operations; Henry Salt's treatises on nonhuman animal rights; which drew from human abolitionist arguments for recognizing personhood of people considered to be property; and the Alcott House of New England, a community serving as a stop on the Underground Railroad and requiring its residents to eat a vegan diet

animal rights as a concept and even in the modern movement all stem from England.

The contemporary movement is regarded as having been founded in the UK in the early 1970s by a group of Oxford university post-graduate philosophy students, now known as the "Oxford Group".[9] The group was led by Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, graduate students of philosophy who had recently become vegetarians. The Godlovitches met John Harris and David Wood, also philosophy graduates, who were soon persuaded of the arguments in favour of animal rights and themselves became vegetarian. The group began to actively raise the issue with pre-eminent Oxford moral philosophers, including Professor Richard Hare, both personally and in lectures. Their approach was based not on sentimentality ("kindness to dumb animals'), but on the moral rights of animals. They soon developed (and borrowed) a range of powerful arguments in support of their views, so that Oxford clinical psychologist Richard Ryder, who was shortly to become part of the group, writes that "rarely has a cause been so rationally argued and so intellectually well armed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal...vement#History

animal rights as both a concept and movement predate hitler by at least 50 years in England.

[Calfredd]

animal rights as a concept and even in the modern movement all stem from England.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal...vement#History

animal rights as both a concept and movement predate hitler by at least 50 years in England.

Why the weird history lesson on the concept of animal rights rather than just telling me that Hitler never has nor intended to create animal welfare in Nazi Germany? His close aids did talk about how Hitler was planning on closing slaughterhouses after WW2 although we both know how that went.

[Thekri]

The really shitty thing about Lovecraft is that his racism shows up in his writing. I love the genre and mythos that he spawned but goddamn was he a bigot. Same goes for H.L. Mencken. I can't read either of their writing without their bigotry being present in my mind. Is it reason enough to not read or admire their non-bigoted work? Their impact is too big on American writing to act as if they didn't exist. You certainly can't ignore their racism, though.

Agreed, and it can be pretty stomach turning on older works. I still think they are worthy of attention though, although the full context is important to understand. All historical figures deserve being taken in the full context of where they are coming from.

Another example that is really blatant is Edgar Rice Burroughs. I grew up reading the original Tarzan books, and damn, those things are racist as shit. They are extremely appealing fantasies for a young boy, but even the premise is deeply rooted in Racism. The son of an English Lord washes up on the beach, and of course that makes him the most intelligent, powerful, handsome, and good person in the whole of Africa. "Bloodlines" are really important to a lot of that era of writing, deeply rooted in the scientific racism of the time. It even melds into early Disney and animated films, where "Royal Blood" is a quasi-magical force motivated by the same quackery.

That said, I don't think any of these works should be discarded necessarily. They had very real effects on the culture and literature of the Western world, and ignoring them is losing a bit of that understanding of how our culture came to be. I certainly understand the sentiment of boycotting them, and some people that can't handle it certainly should avoid those works. Reading such things should bother you, but being made uncomfortable is part of how we face reality. We don't want to get to a place where we just pretend it was never real in the first place. If we ignore facts, then history turns into a collection of myths like the "Lost Cause" fantasy that has permeated our history when it comes to historical accounts of American race relations.

[Monster Hunter]

Why the weird history lesson on the concept of animal rights rather than just telling me that Hitler never has nor intended to create animal welfare in Nazi Germany? His close aids did talk about how Hitler was planning on closing slaughterhouses after WW2 although we both know how that went.

because people don't take things at face value. so you got the history of the animal rights movement direct from the wiki.

[Fencers]

Art can be designed to provoke a reaction or to inform (through metaphor or allegory), if it cannot do those things without the viewer having the full context of the artist then it has fundamentally failed at its explicit stated goal.

Again, there is no possible way for it to exist without context. It can not be created as such (regardless of intent) and can not be received as such. To re-use a famous quote on this, "There is no outside text."

[Aurgjelme]

They removed Swifty's character and achievement in Ashran over allegations.
Allegations that he himself denies.

What a dick move by Blizzard.

Make sure you dont upset someone in life, they might just put you in this modern age pillory.

[melodramocracy]

I don't know about, or care about the personal viewpoints of creators of pretty much anything I enjoy.

This thread makes me want to dust the Lovecraft books I have on my shelf and give them a re-read.

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The world has surpassed the need for Harry Potter

You don't get to decide that.

[Shadowferal]

No I dont, but the world never needed poorly written books about wizards.

The world said you're wrong.

[Yriel]

Again, there is no possible way for it to exist without context. It can not be created as such (regardless of intent) and can not be received as such. To re-use a famous quote on this, "There is no outside text."

Only if you are an intersectionalist and think that everything is always connected.
I can seperate art from their creator without any problem. Not always, some things are created with an intent but others aren't. I can decide that for myself and act accordingly.

[Amerissis]

I like what I like and I don’t check out the creator to see what his/her ideas are. If we can only like creations from people who’s ideas align with ours, who have never done anything bad and adhere to current SJW standards, there won’t be much left. If I accidently find out what evil bastard someone is, usually because it’s on the news, I will probably still like his/her work, but won’t spend any money on it or recommend it to anyone. I doubt I’d throw away what I had from them (music, books, paintings), but this situation hasn’t happened yet, so I’m not sure what I would do.

[Fencers]

Only if you are an intersectionalist and think that everything is always connected.
I can seperate art from their creator without any problem. Not always, some things are created with an intent but others aren't. I can decide that for myself and act accordingly.

You can't. It is not possible for you to feel one way or another about anything in reality without context.