Does this change your opinion of Lennon? Or does it make you more willing to forgive other abusers? What is your standard for bad behavior for artists? It's easy to condemn artists whose music or books or other output you dislike anyway. But what about when it's someone whose artistic creations mean something to you?
What do you mean opinion, artistic or personal?
I don't think it changes artistic opinion, since I tend to try to seperate the art from the artist. I mean Roman Polanski, great filmmaker. (GHOST WRITER could teach these punk kid directors how to make a thriller) He also should've gone to jail and not escaped to France.
Either or both. Artistic or personal. I also really really try to separate art from the artist. This is easier if the artist happens to be dead (HP Lovecraft , Robert E. Howard, etc) but there are limits. Sometimes the artist is such a **** that I can't ignore that or sometimes the artist's views which are antithetical to mine are a KEY component of his art.
Originally Posted By: ronnierocketAGO
People do tend to tie their fandom of artists with their public life, or the character they present to the public. It's foolish because inevitably they always come up short. How much of Mel Gibson's global fandom was related to his supposed likeable everyguy persona he always put up in interviews? In what indication did you get of his anti-semitism or his short temper or openly sharing his opinion of women and black people when liquored up?
I might just be one of the few peoples who have no interest in "knowing" celebrities or meeting them. (I don't get autographs either.) Hey I like your music or movies, let's not complete that m'kay?
Lennon was a great musician, no doubt about that. But let's just leave it at that. (Seriously me and Lilo couldn't be fans/admirers of Prince if we let his infamous psychotic assholic reputation define if we can stand him or his music.).
Right. You can enjoy the music or art and just leave it there. I'm reading Buddy Guy's (ghostwritten??) autobiography and he has quite a few unpleasant anecdotes to share about various blues icons, most of whom are dead and can't rebut. It's matter of fact, not told in a salacious or gossipy manner. I disagree with people that say for example that because you enjoy Ike Turner music that you by definition support abusing women. Fortunately or unfortunately artistic talent is not only shared by morally upright people. That said I also don't think that just because you're talented you should get a pass when you do wrong. It's tricky, everyone has a different comfort zone.
I thought the article about Lennon was interesting if only b/c he's essentially frozen in memory as Imagine/Give Peace a Chance/Beatles/etc while Brown is struggling against being defined as a violent brute, often by people who were never fans. It's like if I discovered that Buck Owens had been abusive to women (according to book I was browsing he was) and went around trying to define him as that and only that. It would be quite easy for me to be a self-righteous Knight Templar on that issue because I was never a fan in the first place.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
