Artists’ Creative Power Is No Excuse for Sexual Abuse
Can we now do away with the idea of “separating the art from the artist”?
Whenever a creative type (usually a man) is accused of mistreating people (usually women), a call arises to prevent biographical details from sneaking into our assessments of the artist’s work.
But we’ve been learning more about how the entertainment industry has been shaped by abuses of power. It’s time to consider how its art has been, too.
Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., to name a few from the ever- expanding list, stand accused of using their creative positions to turn film sets into hunting grounds; groom young victims in acting classes; and lure female colleagues close on the pretext of networking, only to trap them in uninvited sexual situations.
The performances we watch have been shaped by those actions. And their offenses have affected the paths of other artists, determining which rise and which are harassed or shamed out of work.
But this idea of assessing an artist’s work in light of his biography is, to some critics, blasphemous.
A proclivity for reprehensible acts is built right into the mythos of the artistic genius — a designation rarely extended to women. This is what the historian Martin Jay calls “the aesthetic alibi”: The art excuses the crime.
The film critic Richard Brody of The New Yorker suggested that stories about filmmakers “can be illuminating,” but the “better a film is, the likelier that the biography only fills in details regarding what should already have been apparent to a cleareyed viewing.”
The journalist Gay Talese dismissed Anthony Rapp, who accused Kevin Spacey of preying on him when he was 14. “I hate that actor that ruined that guy’s career,” he said.
Directors, meanwhile, have justified mistreatment of women as a gritty artistic choice. Bernardo Bertolucci, the director of “Last Tango in Paris,” said he chose not to fully inform the actress Maria Schneider of all the details of the film’s infamous butter scene because he “wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress.” (“I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped,” she said.)
But the entertainment industry seems quite interested in conflating the art and the artist as long as it helps sell movie tickets. If Hollywood weren’t invested in selling the people behind the art, the Oscars wouldn’t be televised.
Film is also a business, though one that can lack the human-resources infrastructure of corporate America. No one makes that clearer than Mr. Weinstein, who stands accused of corrupting the artistic process to take advantage of women even as he has strong-armed his films to Oscar gold.
The habit of treating artists as transcendent creators rather than as players in an economic system serves to protect them from typical workplace expectations. And in the same way that a sneaker or technology company tries to distract the consumer from vile production processes by churning out covetable products, Hollywood serves up spectacles that seek to conceal the conditions under which they’re made.
Many of these works make the consumer complicit in the perspective of the abuser.
This conversation is often framed as an either- or: Whose work do we support, and whose do we discard forever? HBO cut ties with Louis C.K., dropping him from a coming benefit show and removing his comedy specials from its on- demand service. The first move seems wise, but the second feels counterproductive. Some viewers may not want to see Louis C.K.’s face again, but others could find illumination in watching his work with a new eye.
None of this is to say that it’s never valuable to consider a piece of art on its own terms, or that biographical details necessarily make for illuminating connections. But the insistence that the two always be separated feels suspect.
Drawing connections between art and abuse can actually help us see the works more clearly, to understand them in all of their complexity. In this light, some aspects of the work can seem more impressive. The knowledge that the actresses Selma Blair or Lupita Nyong’o weathered harassment in their careers only makes their performances even more extraordinary.
If a piece of art is truly spoiled by an understanding of the conditions under which it is made, then perhaps the artist was not quite as exceptional as we had thought.