Judge the film, not the maker
YES, I know: 15 years ago, Birth of a Nation star and film-maker Nate Parker was acquitted on charges of rape and sexual assault. But though a jury concluded that he wasn’t guilty of a crime, I can’t help but believe that he used a woman who he knew was vulnerable.
He’s repugnant but that doesn’t mean I won’t go see his movie.
I get where the writer Roxanne Gay is coming from when she said in the New York Times that she “cannot separate the art and the artist”, but I can. I – we – do it all the time, and unless we’re going to start boycotting every tainted artist’s work, we’re hypocrites. I may think Parker, the person, is a lowlife, but he has produced a work of art that I’m perfectly content to buy a ticket for, take in and assess on its own merits. It was originally hailed as “reflective”, “vigorous” and “vital”. Now it’s being ripped as “overdone” and a historically inaccurate “epic fail”. I say, let’s see. It will either succeed or fail on its own merit, or lack thereof, but that shouldn’t have anything to do with Parker’s sordid past.
We consume and experience films (and music, and, for that matter, sport) for many reasons. To be enlightened, to be entertained, to experience beauty and grapple with ugliness. While the artists who offer this to us are linked to their work, they aren’t the work themselves. And their pasts don’t negate the value of what they create.
The controversy over Birth of a Nation isn’t unique. Many artists, some who’ve inspired millions, have exhibited loathsome behaviour in their private lives.
In recent years, Woody Allen has become a pariah over allegations that he sexually abused Mia Farrow’s daughter, Dylan. But no one questions the import of his oeuvre and his films still open to much fanfare.
Braveheart – Parker’s acknowledged favourite film, to which Birth of a Nation has drawn comparisons – won the Oscar for Best Picture. But Mel Gibson, its star and director, who informally advised Parker on his project, is known now for his racist and misogynist rants.
I’m currently enjoying the biography of author Patricia Highsmith, a noted anti-Semite, and I simply can’t be sure a more detestable person ever existed. But I can’t deny Highsmith wrote fabulous thrillers.
When I’m delighting my niece with a reading of Dr Seuss’s classic, The Cat in the Hat, I confess that his racist depictions of African Americans and Japanese Americans couldn’t be further from my mind.
There are exceptions. I used to see nothing wrong with R Kelly’s Bump ‘N Grind, but now I do, because I can’t listen to it without feeling like he’s alluding to sexual liaisons with under-age girls.
But even my exceptions are arbitrary. Rick James went to prison for tying a woman to a chair and burning her with a crack pipe. But if Super Freak comes on at a party, I’m on the dance floor. And in some cases, I can’t explain how I drew the line between moral judgment and aesthetic merit.
Neither can society. Two years after former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was captured on video hitting his wife, no NFL team will sign him. Yet Jim Brown remains an icon, enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
I can best explain my decision to see Birth of a Nation the way Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim explains his choice to perform the work of German composer, Wilhelm Richard Wagner, in Israel, where it is banned: “It’s obvious that Wagner’s anti-Semitic views and writings are monstrous ... Wagner, the person, is appalling, despicable and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings. It is noble, generous, et
Unless we boycott every tainted artist’s work, we are hypocrites.
cetera.”
There is no question that we should have a robust discussion about Parker’s past. We have to in a culture that still has not come to a consensus on what constitutes consent, and what doesn’t. But boycotting this movie feels like a gesture that allows us to feel self-righteous but doesn’t accomplish much else. There’s only one way to find out and either way, I won’t judge it based on my feelings about Parker. – Young is an attorney and an editor at rollingout.com.