Is it fair to reject someone’s entire body of work because of what they’ve done, even if they are entirely guilty?
When someone breaks our moral code, it’s tempting to dismiss them and their life’s work. This is especially so if they have committed an egregious offence against society, done something terrible, which cannot be forgiven. In today’s media climate, that will often happen before any legal processes have been concluded. There would be an exposé revealing a series of incidents, involving victims sharing their experiences.
For those of us active in the creative sector, the artists, the celebrities and influencers, there is another sanction: getting cancelled. On social media, this essentially means rejecting, dismissing and boycotting an artist’s entire body of work. We may Stan, sure, perform the attitude of obsessing over an artist or a celebrity, but in fact, we have more personal relationships with artists these days than we have ever had before. We can access pics and clips from their daily lives, we can watch video blogs where they speak to camera, as if to us. We can like their posts and, if we’re lucky, and they’re feeling open, we can chat.
But when they stumble, when the objects of our affection sin against others, against society, do they deserve to be cancelled? Should the work be punished as much as the perpetrator? Or are those love songs the offender’s best, greatest, most aspiring attempt at goodness? The greatest work of an imperfect, corrupted person? A shot at redemption?
Do we reject the artistic output of every artist who does not conform to the emerging values of contemporary society? Bear in mind that to do that properly, we would need to throw out the work of most men who were adults before the year 2000, and most white people. Anyone who was ever abusive! God, that probably applies to today’s artists too.
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