No art is created in a vacuum. It is always a reflection of its people, time, and place.
No art is received in a vacuum. It is always viewed through multiple, differing lenses of time and culture.
Where does the line between the Creator and the Created lie?
Is there a line in the first place? Is it a nebulous swath of grey?
Can the Work be separated from its Maker? Should it be?
How much is the Work a reflection of its Maker? The Maker’s thoughts and morals and deeds?
Can the Work be deemed beautiful if the Creator is vile? How much does one taint or cleanse the other?
And what does it mean for us to receive and respond to the Work and its Maker? What does this dialogue mean in this triumverate: Creator, Art, and Viewer?
I posted a thing on how it’s wrong to personally attack or threaten creators for their work, and so it’s only fair that I also post a thing about how that’s not the same as saying that it’s all okay.
So I turn to AGG, as usual, with her beautiful words and uncanny facility at getting to the point and communicating the pain. She is not advocating death threats with these questions, she is making some fantastic points, and they are absolutely fair and just.
Accountability is a different animal from revenge. There’s no evil in disapproving of or disliking a creator for what they put in their art. It’s not wrong to take them to task by telling them that they’ve done wrong, telling them that they’ve hurt people—and if they won’t listen, by telling everyone else.
People have the right not to like a work, not to like a person, and even to tell them so without resorting to violence or threats.
That’s a whole different thing from lashing out to hurt the way you’ve been hurt. Holding people accountable for the wrong they do—that’s a civic right and collective obligation.
To add to AGG’s questions, here are a few more:
How far is art ‘just entertainment’ and at what point should it be addressed as a communication?
How do we deal with it when our lenses are so different that the art is saying vastly different, even conflicting things to different people?
How do we handle it when the art looked positive to some of us, but engendered real pain in others?
I know we don’t handle it by stoning the creator and his friends, but it’s also unworthy of us to simply look the other way and ignore suffering.
I’m speaking in generalities here for, I suspect, the same reason that AGG and ProfessorFangirl are—because today the debate is about Moffat and his shows, but next month it’ll probably come around again, with somebody else, and their book or TV show or movie. There’s always somebody.
I know people are lashing out because Moffat isn’t listening to them. That still doesn’t make personal attacks and threats okay. But if the creator chooses to withdraw from the conversation, then it behooves the rest of us to still have that dialogue, so that other creators who will listen can learn and do better.
And also because the sufferers are human beings who deserve to have their pain acknowledged, whether you share in it or not.
And that’s all I have to add to that conversation.