The Monsters Hiding on our Bookshelves
On Neil Gaiman and separating the Art from the Artist
Hi close friends,
When you’re reading this, it’ll officially be my last day at my current job! January was such a packed month, that half of me can’t believe it’s already over and the other half of me is like, how is it still going?!
In January I watched…
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 A Complete Unknown (2024)
🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑 Babygirl (2024)
🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑 Emilia Pérez (2024) (Did not finish!)
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗 Look Back (2024)
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕 Dìdi (2024)
What’s on my Oscar nominations watchlist…
Anora
Sing Sing
Memoir of a Snail
Conclave
The Brutalist
I’m Still Here
The Apprentice
Nickel Boys
A Real Pain
**I usually try to watch the animated and/or doc shorts as well as they’re screened in theaters!
More Reality TV Releases
This week, I watched the premiere of Grant’s season of The Bachelor and damn, does it feel good to have a hot and corny man on my screen again! I was giggling and kicking my feet seeing him flash his smile and do his cringe dance moves in the intro montage. Of all the Bachelor franchises, the original is my least favorite, but there’s something about this season that feels like it’ll be promising, perhaps because these women actually seem very into the lead and ready to compete for their man.
We also have an official date for the return of one of my favorite Bravo shows, Summer House — Wednesday, February 12th! I rewatched the season preview today and I totally forgot how good some of these one-liners are. Like Paige calling Kyle a wannabe Diplo? Chef’s kiss!
On a more serious note, Vulture came out with a feature covering fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s sexual assault allegations from numerous women. I won’t go into detail here, but you can read the full article here.1 I will say, it’s a gnarly one and he is without a doubt quite a deplorable man, so be warned.
One year, while back home on break from college, I went to a hangout at a friend of a friend’s house. I was slightly on edge, these not being my personal close friends2, but who I felt I wanted to make a good impression on nonetheless. Someone mentioned a male director — who I now cannot remember the name of — who was circulating in the news for being Problematic™. I said I had heard that his most recent movie, which had been nominated for awards, was supposedly very good and that I wanted to watch it. What I do remember and will never be able to forget, is one of the girls — who I greatly admired and felt aligned with values-wise — turning to me and saying matter of factly, “Well, I don’t believe you can separate the art from the artist.” In response to this statement, I was at a complete loss of words. I had never heard that argument before and it felt like a direct slap on the wrist. When I went home, with her voice ringing in my head, I diligently looked up what she meant by that, and decided I ought not to be on the wrong side of the debate I didn’t realize I was a part of.
Now many years later, I look back at my younger self with much more compassion. The truth is these all too common stories of art vs the artist are much more complicated.
Its something I’ve been thinking about a lot — luckily not because I’ve done something heinous recently — but rather because I’m currently working on a story that started out as creative non-fiction and has now evolved into auto-fiction. I felt conflicted at first about taking liberties with the “true” story, feeling like I was cheating positioning it as fiction and conveniently changing only the details I needed. How could it be considered real fiction if it wasn’t entirely made up? A fellow writer reassured me, saying she had once heard from an author that your first book is full of yourself and your life. You get it all out of your system, and then your second book is where you expand beyond that.
How much of a writer is in their work, and what are the lines between fact and fiction? That’s the question many readers tend to wrestle with when authors they previously adored are then outed as terrible people. While it may be a slippery slope, it’s an understandable urge for fans to go back and dissect their fallen author’s work, as if puzzling the pieces together could give some type of comfort that we have the power to prevent future harm from happening.
When separating (or not separating) the art from the artist, some of the lines between the questions we ask ourselves start to get blurry. The quality of the movie by said male director who has been declared a Bad Person is not determined by whether he himself is good or bad. The movie also may or may not have certain aspects of his own self enmeshed into it by virtue of the art being made by him. But are these his morals which are then enmeshed? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no.
Then, there’s the financial aspect of the argument — i.e. you shouldn’t put your dollars toward an artist who doesn’t deserve that money, no matter the quality of their work. Or that we should de-platform those who are spreading hate or have done wrong, based on the crime. But to me, that feels like a separate ethical quandary entirely, and one I think the girl at the party was trying to point to. Maybe I’m not a bad person for thinking the movie is good, but maybe I am a bad person for watching the movie in the first place with the knowledge I have of the director.
I found BookTuber Cindy Pham’s thoughts on the Neil Gaimon case to be quite illustrative of the recurring discourse that happens when these all too common stories come forward:
“The artist’s previous work gets dissected and analyzed to try and figure out were there hints about this artist’s morality or lack of morality.
…There are absolutely male writers who can be very shitty when it comes to writing women, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re predators. It just means that they operate within the patriarchy, and are used to stories being told a certain way. I don’t think it’s fair to evaluate morality based on art…
I believe that good art doesn’t make good people, and conversely good people don’t [automatically] make good art either.”
It’s a fascinating conversation topic for sure, and one I find myself returning to time and time again in these instances. While I don’t think it’s one size fits all, I do think it warrants self-reflection as consumers and drivers of culture.
Further Reading
This is the section of my newsletter where I share more recommendations in line with the theme of the work I’m reviewing, if you are so inclined to dive deeper.
READ:
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma feels like the perfect book to add to my TBR list — “This unflinching, deeply personal book expands on Claire Dederer’s instantly viral Paris Review essay, ‘What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?’”; “part memoir, part treatise, and all treat” (The New York Times)
WATCH:
“J.K. Rowling” by ContraPoints definitely deserves a re-watch from my end. Whether or not I agree with her takes, every video essay by her is a delight and makes my brain happy. And J.K. Rowling is of course a prime example of the controversial topic of “separating the art from the artist,” after she came out with many anti-trans and TERF statements, and has only further doubled down since. It looks like Natalie has come out with another video about J.K. Rowling since this one as well, so it might just be a double feature for me this weekend!
Along that same note, Lindsay Ellis has two videos on the Death of the Author which I have not re-watched in years, but I remember really adding to the discussion as well (talk about OG BookTube, wow!). They are also much shorter if you don’t have a full hour or two to kill.
And that’s it for this week, my lovelies! Chat soon. <3
Pun not intended, but appreciated.