Art from creator

[u/Paularchy]

I've been craving the graveyard book lately. My first Gaiman book was Od and the frost giants. SPARKED my lifelong love of norse mythology. Then coraline. Then american gods. THEN draveyard book. But I like Bod. I resonate so hard with him. But I'm so incredibly angry at gaiman. How could not be? I couldn't even watch the full alligations. I was physically ill. (Why I don't read body or erotic horror)
But here's the thing. I learned some things about Derek Landy. And they hurt. A lot. Not as bd at gaiman, not even in the same ballpark, really. But it made me sad. And then I was like "You can't tell me Lalkyrie wouldn't punch him in the face for that shit." Same thing here. You can espouse amazing values while being shit.
I used to know someone who would say "If it's not enthusiastic consent, it's not consent." That same person later coersed someone into sex under much hesitation, eventually saying yes out of fear of losing home and shelter. he didn't live up to that value. But that value is accurate.
You think Bod's parents, the ghosts, not his bio parents, would have been chill with ANY of that? NO. Of course not. You can still learn the good things while realizing that sometimes, people are just hypocrites. That doesn't mean they didn't leave an important message that can actually benefit humanity to nobody's detriment. Um. No pun intended. It can just be a thing we do because it's the right thing.
In short, just because he did a bunch of awful things, it doesn't mean that those of us that came out of his books wiwith empathy and a deeper sense of care for those around us were wrong in doing so. It just means that he built a fantasy of who he thought he should be, while concealing something pretty dark. Kinda like the cthulhu books he worked on. Or, you know. Any of the gods in american gods. Or Jack, Scarlet's mom's... Hunanfriend?
tted for some spelling stuff, will try to fix more later, bit of a rush rn.

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[u/NoahAwake]

This is a much more honest application of separating the art from the artist than people usually mean.

Every reader has their own relationship with a book and whatever they walk away with, regardless of what emotions, is valid.

Taking away beautiful things from a monstrous author doesn't make *you* the bad person. A lot of monsters have made beautiful art. The only honest way to engage with art of any kind is to know who the person who made it was and be aware of where their insidiousness snuck in.

Also - you hit on a deeper truth expressed by Carl Jung. People are multifaceted and those who succumb to their shadows usually project a beautiful image in an attempt to distance themselves from their shadows. So, I believe you're right that a lot of his stories were written about the kind of person he fantasized being, but fell short of.

But never, ever think there's anything wrong with you for taking empathy and a deeper sense of care from a piece of art. You're not the one who violated those things.

[u/BrentonLengel]

What meaning we draw from his work exists independent of his character/personal life. The problem is that knowing about an artist's crimes often damages our ability to interact with their work.

I was a bit too old for Harry Potter, and as a result while I liked the books and the movies, but I don't have any nostalgia for "The Wizarding World". As a result, Rowling's outspoken TERFist bigotry kinda ruins everything about the franchise for me...and to me this is no great loss.

Neil, on the other hand, not only served as a major creative inspiration but has also like, materially helped me in a few (small) personal ways.

As such my relationship to his work is more complicated.

At the moment my perspective is that "a man's good acts don't wash away the bad, nor the bad the good." I have to kinda compartmentalize when it comes to enjoying his work.

Overall, I side-eye the shit out of what seems to be a neoliberal consumerist approach to art.

If we're being honest, everyone is (at bare minimum) a bit of a rascal...and this goes double for artists.

George Orwell was anti-semitic. Tolstoy r@p3d his wife. Ghandi was fairly racist when it came to black people and had weird sex stuff with a bunch of younger women. MLK Jr. slept around on his wife.

The idea that by drawing meaning from their work and activism, we are somehow tarred by association is fundamentally irrational. I'm also intensely suspicious of the kind of thinking that comes with making oneself a "right thing enjoyer" who only enjoys the work of literal saints.

That's a very late capitalist way to think about art...and tbh it feels gross. Art is food for the soul. It isn't a product to be conspicuously consumed. Like we're not talking about branded clothing we're talking about a transcendental part of the human experience.

So I suppose the TL;DR here is it's okay to like the work of someone who did bad things. We shouldn't lie to ourselves to preserve our previous relationship with Neil's work, but at the same time, if we can still draw something good from it, we absolutely should.

So to invoke a somewhat unfortunate phrase (in this context) don't feel like you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You don't. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying...to themselves as much as to you.

[u/Worried_Passion_3703 → u/BrentonLengel]

Interesting comment about Gandhi. Time for more research. I know the focus is on Neil Gaiman, but since you included this in your post, it’s worth noting - at least for me.

[u/BrentonLengel → u/Worried_Passion_3703]

There’s an episode of “Bullshit with Penn and Teller” about it. They also tear down Mother Theresa and the Dalai Llama…though I suspect they had significant help from Chinese propagandists for the latter.