Very few people are able to separate the art from the artist, since most people (I said most, not all) confuse artistic greatness and greatness in morality. Great entertainers are very often regarded as great human beings and role models. If you take the example of Michael Jackson, most people who are still fans and admirers of him are the ones who think he was innocent, that he never committed any sexual acts with little children and they will even tell you he was a true humanitarian. Because if they believe he was a child molester, most of them would not be fans anymore. Most people who were eager to forgive Roman Polanski, were the same who were finding all kinds of excuses for his behavior: the young girl looked much older, she looked almost 18, she has had previous sexual experiences, … deny or purify the stars’ actions in order to be able to admire his art, make the immoral act disappear, and the idol can be restored to his status. I was thinking about all this after the Kanye West debacle, it’s different, of course the guy committed no crime, but his behavior certainly will affect how people see his art.
I have to admit it, I also have a very hard time to separate the art from the artist, I understand why it should be the case, and I have tried, but I am not that sure I managed to do it.
In music, it is not that I want rock stars to be saints, it’s not the point, everyone makes mistakes and errors, but there is a difference between human beings making errors and being an obnoxious, detestable, horrid human being, without saying a murderer or a pedophile.
Should we appreciate, even enjoy Charles Manson’s music for example? Technically, if it is great art and if art and artist can be separated, we should be able to, but can we? I can’t, I have never listened to his music and never will. You’re gonna say, this is an extreme case but extreme cases are useful to prove a point.
Should we enjoy Chris Brown or Mel Gibson’s art? And where do we draw the line? Recently it was reported than Gibson had lost a role, and in 2009, radio stations were dropping Brown’s music and his popularity was way down. This proves my point as they fell in disgrace, but only for a while as people tend to forget very fast.
Art and artist, especially in music, are really very much intertwined. It is not like painting or literature, the painter does not sit in front of his painting when you’re looking at it, nor the writer is there when you are reading the book. In music, it’s different, it’s the voice of the artist you are listening to, and when you go to a concert, you are standing in front of him or her: you can’t escape this character that you find so despicable.
On a practical point of view, there is the money issue, if you buy that artist’s music, do you want to make him or her richer if his or her points of view and lifestyle are so unethical for you? Not a very desirable situation.
Sure, a work of art exist separately from its creator, transcend his creator’s personal life, has an independent life from him or her and exists through the ears and the brain of the listeners. Philosophically speaking, this is a seductive idea, very idealistic and even truer for people who are now dead, but when it comes to contemporary songwriters, their private life is all over the news, and we are never able to omit the obvious.
Song lyrics tend to be very personal, a building for example seems much more separated from its creator’s mind than lyrics, and it is so much easier to separate an architect’s morality from its art than a songwriter’s morality from his song. Liking a song is also very personal, a sort of attachment to something we recognize ourselves into.
The most extreme case of art imitating life is illustrated by some rappers who have been engaged in violent acts and have written lyrics about murder and rape. How can you differentiate their art from their life in this case? The oddity of all this is that these same guys seem to escape to the public ‘s moral radar and sell a lot of music!
Thus, if songwriting is an art which lives through the songwriter’s voice, if his or her outlook on life will necessarily be reflected in the songwriting, the songs will always be interpreted through his or her mind and intention, and if these intentions are no good, there are a lot of chances the interpretation will be bad news.
In a way, in music especially, the artist is always in the art.
So does it mean we should only listen to music from artists that we consider moral? Of course not, but I personally will never be able to truly enjoy songs coming from people whose lifestyle is too far away from what I regard as ethical. And where do I draw the line? That’s the problem, everyone has to decide where to draw this line or not to draw it at all.