Separating The Art From The Beholder
There’s a common debate about the idea of separating art from the artist who produces it. The two sides typically go like this: one side thinks the art is the reflection of the artist, and the other thinks the art is something standalone that should be judged separately from the artist.
Take, for example, JK Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise. Rowling has gained a negative public perception, while her books and the movies that followed are generally beloved. It’s become common (at least on the internet, where everything tends to devolve into an argument) to get drawn into a discussion about Rowling’s personal beliefs from a simple post about your favorite Harry Potter spells. There are articles dedicated to dissecting Rowling’s beliefs from pieces of evidence gathered from the Harry Potter books, as if to convince everyone that we should have seen Rowling’s personal beliefs written between the lines all along.
There are many other examples in recent memory, generally when a beloved artist does something despicable, causing people to be torn about whether they’re allowed to continue enjoying the person’s music. We’ve encountered several examples of this during the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums project - Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, and Kanye West, to name a few.
The idea of separating love for music with love for the person who created it is a complex one. Should we financially support morally reprehensible artists by listening to their music? Should we pretend to hate a good song because the artist who wrote it subsequently did something awful? Or conversely, should we forgive a person because they wrote a song that was objectively completely fucked up? These are difficult questions, and I’m going to sidestep them for right now and focus on the listener rather than the artist.
As a music listener, how much should my taste in music be associated with my own personal beliefs? Can we separate ourselves from the music we enjoy, or does it define us?
This internal debate came about after I listened to Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. I hated that album with every ounce of my soul, to put it mildly. But what troubled me, even after Marshall’s grating voice had faded from my eardrums, were the continuing thoughts about the kind of person who could like that album, and what that said about them.
Intuitively, judging someone for the art they enjoy seems ridiculous. Their reasons are infinitely complicated, as are their lives, and even if I did have the right to judge them (I don’t), I’d never be able to form a nuanced enough understanding of their views to do so effectively. I mean, if I was a godlike figure with the mandate to judge everyone, I’d at least want to do my homework first. No damnation without due diligence, y’all.
As an example, let’s say I enjoy Eminem’s song “Kill You,” which includes, among other things, references to murder, drug use, anti-homosexual slurs, and many other horrible crimes against humanity. These are ostensibly presented in the form of a “skit”, kind of a hypothetical situation that’s playing out in Slim Shady’s head - Slim Shady is supposed to be one of Eminem’s alter egos, like the messed up corner of his head, and the general consensus seems to be that the subject matter of this song is mostly for shock value rather than expressions of the artist (despite the fact that the album is literally named after the artist. It’s confusing, and I still might not be getting it.)
If I enjoy this song, does that imply I’m a bad person?
Obviously that’s not for someone else to say, even though many on the internet would be happy to pass such a judgment. But in my mind, I can’t escape the idea that I’d have to be pretty messed up to like this song. I picture playing it in a car with a friend or family member, and what they’d think of me for enjoying it. Or if someone played it for me saying they loved the song, how would I react to that information? In the case of “Kill You,” I would probably, simply put, judge the shit out of them. Even though I’m not in a position to judge, even though they aren’t the one doing all the horrible stuff Eminem raps about, even though they might be enjoying the song for a million reasons I can’t even comprehend, even though they’re just listening to something that someone else put hours and hours into creating, judgment is still my first instinct in this hypothetical.
I used an extreme example, because this song might be one of the most polarizing (and hated) in existence. But you can tone the argument down and apply the same thinking to almost any piece of music. For example, I’ve always loved the song “Stay With Me” by Faces. Does enjoying that song say something about me? Or am I, as a listener, totally separate from the song’s issues, and free to enjoy it for any reason I want? I love the song for the rollicking guitar riff and the catchy chorus, and Rod Stewart’s raspy rock and roll voice. I tend to ignore the one-night-stand references and the somewhat sexist description of Rita, which I consider tame in comparison to a million other songs that disparage women in one way or another, although I wouldn’t want someone describing my daughter the way Rod describes Rita. I can discard the negatives and focus on the positives of the song.
Clearly, dissecting every piece of art we love to understand what that says about us has the potential to become an inescapable rabbit hole. My gut tells me that the reason I like a song says more about me than another person’s interpretation of the song. Maybe there are people out there who like “Kill You” for its frank discussion of harmful thoughts and the idea that ignoring them may not be the solution - perhaps expressing terrible thoughts as words is an outlet that prevents one from acting on them, and perhaps “Kill You” can be appreciated from that light. I don’t know, and it would probably take a psychologist to fully understand the implications. The point is that there are infinitely complex reasons for someone else to like a song, and they’re probably impossible to understand, even through scientific study.
My conclusion is that, in the end, only I know why I really like or relate to a piece of music. Nobody else can fully understand the context of why I enjoy something. Therefore, only my opinion of myself matters. If I’m satisfied that liking a song with negative qualities doesn’t infect me with those negative qualities, then that’s enough. I can separate myself from the music I like, or I can choose not to separate myself from it - but anyone living outside my head isn’t qualified to make that distinction on my behalf.