Simplified Speech # 242 – Separating the art from the artist

Hello everyone and welcome back to simplified speech, the Q-Lips series which features queer, natural and easy to understand conversations about fascinating topics. Today I am joined by my co-host Indiana and we're going to talk about problematic artists and if we can separate the art from the artists. So yeah joining me as my co-host it's Indiana, Indiana, how's it going?

Okay, I'm doing pretty good. So that's right. So today we're talking about what it means when we say an artist is problematic,

what it means to separate the art from the artist. And we're also gonna talk about several examples of artists who people consider to be problematic and talk about why do people think they're problematic?

What behaviors or political beliefs or crimes have they committed for people to think of them as problematic? Yeah, and we're also going to chat a little bit about how we feel if our friends support artists that we think are problematic. So guys, in this episode, we'll get into all of those

topics and more and along the way, of course, we'll teach you all of the key vocabulary that you need to know to be able to understand conversations about this topic and to be able to speak about this topic. And for all QOs members, there's also a helpful study guide, an interactive transcript, a quiz, and much more available to help you and to guide you through this

episode. So if you'd like to get that helpful study guide visit our website, QOPS.com. You could sign up and become a QOPS member for an affordable price and get the guide and really get the the most out of this episode. Okay, and with that being said, let's get started with our conversation in Indiana. Here we go. So today we are talking about separating the art from the artist. And

Indiana, we've been meaning to record about this episode topic for a little while here, but finally today is the day and I think this will be an interesting conversation and one that I'm really curious about your perspective on. So let's get into it and maybe we should start by sort of defining what we're going to talk about here today about separating the art from the artists.

When you hear this phrase, what does that bring up in your mind? For me, the phrase separating the art from the artist applies to when an artist has behaved or been problematic or perhaps committed a crime. And then somebody who is consuming or enjoying art who learns about this history or here's about rumors about an artist, they need to wreck and with, they need to deal with

this conflict of feelings like where they love this art and they're getting something out of it, but they recognize that this person who made this art might be doing something or have done something that was wrong and can you still enjoy the art or, yeah, like continue to have a relationship with this art while knowing that this bad thing happened. So to me that's what comes

up this conflict inside yourself or you're deciding, can I separate this art from the artist? Can I enjoy this art even though the artist did something bad? Is there anything that you would add to that Andrew? Am I missing something here? No, I think you nailed it. That's that's perfect. Yeah, it's just an interesting question, right? Does art stand alone? Can we enjoy art just on its own or do we always have to

think of the creator when we are enjoying the art? And we're not talking just about visual art here, right? We're talking about film, we're talking about music, of course, visual arts, maybe writers as well, any kind of creator does their creative work, stand, separate from them, or are the two interlinked and connected. And in Indiana, when you were speaking there, you used

this word problematic. And that's a common word that we used to talk about this sort of issue is a problematic artist or problematic musician. What does it exactly mean problematic? Either it's their general behavior or an actual single act or something like more of a crime that makes them somebody that you couldn't say is perhaps like, oh that's a really

great person or that yeah they've done nothing wrong or like I can feel like they could be my hero. A problematic, artist, a problematic person would be like, they have a lot of character flaws, or they've done something quite wrong. Like, yeah, like I said, perhaps committed a crime.

It could be sort of this sliding scale between like, oh, you made some really rude comments to your colleagues, and that's not that big of a deal to like, actually maybe a sexual harassment or, yeah,

sexual assault kind of situation. So there's a lot of different things that could be problematic for an artist. Yeah, that's a great definition. I like that imagery that you used as sliding scale.

Like it could be something that's not too serious, right? Like I heard recently, I can't remember the singer, but it was on Reddit recently, a voter singer who was doing a fan signing.

And apparently she wasn't interacting with her fans very much while they, you know, they're paying money to get their autograph and a photo. And the artist was just sort of like brushing them off

not really paying attention, that's kind of problematic, right? Because it's like, kind of showing that you're a bad person, your fans are paying money to see you, and they're coming to support you and then you're sort of ignoring them and just it just feels bad, right? It's like you're stealing their money essentially. But in the grand scheme of things, that's not

like super, super evil or anything like that, like maybe she was just having a bad day, right? we could think of it that way. That would be on the positive side of problematic, if I could put it that way.

And then that can go way to the other end, right? With sexual abuse, sexual crimes, maybe even who knows murder, something like that, right? Like it has this huge spectrum.

So anytime that's an artist, I really like the way that you put it, we wouldn't say they're a good person. They have some character flaw.

then we could describe them as being problematic.