What do we do about good art made by bad people?

In the ongoing debate of whether it’s possible to separate the value of an artwork from the actions of its artist, the modern world offers a simple solution: so-called “cancel culture,” or the idea that an artist can be shunned for reasons ranging from bad behaviour to criminal activity.

But as host Elamin Abdelmahmoud explores with guests Yara El-Soueidi and Judith Shulevitz, cancel culture isn’t actually that simple — or even ultimately that effective. Even when there are calls to “cancel” an artist, many of them go on to sell out stadiums and star in critically-acclaimed shows.

Yara El-Soueidi is a music journalist who recently wrote about the recent allegations against Arcade Fire’s frontman Win Butler, and the ripple effect they’ve had on the band since. Judith Shulevitz is a culture writer who recently published a piece in The Atlantic titled, It’s Okay to Like Good Art by Bad People. Together, they get into the complexities of what to do about good art made by (allegedly) bad people.

We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Yara, let me start with you. Is there really anyone surprised that Arcade Fire is headlining a festival?

Yara: In a certain way I’d say no. I feel like there hasn’t been any consequences, or people have accepted the apology that Win Butler gave through a PR firm — and the PR firm that gave the apology is actually pretty well known for handling other inappropriate behavior cases. So you feel like everyone’s been trying to find some kind of apology for Arcade Fire because that was such a big band in the early 2000’s. It’s a part of a lot of people’s lives. So, I’m not that surprised. I am surprised by the lack of accountability the industry has actually shown towards Arcade Fire. They’re basically letting it pass; they’re giving them a chance to still tour and do money out of their art.

Elamin: Judith, let’s get into the substance of your piece in The Atlantic. You built around the premise that art, whatever the art is, transcends the creator. Let’s talk about why you wanted to explore that argument.

Judith: Well, I wouldn’t say it always transcends the creator. That’s a headline. I don’t write the headlines.

Elamin: Fair enough.

Judith: I would say that it’s possible to keep two ideas in your head at the same time: one, that the artist is a real jerk. I acknowledge the sense of betrayal and disappointment that a fan can feel, and I think it’s painful. A fan can then withdraw from her fandom and not give her money to the band. But in the case of Arcade Fire — look, I’m not very familiar with the case. Yara is infinitely more familiar with the case, but I read her piece, which was wonderful. Win Butler behaved very unpleasantly, but he did nothing criminal; the women were of age. He was a jerk, he imposed on them, but in my reading, it doesn’t sound like he assaulted them except by a very high standard of what assault would be. He behaved badly toward them. And I also would point out that Arcade Fire is a band with other members in it. Should they be punished?

Now in terms of cancellation and what is cancel culture, I would argue you’re not necessarily only cancelled if your career is ruined and you’re bankrupted. You suffer reputational harm. And clearly, Win Butler has suffered among his fan base and his hometown serious reputational harm. Just because he continues to play doesn’t mean he won’t go forward in his career with this very big asterisk. So that’s my take.

Elamin: Yara, you spoke with some of the people who were allegedly exploited by Win Butler. He says that these were consensual relationships, but he has apologized. These are people who are really suffering because of what happened. What do you make of Judith’s comments there?

Yara: What I’m going to say is no, nothing criminal came of it, though one non-binary person did say that Win Butler assaulted them, so there is that going on. In my opinion, the judicial system in cases of sexual harassment and sexual abuse has been proven to not really be effective, so I can understand when victims don’t want to actually go through bringing the accusation up. Those fans I talked about were extremely young, which for me shows the power dynamic that was going on between Win Butler and the fans. Those fans believed that Win Butler or Arcade Fire was their whole world, and Win Butler kind of took advantage of that, which for me plays on this very thin line between being a jerk and being manipulative or abusive toward your fandom — the people who pay for you, basically, to do this art. And for me, the way he treated those fans talks a lot about the way he might perceive his art.

Elamin: I want to make it clear that this wasn’t meant to be a conversation specifically about Win Butler and Arcade Fire; I think this was sort of our bouncing off point. But Judith, when you wrote the piece, you got into the work of Claire Dederer who wrote this book called Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. And she was looking at these big cases, of the painter Paul Gauguin or filmmaker Roman Polanski. How do those cases help us understand this moment that we’re living in, especially when we think about criticism directed toward an artist being so instantaneously amplified online?

Judith: Well in the case of Gauguin, in the case of the dead artist, what you have is a revisitation of the circumstances in which he produced his art. He definitely took advantage of young Tahitian women. He was participating in a colonialist system, and it affects his art. And so you can put on shows of his art and teach what that colonialist attitude toward women does to his art. To refuse to show it would be to miss a really important teachable moment. I mean, he also had an important role to play in the history of art — which could be something that would reframe your understanding of the history of Western art, right? So you really don’t want to cancel Paul Gauguin. There’s a lot to learn from Paul Gauguin.

With Roman Polanski it’s infinitely more complicated, and Claire comes out I think in a good place where she just says, “I live in a state of cognitive dissonance because I do love his movies, and I am beyond appalled by his rape of a 13-year-old girl. It’s a dilemma, and I’m just going to live within that dilemma.” She’s not giving money to Roman Polanski because she’s looking at old tapes, and it’s a part of her formation as a cultural critic. I really do think that you have to be able to hold those two ideas in your head at the same time. Now it’s a different matter when you’re giving money to the artists, like Arcade Fire — then I think you make a decision [of] not giving money to that artist. And that’s very legitimate.

Elamin: The part that I am always struggling with, Yara, is I think about artists who have done things recently that have clearly crossed lines that I consider to be not okay — the prime example of this being Kanye West. The way that the technology has changed means that if I play a Kanye song on Spotify or on Apple Music, I am directly giving money to Kanye West. I think if I was playing a record that I have owned for 20 years, he does not benefit from each successive play of that record. But the way that the economy is changed makes us a bit more entangled, I think, with the art that these artists make and it makes sort of the way that we give them money, even if it’s just a few parts of a cent every time we play their music, it makes us a bit more implicated. How do you think about the way that we’re entangled with artists’ lives now in ways that maybe we weren’t even ten years ago?

Yara: I don’t think people deserve to be cancelled in a way, but I think that there’s choices to be made. But also more than that, I think we cannot ask the general public to take these decisions. You know, it’s putting a lot of pressure on the shoulders of people who don’t necessarily understand the extent of how our economy works right now toward culture. I think the institutions have a bigger role to play in this. I will never shun someone who listens to Arcade Fire or someone who listens to Kanye West; that’s a personal decision. But I’ll say that the industry has a bigger role to play, and we should actually educate the fans or the listeners more … and if the industry decides to ignore those situations, we put people in danger of repeating the same actions over and over again, which for me the problem is more there than a single person contributing to the art.

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