We live in
a world where celebs are universally adored, worshipped even. Inordinate
attention is paid to everything they do outside of what made them famous in the
first place. Their personal lives are intensely scrutinized by Stans who want
to know what they eat, their pet’s potty schedule, and every excruciating
detail about the lancing of the boil on their chosen idol’s butt. To the
fanatic’s starstruck gaze, celebs are unimpeachable.
It is
becoming routine for devotees to suffer a complete nervous breakdown and
experience implacable rage, when their God or Goddess is revealed to be just
another flawed human being. That beneath the razzle – dazzle and flim -flammery
of superstardom, there is the usual unsightly warts, dirt under the overprized
rug, and gleaming skeletons in closets that renders all humans as mostly
indistinguishable from each other. Not many can admit as much… whether they
have been inhaling hydrogen peroxide on Samantha’s recommendation, steaming
their vaginas because Gwyneth Paltrow says so or feeling broken and unable to
engage with Alice Munro’s short fiction after the shocking revelations made by
her youngest daughter – Andrea Skinner, who wrote about how her mother had
chosen to stay with her stepfather till he died despite knowing that he had
sexually assaulted her when she was 9, continued to do so well into her teens
before brazenly admitting to it and accusing her of seducing him.
When ugly
secrets about legends are exposed, their admirers feel forced to pledge fealty
to the cancel culture club lest extremists on the left insist that liking
Neruda or Polanski is akin to supporting the rape of minors and reading Harry
Potter makes you an enemy of trans people. Knowing about the creator’s crimes
may cast the creation in a different light but enjoying it doesn’t make one a criminal
or complicit in a crime. Saying otherwise is simply imprudent and indicative of
a repressive cultural environment that is likely to see the emergence of modern
day Savonarolas, who only see wickedness in art if the artist does not have a
good conduct certificate and will condemn it to the Bonfire of Vanities.
Cultural
conscience keepers would disagree, insisting that the inner lives of artists
spill over into art and if the former is morally corrupt, then so is the
latter. That engaging with the product of vice is tantamount to endorsing evil.
However, in these tricky cases, it is not merely a simplistic question of
separating art from the artist. It is about accepting that nothing or no one is
completely good or bad. That people who are extraordinarily good at their job
might be unacceptably flawed in some areas of their personal life. Burying good
art on the strength of an artist’s bad deeds is doing the world a disservice. As
rational human beings, it might be best to desist from becoming excessively
enamoured of greats in their chosen fields and to engage with their work or not
based solely on its merits or the lack of it. That is the Goldilocks zone and
is just right since it isn’t too much or too little.
This piece was originally published in TNIE Magazine
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