It can sometimes be hard to separate the artist from their art. Are there any artists who were bad people but whose work you still enjoy?
Feel free to answer if you’re in the opposite scenario: an artist who you love personally but don’t enjoy their artwork.
Feel free to respond more than just music artists!
A lot?
Tom Cruise is the easy answer for obvious, cultist, related reasons. And as much as I love Donnie Yen in basically everything he has ever done, he is a hardcore CCP shill at best and there is a LOT of really creepy and questionable shit in his casting and “writing” that makes me wonder when he fucks up so bad that even China cares.
But, generally, the rule that a friend “coined” is: How bad are they compared to Mel Gibson? And while that is mostly a “funny” way to look at stuff, it is also useful to keep in mind regarding the different scale of assholes. And it also depends on what they are bad about.
Also, I still like pro wrestling. That shit is a minefield.
But to provide an answer that didn’t seem to come up yet:
Nobuhiro Watsuki. Creator of Rurouni Kenshin and such a pedophile that even the Japanese government gave a shit (and… just spend five minutes on the fifth floor of any manga shop and you’ll understand how massively fucked of a scale that is. Or walk down the streets of Akihabara at night).
But also? The Rurouni Kenshin anime is still one of the GOATs… for the Kyoto arc. Even if there is a lot of shit in the arcs surrounding it and the overall story of Kenshin that REALLY makes a lot of sense when you understand how evil the creator is… And the live action adaptations are a must watch for any fan of action movies because it is probably still the greatest blend of wire work, fight choreography, and “style” to ever exist (I hear the Yu Yu Hakusho live action taps into the same vein).
One of those things where I will be a lot happier when that piece of shit is dead and unable to benefit from sales.
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Johnny Craig, the former lead singer for the band Dance Gavin Dance. Dude has repeatedly fucked up and ripped off fans, but damn did he have a great singing voice.
And for the opposite, T-Pain and Post Malone. Both of them just seem like the coolest, and most chill people but their studio music is just not for me.
Yeah, Johnny Craig definitely has an history of messed up stuff. It makes me glad I prefer Kurt Travis’ vocals.
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How edgy. His art is boring to me and in a blind review, critics said his art had a profound disinterest in other human beings.
alright very legit account created today, good one
Robert Heinlein. His works were all over the place, and it would be a mistake to assume that he believed in something just because he wrote it in a fiction novel, so on that front I think he gets a fair amount of undeserved heat. He was pushing the limits of progressivism for his time, tossing out and seemingly defending everything on all sides from fascism to anarchy to direct democracy.
If we discount his fiction, though, since it can be hard to tell from that what he actually believed, then he still falls pretty short by modern standards. A homophobe, almost certainly racist, and although he was practically a feminist by the standards of his time I would have to admit that he’s pretty misogynistic by our standards.
I wish this was more talked about, when people mention classic sci-fi. I’m an avid SF reader, particularly older stuff, and it could almost be a drinking game of how few pages it’ll take before you find an offensively outdated reference, no matter how great the book. But every time I’ve picked up a Heinlein, hoping to find more positive points in classic stuff, I’m left just…feeling ooky. An easy example being the lesser known Friday, with the “happy” part of the extremely unrealistic female protagonist’s journey: marrying one of her gang-rapists. I haven’t been able to make a dent in my stack of Heinlein’s since that nonsense. Too many other great and interesting authors that weren’t horrid shitbags.
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It’s the an artist that doesn’t fall into this category?
Marilyn Manson - he had a slow slide from alcoholism to lecher creep to serial abuser. he spent 2009-2011 doing the worst shit to women that you can imagine.
Brand New - turns out that Jesse was a groomer of underage girls.
Arcade Fire - Win Butler is a sex pest.
Smashing Pumpkins - not at all in the same category as the others, but goddamn does Billy Corgan suck. he was always known as a first-class egotist, but he just kept being an asshole long after his prime had become a distant memory. then the weird shit started: crackpot conspiracy theories on Myspace, palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews. the latest album is an extended allegory on cancel culture. worse, it’s mostly unlistenable.
palling around with Alex Jones on Infowars, dropping alt-right buzzwords in interviews
That saddens and actually kinda shocks me.
I would have expressed ZERO surprise to news of him going so far to the LEFT that he ended up miles beyond hippie dippie new agey and founded his own Heaven’s Gate cult (The central belief of the which was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven)…but this is…honestly weirding me out.
Wasn’t he going so far into eastern spirituality that he was recording himself reading the entirety of the Bhagavad Gita at one point or something?
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Are you a fan of his earlier or later work?
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His paintings were mid
At best.
Definitely not shitty-bad, but it seemed like a Seinfeld moment. Looks like he’s still a small artist so I won’t name him here - but a guy I sat next to on a plane turned out to have drawn/designed the shirt I wore that day. We were having a nice chat when the discussion turned to the CCP and his admiration for their authoritative actions.
I definitely Noped out mentally from the conversation, but we still kept talking for a while because… well we were on a plane. Was still a nice guy (to me) - just …interesting… views.
Asimov, from all accounts, was quite a creep but dammit if his writing isn’t good.
Oh, Ayn Rand!
Wait a second, no, I hate her work too.
I’m out of the loop, what did she do?
I would say Kevin Spacey. The man can act: Usual suspects, Seven, first season of House Of Cards. Shame how he turned out.
