Hello everyone and welcome back to Simplified Speech, the QLIPP series, which features clear, 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?
Hey, 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 going to 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 QLips 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, QLips.com.
You can sign up and become a QLips member for an affordable price and get the guide and really get the most out of this episode.
Okay, and with that being said, let's get started with our conversation, 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 hears about rumors about an artist dies they need to reckon 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, 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, where 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 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 Indiana, when you were speaking there, you used this word problematic.
And that's a common word that we use to talk about this sort of issue is a problematic artist or a 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're, 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, maybe that's not that big of a deal, to like actually, maybe a sexual harassment or um yeah um, 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 a sliding scale.
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 about a 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 and 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 super, super evil or anything like that.
Maybe she was just having a bad day.
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 with sexual abuse, sexual crimes, maybe even who knows, murder or something like that right.
It has this huge spectrum.
So anytime that 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, and Sometimes we also use this word problematic to describe song lyrics.
Maybe a lyric that is very offensive in some way or another, we could also say is problematic.
So yeah, a good vocabulary word to know, guys, when we're talking about this topic.
So Indiana, why don't we get into it and talk about our own personal perspectives here about problematic artists?
Unfortunately, there are so many to talk about.
I don't know why.
Artists just seem to have a lot of character flaws, like you mentioned.
And there are so many problematic artists out there.
I'm sure we could spend hours talking about all of the different ones.
Unfortunately, it's not a good thing, but it is the truth.
So why don't we talk about some problematic artists that...
Maybe you know we liked before and then they did something bad and we don't really like them as much anymore.
Or maybe you have the perspective where this doesn't bother you at all and you're able to separate the art from the artists.
Let's get into it a little bit.
So who would you like to talk about first?
Which artists?
Yeah, so I think it's definitely not black and white.
It's hard to take a 100% or 0% support, don't support an artist perspective.
I think, you know, I could give an example.
This is not necessarily for me because I'm not really into Harry Potter.
Of course, I had a relationship with the books when I was a kid and I enjoyed reading them with my mom.
You know, I had some good childhood memories of these books.
But a lot of people continue into adulthood to be huge fans of Harry Potter.
And I'm not sure if listeners know, but there has been over the past several years, a lot of controversy about the author JK.
Rowling for a lot of extremely transphobic comments and her political position towards trans people is very problematic, as we would say.
She does not agree with or support the idea and she's said some very hurtful and problematic things.
And so I think you could continue to enjoy Harry Potter, but what does that mean to you as a person who's consuming this, who is reading this book?
You have to ask yourself, I think.
What does this mean?
Do I feel comfortable with this?
Has my relationship changed?
Can I enjoy this story but then perhaps make a decision to not financially support further works from JK?
Rowling or to talk about this with other people who like Harry Potter?
I think there's a challenging verb, but it's an interesting verb that you hear a lot, maybe in like university settings where you're questioning something.
Interrogate yourself.
Interrogate the situation.
Like ask questions and try to come to some solution for yourself.
And that's going to look different for everybody, but I think it's important.
At least, if you know somebody has done something wrong or stands for something you disagree with, you should ask yourself like what does this mean for me and my relationship with this artist?
Like, how does it change things?
So it's very sort of philosophical, I guess.
And this doesn't have a clear cut answer.
But yeah, I could not go out and support JK Rowling and buy her books or watch her new stuff, the new movies of her, of her works.
Even if I really liked them, I feel like I would not want to financially support her, because that's not what I stand for.
So I've just rambled a little bit about that.
What do you think, Andrew, about that?
Or like is there an artist that you would think like, oh yeah, I could continue to support, or there's just no way.
This is crossing the line for me.
Like, what do you think about this?
Well, I mean, it's interesting because you brought up another area of being problematic.
We talked more about maybe breaking the law or being a bad person, but here it's holding a political view that you don't agree with, right?
And so there are so many different.
I mean, we're living in a very polarized political world these days.
And it seems like the world is split almost, right?
50 of people believe one kind of philosophy or political belief, and 50 of the world think another way.
I mean, I'm simplifying it, of course, but we're split into these two different camps, essentially.
And so if there is an artist that you like that holds an opposing political belief, then that you disagree with then yeah, it's really interesting.
And I've had this pop up with a few artists recently due to their political beliefs.
We won't get too deep into the weeds here about that, but you have to reckon with yourself.
Like, can I support somebody who just thinks in a totally different way than me politically?
So yeah, that's another aspect of being problematic.
And of course this is going to vary for, from individual to individual, right?
What might be a problematic artist for me politically might be totally somebody else's like ideal artist that stands up for what they believe in.
So that in that way, it's going to really vary from individual to individual.
Whereas I think more with the criminal aspect of it.
It's really hard to to reconcile with somebody who's a criminal right.
Like one thing that I wanted to bring up here in Indiana was about with music because, for whatever reason, I think, if an author that I really loved suddenly was problematic and I was like oh, I can't support this person anymore,
I think that would be okay.
Like I just wouldn't read their books again and I'd survive.
But for whatever reason with music, it's harder for me to ignore a really good song.
If a problematic artist is a musician, and they made some just really amazing songs, and maybe those are songs that I grew up with or remind me of a good time in my life if I hear those songs.
Then, of course, I'm super conflicted.
I'm like, oh, I love this song.
It's great.
But at the same time, I don't like the artist.
But at the same time, can I delete it from my playlist?
Like it still brings up these good emotions and good feelings and good memories.
So I don't know.
I'm more conflicted with music.
But there's this one artist, R. Kelly, Indiana.
I'm sure you know R. Kelly.
And for me, it's really black and white.
For him, actually, I wasn't 100% sure about all of the official trouble that he got himself into.
So I looked it up on his Wikipedia page.
And I'll just read this.
R. Kelly, the R&B singer from the States.
It says on Wikipedia here in 2021 and 2022 he was convicted on multiple charges involving child sexual abuse and is currently serving a 31-year combined sentence in a prison somewhere in the States.
So like, that's pretty black and white, right?
Like child sexual abuse.
That's the worst of the worst.
You can't get much worse than that.
So for me it's easy in a case like that to be like okay, I'm not going to support R Kelly in any way, shape or form anymore.
But yeah, for other musicians, sometimes it's tough.
Do you feel the same way that it's harder to ignore problematic musicians than it is with other art?
Yeah, and I think you're right about the novel thing too.
There's also the aspect of when you write a book I mean most of the time that is like the artist, the author, that's the person responsible for this piece of art.
Of course, there's editors.
I mean, I'm not saying that that piece of art is 100%. solely from that artist.
But a movie, when you're the director of a movie or an actor in a movie, there's so many different people whose combined efforts and creativity have created this film and music.
It is maybe in between the book example and the movie example, but I think that there's a lot of people who could be collaborating on it.
A band, a group of musicians might create something, and then one of the members is problematic, but it's a collective product from a bunch of people.
So it can be harder in that way too, to like completely say oh, this is his or this is her art, and I can't support that.
I think that complicates things as well.
But then also, yeah, you're right.
Like you hear a song and there's something more immediately like emotionally.
Something grabs you emotionally with a song, perhaps more than like a two hour movie, or a book.
Like it's more instant where you're like wow, this made me feel something right away from the beat or the lyrics or something.
So it is.
I also find it harder to like just stop listening to a song or a musician, even if I might feel weird about it.
Yeah, that's a harder one.
Yeah, I'm thinking of Kanye West, the rapper Kanye West.
I think he's a really super talented, amazing rapper.
I like a lot of his music.
I've been a fan of his up until recently.
However, Kanye's just said so many stupid things.
And again, I'm going to turn to Wikipedia here just to give our listeners some context.
For years and years, he's been a pretty eccentric guy, I think we could say.
But for the last two or three years, he's been especially not so good at all.
So let me read what it says here.
On Wikipedia it says, starting in 2022, West has drawn widespread condemnation and lost sponsors and partnerships for his anti-Semitic views.
He has self-identified as a Nazi, praised Adolf Hitler, used swastika imagery and denied the Holocaust.
So it's hard to support somebody when they hold those just really hateful views.
And some people say oh, he's just doing it for attention.
But I mean, find another way to promote yourself and get attention.
That's just really, really bad.
And even recently, Kanye West announced a concert here in Seoul.
And for a second, I was like, hmm, should I go to the concert?
And then I had to Google and find out, because I don't really follow his career too much but I knew he was a little bit problematic.
Then I learned about what he had been doing and saying, and I was like, no way, I can't do it.
And then the concert got canceled.
And I think it got canceled because of all of these comments he's been making.
But then I heard that it is going to be happening again.
And I don't know what the status is of the concert now, but it sucks because I liked some of his songs.
I like some of his music, but then he goes and says all these things and acts in a really just disgusting way.
So it's kind of sad when we lose the artists and we lose the music, we lose the songs that we loved.
And it's hard to reconcile, but it is a loss.
I feel like it's a loss in a way.
Yeah.
Like if you know this about him and then you continue to enjoy older music from you know it changed you or had an influence on you when you were growing up and it meant a lot at that time.
I mean, you can't just... choose to disconnect your positive feelings about music.
Maybe learning about this stuff will make you kind of.
It gives you this feeling of ickiness or something really bad when you listen to those old songs.
And if that's what happens, that makes sense.
But maybe you're somebody who still enjoyed those old songs by him.
I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but yeah, if he's saying such hateful things, i would think like it's important for you to think yeah, maybe i shouldn't.
You know, should i go see this concert?
Yeah no, probably not.
Right, i should not financially support somebody who's actively promoting hate, right yeah?
So like, i think again, there's like a lot of this stuff where it's like your feelings can be very complicated, but When it's the impact, this is such a you know, on the sliding scale of problematic, this is a really bad thing.
You know the things he's saying.
So I think like, yeah, it's important.
My opinion is that it's important for somebody to say like okay, where can I put my stand?
And like not support this person.
So this is another interesting issue then that I wanted to bring up with you.
What about people who are aware of what a problematic artist is doing?
Let's say, for example, I'll use me, for example.
I'll put myself under the spotlight here.
Say, i know about what kanye west stands for these days, i know what he's doing, but i just choose to turn away and ignore it and just enjoy his music, like always, and just be like yeah, i don't really care, like whatever, i'm not interested in him, the person, i'm just interested in the music.
But maybe i still bought concert tickets and i still went and saw the show.
But again i kind of justified it to myself Like hey, I don't care what he does.
You know, I'm just into the tunes.
Does that change the way that you see other people and your relationships with others?
I do think I would have an immediate like huh, like negative reaction.
But I would definitely want to talk about it with you, know if it's my friend.
And yeah Andrew, you're going to go see Kanye.
Like, wait, do you know what's going on?
What he said?
You know I would probably want to have a conversation about it and see what you're thinking, and you know.
Maybe you don't know all this stuff or yeah, but I would you know.
If you just 100 said no, I can ignore it.
I would feel a little bit uncomfortable about that.
You know?
Yeah, I think that would be probably a problem for me.
But what about you?
The situation is flipped.
I'm going to the Kanye show.
What would you feel?
Yeah, it's a tough one, because I do think that sometimes it does influence the way that you see people.
I don't think it's like a deal breaker for me.
However, it would make me see you in a different light.
And I probably would think like oh, we have some fundamental difference in the way that we see the world.
And it would put some distance between us.
It would make it hard for me to get really like have a closer friendship with you.
But just because I would think that there's like just a massive split, a big difference in our value system.
So yeah, I think it does have an impact.
Yeah, it's interesting, but it does.
Yeah, I mean, that's another thing, right?
Like what if I go to karaoke and then I throw on an R Kelly song?
Like what does that mean for the people I'm with?
Right.
Yeah.
Like this is suddenly, even though it's just maybe music, that I you know.
Oh, I love the song, but it does have some political or social implications.
Like it means something to people.
If you like, why are you ignoring?
Why are you, did you just not know?
Yeah.
It creates a lot of questions.
Yeah.
And you're bringing up an old memory.
But Remix to Ignition it was just a karaoke banger back in the day, the R Kelly song, but it's gone now.
We can't sing it anymore.
So Anna, do you think there are ways that artists can redeem themselves?
We've talked about some pretty bad artists here, but we also started the chat off talking about a singer who had just a bad off day and didn't interact with her fans very well.
What are some ways that artists can redeem themselves?
Or would you be open to giving a problematic artist a second chance?
Yeah.
Again, I can't say a blanket statement for every artist, because every situation is a little bit different.
And a blanket statement is something that covers everything.
Every case falls under this blanket.
So if I say, I love jazz music, that's like a blanket statement.
All jazz, right?
Perhaps.
I don't know if that's the best example.
But I can't make a blanket statement about every problematic artist.
But I think, a lot of the time, if I felt that an artist recognized that what they did was wrong, or what they said was wrong or their pattern of behavior was problematic, and then they made some effort to fix the situation or apologize or change for the better.
I mean, I do think if I felt the apology and the effort was genuine, like it was not just for PR, public relations, I feel like I could feel better about supporting that artist going forward.
Of course, like I said, it depends on what the actual crime or thing was, but people can change.
You have to feel like they really are trying to fix the situation.
Yeah, that would be sort of my stance on it.
I don't know.
How do you feel about it?
Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
It's too hard to say, like, yeah, I'd forgive everybody for everything, right?
Like, we can't make a blanket statement like that.
It's really case by case, person by person.
But...
I do believe in second chances and giving somebody a second chance, as long as they really change their behavior and we're willing to own up to their past mistakes, for sure.
I guess one example that I think is Again, this isn't so personal for me because I don't actively listen to Lizzo
Also, so this is a musician who was very famous and popular a few years ago.
And she's also.
There have been different, separate accusations against her for being like a terrible boss and creating a hostile work environment.
But the situation I'm thinking about was she included a song lyric that could be considered problematic.
It included a word that a lot of people in the disability community felt was not appropriate, almost a slur like very offensive, to say a very bad word.
But not everybody knew that.
And from my understanding, Lizzo did not know how offensive that word was.
So what she did was she apologized and then she like actually changed the track.
I think she like, took it off of Spotify, changed the lyric, re-uploaded it, re-released it, or something like that.
So I felt like that was like, okay, you made a mistake that was very harmful to people.
People were upset by it.
They felt like what, you know, but you kind of said, I'm so sorry.
I didn't know.
And then you changed it.
And I mean I don't think that's worth that in particular instance is worth never listening to her again or boycotting her.
Okay.
The other stuff aside, with the hostile work environment, that's separate, but just that single instance.
I mean, I think that's reasonable for me.
You saw what you did wrong and you changed it and you apologized.
That's good.
I love that.
That's a perfect example.
For me, that's excellent.
If somebody takes all of those steps and owns up to the mistake and apologizes and changes the song lyric yeah, totally.
That's great.
That's what we should do in those kinds of situations.
But yeah, Lizzo has some other problematic aspects about being a really bossy boss to her, her bandmates and stuff.
So some other issues there.
Yeah yeah Well Indiana, I think that will bring us to the end of today's episode.
Thank you so much for chatting with me about this topic.
It was a fascinating conversation, and I hope our audience enjoyed it as well.
And guys, we're going to turn things over to you now.
So we'd love to hear what your opinion is about problematic artists.
And probably you have some examples from your own country and your own culture as well that you could share with us that maybe we're not aware of.
So Yeah, we're eager and waiting for your comments.
You can leave them on our Discord community.
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Okay.
Indiana, thank you so much.
Please take care and we'll talk to you next time.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
See you, Andrew.
