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Yassmin Abdel-Magied's avatar

@helen - excited to see this book from you! Looking forward to it.

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Original Owner's avatar

_A Clockwork Orange_ poses this question vividly. Alex and the Droogs' acts of "the old ultra-violence" obviously pose a problem for the society they live in (and are probably the result of a deep and pervasive sickness in that society), but high-tech behaviorist techniques that extirpate those tendencies seem also to eliminate creativity and the ability to experience beauty. This leads the authorities to forbid using those techniques to fix people like Alex.

The incorporation of the other Droogs into the Metropolitan Police seems not to raise the same principled objections.

The alternative of keeping Alex imprisoned and therefore unable to inflict harm on the public doesn't seem to have been considered, or maybe I overlooked it.

There is a difference between criminalizing actions that harm other people, and criminalizing thoughts that exist in a person's subjective interior. Of course the two are not unrelated, but the distinction has to be made.

Weinstein seems to have been a complete bastard, I wouldn't want him for a neighbor, and I'm glad that apparently there are several degrees of separation between us. I don't know that it makes sense to refuse to watch any of the movies he profited from though.

Cosby's acts were quite despicable and creepy, but I think the harm was not as extensive, in the same way that second-degree murder still involves a wrongful death but is not considered as serious as first-degree. I wouldn't want him for a neighbor either, and, in case I was unclear, I don't think his actions were excusable, or just boys being boys.

As for his creative artifacts, I never cared much one way or another about his TV shows, and was never tempted to eat Jello pudding. But the standup was really very funny, and I think it still is, even though it's hard to watch it without thinking of what the man did when he was able to get away with it.

Norm Macdonald was a big Cosby fan, and admired him both as a performer and as a man, he said. When the truth about Cosby came out, Norm of course changed his perspective. The post-Cosby comment of his that I remember is, "People say, 'You know, the worst thing about Cosby is that he's a hypocrite,' and I don't agree with that. " Pause for a beat. "I think the worst thing was the raping."

Many people have a shadow side that nobody sees. These two had huge, malignant shadows. How many "normal" people that we see every day are criminally-minded under the surface? In _Chinatown_, John Huston's character Noah Cross comments, "You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING."

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Mo Diddly's avatar

I feel like two different things are being conflated here - the art changing the way we deal with the person’s behavior, and the person’s behavior changing the way we view the art. I am 100% on team prosecute Weinstein (and Cosby, etc), definitely don’t worship artists to the detriment of justice. But I see no problem with continuing to enjoy Weinstein’s movies and Picasso paintings, playing Michael Jackson songs, or listening to Wagner. Great art no longer belongs to the artist, it belongs to all of us.

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Rob Rough's avatar

In my view a person is like a whirlpool - which appears to be a stable entity whereas in fact the water that was in it a minute ago is no longer there. Likewise the cells and atoms that a person consisted of when they did the bad thing are no longer there after some time has elapsed. So what persists?

People are very quick to call themselves “atheists” these days and yet they insist that something non-physical persists (a soul?) which is independent of the physical body.

“Dali” is a name we give to what we wrongly perceive as a persistent entity. Something made the art. Another configuration of cells and atoms committed the sin. Society calls them all “Dali” because conventional thinking demands that “something” be held responsible for both.

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Tim Small's avatar

Thanks for this - GO is truly a reliable source of discerning critique on the perennial problems of our mediated age. And Hooray for Hollywood!, which not only provided a great climate for film production but a meeting place for some of the most flamboyantly debauched dream peddlers to ever walk the earth. Now we know where to find them, even though the rise of the wwweb has revealed Hollywood as more of a virtual location than a specific terrestrial one. In fact our dream factory industrial complex is ultimately more of a sandbox at the shoreline, and the tsunami will arrive someday day.

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Roger Hicks's avatar

This one hits hard. I grew up with Bill Cosby - Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, and, of course, the standup comedy video Himself that I watched countless times.

Then there was his court case and conviction. I learned firsthand how damnatio memoriae works - anything by him or about him suddenly became radioactive.

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J Michael Cobb's avatar

Thanks for sharing this. I have long been fascinated by the question of great art by morally reprehensible people. Does it matter how bad the actions of a person are? If they are sexual harassers but not sexual assaulters, for instance, can you enjoy their art a little bit more? Is great art no longer great when you learn about someone’s bad behavior? And so on.

I don’t have a clear answer on this, but have heard arguments about enjoying the art so long as financial proceeds went to compensate victims, or so long as the creator is dead or otherwise not benefiting. And of course, all of that is about past behavior. I can’t see how excusing ongoing or future behavior is morally possible.

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L.H.Mcpartland's avatar

Interesting.

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Jun 13
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Luke's avatar

Was this ai generated

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