Something I have a hard time reconciling with in spaces where we discuss the faults of a creator and specifically a creator who is abusive, is this knee-jerk reaction to then denounce the creative work as inherently 'bad.'
I don't mean bad as in 'you should not consume them and instead should spend your money and voice elsewhere', but this desire to look at art and say-- there can be no inherent skill involved in this art, because the creator did something monstrous.
(which, before I explain further, let me be clear and say that I am not necessarily advocating for the consumption or the hand-waving of a creator's input; merely, that it suits the goals of a materialist critic + someone who desires to do community based good [ie, a leftist] to inspect things case by case, on material harm)
It just feels.... Hollow. Weak. Not materialist. To denounce the whole production of something that invariably has good story elements, artistic elements, et all because the creator did something bad not only provides an easy defensive backlash of people who still like the source material and therefore might now denounce that the creator is a horrid person on merits of 'well the story is good so the guy must be good' (I'm obviously simplifying this rhetorically, but you understand what i mean I hope), but also gives cover for other abusive people who make good art-- how could I be abusive if the art is so good? (read: auteur theory, really)
I think it's worth it to acknowledge that a bad person can make good art (and I'm not getting into the inherently faulty and subjective constructs of 'good' or 'bad' here, let's not get into the weeds too much and just accept a common denominator for the scope of this.) A good person can make bad art, certainly; the inverse is true. Perhaps we ought not to take the signaling of one attribute-- the abusive atrocity the creator did-- with the inherent value of art that is, among many other things, probably a collaboration effort of many different creative teams, inputs, and miasma.
Certainly, a creator's abusive mindset can infect the art, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to say, for instance, the domed scope of a creative piece of art won't include at least some unconscious and biased messaging from the creator that is likely influenced by beliefs and actions the creator has made themself. But to start at 'the creator is bad' and 'therefore the work is bad and we can move on' really does leap over an entire canyon well of materialist criticism and examination of what was *good* and *bad* simultaneously about the art. Which does the community and realm of artistic respect dirty, I think.
Anyways. While this was partially inspired by the Dan Schneider fiasco, it's about both studio creative AND the smaller, more indie, on-our-dashboard style grassroots projects too. Art is art, man. Criticize it by the merit of the art and involve the creator when it's relevant, but using a creator's abuse to side step whole cloth the argument from the jump doesn't do you the rhetorical or critical theorizing dues that yky think it does
