Shame on you
Since last Friday, when I saw a thread on Twitter that I wish I could’ve bleached from my eyeballs, I’ve run into this idea several times that it’s wrong to consume “problematic” media and you shouldn’t do it, and if you did it, you should feel bad about it. In general, I’ve noticed, this line of thinking has two paranoiac strains, both self-centered identity crises: fear of ostracism and fear of contagion.
The first mostly applies to living creators, where for example we’re not supposed to watch The Usual Suspects because Kevin Spacey is in it, and he’s been accused of a very nasty sexual assault. Watching the movie puts pennies in the man’s pocket, after all, and we don’t want to support that kind of thing.
I don’t get the connection. If no one ever streamed, rented, or purchased that film again, it’s not like he would starve. (Are we trying to kill him, to stone the evil from our midst like an Old Testament mob?) Human beings are not little nation-states that can be deprived into submission with economic embargo. If Kevin Spacey is genuinely prone to committing sexual assaults — and he may very well be — then he’s going to do them, rich or poor. If deprivation equals prevention, then prisons ought to stop all crime.
On the other hand, if you really stop to think about it, the stress of losing his fortune might drive Mr. Spacey to commit more assaults. Perhaps the best thing to do is to make sure he and Aziz Ansari and Harvey Weinstein are all rich and comfortable so that they’re less likely to do bad things — that is, if deprivation of money really has anything to do with it.
No, no, I am told. Money is not the point. Money is just the mechanism. The point is to punish these men, to let them know their behavior is unacceptable.
Well, setting aside the very big question of whose job it is to police other people’s behavior, how is your economic finger wag transmitted to them exactly? Surely they need to be aware of it for it to have any effect. How would Kevin Spacey know that tonight, sitting in front of your television, you’ve decided you’re NOT going to watch The Usual Suspects — not because seeing him play Verbal Kint is uncomfortable but solely as punishment?
He’s not. Nor is he likely to see your pronouncement on social media of the same. But then, that’s not the point, is it? The point of conspicuous behavior is to let the people around you know that you’re one of the good guys, that you care about sexual assaults and by golly you’re not going to tolerate that kind of thing, and no one else should either, and if we all got together and stopped watching Kevin Spacey movies, then he’s sure to get the message, and the studios, too, and then we’d be getting somewhere!
This of course transmits the finger wag from Kevin Spacey to the entire world, because if not watching The Usual Suspects sends a message, then surely watching it does the opposite, which is to say makes every single viewer complicit in a sexual assault.
Hopefully the misstep is clear to you.
Certainly lots of people in Hollywood and elsewhere seem to be getting blacklisted. We’ll see if it lasts. To the degree it leads even indirectly to genuine social change, maybe it’s not a bad thing. But that’s really the question. After all, it’s one thing to decide for yourself that you’re never going to watch another Kevin Spacey film. Fine. Totally your choice and no one should shame you for that. But it’s another thing entirely to suggest that anyone who doesn’t do the same is permissive of sexual assault and therefore part of the problem and worthy of guilt and public shame.
Let’s be clear. I’m not suggesting anyone feel sorry for Kevin Spacey or Harvey Weinstein or whoever. At all. You’re free to react to them however you want. If you don’t want to watch The Usual Suspects, don’t. I think it’s perfectly reasonable that some of these accusations make people feel uncomfortable.
The question is, do you have legitimate reason to make other people feel guilty about it if they do? Is it wrong to rent or even simply to watch The Avengers, or Firefly, because they were directed by Joss Whedon, whose ex-wife has now accused him of emotional abuse? Does the one follow from the other?
I think we get closer to an answer when we consider the second fear — of contagion — which is where this line of thinking is applied to creators long dead, creators who can’t possibly benefit economically from your consumption of their work nor even be aware of any collective finger wagging.
Normal Mailer, for example, who makes most critics’ lists of the best writers of the 20th century, stabbed his second wife (of six). He was having a party at his home, got drunk, and turned belligerent. He had a fight on the street with one of his guests and went back upstairs where he had an altercation with his wife before stabbing her twice with a pen knife. Guests took her to the hospital over his drunk objections that they should just let her die.
Perhaps worse than the crime was the conspiracy of silence afterwards, where the New York literary circle closed ranks around him. This included prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem, who came out publicly in support of Mailer’s run for mayor of New York several years after the assault. (He lost.)
I don’t get how not reading “Barbary Coast” makes any of that stop. And shouldn’t we also boycott Steinem for supporting a known domestic abuser? Mailer didn’t just hit his wife. He stabbed her. Twice! And how far back in time are we applying contemporary moral standards? To the turn of the last century? To ancient times? The lesbian poet Sappho was complicit in a society built on widespread slavery. Why does she get a pass?
And do these moral standards apply to creative works other than narrative fiction? Degas seems to have had a thing for underage girls. Should we burn all his paintings? It’s generally understood that artists have tended toward some very despicable habits. What will remain in our museums when all that’s allowed is wholesome female-, child-, LGBTQ-, and POC-friendly content made by morally upright allies?
If a college student is assigned one of Mailer’s books as part of a class on 20th century American literature, is he going to be infected by it? Is he going to walk away with a greater tolerance for domestic abuse? And if not, why would anyone else? Are we really suggesting that certain books should not be read and certain movies not be watched and certain paintings not be displayed because people just can’t handle them? Are we saying that art and literature are in fact dangerous to the Utopian social order?
Some people seem to think so, even if they wouldn’t put it in those words.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misguided-campaign-remove-thomas-hart-benton-mural-180967080/
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/07/18/books/underneath-orientalist-kimono/
