“Your Fave Is Problematic” Reading List
In tragically familiar news, it recently emerged that an entertainment powerhouse was a bastard . Harvey Weinstein, who has spent millions to pay women who accused him of sexual assault, has been involved in hundreds of great works, including Project Runway , Pulp Fiction , The English Patient, and Air Bud . Weinstein is, of course, terrible, and none of his works atone for it. For some, the question is how to deal with a favorite work if it contains traces of Weinstein’s involvement.
There is no single “right” way to relate to good work involving a bad person or even a good person with bad behavior. But if you don’t know how to feel like a fan, there are tons of tips on the internet. Here’s our guide to one of the best books on the topic.
Tumblr Your Fave Is Problematic (now abandoned) has identified a wide range of potentially offensive celebrity behaviors. Its name has become a proverb (and frequent headline) meaning “The people and things you love often do harmful things.”
The blog itself has often been problematic, but as Weiss pointed out , it helped educate many readers by introducing many to concepts such as cultural appropriation, transmisogyny, and microaggression. His “Now what?” This section is a quick guide to dealing with a problematic favorite. He gives a generous answer to the question, “Can I still love the troubled favorite?”
Yes. Nobody bothers you. You can love and consume their work without loving them as a person. You can even love them as a person if you understand that they really have problems.
Of course, there are some creators that you probably shouldn’t like as a person, such as Weinstein and other alleged sex abusers Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski. No amount of charm, warmth, or intelligence will atone for an implacable molester or rapist. Each fan draws their own line between mistakes and unforgivable sins, and most of the authors covering the topic give them that freedom. But most creators are open to improvement, and YFIP encourages fans to label bad behavior not only as a punishment or warning, but to help the creators grow.
- Bad people create good art. As New York Times critic Charles McGrath explains, this statement combines two different types of “good” and “bad.” Art and people are judged differently, and it shouldn’t be. So enjoying literary classics does not mean approving of their often awful authors. (Of course, this is more difficult if the author can still get a check when you buy their work.)
- Good people do bad things. You too. While some creators should be written off, others go out of their way. Calling them supports, not destroys. Ijeoma Oluo breaks through the defenses, which we often raise. Her essay “Confess Your Favorite Is a Problem” forces us to admit that all of our favorite authors and celebrities will end up saying or doing hurtful things. We don’t like to admit it because it means admitting that we are hurting people. And if we don’t admit our flaws, we will never fix them.
- Your loved one can get better. Writer Liv Jordan uses the same concepts as Oluo to investigate how Tina Fey fails to recognize problematic behavior and apologize for it . Jordan leaves, still loving and respecting Fey for her work and her fight against sexism, but hopes that she will succeed.
- Don’t expect your loved one to be perfect. On the African culture blog Africa Is a Country, Sisonke Msimang deconstructs the concept of black girl magic, which considers thinkers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi to be infallible, leading to inevitable disappointment when they are wrong or reveal a fanatical opinion. She points out that we put more pressure on these supposedly ideal figures and punish them more severely for any mistakes than white people or men. In other words, acting like black women can’t do anything wrong is sometimes just an excuse to reinforce existing racist and sexist hierarchies.
- Criticizing a loved one is great, and sometimes even fun. The podcast Your Fave Is Problematic criticizes pop culture from the 80s to the present day, with episodes dedicated to Friends , Aaron Sorkin, La La Land and Taylor Swift. Facilitators demonstrate that acknowledging shortcomings (without excusing them) can increase your assessment of the work.
- Don’t pick your favorites so hasty. The famous tweet “duck with milkshake” introduced the term for fifteen-minute celebrities who turned out to be terrible. Explaining the history of the term , Esquire’s Luke O’Neill shows the risk of over-judging people in a single step. This does not only apply to one-time miracles; it is very important to choose who you promote and emulate. It’s one thing to personally enjoy someone else’s work. But if you start preaching to them and publicly identifying with them, you must acknowledge that you are posing a certain risk and research accordingly.
- Appreciate that you can even call your loved one. Vox’s Jaime Weinman traces the history of cultural criticism and finds that the genre has become more socially conscious over time. Rather than curtailing free speech (no one gets a legal ban on problematic works), this criticism actually opens up opportunities, fighting for new stories, better performance, and introducing new conversations. After all, if a cultural work is not worth studying, is it worth enjoying it?