What to Do If Your Favorite Artist Gets Fired

Like many millennial children, Caleb Loschiavo grew up loving the Harry Potter series. “As a child, it always seemed to me that I didn’t fit in, as if I didn’t belong, as if I had something that was missing, but I didn’t have the language to describe,” says Loskiavo. ” Harry Potter was an outside place where I could escape, and it was this world outside me, when I was a child, that felt like a place where people who were different from others were accepted.”

But when Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling introduced herself as TERF – a “trans-exclusive radical feminist” – that is, someone who doesn’t believe trans women are women – last year Loschiavo, a transgender person, felt like can no longer support her or her work.

“I went home to see my parents, maybe a month ago to clean up my kid’s bedroom, and I had all these Harry Potter memorabilia, quizzes, little figures and scenes, and my mom said, ‘Oh, you do you want to keep these? ‘ and I thought, “No, no more. I need to let it go, ”says Loschiavo.

No writer, musician or actor is perfect, and sometimes they do or say stupid things and make us cringe, but we can still get through it – especially if they apologize – and move on. But it’s hard to figure out what to do when your favorite musician, actor, or writer turns out to be fanatical or downright offensive. Do you believe in a “culture of cancellation,” the practice of stopping massive public support for celebrities or companies when they do or say something offensive or harmful – after learning that whoever created the cultural criteria you love is a racist , or sexual harassment or unwavering transphobia can trigger internal violence.

Do you continue to support your favorite artist, even if he has sinned? Where do you draw the line? Is there a way to separate art from artist? We spoke to some of the people who went through this to find out what they had to say.

Expect a strong reaction as the curtain rises

We feel like we know the artists who create our favorite works of art. Finding them bad people makes us realize that we don’t. Ultimately, we upset our perception of the artist – someone we loved without even knowing him.

Jeff (who prefers not to divulge his last name) has been in love with singer Ryan Adams ever since he bought one of his albums in 2001. “He was, if not my favorite artist, one of the few musicians who meant a lot to me,” Jeff writes by email. So when the New York Times ran an article in 2019 alleging that Adams sexually harassed and emotionally abused and punished young women musicians when they rejected him, Jeff had to reevaluate his relationship with the singer / songwriter.

“It was heartbreaking,” writes Jeff. “This article came out on the day of my grandfather’s funeral – I had just returned from service when I saw the headline, and while the two events are incomparable, it definitely felt like one loss (the loss of one of my favorite musicians) exacerbated another, larger loss “.

Not only is your idea of ​​the artist lost, but pulling back the curtain on the creator can ruin your perception of the art you loved.

Many of my most vivid musical memories – listening to ‘Sylvia Plath’ on my way home from a college bar or hearing Adams play ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ in Central Park a week before I leave for graduate school in North Carolina – now they look confusing, vague, and I’m not sure what (if anything) to do about it, ”writes Jeff.

Bryce Kelly , host of Percy Jackson’s popular long-reading podcast Radio Camp Half-Blood , had a similar experience. Kelly loved PWR BTTM, a popular queercore duo that preached self-acceptance. But when member Ben Hopkins was accused of sexual assault and predatory behavior, Kelly stopped listening to their music.

“It struck me personally,” says Kelly, who uses the pronouns they / they. “I am queer, what their music said meant a lot to me. So when it was revealed that this person was a rapist and used this platform, this inclusive message to take advantage of people, it really hurt. ”

For Kelly, when the accusations against Hopkins were made public, art lost its meaning. “I felt like a lot of what this music meant was belittled,” they say.

Whether you give up the artist is up to you, but you might want to reconsider financially supporting him.

While the right-wingers often shout about the “dangers” of “abolishing culture,” no cultural police will wait in the wings if you are streaming a bad artist’s track on Spotify. What you decide to do with a troubled artist is up to you.

In Jeff’s case, he’s done away with Adams forever. “After reading the first few sentences, I realized that the [ New York Times ] story is not only true, but I will no longer be able to listen to his music,” he writes.

But others may prefer to draw the line elsewhere. Not everyone can or wants to completely part with their favorite artist. This is clear. The art that we carry with us is personal in nature, and its importance to us has much less to do with the musician or writer who created it, and more with how it made us feel at a certain point in time. This is especially true of the books we read as children and the musicians we listen to when we were most impressionable or vulnerable; in many ways these works feel as much a part of us as our own personalities.

Loskyavo, for example, says he already has a collection of Harry Potter novels, so if he wants to reread them, he won’t support Rowling financially. “I can still read books, it seems to me that it will not help her in her career and will not help,” he says. Although, as he notes, they act differently in light of Rowling’s apparent transphobia: “Now when I look at them, I see all these things that people have called transphobic or contradictory between what is in the text and what she believes now, ”Loskyavo says.

Maggie Serota, a New York-based writer, had a similar experience with Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths. “Like any adolescent with clinical depression, I loved The Smiths,” she says. “When you’re some kind of eccentric and not a cheerleader or something, or as Daria used to say ‘poor chicken,’ [Morrissey] is one of those artists who talk to you,” she says.

Morrissey has always been a little aggressive, but Serota began noticing cracks in the façade years ago. “He started talking loudly about being anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and nativist. He would openly sympathize with far-right figures like Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, ”says Serota. “It was a line that I could not cross.”

Serota decided it was time to stop supporting Morrissey, but she couldn’t bring herself to abandon him completely. “I cannot change my emotional connection with the songs that I loved as a child,” says Serota. “But I can change if I support him financially.” Serota will still listen to Morrissey’s song on Spotify – although, in her words, “even then it seems odd sometimes” – but she won’t go to his concerts or buy any of his albums.

Kelly believes that at the very least, giving up financially supporting the troubled artist is the right move.

“I understand this urge to save what you thought was meaningful in something, even if that person was in conflict with what they were creating,” says Kelly. “But in the case of people with really big platforms, you have to think about whether you are giving them money. Money is power in the world we live in. “

In general, Kelly says, de-platform work and offensive or other problematic artists don’t need you to write nice things about them or invite them to your events. “I don’t want to hear from the big book festival that they have J.K. Rowling,” says Kelly. “I don’t want to hear from the music festival that they will have Ben Hopkins. When it comes to personal responsibility, it is not supporting them financially or supporting them on your platforms. ”

At least the artist gets a star

Unless you’re ready to give up the bad artist or his work entirely, it’s at least a good idea to keep the blame against them. It’s understandable if the art they create is still important to you, but you can’t just talk about them without acknowledging what they supposedly did.

Allie Hoff Kosick encountered this as the host of the popular podcast SSR: Back to Literary Remembrance . Every week, Hoff Kosik and his guest revisit a middle-class or youth book that millennials would read as a teenager, and it’s no surprise that some of these 1990s and early 2000s books (and their authors) don’t look so good on the second glance. [Full disclosure: I took a peek at the podcast once.] Hoff Kosik says that looking at these works from such a critical point of view, she is a little wary of excluding the artist entirely.

“By canceling someone, you kind of hide the whole discourse, without demanding responsibility from him,” says Hoff Kosik. “I feel like it allows people to relax.” In her podcast, Hoff Kosik will return to the problematic texts, but she will be careful to point out the mistakes of the authors and / or books.

Hoff Kosik took it personally. She was a huge Harry Potter fan and long considered Rowling her favorite artist. “I lived and died because of Harry Potter,” says Hoff Kosik. “As a child, who always wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be her. She was my hero. ” Hoff Kosick says she no longer views Rowling as a favorite and will not support any of her feature film endeavors financially or otherwise. But she still thinks it’s worth remembering and talking about the greater cultural and personal influence that Harry Potter and the creations of other troubled artists have had – provided all context is included.

“I think we, as consumers, need to be critical enough to separate the media from the creator,” she says. “You have to find ways to distance yourself from the person and the crap ideas they are trying to promote, and oppose those ideas whenever you can.” But completely ignoring the work, Hoff Kosik says, “It drowns out talk about it in a very strange way for me.”

Remember: Your troubled favorites are problematic because they’ve done real harm.

It hurts to revisit a work of art that is meaningful to you. It’s hard to give up your favorite movies, give up your favorite books and miss this song on Spotify. But people who are offended or otherwise offended by the artist also experience pain.

Kelly says one of the problems with “grieving” a canceled favorite, especially in a case of abuse, is that you don’t focus on the people the artist has hurt. “It’s much more important to focus on this person’s victims,” says Kelly. “They literally mistreat people.”

Jeff says that while many of his childhood heroes, such as Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong, went through controversial times, the harm that Adams did to his victims was severe enough to be abandoned altogether. “The difference here – aside from the undeniably predatory nature of Adams’ actions – is that several of the women interviewed said they quit making music as a result of their interactions with him,” Jeff said. “It made me an easy decision: if their music couldn’t be heard, then I wouldn’t listen to it either.”

There’s untouched art waiting for you to discover.

It’s hard to give up the one you love, but finding music / books / movies / etc can be helpful. You could have missed being in bondage to a canceled minion.

“When it turns out that a person who has written a very popular TV show or famous musician is bad or offensive, I always think of all people, especially the marginalized, who have no platform at all,” says Kelly. … “We try to save what we already love, instead of looking beyond what surrounds us. I think these people deserve a better chance than people making billions of dollars and hurting in the process. “

If, for example, you are a Harry Potter fan who has given up on Harry Potter – and who may be mourning the opportunity to share favorite books with future descendants – there is a lot of content with similar messages and magic that comes from a less problematic and perhaps less visible source. …

“In 1998, kids like me, who were weird, different, gay and single, didn’t have many books about children who were weird and different, gay, single and transgender,” Losjavo says. “We had to go to the wizards and werewolves for a show.”

But, as Losjavo notes, times are different. “Children who are growing up today will not have to do this. If they want books about wizards and mythical creatures, they can get [these] books from queer people, transgender people and people of color. “