It can sometimes be hard to separate the artist from their art. Are there any artists who were bad people but whose work you still enjoy?

Feel free to answer if you’re in the opposite scenario: an artist who you love personally but don’t enjoy their artwork.

Feel free to respond more than just music artists!

  • PonyOfWar
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    616 months ago

    HP Lovecraft - great writer, horrible racist

    Similarly, Orson Scott Card - Ender’s game and its sequel are great, but he’s a raging homophobe.

    • Badabinski
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      156 months ago

      I’m convinced that Orson Scott Card suffered a traumatic head injury at some point. I don’t know how you could go from writing something as beautiful and intimate as Ender’s Game to shit like Hidden Empire, which is creepy right wing Christian disaster porn (from what I can remember of that trainwreck).

      • qantravon
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        136 months ago

        Yeah, I don’t know how the person who wrote “Speaker for the Dead” could be such a bigot. It doesn’t make sense to me.

        • Tedesche
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          36 months ago

          It’s pretty simple: the bugs weren’t gay.

        • bean
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          36 months ago

          This 100%.

          My username comes from Enderverse.

          • @TheMinions@lemmy.world
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            26 months ago

            Ender’s Shadow was an interesting book. Really made me appreciate Bean more than I did when I read Ender’s Game.

    • @tal@lemmy.today
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      36 months ago

      I mean, by present standards, most people historically would have been pretty racist.

      • PonyOfWar
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        116 months ago

        Indeed, though Lovecraft has the distinction of being pretty racist even for his time.

      • ThunderingJerboa
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        46 months ago

        He was certainly above that. Hell his story “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” also known as “White Ape”. Is literally a book about the “one drop rule” to the point its actually funny because of how absurd it comes off as. Its so insanely racist, it fucking becomes funny based on the character’s reaction. Its not a great short story but basically he find out his great great great great grandmother was a “white ape” (which is not human per say but lets read between the lines since the white apes come from the congo region), his response to this news was pouring gasoline on himself and burning himself alive. Like yes its fiction but the fact he made a fucking short story where the focal point is discovering that you are mixed race and learning that is so mind breaking, death was the only logical option is god damn hilarious.