Can you separate an author from his or her work?

pickin_grinnin said:

I have never read Marion Zimmer Bradley's work. Knowing what I know about her now, though, I have no interest in ever picking up anything she or her husband wrote.

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Okay, so how about stuff she edited? MZB was for many years editor of a fantasy magazine that gave voice to loads of good new authors - do we boycott those works too, since she touched them? Would doing so be fair to the authors who worked with her, who had no idea what was going on at the time?

And how about this - the publisher of MZB's digital backlist is donating all income from sales of her works to Save the Children. Going forwards, sales of her ebooks are *helping* kids. The author who is continuing to write in MZB's Darkover universe is similarly donating proceeds to charity.

Hypothetical: What if the proceeds from those works were going to her estate, and her heirs included those who accuse her of abuse? Boycotting her works would then be taking financial support from those she allegedly harmed.

These things are often not simple.

Lovecraft is a very interesting case. He was racist, but it's really more accurate to say that he was broadly xenophobic, even when it came to things beyond race.

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The man was also born in 1890 - he was born, lived his life, and died before what we now think of as the civil rights movement started. You have to work a bit to find authors (or even just people) from that time who *weren't* racist (or sexist) by today's standards. I think we should give thanks to those who are ahead of the curve, but it is hard to fault someone for failing to be ahead of his or her time.

There is a point where we are no longer avoiding support of a repugnant person's ideals, and stepping into whitewashing history - in the "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it" sense. What's better - to avoid the work and forget, or read it and remember?

We can then also apply that thought to Card. What's better - to not support his work, or to read it and use it as a teaching/learning opportunity?

Elf Witch said:

I don't judge anyone who wants to see his movies but don't try and wash away the fact that his child was abused.

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Er. Fact? "Innocent until proven guilty," is a pretty important cornerstone of our justice system. It isn't perfect, but the known alternatives are worse. So, I don't think it is washing away anything to stick by that, recognize how little we in the public at large know as fact about what really happened, and acknowledge there are other possibilities. Folks may frequently state that position poorly, but not accepting the abuse as "fact" should still be okay.

To be clear - I don't think I've seen a Woody Allen movie in decades. I really don't care about the guy one way or the other. I've read little, if any, of MZB's work. I speak here only in terms of the ethics - MZB and Allen are accused, but not convicted. It is not unethical to treat them as if they were not guilty.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Polanski's victim has been pretty consistent in her testimony, even into adulthood, but has said she feels he has paid his debt.

Polanski's testimony in his plea deal before the judge is available to read in transcript- all 19 pages of it- on the Internet. Given the array of penalties he faced, including "indeterminate" involuntary institutionalization in a mental health care facility, pleading guilty when I had the resources to fight the charges would NOT be an option I would choose for myself or a client if I felt they were unjust.

And make no mistake: the list of punishments were explicitly enumerated by the clerk of court during the plea. IOW, he was told he could face up to 20 years in prison and/or an open ended institutionalization in court, and had he said he didn't understand, the proceedings would have ceased until he either DID understand or rejected the plea. So his claim that he didn't figure it out until later (right before he fled) rings kind of false to me.

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Alright. I believe you may have better information about the case than I do.

From what I've heard and read about it, I don't actually doubt that he had sex with her. Here's two tidbits from the wikipedia article:

Although Geimer has insisted that the sex was non-consensual, Polanski has disputed this.[22][23] Under California law, a person under 18 cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse with anyone who is not their spouse.

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and

The probation report submitted to the court concluded by saying that there was evidence "that the victim was not only physically mature, but willing

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.
Looking up the legal terms this seems to mean he engaged in sexual assault or statutory rape - but it's not actually what I as a layman would consider rape.

Imho, what Roman Polanski is mainly guilty of is bad judgement. It's basically exactly what his 'victim' has been saying:

Straight up, what he did to me was wrong.

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and

She also claimed that the event had been blown "all out of proportion".

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He may not have been aware of Californian law and he may not have been aware of her exact age, but he must have been aware that she was very young. That should have stopped him if he'd had better judgement.

Anyway, I don't actually know the guy personally and I'm pretty much out of my depth regarding the topic. What I'm still certain of is that I like (almost all of) his movies. I also like many of Woody Allen's movies (particularly older ones), btw. I had not been aware he'd been accused of child abuse. I hope it's not true. It does leave a bitter taste...

Jhaelen said:

Well, IANAL, and I don't know how accurate wikipedia is on the issue, but this is what it says:
(quoted from here.)
So, originally, he pleaded non-guilty on all charges. What made him change his mind? I like to think it was his lawyer arguing he would stand a better chance at court if he admitted to a lesser charge. Maybe I watched too many (bad) movies, but it seems it isn't that uncommon that a laywer recommends his client to admit something he didn't actually do because he believed his client couldn't win the case if he pleaded non-guilty. What happened after that, imho, fits that scenario:

I.e. Polanski followed his laywer's recommendations without being entirely aware of the potential degree of penalty. When he became aware of it he panicked, even though it was likely he would have been on probation.

So what did really happen? We cannot know.

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I think you're missing these lines from the Wikipedia article:
"Although Geimer has insisted that the sex was non-consensual, Polanski has disputed this.[22][23] Under California law, a person under 18 cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse with anyone who is not their spouse.[24] Describing the event in his autobiography, Polanski stated that he did not drug Geimer, that she "wasn't unresponsive", and that she did not respond negatively when he inquired as to whether or not she was enjoying what he was doing.[25]"

Without going into his own testimony or digging up his autobiography, assuming the citations are correct... it looks like Polanski is admitting to the sex - just asserting that she was a consenting participant. Of course, that still implicates him for statutory rape since she couldn't legally consent. And even if a 13 year old did offer consent, the lack of judgment a 43 year old man would have to exert still boggles my mind.

EDIT: Well - looks like you ninjaed me yourself. Guess I should have gone all the way to the last page before replying...

Umbran said:

Er. Fact? "Innocent until proven guilty," is a pretty important cornerstone of our justice system. It isn't perfect, but the known alternatives are worse. So, I don't think it is washing away anything to stick by that, recognize how little we in the public at large know as fact about what really happened, and acknowledge there are other possibilities. Folks may frequently state that position poorly, but not accepting the abuse as "fact" should still be okay.

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In this case "fact" of abuse that Elf Witch is referring to is that either Dylan was molested by Allen... OR she was manipulated into believing so by Farrow - which would also be abusive. The poor kid is in a no-win situation here - she was abused by someone it's just the nature of the abuse and the perpetrator that are in dispute. But even asserting his innocence (and even if he IS innocent), Allen fighting for custody of a girl saying she was molested by him to save her from Farrow's manipulations (if that's what was occurring), would probably have been severely traumatic to the girl as well. There's no winning in that situation either. It was a mess no matter how you looked at it and I wouldn't blame even an innocent Allen from backing away from that particular conflict.

It's hard, indeed. I only met MZB once and thought the discussion she led on writing was very well done; I've also enjoyed many of her books, and have every issue of the magazine she edited. It was really hard to hear about these allegations and even harder to hear that many people in the SF and fan community knew this and stayed silent. But I can separate an author from her work. I think Orson Scott Card is person with terrible, terrible beliefs, yet I have enjoyed his Alvin Maker series, and still do.

I guess it depends on the individual. Like you said, MZB is dead and will not profit from it if I purchase some more Darkover books at some point.

Honestly, ever since find out what OSC was like, I've just tried to never learn anything at all about writers or other creative people that I like.

MasqueradingVampire said:

I do. I try (to be fair, sometimes I get lazy and I'm trying to be better about that) to research every company I do business with. Whether its a company that makes something or sells something or provides a service or whatever. If they support views I don't agree with, I don't shop with them, buy their products, etc.

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We try to, too. We try to buy locally, buy fair trade products, shop at farmer's markets, my wife spends a lot of time researching clothing not made in overseas sweatshops. But we still own Apple products, and I still use Amazon (trying to quit them)...

BTW, I'm sorry for pursuing this commerce tangent. This is supposed to be a thread about artists. I'll leave off with this: I separate supporting artists from supporting business entities. I'll happily boycott a store, I rarely boycott an artist (except for making bad art). They're different magisteria.

billd91 said:

did not respond negatively when he inquired as to whether or not she was enjoying what he was doing.[25]"

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It's wording like that that further indicates wrong doing.

Take the age of out of the question. That kind of wording only gets used when the victim did not respond at all.

How hard would it have been to say:
"did respond positively when he inquired as to whether she was enjoying what he was doing"

More direct, and no weasel-words to wiggle out of what was really happening.
If the victim was asked if the original statement was true, and she was silent during the event out of fear, then she would have to answer Yes. because that's how logic statements work.

The only reason to word the statement in that way, is because the speaker is trying to weasel out of what they did.

At least in Roman's case, there is evidence of their foulness that allow us individuals to judge him outside of a court of law.

Though in Roman's case, we've got documentation from his legal proceedings that he never finished

billd91 said:

It was a mess no matter how you looked at it and I wouldn't blame even an innocent Allen from backing away from that particular conflict.

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No argument that it was a mess. No argument that the kids went through something awful.

But, in a thread that's talking about what an individual consumer should do about such things, questions of guilt and innocence become pretty important. My point isn't really about Allen and Farrow, or MZB - they re merely the examples at hand. The point is about how we are based on, "innocent until proven guilty," in general.

I say this because I have, in the past, seen fan turn upon fan for not finding someone guilty in the court of public opinion.

Umbran said:

No argument that it was a mess. No argument that the kids went through something awful.

But, in a thread that's talking about what an individual consumer should do about such things, questions of guilt and innocence become pretty important. My point isn't really about Allen and Farrow, or MZB - they re merely the examples at hand. The point is about how we are based on, "innocent until proven guilty," in general.

I say this because I have, in the past, seen fan turn upon fan for not finding someone guilty in the court of public opinion.

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It can be tough, but we're ultimately also talking about small-potatoes individual actions and not incarceration. If I were to boycott Woody Allen films, the effect would be negligible to him - unlike being in prison for child molestation. The stakes are low enough that, even if I'm in the wrong and he's innocent, the injury is low. The cost of acting on suspicion never needs to rise to the same level as criminal prosecution.