Joss Whedon Allegations: The Undoing of the "Buffy" Creator

[Parmandur]

For me, the worst* recent one was probably Isaac Asimov.

I was like ... c'mon. Asimov???? sigh


*Worst in terms of shock combined with love of the work. MZB is, obviously, "worse."

Honestly, these sorts of things never surprise me (I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist), but yelch this is a gross attitude on his part:

The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched.

 

[trappedslider]

glances at lovecraft before looking back towards this mess

 

[GreyLord]

Could be worse.

Imagine if you were a Marion Zimmer Bradley stan ....

I haven't heard about this. What about Marion Zimmer Bradley?

On the creator's part, I find that you can enjoy a person's work without actually appreciating the person themselves. There are a LOT of entertainers and others that were absolutely horrendous people (Charlie Chaplin I hear about, for example), but you can still enjoy their contributions to the arts and otherwise.

Separating the person from their work and noting the contributions of that work is probably one of the better things to do once you start realizing how flawed many of the people that are significant (not just the arts, in science and other fields) in our culture really are.

PS: This is looking at it with one finger pointing and four pointing back, and of course, I hope that I am not considered so flawed, but one cannot tell how others perceive them sometimes. If it turns out I am flawed horribly, by today's standards or future standards, people would look at how I am, and my work, as separate entities where one is not representative of the other. Not that I think I have done anything wrong or horrible, but sometimes you aren't sure how others may perceive you. One individual's hero is another's villain sometimes.

I hope never to be the villain, but I already know that some do not like me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, that was a particularly depressing run of Google.

Whoo boy, yeah, that's so much worse. Eddings' books were dumb fun fantasy but hardly foundational. MZB opened the floodgates for women authors of Fantasy & Sci-Fi, and fought tooth and nail to never let them shut. There's definitely quite a lot more to square there regarding her legacy and the revelations that came out about her and her husband.

Ugh. Is it bad enough to warrant the googling, or fairly minor but disappointing?

I mean the homophobia and other problematic elements of the Elenium already disappointed me when I went back and read it again a couple years ago…

 

[Bolares]

Ugh. Is it bad enough to warrant the googling, or fairly minor but disappointing?

I mean the homophobia and other problematic elements of the Elenium already disappointed me when I went back and read it again a couple years ago…

It's bad enough...

 

[Bolares]

I haven't heard about this. What about Marion Zimmer Bradley?

On the creator's part, I find that you can enjoy a person's work without actually appreciating the person themselves. There are a LOT of entertainers and others that were absolutely horrendous people (Charlie Chaplin I hear about, for example), but you can still enjoy their contributions to the arts and otherwise.

Separating the person from their work and noting the contributions of that work is probably one of the better things to do once you start realizing how flawed many of the people that are significant (not just the arts, in science and other fields) in our culture really are.

It's not just about that though. I can separate a person from their work. But consuming/paying for that work directly supports that person. So even if I can separate the person form the work I have to ask myself if I want to make them richer...

 

[Umbran]

Ugh. Is it bad enough to warrant the googling, or fairly minor but disappointing?

It is really bad.

 

[Jer]

Ugh. Is it bad enough to warrant the googling, or fairly minor but disappointing?

The Bradley stuff is bad enough that you might not want to google it. It involves allegations of child abuse.

 

[GreyLord]

It's not just about that though. I can separate a person from their work. But consuming/paying for that work directly supports that person. So even if I can separate the person form the work I have to ask myself if I want to make them richer...

I find by the time I find out anything, I've already bought and supported that individual already...so what do you do?

If you find their actions problematic and those that supported them as problematic, you have already supported the problem and the actions.

On the otherhand, many of those we talk about are already dead. Who are you supporting then...the dead use no money that I know of. I suppose their heirs might...but how do we judge whether heirs are good or bad?

Instead of view ourselves as villains for supporting those who took actions we find unlikeable now, and thus we were those who supported those actions...perhaps it is better to see us as supporting the creations that they made that perhaps speak in a different manner or created situations differently than those who created them?

Look forward to making positive changes in the community in the future rather than condemning ourselves for the past.

 

[GreyLord]

The Bradley stuff is bad enough that you might not want to google it. It involves allegations of child abuse.

Okay...that sounds bad.

I think this is a prime example of separating the creator and the creation. I have many of her books already. I bought them already and have them in my library. I don't think it serves anyone to simply toss them out.

On the otherhand, the implications people are making is I absolutely would be horrified by the author's actions in real life.
That's not an easy thing to live with if you see that by buying stuff the creator wrote, you in turn were supporting bad behavior.

You could see instead that you were supporting what the material created represented and what it accomplished, rather than the creator themselves...and thus see that (as long as the results of the material were positive) you were supporting an idea that created positivity rather than the negative results of the author, creator, inventor, or any other item of the individual.