Cancel Culture

[The Johnny]

William Burroughs would be example for me: Shot his wife in a drunken game, slept with a teen male prostitute in Tangier, decades of heroin abuse.

In fact for me the interest in his work wasn't divorced from his horrible life, for me the interesting part was explicitly how his horrible life intertwined with his writing.

I guess trainwrecks have entertainment value too? Sade could fit in the same category? Or at least as a window to understandment of their thinking process idk.

Maybe the dissonance is when people create happy or joyful things while being hateful in their personal lives? Tomorrow i think ill re-read the whole thread.

BTW if anyone is good at thread necromancy, i think we discussed this sometime before and we could get some insight from that?

[Fujikoma]

I can't read six pages of popular moral outrage and shitting on your own. I did think it was a great post, Cram. It's been years, and you're still one of the most thoughtful posters.

[altered]

But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

I had to give this a lot of serious thought. I think I can finally answer you.

Yes, with some caveats.

Some works are themselves so disgusting and terrible that they cannot be saved. There is no way you can enjoy Mein Kampf without being an innately awful person. This actually affects some non-fiction as well: Julius Evola is the only primary English language source for a lot of European esoterica of the medieval era, and he's filled it with fascist notions from top to bottom. The work he's done is so tainted that it cannot be trusted. This is also true of much fiction and entertainment. You can't listen to Skrewdriver and be anything but awful. It's non-negotiable.

And other works are so bound to their creator's awful nature that to enjoy them necessitates consciously rejecting their creator's intent — knowing what they were communicating and saying "No." I find this to be true of Lovecraft, though that's asking for a flame war if I don't add that that is my personal view of the matter. (Incidentally, I think Lovecraft was a shitty writer to begin with, independent of his qualifications as a human being.)

But usually, yes, I think you can enjoy a shitty person's work independent of their beliefs, so long as you aren't supporting them or their beliefs. Under current copyright regimes, this usually means piracy if they don't enter the public domain and the royalties don't land with individuals and/or organizations opposed to their beliefs.

[The Johnny]

So i mined the thread for names referred of what people consider irredeemable... and since i dont know the names or their stories, i wont offer an interpretation regarding them, but heres the list:

R Kelly

Hardwick

Louis CK

burzum

brock turner

harvey weinstein

william bennett

Names excluded were the ones people found tolerable (?) or not interfering with the enjoyment of their work entirely. So maybe theres a pattern?

[Fujikoma]

I don't see how you excluded Bill Gates.

[altered]

I don't know most of those names myself.

R. Kelly is a sex offender convicted of child molestation or something really damn close, I don't know the details.

Louis CK mocked the Parkland shooting survivors. Kids who saw their friends die.

Burzum is Varg Vikernes, a neo-Nazi who burns churches and killed his bandmate (stabbed him 32 times) for the suspicion said bandmate was gay.

William Bennett is a musician who invented the genre of power electronics. He has long supported acts in the genre regardless of their political affiliation (including many, many fascists, it's a fascist playground of a genre really with only a recent spate of queer, largely trans artists entering it shifting that dynamic).

He stopped Whitehouse in 2008, after the release of the 2003 album Bird Seed which had mercifully abandoned all the "shock" imagery (serial killer worship, fascism, extreme racism) for personal rage. His new project, Cut Hands, is based on an extremely racist interpretation of black culture: scary men with spears and loincloths doing voodoo chants type shit. It's literally distorted tribal percussion.

Bennett is the only one with any complexity to his background, which is why this is by far the biggest description.

[altered]

I should add that I am AWARE of Weinstein but that I do not know the specifics.

[Fujikoma]

Voodoo tribal stuff is real, does aknowleging this make one irredeemable?

[Fujikoma]

I mean, Albinos still get butchered because their parts are reportedly useful in witchcraft real.

[Fujikoma]

I don't think any significant scientific studies have been undertaken to determine the value of albino body parts in witchcraft, but I don't think they have to. For the most part, witchcraft is useless. For the, most part.

[altered]

Go look for your daily dose of abuse somewhere else. Adults are talking.

[Al Qədic]

Voodoo tribal stuff is real, does aknowleging this make one irredeemable?

I don't know that you understand the significance of connecting black culture with voodoo...if you play a trope straight, then you're treating that trope as if it's appropriate. The "blacks do voodoo and wear loincloths" trope is not appropriate, so for a project to "be based on" it does in fact mean that something shitty is going on.

If you're wondering why that's not appropriate, then is it okay if I treat you like a cave-person?

[The Johnny]

But back to entertainment and culture: could you enjoy the product of a vile person, but this person for some reason doesnt benefit from it or they already died?

I had to give this a lot of serious thought. I think I can finally answer you.

Yes, with some caveats.

Some works are themselves so disgusting and terrible that they cannot be saved. There is no way you can enjoy Mein Kampf without being an innately awful person. This actually affects some non-fiction as well: Julius Evola is the only primary English language source for a lot of European esoterica of the medieval era, and he's filled it with fascist notions from top to bottom. The work he's done is so tainted that it cannot be trusted. This is also true of much fiction and entertainment. You can't listen to Skrewdriver and be anything but awful. It's non-negotiable.

And other works are so bound to their creator's awful nature that to enjoy them necessitates consciously rejecting their creator's intent — knowing what they were communicating and saying "No." I find this to be true of Lovecraft, though that's asking for a flame war if I don't add that that is my personal view of the matter. (Incidentally, I think Lovecraft was a shitty writer to begin with, independent of his qualifications as a human being.)

But usually, yes, I think you can enjoy a shitty person's work independent of their beliefs, so long as you aren't supporting them or their beliefs. Under current copyright regimes, this usually means piracy if they don't enter the public domain and the royalties don't land with individuals and/or organizations opposed to their beliefs.

I dont know if it was my mistake to frame the issue about "the joy" that a creation offers the consumer as being the sole factor, even tho it does seem to be a big factor. So the way to circumvent a joyful creation from a vile creator is to in one way or another the creator receiving no benefit from it. So i think the dead get a free pass on a lot of things?

But it was mentioned before about not things that bring joy but that are practical and useful... the discoveries made thru atrocities and by war criminals... also for example, Mein Kampf i think (?) its still banned in Germany because its a taboo subject and they cant trust their citizenry to read it responsibly (?) while in reality it can be a great resource to understand this person's rationale for what he did... Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism" is important in that sense too because we get to understand in a philosophical level what he wanted to do. Then theres a billion documentaries about serial killers which can be used by either wannabe killers or those seeking to understand them clinically. Faust mentioned Burroughs.

So in synthesis one could say that:

1) Regarding culture that brings joy but the creator is a shithead:
-One can consume it without problem if the creator isnt too untolerable
-The creator doesnt benefit from the creation
-The creation isnt itself tainted enough by the creators bad tendencies

2) Regarding culture that brings understanding/knowledge:
-As long as its useful (?)

Theres a lot of nuances that can be added like "can/should" and how a lot of it is after all a matter of taste... but besides all of that and coming back to the OP... theres this whole primitive mob mentality and virtue signaling (by both sides of the political spectrum) that goes on in the alluded Cancel Culture, and it just really reinforces the idea to an outsider of how divided in tribes and how fiercely everyone is after each others throats in America - i dont recall a single case of a creator or writer getting boycotted and drenched in tar and feathers here in Mexico, or for that matter in any other country, maybe im wrong and i dont watch the news enough.

[The Johnny]

Fujikoma, at what point does posting 5 times in a row in a 2 minute span with one-liners is it considered spam?

If i could mute you i would have done so already, so could you at least do me the courtesy of fitting your brain leakage to a single post so i can just scroll thru it faster?

Thx

[altered]

Consider for a moment Mein Kampf in the context of the manifesto of the Christchurch killer.

Very few people can be trusted to handle that sort of thing /responsibly/. Professionals specifically asked people not to spread it around. It can be useful, sure! But it's like plutonium: it's only useful in the hands of people who know what they're doing, and it's at best a mild hazard and at worst a horrific radioactive excursion incident for everyone else.

If any random person has a copy of Mein Kampf on their shelf, it's almost a guarantee that they are a horrible human, damn near 100% of the time. There are precious, precious few exceptions, and they tend to have degrees and shit. We would feel the same about almost anyone who kept the Christchurch killer's manifesto on their desktop, and for good reason.