Epiphanies 2022: Where is the line crossed
At on end you have Gary Glitter or Bill Cosby. Both people who’s works we not watch again (but for different reasons). At the other you have She Who Must Not Be Named who despite her comments on transgender lots of people are willing to read her books, watch her films etc. Somewhere between them there must be a line we will not cross. Where is it? Is it different for different people?
[Edited by Alan Cresswell: See below]
[Edited by Alan Cresswell: See below]
Comments
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
Was not aware of this. Thanks
On the main issue - everyone has blind spots. I note that John Peel for instance is still held in revered esteem by many people including the BBC and Glastonbury, despite him marrying a child and openly discussing his attraction to schoolgirls in his autobiography. It's almost as if his complete openness about being attracted to children (and let's be clear, a 13yo girl is a *child* and was a child even in the 70s) allowed him to hide in plain sight. And I grew up listening to both his Radio 1 show and Home Truths - it's certainly always painful to realise that someone you admired greatly was also an open and brazen paedophile. But nobody talking about it aside from the recent petition to rename the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury, even compared to eg Bowie.
Walt Disney was antisemitic, he wasn't a Nazi - he was openly and vehemently opposed to the Nazis while also being antisemitic, and this was not seen as being in any way contradictory by the majority of people in Allied countries. Antisemitism was not and never has been exclusive to Nazi ideology, and always has been baked into many aspects of culture for opponents of Nazis. Portraying antisemitism as being exclusively a Nazi issue makes it easier for antisemitism to go undetected or unchallenged in anti-Nazi spaces.
It's not incorrect, because it's a distinction without a difference, and a distinction that leads to children being treated as if they are consenting adult equals to adults preying on them. A 13yo is a child, and really obviously a child to any adult - using different words to somehow suggest that they are *not* a child is a bad thing. Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Fair enough.
Roald Dahl is another interesting example (and another, more egregious, anti-semite).
No, it's difference in terms of both pathology and harms caused.
I don't want to derail the thread here but throwing the word 'paedo' around doesn't protect children. And yes, I am vehemently opposed to the fiction that a child can consent.
I speak from personal and professional experience here.
AFZ
A quick reminder that any discussion of paedophilia, hebephilia or ephebophilia belongs in Epiphanies. Could we get back to more Purgatorial ground?
Thanks,
MaryLouise, Purgatory and Epiphanies Host
Hosting off
Draw the line? I don't think the fact that someone is a Bad Person rules out the fact that they can produce good work. It may mean I review what they have done in new terms, but it can still be good.
So John Peel - did do a huge amount for new music in his time, and alternative music, punk and similar. That is a contribution to the music scene that we can all appreciate and do, whenever we lsiten to an indie artist. Personally, I would rename the Glasto stage because of his other failings. Because a continued celebration of him is not (IMO) appropriate.
It all strikes me as similar to those who refused to use Vicky Beeching worship songs when she came out as gay. They were fine before hand, but not after? Nothing changed in the song. OK, maybe not invite her to your church if you hate gay people, but what she has produced is just the same, just as good.
His stuff is now widely banned.
Is being famous and being a wrong'un different from using your gifts as a tool in your wrong doing? Should that be the line?
Oh and Walt was cremated not frozen.
Accusations of being a Nazi are a problem simply because of how they distort antisemitism as a phenomenon, which was a perfectly normal part of being American for most Christian Americans in the early to mid 20th Century.
It's now pretty obvious that the editors really did a lot to make the books better, and that as Author became more powerful she felt that she did not need such close editing. Well, she was clearly wrong. The latest book isn't just bigoted but a genuinely unreadable mess.
In addition to the point you raised—using one’s gifts as a tool in wrongdoing—I think a situation like Haas is complicated/distinguished by two other factors. First, we’re not just reading or watching what Haas created; if a hymn of his is sung in worship, we’re asking worshippers—including worshippers who’ve experienced sexual abuse—to put those words in their own mouths. And second, the lyrics themselves can perhaps pose a problem when one knows about the accusations against Haas. For example,
I will come to you in the silence;
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear My voice;
I claim you as My choice.
Be still, and know I am near.
That can take on a whole different meaning if you know the allegations.
First would come active danger and issues intrinsic to the works.
Once down to indirect effects the key factor would be support, either financial or reputational to ill ends.
Meaning would potentially shift or attract unseemly resonances. On an individual level this would have quite an easily triggered line (I have to prioritise somehow) and often falsely.
Is his stuff actually "banned", or do people just voluntarily not use his stuff anymore? For example, there is no formal "ban" on minstrel shows, it's just that most people find them repugnant these days so none get staged.
Here, perhaps?
Oh yes agreed - I had all sorts of issues with the later books. They did need much better editing. But also - I enjoyed them. I will not deny that. I was making the point that some people seem to be claiming that they knew all along. Maybe they did, or maybe they are pretenders.
The Vacancy book is mediocre. Other-Name-Crime novels make reasonable TV. The latest book I will never know about. I suppose I want to acknowledge that Unnamed Author did have some real positives, and at the time I was an enthusiast. I am not rewriting history because said author turns out to be Not A Good Person After All.
Yes certain dioceses have instructed that his stuff should not be used. It has been taken out of current publication. It no longer appears on hymn planners.
Being out of current publication is a fate that eventually befalls most published writers. No one is guaranteed that their work will be published in perpetuity.
That's a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Until the revelations about his behaviour, Haas's music was popular. His Mass settings were used in all kinds of places. Following the revelations about his behaviour, a number of churches and dioceses chose not to use his stuff any more, and GIA has removed his works from their catalogues.
This is not the typical "there's not enough sales of this item to support another print run / warehouse space / marketing" of the publishing life cycle of print books, but a deliberate choice to remove Haas's works from use as a result of his reported behaviour.
It seems to be of a similar type. I'm not sure I can go along with the idea that there are legitimate and illegitimate reasons certain artistic works become less popular. No one is obligated to like Haas' work, and they're certainly not under any obligation to spend money on it. No one is owed an audience and I'm not sure policing people's æsthetic choices to make sure they're made for the "right" reasons is a valuable endeavor. Is "makes me think of sexual assault" really a less valid reason for no longer liking an artistic work than "no longer meets current musical fashion"?
Well, sure - but in the case of Haas's work, GIA proactively said "we're not listing his stuff any more because of what he has been accused of". They're not responding to a lack of demand (for whatever reason), but are part of the decision to create that lack of demand.
GIA is also under no obligation to publish anyone, nor are they obligated to keep publishing someone in perpetuity if they've ever published their work at any time in the past. Policing the business decisions of corporate entities (especially closely-held corporate entities like GIA) for proper motives (e.g. ceasing publication because of substandard returns on investment is okay, ceasing publication to avoid the reputational damage for promoting a self-confessed sex offender is not) also seems like a dubious endeavor.
There's a difference between becoming old hat and being cut from lists.
His music was well loved and widely used until his victims started coming forward. The banning is a direct result.
The things are not remotely comparable.
Nobody is "policing GIA's decisions". We are noting that they have decided to stop selling Haas's music because of the allegations against him. This is cause-and-effect.
Cause: A large number of women came forward alleging serious sexual crimes and misconduct by Haas.
Effect: GIA chose to stop selling Haas's work, quickly followed by similar actions from a number of other music publishers. A large series of dioceses and churches start issuing anything between an outright ban on the use of Haas's work and a strong suggestion that Haas's work not be used.
Characterizing this as a "ban" rather than just "people choosing not to use his stuff" is not unreasonable.
@Alan29 and @Leorning Cniht, who have suggested that GIA's decision is illegitimate in some not-very-clearly defined manner.
I guess it depends on how you define "popularity". You could certainly say Haas' music is a lot less popular with the kind of people who run sacred music publication companies or Catholic dioceses. I suppose you could semantically argue that this doesn't count because a corporation or diocese isn't a natural person and therefore shouldn't be included in the purview of "popularity", but that seems like hair splitting.
I'll note that GIA does not have a monopoly on the sacred music market. Even if they were unwilling to sell their rights to Haas' past work (a point I'm not at all certain about, nor am I clear that they have exclusive rights or just permission to publish) Haas still has the ability to try to market his subsequent works to any other publisher. In this day and age he even has the option to self-publish, if he feels (like many here apparently do) that there is a massive, unmet commercial demand for the works of David Haas.
Bollocks.
Neither of us have suggested that GIA's decision was in any way illegitimate.
We have both said that GIA (and others) stopped selling Haas's work because of the accusations made against him, rather than as a natural consequence of nobody wanting to buy his stuff.
Neither of us have said that this is illegitimate.
I'd actually argue the opposite - that publishers stopping selling his stuff, and dioceses and church bodies asking for his stuff not to be used - is a perfectly legitimate and correct response to his case, and that it would be quite wrong for everyone to just shrug their shoulders and say "we'll keep singing his stuff unless enough people in the pews complain".
And I'm quite sure that there are some people in every congregation who like his music, do not connect his music with his misconduct, and will be disappointed by its absence - but I think their disappointment is outweighed by the care that churches owe to those of their members who do (and perhaps very personally) link the music of an abuser to the abuse that he carried out.
(I think we're all agreeing that the change in demand for Haas's works is entirely related to the man himself and his reported actions, and not to do with the music.)
A very good basis actually. For example:
They're trying to make a distinction that individual consumers deciding not to spend any of their money on Haas' work for the purposes of consumption is somehow different in character from a corporate entity deciding not to spend any of their money on Haas' work for the purposes of resale. (Leaving aside how much of the market for sacred music is composed of individual consumers rather than corporate entities like churches.) I'm arguing that this is a distinction without a difference.
Perhaps the reason you find the purported illegitimacy to be “not-very-clearly defined” is because it hasn’t been suggested in the first place.
It's arguable that typefaces are functional and utilitarian creations, not artistic ones. We tend to be more forgiving of technical creations than we are of artistic ones. Probably because we don't really examine the underlying message of steam engines or double-entry accounting.
Although the ethical arguments about the use of data from Nazi medical "research" suggest that there's a limit to this.
Wouldn't the relevant question be whether the beneficiaries of the Gill estate are particularly monstrous people?
ad absurdum counterpoint...
If it was discovered by historians that Shakespeare had engaged in the same kind of sex crimes that Gill did, should we stop reading and watching his plays?