Hate The Artists...Love Their Art?

    As I start typing this...whatever it is going to be...I'm listening to the unsurpassed keyboardist and songwriter, Bill Payne. Mr. Payne is one of the founding members of the seminal band Little Feat, and while I am uncomfortable with the word "hero", Payne (along with Jimmy Webb, Bruce Hornsby...and, of course, my mother!) is about as close as it gets for me...musically speaking. After being introduced to Da Feats many years ago by the multi-talented and dear friend Mr. Kevin MacNeil (while we jammed with a couple of his friends playing the second-to-none track by Lowell George and Little Feat, Two Trains, I became hooked. The rest is, as they say, history...musically anyway. Payne released only one solo album during his career which is what plays into my ears right now as I type. Priceless...

    I bring this up because I just finished reading a book by someone named Claire Dederer. I've never heard of her but she seems to have become quite the "It-Girl" among the intelligentsia. Her contributions include essays in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vogue. Her latest book, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma (2023) is a thought-provoking piece on the relationship between an artist and the artists' fans. You see, Dederer is trying to work out that fine line many people have with their idols who are, shall we say, less than noble. In Dederer's case, far less. 

    Her book highlights three artists who were idols for her in her youth: David Bowie, Roman Polanski, and Woody Allen. In doing so she relates interesting stories from her speaking tours over the last few years. To be honest, while I am quite familiar with the stories of Polanski and Allen, I was unaware that Mr. Bowie had become a posthumous cautionary tale. In short, after his death in 2016, an article resurfaced in which a groupie told of a late night encounter with Bowie in which she lost her virginity. She was 15. "All of a sudden, the bedroom door opens and there is Bowie in this fucking beautiful red and orange and yellow kimono," says Lori Mattix, recalling with wistful pleasure. "Who wouldn't want to lose her virginity to Bowie?" Well, wistful pleasure isn't how many contemporary readers see it. Thus Dederer begins an interesting journey through youth, fandom, and the realization that maybe, just maybe, these people...while talented and charismatic...are not the gods/heroes people think they are. 

    Her book is an outgrowth of an essay she wrote a number of years ago on the same topic. As she toured college campuses discussing the essay, giving lectures and inviting long question and answer sessions, the one question that kept being repeated over and over was, "Can I still listen to Bowie?" The unspoken corollary to that question is, "How could they not?" It seems that even for this generation of youngsters, Bowie is a bell-weather for the angst-ridden, and those that feel just on the edge of being cool and hip. I mean, Bowie is their guy! If it was anybody else...who cares. But the story left Dederer and many of her listeners (the vast majority of whom are female) feeling "horrified and sad."

    Dederer's most difficult issues involve Polanski and Allen. She is, or was, a thoughtful and huge fan of both these men and for years has struggled with her love for their work in light of their personal failings. Polanski is, by all accounts, a great director (Rosemary's Baby being his most famous work), and in a vacuum, is a Hall-of-Famer. In 1977 he drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles, and in a plea bargain he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor (statutory rape). He then fled the country to avoid the consequences. Allen, on the other hand, slept with his then girlfriend's (Mia Farrow) daughter (Soon-Yi Previn) and eventually married her. If it means anything, Allen and Previn are still happily married. This really touches a nerve for Dederer as she was quite close to her stepfather, and the story of Allen (a hero for her) "sickened her" as she felt it somehow tarnished and cheapened her relationship with her stepfather. She admits this thought process isn't logical but she felt it changed the way she looked at Allen's movies. And let's be honest, Allen is a genius. Annie Hall, Sleeper, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo...the list is endless. Genius is, no doubt, part of the equation of fandom...or dismissal.

    Dederer's book does have chapters of wicked (if that's the right word) female artists, but to be fair, these examples don't have the power that Allen's and Polanski's stories have. They are mostly about these women leaving their families to go off and write the great novel. I mean, is anyone going to not read Doris Lessing because she left her husband and family in South Africa to move to England in order to write? Or ignore Sylvia Plath because she committed suicide in the room next to her children and in doing so, traumatized them for life? Probably not.

    And that got me thinking if this was a gender thing. So I called my dear friend Dorothy from Kansas. Peter, please tell me you don't really have a friend named Dorothy who lives in Kansas! Well, she does live in Kansas. Unbelievable. Anyway, I asked the wise and wonderful Dorothy whether or not she could still be a fan of an artist (painter, singer, writer...whatever) whose history mirrored someone like Allen or Polanski; whether or not she could separate the art from the artist. Dorothy didn't hesitate. "No," she replied. We then got to talking about judging a work on its merits and how much aesthetics played a role in art appreciation, or how detached someone needed to be in judging art/artists. She held firm. It was a very cool conversation. I told you I have really smart friends!

    None of what is written here should be thought of as excusing bad or even horrific behavior. Nor do artists deserve special treatment. People need to be held accountable, especially someone like Polanski. But Dederer is not writing about crime and punishment. She describes the book as an "autobiography of the audience, an examination of how personal experience colors an individual's response to a work of art." No audience member is without personal experience or able to evaluate a movie like Rosemary's Baby, Manhattan or Stardust Memories from a lofty perch of pure aesthetics, as Dorothy and I talked about. I think it's just that some people's experience inclines them to excuse certain behaviors in their favorite artists, and Dorothy's (and millions like her) do not. For example, I can't stand Jane Fonda. I think what she did during the Viet Nam war was treasonous when she took a picture with a bunch of North Vietnamese soldiers and told them what a piece of shit country she lived in. I don't think she's a particularly good actress, either. If it wasn't for her old man, she'd be waiting tables at a run down diner on Route 66, somewhere. But, and there's always a but...I love the film On Golden Pond. Kate Kepburn and Henry Fonda...brilliant! And so I kind of just emotionally muddle through the parts when Ms. Fonda is on-screen. Or even closer to home, I guarantee you that of the few people who read my crap, someone has read something along the way that has caused him or her to think of me in a not so flattering light...and they've stopped reading. While that saddens me, they have every right to do that. 

    Anyway, can Ms. Dederer and those like her still listen to Bowie? As the book winds down she tells a story of the writer Pearl Cleage and her fan relationship with the music of Miles Davis. Full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Miles Davis' music. Davis openly admitted to abusing Black women like Cleage. She even published a book about it (which I have not read) titled Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman's Guide to Truth (1990). Years later, Cleage admitted that she still listens to Davis' signature recording Kind of Blue (1959), maybe the greatest jazz/blues album...ever. You should listen, too. "Cleage loves Davis, and then hates him, and then loves him in a more knowing way," writes Dederer. "So our relationships shift as we grow up. But pretending the love doesn't exist, or saying it ought not to be, doesn't help anything."

    I've said many times that we don't really know these people that we cheer for or whose art we love. The solution is to understand that they are not idols at all. Actually, it's a pretty common experience. We adore and even worship our parents when we are children. As we grow up we come to the understanding they are flawed human beings. And we often do this with a period of adolescent rejection, or even, unfortunately, adult rejection. Hopefully we then come to understand that we love them despite those flaws, as we hope to be loved despite our own. 

    Here's the thing. Some of the most beautiful art the world has ever known has been created by terrible people. We can decide, in a fury of righteousness, to dismiss both the artist and his or her work. And one has every right to do that. You can then argue that someone like me needs to shut the hell up. On the other hand, to steal a thought from my preacher forebears, maybe we can choose to view these works as a kind of grace; the miraculous salvage from the inevitable wreck of our lives. Thanks, Dorothy.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com