2025-01-17

The one (tiny) positive from the Gaiman thing (aside from the small amount of vindication for his victims, and the marginally increased possibility of their actually getting on the other side of years of psychological hell) is the direct tackling of the artist=art question. I am very ambivalent on the point.

Argument Against

As has been pointed out many times by now, if being able to write evil characters and their evil deeds means that the artist is also evil in real life, then Steven King must be the worst serial killer of all time and Vladimir Nabokov the world’s most self-incriminating paedophile. The rebuttal is, of ourse, that Kind and Nabokov are reputedly genuinely kind people with no hint at all of monstrous acts. Conversely, by the same logic, Bill Cosby couldn’t have been a serial rapist because his work was (almost unbearably) squeaky clean.

It seems to me, in fact, that there is an inverse correlation when it comes to fucked up art. The classic example is, of course, people in the metal scene, who look absolutely terrifying, but are generally sweet and good-natured. There are bad apples, of course, but a metal show is probably one of the safest experiences you could ever have. Metalheads themselves explain this very coherently as catharsis, loud music is how they purge themselves of anger so that they can be kind in their day to day life. My belief is that this is true of 99.9% of people who make fucked up shit. They’re expressing fears, working through bad experiences, or venting harmful impulses so that they can be a normal-ass person in daily life. The same is true of most people in bodybuilding, martial arts, extreme sports, BDSM, and so on.

Argument For

At the same time, it is also patently true that some people do write their fantasies, and those fantasies do reflect a very real desire to harm others; so real that they actually do it, Gaiman being case-in-point. Personally, I have a couple of story ideas that I’m loathe to write/publish because they are violent and angry and I wish they would come true. If my inner morality was less robust and I was a generally more confident/entitled person, I admit that I would be very tempted to find a way of making them happen. (In fact, one of them has recently come true and I am secretly ecstatic that someone actually had the balls to do it.) I may or may not write these stories, because I am prone to quite brutal self-censorship and so playing with a dangerous idea is no fun for me at all when the idea is something I wish would happen. Factually, I know that they would remain stories and that my inner compass would never allow them to wander in to the realm of real action, but part of me is deeply afraid even to entertain the possibility, because it is not inconcievable that I might weaken and they might make their way out.

Caveat, oh Caveat

The forgiveness I extend myself is that my ugly and scary ideas are essentially revenge phantasies directed at rapists and exploiters and [insert powerful person] who knowingly and intentionally cause harm to others, or make decisions which cause harm to or kill innocent/powerless people. In other words, my phantaises contain the basic belief that there are unforgivable actions, and some are so intolerable that the only correct response is death. The difference, and the reason why I don’t actually worry about myself becoming something like Gaiman, is that my impulse to cause pain/harm/death is directed exclusively towards people who deserve it. Desert is not determined by their gender/adjectives/pronouns; not by their opinions, beliefs, or even words; not becuase they are weak/inferior; but by the material fact of their intentional, conscious actions causing irreperable harm to another person for no reason other than personal pleasure or material gain.

I know I’m not alone in this. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes frequently lets murderers go because he believes their cause to be righteous and that the so-called victim deserved to die. There are also numerous cases of the parents of sexually abused children murdering the rapist in cold blood and broad daylight, and not even being arrested, let alone put in prison. And I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think that the recently assassinated CEO received a much more humane punishment than he actually deserved.

Thoughts are not actions, I know this. But having some experience with compulsions (in my case self-harming and self-sabotaging), I know also that sometimes thought and action are not as far apart as I’d like them to be. It can be very scary to play with those ideas, and the impulse to brand them all essentially evil is a very strong defence mechanism.

Both/And

The conclusion, as such, is the usual one: both/and. Most of the time the artist who plays with evil themes is not actually evil. But sometimes they are. But mostly they’re not. But sometimes they are.

The only satisfaction to be found is in the ratio of good to bad, which seems in fact to be rather large. But this is the nature of life itself, nothing is clear and easy and there is always the possibility that what look like good intentions are actually bad. For our own sanity, we have to give the benefit of the doubt, but we also shouldn’t be surprised to discover that there are people out there who make art that reflects the bad things they really do in real life.