More Salvos: Friends Comment, "The latest fracas with Woody Allen and the question of how you assess an artist's work in terms of his Life and Opinions(or allegations about)

More Opinions and Salvos: Friends Comment on not just Woody Allen but the Whole Topic of how we assess an artist's work in light of his opinions, acts, and allegations about these

OK, OK, Let's cut to the chase here because this whole series has been inspired by the latest fracas involving Woody Allen

 This is What One Old Friend of Mine Has to Say:

While in no way do I excuse child molestation, I think the furor over Allen evinces our growing intolerance of others and shows our craving for instant justice. Allen has been accused of a crime, that if it occurred, happened 20 years ago. He has not been tried, and certainly has not been convicted. We haven't even heard his side of the story. (Is he keeping mum to duck the question, or to spare his adopted family and himself the ordeal of a public grudge fight?)

Your blog references some of the artists and public figures who exhibited offensive and or criminal behavior. Their numbers are legion. Hemingway, Roman Polanski, Mary Magdalene, Bill Clinton.

(Intolerance has a way of coming back to bite you. Ironically, many of the vaunted Russian composers of the music showcased at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics were gay or bi.)

This whole intolerance of artists for their real or purported behavior seems eerily similar to the entartete Kunst or the Degenerate Art campaign Hitler waged against artists he thought weren't German enough. It also smacks of the HUAC hearings that blacklisted numerous performing artists for their exercise of right of free association. 

Justification for the current intolerance comes down to "doing it for the children." The logic goes, "If just one pervert is taken off the streets, then the suppression and vilification of thousands of innocent people will be worth it."  (Allen is innocent until proven guilty.) "For the children" has become the new excuse for excess, just as anti-terrorism was the pretext for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, TSA, NSA spying on US citizens and foreign leaders, etc. 

Liberals who fall into the trap of blacklisting accused, or even convicted wrong-doers, would have a hard time justifying their support of giving ex-convicts a chance at employment. The South African Truth and Reconciliation experience might serve as a model of how intolerance can be tempered by forgiveness.

--------------------------------

 

Above: Russian Composer Sergei Prokofiev

I have already commented on Bertolt Brecht previously, his politics, his shiftiness etc. even though I have left out for instance how while in Hollywood he send begging letters to Kurt Weill, who was then having success on Broadway..the always big hearted Weill kept writing checks until Lotte Lenya looked at their bank account and stopped it short: Look, she said, Brecht not only reaped a fortune in royalties from the Threepenny Opera (some of which are still coming in) but he is being sheltered by influential friends in Hollywood in whose beach house he is living at and who are determined to find him work...let Brecht do what he does best, which is to take care of B. Brecht."

With Prokofiev, we run into similar problems: I read a bio some years back about the always superior, even supercilious composer and his calculating mind...how his behavior once wooed back by personal promises by Stalin to the Soviet Union showed a rather nasty streak ( denouncing his complaining left wing Spanish wife to the authorities when she became a pain in the ass about not living the lifestyle she thought they had been promised, and other things).

Here I let another friend chime in: 

When you mentioned that Prokofiev was a "rat", I thought of three things, which must go not to the analytical lab, but into that kitchen of anecdote from which we take, often at our peril, a sense of people whom we will almost inevitably view thorough a glass darkly.  First, we must puzzle -- no matter what the announced motivation -- at Prokofiev's return to the USSR in the darkening days of Stalinism.  Second, in recent decades, P got a bunch of bad press in consequence of the so-called Testimony of Shostakovich.  The house is still divided, however, as to the authenticity of that work.  Third, there is no question that it is was whoring to write a cantata in praise of the slave-constructed White Slave Canal.  Meanwhile, all those aside, we still must be dolts indeed not to love Cinderella, Aleksandr Nevski, the Fifth Symphony, and the Second Quartette, not to mention the pre-return works. 

 And to the topic in general ( and, I am happy to say, on a somewhat lighter note): 

Many years ago, I happened to hear the poet Robert Graves , ...   Speaking of poets past, he speculated, "Would you like to have them around?  Supposing there was a knock at the door, and some one said, "Vergil calling.  D'you want to see him?'  'I suppose so.'  Another knock and a member of the household says, 'John Milton is here to see you.'  I'd say, 'Tell him I'm out'.  But if I heard, 'It's Homer calling' I'd jump up, knock everything off the table, pour him a fine drink of wine and roast an ox if I could find one". 
        I happen to agree with the examples, but more broadly with the thought-processes.  Indeed I'm feeling a little guilty about the draw-down of my wine-cellar, in case the sainted shade of Lermontov or Gottschalk appears.  Likewise, I still await Thoreau, though he was a temperance man, and so I can still be a good  host.  I would be delighted to see Saint John "the divine"but I'm not so sure about Saint Paul.  And so it goes. 

Finally for THIS installment, we have the words of a writer friend whose wisdom I feel surpasses his years by quite a bit: 

"Sometimes, art allows the artist to share in a public forum dark fantasies, repugnant thoughts, sinister intentions, things they might never act on, but secretly wish they could.  In this case, art serves the purpose of making these abhorrent desires benign, so to speak, i.e. it's better to write about an assassination plot that engage in one.  But when an artist's personal life starts to resemble the art, and vice versa, and not in a good way, what results is a diminishing of all involved, such as the "ickiness" factor now surrounding Woody Allen."    

I MYSELF agree with the former statement that everything about Allen so far is allegation, and and as he has yet to reply to the all the charges, for whatever reason, we cannot rush to judgement.

MORE ABOUT THIS WHOLE TOPIC TO COME......AND OTHER VOICES TO BE HEARD AND OTHER ARTISTS MENTIONED....