I think that’s an easier argument to make with someone who is dead, like H.P. Lovecraft. It’s a different story when the artist is still alive and actively profiting off the work you are consuming.
At this point there’s really no need to anyway. Plenty of works nowadays that capture the spirit of the sort of cosmic horror he wrote about without the atrocious xenophobia, or at least touch on the topic in ways that deconstruct and/or scrutinize those views in a much healthier and compelling way.
I’m a firm believer that if we only accepted art based on the morality of the artist, the whole world would be a bleak shade of grey.
Gotta separate the two. You can say “X was an incredible artist and I appreciate their work, but holy shit were they a terrible human.”
We can acknowledge the spectrum of the human and let the good parts into the world and still shun the bad.
I think that’s an easier argument to make with someone who is dead, like H.P. Lovecraft. It’s a different story when the artist is still alive and actively profiting off the work you are consuming.
As a black dude, I’m still not reading Lovecraft…
At this point there’s really no need to anyway. Plenty of works nowadays that capture the spirit of the sort of cosmic horror he wrote about without the atrocious xenophobia, or at least touch on the topic in ways that deconstruct and/or scrutinize those views in a much healthier and compelling way.
Yeah, that’s fair. He was so racist that even his contemporary racists were like “wtf?”
Piracy it is then!