Seperate the Artist from the Art

What does it mean to seperate the art from the artist? It seems to have two meanings which are used as one and the same:

• “Am I allowed to enjoy media from bad artists?” Yes, I have made peace with the facts that most creators probably disdain me in one way or another, and abusive behavior is not exclusive to a small group of evil people. Worrying about making good customer choices is an endless pit of misery that helps nothing. One should also keep in mind that for every despicable artist out there, there are many marginalized creators deserving more support; but I think this is a seperate issue which shouldn’t be conflated with customer activism.
• “The critique of art should be seperated from the artist.” Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Audience has a deeply personal relationship with art, and art critique should always prioritize this relationship over the artist. I have discussed this on detail before(click here), so won’t do so here again.

Thus, my answer to the regularly re-heated debate : We should seperate the art from the artist. There is a more interesting question however: What happens when we can’t?

Sometimes we reach our personal limits. Everyone can understand creating good art doesn’t make a creator morally uptight. Yet still, creators leave a part of themselves in art, so when they cross the line, their mere association might feel to much. Sometimes it’s just not the same anymore.

Sometimes, the artist and a fanbase works hard to make sure the art from its artist inseperable. Perhaps the most salient example of this is Harry Potter.

If you have observed how people tend to talk about Harry Potter in media, you would certainly caught the weird tone the discussions have. HP discussions often has. Characters are mentioned as if they are real, the plot is discussed as it is a piece of world history. This is not exclusive to HP, and its wish-fulfillment aspect might make people to indulge in its world and lore a little too much, but what’s unique about HP is how this behavior is enabled and endorsed to the staggering degree by the author. The author drops lore bits, celebrates characters’ birthdays and muses about events in the story. This is actually nothing too absurd in itself, it could be even cute and tounge-in-cheek. However, the author and fans constantly do this, frequently referencing HP when talk about real politics. To someone lacking any context, it would actually seem like these people are in a very involved role-play, or worse, believe Harry Potter is non-fiction.

No, what’s happening here is not that simple. Harry Potter fandom and the author denies the series’ from existing as fictional novels, or literature at all. It is treated as a documentary, a reality TV show, and a political manifesto. This attitude is so widespread that even the critics sometimes do this. They say: “The author is no doubt such a reactionary, look at Harry Potter, it is filled with so much of this!” Such critiques fail on two fronts:

• Harry Potter as a whole is not a series with a consistent world-building. It takes many assumptions as granted. For example, for a series so much focused on death, most related concepts left blank. The series only make sense if you already know and agree with Christianity, which is notable bacuse series never once discuss religion. Harry Potter is a magic-decorated world from the view of a cis-straight middle-class-turned-rich Brit. What “political themes” present in the book are mostly a cluster of truisms flowing from it. Of course all characters would end up being married at the end of the book, what else are “normal healthy adults” supposed to do?
• Harry Potter, or any other art piece, is completely irrelevant to the author’s behavior. If the series were just uplifting children’s tales, this wouldn’t change anything about author being a raging transphobe. Conversely, if the author was the truly vagely progressive person a lot of people thought as, that should have no relevance to HP as piece with neoliberal-misogynst themes.

This shows how truly difficult is to seperate HP from its author. If you have read any Harry Potter content in English, the author’s shadow seem inescepable.

Still, it is not impossible. When I read the series when I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about the author. As much as knowing about the beliefs of the transphobic author makes me see some parts in the series in different light, I never really needed that knowledge. No one really does. People merely has a habit of thinking literary criticism as something mostly applies to art from the artists they don’t like.

I wish people stopped talking about that transphobic millionare when there are much more important issues even in the scope of trans struggles. However if they want to talk about that person so much, they should leave Harry Potter, Fantastic Beast or whatever fiction the author have involved in. Not as a respect to sancity of nostalgia or anything of the sort, but because personal criticism and art critique are entirely different matters. If you are unwilling to seperate art from the artist, then at least try to seperate the artist from the art.

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.