That's a fair assessment, Dana.

So, if can push the question forward where do you sit with the following creators considering their various ethical failures?

(I'm not just reeling off a random list but these are artists I've spent some time trying to sort through my feelings about.)

Woody Allen (personally, I have stopped wanting to watch his movies, and find Manhattan in particular troubling)

Roman Polanski (I'd still watch Chinatown or Repulsion, but not interested in defending him)

Bill Crosby (rapist. No interest in revisiting his work. Which is definitely a bit of a personal amputation as his standup was formative in my childhood years and my brain still reaches for some of those jokes)

Coco Chanel (after reading her bio it's clear that she wasn't just cozying up to the Nazis for protection, but actively endorsed their philosophy. She's a very important designer and I love her work BUT she was truly an awful person and I dislike her being held up as a role model to young girls)

David Bowie (using him as a placeholder for any number of 60s/70s rockstars who had lots of sex with underage girls. I'm so familiar with the context of that era I feel like I can make a more nuanced call than just "moral standards were different then." Which is that the culturally presumed age of consent in that era was about 16 and everybody thought sex was a good thing to do. It also landed in that rare bit of history post-pill and pre-AIDS so No Consequence Sex was the rule of thumb. Also, no accounts of Non-consensual sex with Bowie. So, I do see claims that any musician/actor of that era who fucked 15/16 year old girls was a rapist, but I don't buy that at all.)

Any thoughts on these or others you've wrestled with? What's your rule of thumb?

I do take the cultural presumptions of the era into account, but don't let that excuse things like...Agatha Christie's racism or anti-semitism.

Yeats is one of my favorite poets but he had some unfortunate Fascist leanings. Doesn't stop me from reading him, but I see some his poems in a different light because of it.

One thing that I am more cognizant of is viewing their work in light of their malfeasance. How does Wood Allen's pedophilia and (at times) misogyny inform his work? A lot! So I don't just let that stuff slip by uncritically.

It's hard for me to figure out where the line is. I recently removed all of Mario Batali's cookbooks from my bookshelf after the accusation went from harassment to rape. And boy I'membarrassed to admit how hard that was for me. I have no interest in seeing any more Woody Allen movies. And I would really like to see Bryan Singer removes from the X-Men franchise.

Joss is interesting in that regard, because the quality of his work suffers in direct proportion to how much he gives in to his worst impulses. And not just because it's icky; it's like all quality control gets thrown out the window as he tries to shoehorn his baggage into the script.

Contrast that with, say, Alfred Hitchcock, whose work tends to be more critically acclaimed the more personal his work gets. Vertigo is rated as the greatest film of all time, but it's a really fucking creepy gross movie given what we know about Hitchcock now.

I recently removed all of Mario Batali's cookbooks from my bookshelf

For years my go to cookbooks were the Frugal Gourmet books, until the pedophilia allegations came out. Now they sit in a box in the attic. I won't even donate them.

Cosby was the worst for me. My brothers and I would listen to his records for hours when we were kids. I can still recite a lot of his routines from memory, but I no longer listen.

Woody Allen (personally, I have stopped wanting to watch his movies, and find Manhattan in particular troubling)

There are a couple of movies that I would still watch, but I don't seek them out, nor have I watched any of his more recent stuff.

Bowie

I don't begrudge Bowie. I have more problems with Jimmy Page. Still not sure where I fall on him.

Christie

Baby!sis was visiting a couple three weeks ago, and we got onto the topic of And Then There Were None whilst strolling along the Cliff Walk in Newport. I stopped her dead when I told her what the original title of the novel was. There is casual racism in a lot of older books (Chandler, Sayers, older Stout...) although perhaps not as blatant. It usually won't stop me from reading, but it does make me pause a bit.

Contrast that with, say, Alfred Hitchcock, whose work tends to be more critically acclaimed the more personal his work gets. Vertigo is rated as the greatest film of all time, but it's a really fucking creepy gross movie given what we know about Hitchcock now.

I love Vertigo exactly because it's Hitchcock baring his kinks on screen. It's very intense and weird and you wouldn't be able to tolerate it if you weren't sucked into Jimmy Stewart's nice-guy persona.

I have more problems with Jimmy Page. Still not sure where I fall on him.

His whole thing with Lori Maddox is hard to parse from a contemporary perspective.

I love Vertigo exactly because it's Hitchcock baring his kinks on screen.

Except that he would go on to more or less act them out in real life on Tippi Hedren.

Yeah, Tumblr does that too. I think there was stuff that was glossed over at the time because fandom deified him, and I think there's shit leveled at him now that's unfair.

Agreed. And some of the interpersonal crap around CC that he gets blamed for is a lot more complicated than Tumblr claims, which is frustrating as hell. I remember what was happening at the time!

Joss is interesting in that regard, because the quality of his work suffers in direct proportion to how much he gives in to his worst impulses. And not just because it's icky; it's like all quality control gets thrown out the window as he tries to shoehorn his baggage into the script.

THIS. The worst parts of AoU for me were the ones where his baggage was overwhelming and cringe-worthy.

His whole thing with Lori Maddox is hard to parse from a contemporary perspective.

There's a LOT of the 1970s that's hard to parse and, given her tendency to be a somewhat unreliable narrator (see [link] ), I am still not sure where I fall on that one. Or the 1970s in general.

Except to say that the past really is a foreign country and the sexual history of my circle back in our teens would raise modern eyebrows, yet isn't what most of us feel harmed by now. Even those of us who have been through a lot of therapy! (Exceptions would be people who were REALLY underage with people who were already in their 20s, probably.)

(Also...this sort of ties into a thing where I think we can retroactively damage ourselves unnecessarily, which is the sort of conversation to be had over serious cocktails.)

Polanski is a horror show. But Bitter Moon was very important to me in the days where I didn't know the specifics of the assault and just knew the common knowledge version of statutory rape. So.

Except that he would go on to more or less act them out in real life on Tippi Hedren.

That's why it's better to make weird movies than weird gestures!

I have to say that I am coming down on the side of Chris Hardwick, after those other girlfriends of his stated they did not see any of that kind of behavior from his, during many years with him. This is partially, I realize, due to very personal reasons. The woman who wrote the article cheated on Hardwick, and my ex-DH cheated on me and then told all of our friends about how my behavior had driven him to it. Her article had a feel of the same kind of self-justification to it. But I realize that is based on my own biases.

Allen, Cosby, Spacey and Weinstein can rot in Hell and I am not interested in giving them another of my hard-earned dollars.