Michael Jackson and the morality of the artist

John McWhorter says, and says with his usual clarity and grace, pretty much exactly what I thought of Michael Jackson. The one exception is that he passes over Jackson's molestation accusations more breezily than I am wont to.

Which brings me to what Ta-Nehisi Coates has to say on the matter.

Ray Lewis may well be an accessory to a man's murder. But when I watch him run up and down field on Sunday, it sparks something in me. Woody Allen wooed his wife's adopted daughter, and may well be a child molester. But I think Bananas makes me laugh. Mike Tyson is, among other things, a convicted rapist. But I had not lived until I saw him demolish Trevor Berbick. And so on...

I guess I could peel these people out my life. I guess I could stop seperating art from men. Regrettably, I think, I wouldn't be left with much art worth admiring. Sometimes awful people, do beautiful things. One doesn't cancel the other.

I agree that awful people do beautiful things. I disagree that one can separate art from artists. Art is a form of communication, and is in part understood by understanding the author's intentions. (I could go on and on about this, and I have in writing philosophical work, but I'll refrain here. Suffice it to say that I think the concept that we look at, say, a poem as simply a text or series of words with dictionary meanings, with no regard for the author or context in which it was written, often results in a failure to properly understand the poem).

That said, I don't only enjoy art created by people I find morally acceptable or with whom I would be excellent friends. Like Coates, I find Bananas quite funny (although my favorite early Woody Allen still has to be Love and Death). What seems to matter more is whether or not the artwork communicates something about the immorality. A movie such as Manhattan, which seems to defend and glorify his sexual preference for high school age group (and not simply for reasons of tauter skin, but because older women are too sophisticated and challenging) is much more off-putting given the facts I know about his life.

In the case of Michael Jackson, I am apparently one of the relatively few people who does not think he is a genius. I like his voice quite a lot when he was a child, much less so as a falsetto adult. His songs are often catchy enough. His dancing was very good. And that's about it. Knowing how brutal his father was in forcing him to perform does influence my enjoyment of his childhood recordings. But his later music, which does not seem to deal with or defend his apparent preference for young boys, is still reasonably enjoyable for me.