#ethics of problematic things

[romilly-jay]

In conversation with Scalzi's 2014 post about enjoying art-stuff that turns out to be problematic (either in itself or by association) Part #2

*lead images are from John Scalzi's talk at the Hugos ceremony, Glasgow Worldcon August 2024*

Here's another link to the John Scalzi blog - from 2014 - that I'm engaging with here and in part #1 a couple of days ago

This second part is - hopefully - a bit more about the action or range of actions to be taken once we are in the position of realising that a Thing We Like is associated with a Person We Don't Approve Of.

I suppose this [how to deal with art made by problematic creators] IS knottier than the question of what to do about problematic art per se, or, using the original language, problematic media per se.

?? Is that right? As I type these words, I don't yet know - this is the Quiet Extravert in me coming out i.e. I'm going to discover what I think by typing words onto my keyboard and assuming what I think isn't unprintable, we'll all find out through the same series of sentences, encountered asynchronously.

So, let me unpack the thought a bit and see. Two immediate scenarios occur to me: i) I innocently encounter a piece of media and, in consuming it, discover that it includes content that is AWFUL and ii) I love an old thing but attitudes have moved on and returning to it, I realise that I NOW understand elements of the content as terrible.

Judging the me in scenario i), I really feel like that version of me could have benefitted from doing better homework before getting started. Fair point. I often do go into things rather under- researched and having to move up the curve. I guess I simply decide whether or not I feel okay to keep on consuming (is it something I am finding hard to endure and, if so, is there really any reason to keep on going with it?).

Scenario ii) is a bit gnarlier (apparently this isn't a word, but I like it so I'm keeping it... AND I just accidently bounced myself into a tiny version of the phenomenon under discussion). I'm not just processing the Terrible Content; I'm also processing my history of enjoying and advocating for work that is no longer acceptable.

At root I am having to deal with the "death" or material adjustment to past happy memories of consuming those works with a pinch of self-consciousness: Oh no, I love/d those works. Am *I* a bad person?

This is where JS's supplementary points from last time make themselves felt, I believe: one, that the person/ thing is problematic, regardless of the fact that you like it; two, that the fact you like it doesn’t mitigate the fact that it is problematic.

[End of excursion away from JS's approach. Carry on, JS!]

Turning to the matter of what action we should take, here are the example questions JS offers // and it's pretty clear from the context (I believe) that this is provided as a non-exhaustive list //

* Should you support the work with money?

* Do you differentiate works from different eras in the creator’s life?

* How much weight should you give to [the creator’s own] historical context?

* How much do you care about a creator’s personal life?

* Does it matter whether the creator is living or dead?

I think these attach primarily to the "problematic person" side of the topic and that intrigued me a little when I compare it to the starting point question (framed mostly as questions about the Thing). Having taken my wee conceptual diversion, I now feel reasonably comfortable that this does indeed reflect that the question of Problematic Stuff is trickier when the art/media is "fine" [is it?] but the creator is known to be or is outed as being a binfire of awfulness.

The first question is altered by our current social media world because of the way attention / clicks can be monetised - it's not effective (if it ever was) to consume The Thing only on "free" media. Giving your attention can be parsed into income for the originator.

NOT problematic (as far as I know) but my main personal example of attention = a form of support has been our family's avid YouTube consumption of the restoration of Tally Ho. The video channel is well made and the symbiosis between project and YT eyes-on-the-project is not only evident but frequently mentioned as encouragement to carry on supporting. No question that the scope and quality of the work has been utterly transformed by having a large subscriber base. That has translated into YT income plus advertising plus an engaged community full of people willing to directly donate $$ and expertise.

Questions two, three, and four seem like variations of the same issue, as articulated in an expanded version of question four, if we replace "creator's personal life" with "the person of the creator". Dancing with vocabulary but that second formulation seems to me to incorporate their historical context and whether there's a moment in a creator's life when they plummet from grace. (Assuming it's an identifiable moment and assuming we decide to have confidence that there wasn't more of the same happening out of sight, earlier. Are we?)

I find myself settling on a view that there's no pre-formed by rote measure to be applied, not one I'm comfortable signing up to. Arguing myself into feeling that treatment is a matter of conscience, assessed case-by-case, and open to being revised at any time.

Yes, some issues will ALWAYS matter. Yes, some topics don't attract universal condemnation but you can still choose to insulate yourself from them if your ethical framework or mental health care requires.

Question five sounds like it a solution - at least we wouldn't be bracing for the next piece of IRT terrible behaviour - but I'm not convinced that time passing diminishes whatever wrong things have been done. (If the behaviour's reprehensible, that remains true.)

Better, perhaps, to adopt the strategy advocated in a considerable more recent John Scalzi post (15th Aug 2024), which is Against Idols. Just making the case that no human can stand under the burden of standards and expectations we project and transfer onto our heroes* and suggesting that it's better if we don't try to make them do so.

(*Except, possibly, Taylor Swift. I'm TS-neutral // I know: I've missed out // but from outside, over here, she seems to be nailing it so far?)

Link to JS recent post for more:

[harbingerofsoup]

i bet the in universe daniel molloy discourse is a thing of beauty

[thecelestialsyzygy]

PSA No one gives a fuck if you don't like byler anymore. You want to come into the tag and talk about how boring they are to you now? Okay, then why are you in the tag? No one HERE cares to see your opinion unless they are just as boring as you. You want to talk about how you "checked out of the fandom" and "see all the flaws in the show now" or how "it's all been done before"? Okay congratualtions, do you want a cookie? If so here you go 🍪.

SO many stories have "cliche" elements, have been "done before", or have taken inspiration from OTHER stories. That doesn't suddenly make it bad or make you unique and different for thinking otherwise. YOU needing EVERYTHING you do in life to SOMEHOW be related to or have a political/ethical reasoning in order for you to un-like or dislike something is NOT my problem. YOU needing the internet to tell you what to think is NOT my problem. YOU not being able to separate Will's story and character from Noah Schnapp is NOT my problem. You thinking that leaving the fandom makes you a better person and therefore better than others who still choose to be in it because of your inability to separate fiction from reality and look beyond surface level is NOT my problem. Don't rain on my parade because of YOUR personal issues that you need to talk out with yourself. I'm glad some of you at least saw yourself out the door but stop being miserable about it and pretending it's a brag in the tag.

[dead-generations]

we know about as much about momentum/acceleration generated artificial gravity, how to practically generate it, thresholds of tolerance, health effects of gravity <1g >freefall, etc today as we did 40 years ago. because no one has done any real significant testing except on spiders and mice and plants and those have been very limited. the ways in which they are limited have been quite unhelpful for practical problem solving.

we know what problems 0g causes for human health but we really have no idea what the effects of martian gravity would be on the human body for no real reason besides a lack of will to construct the necessary tests. which, to be clear, would be doable but non-trivial as they would involve significant engineering and manufacturing, but we are already wasting a lot of money doing pointless shit in LEO anyway

[vivaciousoceans]

I can’t imagine only engaging with media that makes me feel 1000% comfortable.

[vv-ispy]

.

[autistic-katara]

i love when someone who has “[thing i am/do/believe] dnfi and kys” follow me, it’s pretty funny ngl

[romilly-jay]

In conversation with Scalzi's 2014 post about enjoying art-stuff that turns out to be problematic (either in itself or by association) Part #1

TLDR - he makes great points and I'm cheered to see how well this advice holds up one decade on - still wanna talk about it, though

And... having done my usual thing of clipping whatever I've come across recently that seems relevant - think this is more than one post

=========================================

Original post is from 19th March 2014 in reply to the following reader question from H. Savinean (reduced version here, emphasis added) which JS /surely correctly/ identifies as a can of worms:

I would like to hear your thoughts on liking problematic things, e.g. media with historically accurate but objectionable portrayals of gender/race/etc., media with no historical excuse for the above, media that ignore women and people of color, comedians/ actors/ writers who plant their feet firmly in their mouths far too often.

First thing I appreciate is that he establishes his definition so that we know the version of the question he's going to examine. Article mentions that he was original a journalist and this framing choice tracks - although/also LOL he notes that "problematic" has meaning in a wider set of contexts. Given the subject matter, this tactical vagueness seems like an excellent survival technique. [Any chance I can match him and stay out of cancellation prison? Can only hope.]

He uses the following as the terms of reference for the piece:

For the purposes of this piece, the word means “work [and/or] people I have issues with for some substantial and to me relevant social/ moral/ ethical reason.”

His TLDR statement is that he believes it's okay to like or value work that is problematic and/or work by a person that is problematic.

[That's not the only thing he says by any means! More nuance below.]

Now that I'm slowing down into the piece, I realise that whatever the case in 2014, this absolutely isn't a cultural given in 2024. Perhaps it never was i.e. when I tell myself that people used to have more flexibility - or ability to hold separate - or capacity for ambiguity - it's nothing more than that, a story I tell myself. Echo chamber thinking.

Calling Orson Welles on Elia Kazan - this image is a still from a video clip where he responds to an audience question about EK.

He says that he can't answer the question, due to his disapproval of EK's collaboration with the McCarthy investigations [rooting out alleged communist sympathisers in the arts], compounded by EK then making On The Waterfront, a movie that celebrates the actions of the informer character. Finally, by way of addendum, he notes:

I have to add - I have to add - that he is a very - good - director.

(It's not a quote about RP - RP is mentioned in the Tweet but the Welles clip is intended as a general example, as I realised on the second time of listening... First time, I was simply intrigued to "discover" that RP had been involved in the movie On The Waterfront. Nope, no he wasn't. That's fake news. He was born in 1933 and that movie was made in 1954, so, possible but unlikely as timelines go.)

OW demonstrates a holding together of contradictory assessments, revulsion at EK's behaviour and yet also an acknowledgement of his directorial talent. Both exist together, though it's quite here, in this clip that for OW, the moral revulsion weighs the more heavily.

IMO this seems like it's probably a good illustration of what John Scalzi goes on to say - I've clipped the entire segment this time:

I think it’s fine to like or recognize the value of problematic people [and/or] things. I think it helps to additionally recognize two things:

One, that the person [and/or] thing is problematic, regardless of the fact that you like it; two, that the fact you like it doesn’t mitigate the fact that it is problematic.

You can hold the two thoughts in your head simultaneously.

JS then goes on to illustrate with two examples, one focused on the person, the other on the work (erm, AND the person TBF).

The example given for where the work is admirable/excellent but the person HIGHLY problematic is China Town (a masterpiece) and Roman Polanski (child rapist). To me, this is famous/infamous - I've heard about the case and I've seen the movie, though I was probably too young to appreciate it as art. I remember finding it very tense.

The other example I hadn't heard of and frankly, I'm not planning to investigate any further. Very clear to me from the context why JS is giving it as an example of problematic work and I don't feel any need to try to see past that to make my own assessment of the quality of the film-making. It's not exactly as though I'm qualified to know, really, at the best of times. For the record, the example is Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl and this is what JS says about it -

For reasons relating to cinematic technique, one of the major films in cinematic history — echoes of the film pop up everywhere from Star Wars to The Lion King. For subject matter, [as] an unapologetic celebration of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg and of Adolf Hitler, it is literally horrifying.

Riefenstahl herself: A brilliant filmmaker and forever (and rightly) tainted by her association with a genocidal regime; one of the first great women directors, who unquestionably lent her considerable talents to the furtherance of evil. Can we appreciate the craft she brought to the film? Absolutely. Should we argue that this craft mitigates the purpose for which it was used? Absolutely not. Should Riefenstahl’s embrace of the Nazi party be excused because of her cinematic talent? Not in a thousand years.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Ok so I’ve had this question for a while and I feel like you’ll be able to give me a good answer. I understand that we’re absolutely not supposed to support anything JKR does monetarily and I never intend to do so. However is engaging with Harry Potter media *at all* also something I should not do or is it only things that give her money?

Like, would there be anything wrong with me playing Hogwarts Legacy if I pirated it? Is fanfiction and fan art ok to consume? Or is engaging with the IP at all going to be harmful in a way that I don’t see atm?

Thank you for your time!

I don't really think a cis person is the right person to ask about this, but I also know that trans people are sick to death of having to field these questions so I'll do my best to answer this, if everyone who reads my answer will promise me that you will NOT use anything I say in this post as an annoying argument against a trans person who has a different opinion on the matter. Remember whose opinions are actually important here.

And look, number one, you can do whatever the fuck you want. Nobody can stop you. If you, in yourself, in your soul, feel morally comfortable consuming Harry Potter by some convoluted method of Ethical Consumption™, then go and do that, and own it, and have the strength to be judged for your decisions.

Trans people might not trust you - hell, I'll probably not trust you either. They might get angry at you, and criticize you, or roll their eyes and call you a fucking loser. If you have the moral conviction that what you are doing is right, and that you are acting in accordance with your beliefs and you are not doing harm, then stand by that conviction and face the consequences. Have that strength of character.

But if you feel the need to go around posting and arguing that it's unfair, that you shouldn't be judged, that you should get to be a special exception and people are unreasonable when they get mad at you... then that is evidence, proof positive, that you are a fucking loser. That you are cowardly, and you don't actually believe that what you are doing is right, you just want the world to affirm your fragile ego while you enjoy your little treats.

To be clear, I am not accusing you of doing this (you seem to just earnestly be asking for guidance), but there's a hell of a lot of people who do do this, and you don't want to be one of them.

So that's number one. Do whatever the fuck you want, and face the consequences with a spine.

Number two is... just fucking drop it. That is my earnest advice to you. Just fucking drop Harry Potter. They are children's books from the early 2000s, they just are not that fucking good or important. The Hogwarts Legacy game is live service slop; the movies are passable at best and their quality comes from the actors being better than the source material. Just drop it. Harry Potter has nothing to offer that you can't get elsewhere from better media with better authors, or problematic authors who have good grace to at least be dead.

Don't waste your life thinking about complicated ways to circumvent the moral problem of JK Rowling's rancid transphobic hate-aura at the center of the franchise, don't waste your finite time on Earth trying to thread that stupid needle. Harry Potter isn't worth this. Rowling is old, and shriveling from hate and mold fumes, at the very least just wait for her to fucking die, and for her political project to fail, before you pick that world back up again.

I speak as someone who read the first book at age 11, hyperfixated on relating to Harry, and whose entire cultural life was consumed by the franchise for over a decade. It is not worth it. You don't need it, you don't need the stress of trying to navigate how or whether to engage with it ethically. You almost certainly have an enormous backlog of other books, games, movies and TV shows you've been meaning to get around to, so just go do that instead. I promise you it will be infinitely more rewarding, and infinitely less compromised by stress and guilt and cognitive dissonance.

And while you're at it, send some money to a trans charity and go scream invectives at a transphobic politician some time.

[wild-at-mind]

'They’re like the drunk guy at the bar who can’t use the right words but is a better ally then the liberal college educated scum bag.' No one loves making fun of the 'liberal college educated scumbag' like a right winger so I guess this is where the right and this kind of leftist finally agree. A happy day. :')

[catgirlredux]

number one lie about feminizing hrt is that it’ll make you less horny

do NOT believe them when they say that, they are WRONG, you will find yourself grinding against the corner of your bed to the thought of things that are physically impossible at best and more often than not ethically problematic

[raelish644]

it would def rip a hole in the space time continuum

sanders sides is the one fandom where you actually kinda don’t want the ship to become canon

[ruindunburnit]

"Marks" are an interesting concept for your goddess-loving Wicca Good vampyres, but they are annoying as hell to work with from a writing standpoint, and that makes them

✨️p r o b l e m a t i q u e✨️

[pearwaldorf]

People in fandoms* associated with Neil Gaiman are not showing each other the grace they should be in a stressful time, and I would like to remind people of some things:

Not everybody knows about the allegations because it is not being reported widely in mainstream media. Gaiman has engaged a PR/crisis management firm that has done work with Marilyn Manson, Russell Brand, and Danny Masterson to actively squash coverage.

The story broke on a site unfamiliar to a lot of non-UK people. There was confusion as well as outright misinformation about whether the site was a TERF outlet (it is not). While Rachel Johnson, the lead reporter on the story, is a TERF who has publicly clashed with Gaiman about trans rights, she has behaved responsibly and ethically as a journalist regarding this. I wrote more in depth about these things here.

Everybody deals differently with finding out creators are problematic. The method you prefer is not the only correct way of coping. Some people are able to divorce art from the creator and some people are not. This is an attitude that can change over time. And if you feel like you need to express frustration that somebody else's method isn't the same as yours? I would recommend shutting your fucking trap.

If people know about the allegations, it's shitty to assume they're ignoring them or think they're false until somebody explicitly says so. There are many things people don't say online, and you are not owed disclaimers or explanations.

Fandom is more than the work itself. Some people find strength in the community that has formed around it, and rely on each other to help cope with and grieve this loss. The love you have for the work and your fellow fans is not something that belongs to the creator. It never has and that can't be taken away.

Your personal relationship with a creator's work will change over time. That's inevitable regardless of whether they turn out to be problematic or not. And when those works are deeply significant and formative, like many of Gaiman's works are to me** and countless others? That's fucking tough. Be kind to yourself and others when working through this. I love you all.

--

* I have seen this in Good Omens most prominently, although I am sure there are other places where it is happening as well.

** I have been a fan of Gaiman's work longer than some of you have been alive. It has not been a great month or so.

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[r3musmoony]

LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

hey kids who read fic, listen up

it’s annoying to me as a Fanfic Elder that y’all don’t understand how consent works in regards to reading fanfic

last night I saw a fic that had EIGHT of my favorite tags included and a great summary BUT it also contained a tag for a topic that bothers me. I weighed the pros/cons and decided NOT to read the fic because the ONE tag I disliked was something that could trigger a panic attack if the scene went into any sort of detail - it wasn’t worth risking the eight good tags.

from the first moment I noticed the fic to the moment I decided not to read it, the entire experience was MY RESPONSIBILITY. the author tagged the fic correctly, I knew what my limits were, and I respected them.

if you find a fic with tags you don’t like, JUST DON’T READ IT 

don’t harass the author, don’t post a big whiny rant about it on Tumblr, just keep scrolling

that is your job as a reader.