The Work and the Artist

Photo poperty of Stormberry

It's not uncommon now to see boycott movements against a given brand based on an economic practice, or a social position the owners of the brand take on a given subject. We have seen this with different brands and different stores and companies with different degrees of success. One could say this was an early form of Cancel Culture, where people - depending on their believes and the values they uphold - would choose to stop buying something or start buying something depending on how the behavior or the believes of the company or brand alight with theirs.

The point behind of these acts of boycott or support are based on the idea that the most effective way to protest in today's world it's through our money, specially when it comes to companies that sell us things and services, or people who need us in a way to make money.

With some things it might be easy to express your support or to withdraw it, because there are many other options. For instance, when I withdrew my support from Starbucks because of their horrendous online Customer Service, I took to look up other coffeeshops and I also returned to my previous favorite coffee brand, and thus left my Starbucks days behind. We also see this sort of behavior when people pointedly choose to consume locally produced products or small business products or even buy as much as possible black owned brands or so.

Things get more complicated when the brandor company you wish to no longer to support belongs to an industry or branch with little other options, such as mobile telephones. For instance, what would you do if the company that makes your favorite mobile phones turn out to be involved in employee exploitation, or employs child labour, supports slavery, or corrupt politicians, or the deforestation of the Amazonas, or so on? Sure, you can say you will buy your next mobile phone from another brand, BUT what if the other brand is also sketchy? What if this given brand you used to support has a whole linking of products and you would have to replace everything? It makes it more sketchy, right?

It may happen also that there are brands you really, really love, that have a superior quality or the kind of service and attention of detail that really makes the difference for you, and so leaving them becomes hard. What then? Morals over utility? Are you ok with something that involves something you disaprove of just because the service or the product is really good? Can you make a separation between the product and their politics or the CEO's personal believes and/or behavior?

Well, and what happens when it's an artist whose work you really love, but the artist stands for or has done things you condemn? Is it ok to keep consuming their work and keep loving it even when what they have done or said is henious?

The usual way to put it in context is: if Hitler would have written a really awesome book or made the best movie on the planet or composed the best song ever, would you still consume the piece of art even if he was who he was and done what he has done?

This is a question that has hit many fans for a time now. The discussion also tends to be twisted a bit - in my personal opinion - by  saying "if the artist was someone awful, shall their art be also considered awful?". 

Here are my two cents in this discussion.

Property of Stormberry

There are levels at which the Art and the Artist are separate. The artist ca be a jerk, but the art it creates can have a high artistic value. It's the same way as a nice, good person who is also an artist doesn't necessarily makes good art too. Talent isn't correlated with morals, goodness of heart or values upheld.

Now, unlike the products and services normally traded, Art tends to carry a part of the moral world of the Artist. It might be more subtle in plastic arts or music, as it can be in literature and poetry, but as an Artist creates, they translate part of their world vision into their art, so chances are that the message is somewhere there. With the consuming of the art, you are also consuming the message, and it might be a message you don't approve of. Yes, maybe it's not so easy to see or perceive, and it might be that the point of discord in question doesn't even appear at all in the art. So what then?

This is a personal call, something you will have to decide now and again, each time to face such a situation, but what I believe is the following:

In the end, the Artist lives out of the money they make with their art, just like a company lives out of the products and services they make. Yes, one singer can't justbe replaced so easily with another, nor a painter so easily with another, and even less a moviemaker with another or a writer with another, BUT you can stand for your believes and choose to stop buying their art. It doesn't mean you have to burn everthing you have of them, or necessarily give it away, but you can choose to show your disappointment by no longer acquiring their work.

If you consider that their transgression isn't so bad, or you are not sure they did do what they are being accused of, by all means, keep supporting them. Because when you pay for their work that's exactly what you do: support them. Art isn't (usually) for free: it has a price so that the artist and the indstry behind it can make a profit and a living out of it.

In today's world much has been taken from us, this very blogpost means sweet nothing in the great scheme of things, but the coin? The coin we spend or save are the one powerful voice we have left.