The 'me too' movement

Nick's current affairs & general discussion about anything that's not sport.
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HAL
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Post by HAL »

I am in Viccy Park. Where are you?
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stui magpie
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Post by stui magpie »

David wrote:Bowie also had sex with a 15-year-old girl as an adult, and John Lennon was a wife beater. And where do you even start with Led Zeppelin...
So we agree. Can the same apply for Movies and TV? I think so.
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
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Post by David »

"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
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Post by HAL »

You are so certain.
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Post by stui magpie »

^

God, I struggled to read that, I just don't relate to art that way, the way that you do.

I can play music, but it's like maths in my mind. That's part of the reason why I knocked back my music teacher when he said I could be a great music teacher- I do it mechanically not artistically. I have little feel and I know that.(note, he said I could be a great teacher, not a great musician)


Doesn't mean I can't play, I just knew my limitations.

when it comes to music, TV or movies, I just like what I like. I can lose myself in something I like and compartmentalise any moral or social issues. Just turn that part of the brain off for the time it takes
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
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Post by ronrat »

Jimmy Page has a condo not far from me. And Gary Glitter. I was here when he got arrested in Vietnam and the Scotland Yards lads got zillions of frequent flyer miles because he kept getting refused entry into all these places. It was like watching pinball. At one stage they were going to get the RAF to fly him back but know one would let them land to do it. They should have let him rot in Vietnam.
Annoying opposition supporters since 1967.
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Post by Pies4shaw »

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/gene ... music.html

https://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/14948

Then, as now, it's a form of moral panic and ought to be rejected.

One reconciles things in this way: I don't condone Gieseking's Nazi collaboration. I don't have to like his politics to think that his are the greatest performances of Debussy ever recorded. Listening to his music is not a political statement. Nor is listening to Karajan's 1963 recording of Beethoven's 7th Symphony (perhaps the single greatest recording ever made - and I appreciate that, in saying that, I am quite alone in my appraisal) or his magical recordings of La Mer, the Prelude etc etc. I have no idea of Jorge Bolet's politics (though I assume that as a Cuban who went to live in the US, his views may have been ultra-conservative) and, were he the most wicked person who ever lived, he would still be the greatest pianist I had ever heard and I would still want to play Liszt, Chopin, Prokofiev, Rakhmaninov etc with the same technical mastery and luminescent tone he had. I couldn't care less whether John Lennon was a perpetrator of domestic violence - it simply doesn't affect my appreciation of his music. I have loved his double-tracked vocals on "I Should Have Known Better" since I was 4 and that won't change, come what may.

I never liked "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" but, if I did, I wouldn't stop liking it because Rolf Harris sang it.

In the same way, people can listen or not listen to Michael Jackson's music for its musicality (or otherwise). Listening to van Halen's guitar solo - on whichever Michael Jackson song it is - is not an act condoning child molestation.

If people don't want to listen to his music, that's fine, too but I'm unhappy with the concept of semi-official and morally-policed disapproval of art because of some "concern" with the artist.

It is probably different where it is public life and politics - I see, eg, a difference between Hitler, Cecil Rhodes, Confederate generals and Stalin and the artists who were unlucky enough to find themselves living under their rule. Monuments to public figures are, usually, less an act of artistic endeavour than a statement of what the ruling elite in a particular society valued at the time the monument was erected - that can change over time and it can be appropriate to tear monuments down. Whether that should or shouldn't happen probably depends upon the circumstances and what the monument, now, represents. One can also acknowledge that the perception of things alters over time. It is unlikely, I think, that I would have purchased a Karajan recording in 1948 because that might have had a differently-charged meaning for me than buying his records did in 1974. I didn't live through the Holocaust, my family wasn't affected and Nazi-collaboration, while abhorrent to me, thus doesn't hold the same visceral disgust for me that it would for others. I also accept that there can be a legitimately-held position that no length of time will be sufficient for some people in some cases.

There may be some degree of overlap with some figures in artistic endeavour. Gary Glitter is one possible example. My recollection is that his principal appeal was to young girls. He was marketed as a slightly risque but "safe" heart-throb singer and his music was, of course, complete sludge. There might be no legitimate means of separating the marketing of his art from his apparently awful life. I am not expressing any particular view about that - I am simply accepting that any statement of "principle" in this particular area will have its logical limits, beyond which its application will become absurd.

Thus, if a film director or an actor is a bad person and does bad things, it may be appropriate for them to be sent to jail for a time, in the usual way. I do not think that we must stop watching and admiring their films, generally speaking. There are limits, of course - one can think of instances where it is extremely difficult to separate the merely celluloid from personal criminality. That won't I think, usually be the case.
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Post by swoop42 »

I do hope none of the people calling for bans on the artistic work of certain individuals drive luxury German automobiles.
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Post by David »

"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
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Post by think positive »

You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either!
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Post by HAL »

More than you might think.
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Post by K »

Pies4shaw wrote:...I don't condone Gieseking's Nazi collaboration. ...
What was the nature of his "Nazi collaboration"? (Is this in the links provided?)
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Post by Pies4shaw »

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HAL
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Post by HAL »

I hadn't thought of that.
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Post by K »

Okay, thanks. I'll take a look. (I have more confidence in a link that ends .edu than in a wiki-thingy. :wink: )

Restricted access, but only until November. What is that about earth and oxen? I can never remember which one is supposed to be the patient one.
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