Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Product Information

There is not some correct answer. You are not responsible for finding it. Your feeling of responsibility is a shibboleth, a reinforcement of your tragically limited role as a consumer. There is no authority and there should be no authority. … You will solve nothing by means of your consumption; the idea that you can is a dead end” (242).

The impulse to farm out the decision to an external authority sounds hopelessly naive – but then, asks Dederer, isn’t there something equally ridiculous about thinking that whether we choose to enjoy a particular piece of art or not is going to change anything? That we might be able to ameliorate the harm of Polanski’s violation of a schoolgirl or Picasso burning the face of his “muse” Françoise Gilot with a cigarette?Hemingway I would consider to be one of the the greats of classic literature with his earlier works, not so much the later stuff. But no matter how much you love a piece of their work, of course it doesn’t excuse their behaviour. A lot to be discussed here. There are two names I could bring up right now who work in television currently where it’s an open secret amongst the public what they have done, with concrete proof by victims, and yet they have kept their careers firmly afloat. As I finish this book and review - the net is slowly closing in on one of them actually. Weirdly enough, he just lost his main job as of 20/05/2023! So hopefully this is the beginning of the end. Time’s up. Your actions have consequences, especially if it ruins people’s lives. Here, Dederer writes the anti-cancel culture book. Allows us not to feel guilty about our pleasures and allows room for the gray space. The tainting of the work is less a question of philosophical decision-making than it is a question of pragmatism, or plain reality. That's why the stain makes such a powerful metaphor: its suddenness, its permanence, and above all its inexorable realness. The stain is simply something that happens. The stain is not a choice. The stain is not a decision we make. This is where the sense of cynicism comes from. The system is corrupt and this thing that we think can do something actually won't do anything and instead of spending time evaluating alternative systems or looking at work people are doing to dismantle it or listening to the people who are actively being harmed, she says we should just stop worrying about it and just watch/read/listen to the things by bad people. Which makes sense if you think, like she states, that people are fundamentally interested in this for some sort of virtue signaling. What she fundamentally fails to grasp is that these strategies and conflicts exist because people want to do better, people want to fix injustice. It's not just about convincing yourself and others that you are not a monster but understanding the practical effects of what is happening to people and trying to create a better world. "Voting with your dollar" is the only avenue that some people have been exposed to to make a difference and if you truly feel like we should throw that strategy in the trash, the most practical thing you can do is expose readers to things they can do instead. Listening to this book, mostly the end but also at certain points throughout, was a less uncomfortable version of watching that scene in Tár where Cate Blanchett continuously bullies a non-binary Julliard student of color for deciding to opt out of performing and promoting the music of people who would've had no respect for them as brown person and for their non-patriarchal gender identity. They want their respect for the artist to be met with an artist's respect for their inherent humanity. Tár is threatened by this both because she gained and maintains her power in the industry through her complicity in upholding these oppressive power structures despite her oppression under these same structures and therefore does not meet this requirement and because she has deep emotional "art love" (Dederer's phrase) for these "important" "genius" composers. Like Tár, it does not feel like Dederer is interested in exploring what happens if we decide to open our heart to "art love" for people who are (to our knowledge) not exploiting the power they have been given in society. If we, like the Julliard student, want to opt out of this system how do we find the people to replace the monsters? How do we help them exist in a fundamentally exploitative system? Can funding art and creators through platforms like Patreon disrupt these exploitative systems or does it reproduce them differently? Are so many celebrities monstrous because monstrous people are drawn to power and acclaim or because the system that they are in encourages or even creates monstrous behavior? Dederer might not be interested in these questions but many people are interested in these questions and are evaluating them. This is where the discourse is going, not "is it ok to like David Bowie?"

The chapter on Nabokov is called “The Anti-Monster” because Vlad himself was in no way shape or form a monster but he wrote an appallingly accurate book about Humbert Humbert, the pedophile, leading CD to worry Picasso’s artwork is legendary status, there is a whole other book written surrounding him and this subject. The way he treated women and relationships was despicable. What is feminism if not a daily struggle against forces that are so large, so consuming, that those forces are invisible to – forgotten, taken for granted by – the very people wielding them? Monsters is an honest, elaborate meditation on the separation of the art and the artist’s biography and whether or not it is possible at all. An interesting, frustrating, often aggravating first attempt to answer the question can we still watch Manhattan or Chinatown, can we still listen to Kind of Blue or River Deep Mountain High, can we still enjoy Les Demoiselles D'Avignon or Where do we Come From? What are We?

Customer reviews

Some chapters in here were marvelous, in others I thought she could have gone deeper. Sometimes she might get lost too long in very personal moments (like when pondering if not being the perfect mother but also pursuing a writer's career equals neglect), sometimes she got too lost in the artist's deeds and not the bigger picture. But so much of this was extremely profound and thoughtful, so many angles, so fascinating and ultimately helpful to me. Whether it will be helpful to you might depend on your investment, this is not the book that will come with the ANSWER, there is not answer since it is ultimately complicated and very multifaceted, even if certain people don't want to admit that. It is also not a new discussion and it will likely be a never-ending discussion, and your own view point might shift, I am sure mine will which is maybe when I will return to this book. I mean, I was surprised with the Wagner mention that she didn't mention Leni Riefenstahl. Especially when she glossed over the Allen-apologists for how 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘢𝘯 must be looked at for its aesthetics. Riefenstahl was the very queen of aesthetics, a female champion of her time, while also being a nazi. A valuable meditation on some of the era’s most urgent cultural questions . . . Emerging from Dederer’s reflections is the plain truth that every personal response to art is inseparable not only from the artist’s past but also the history of each member of its audience.” In her hands, vexed territory is oddly flattened out, its provocations mere mole hills on the way to nowhere. But in truth, I was more often baffled than bored. Virginia Woolf’s antisemitism (Dederer proudly tells a Jewish friend that she has “rumbled” this) hasn’t been forgotten; Allen Ginsberg isn’t better known than Philip Larkin (or not in Britain, anyway); JK Rowling doesn’t live in England. Monsters is populated with auteurs, with people whose instincts are singular and extreme, but its author’s real predilection seems to be for generalisation. An unwarranted detour into the world of scientists has her trotting out all the cliches about their eccentricity, the tattered garments and rope belts she believes they use to burnish their “genius”. Who can tell Picasso’s abused women apart? Not her, she tells us. They’re a “fleshy pig-pile” and she – well done, sister! – can never remember which is which. Dederer explores this. Comes to the idea of a stain. Does a single stain ruin a silk dress? So much so that the stain becomes the dress? Perhaps for some, but for others, it's just a stain. It'll wash out. It can be taken to the cleaners. It can be fixed. But the stain should not totally ruin the dress.

A blisteringly erudite and entertaining read. Dederer holds the moral ambiguity of her subject matter, landing her arguments with precision and flair. It's a book that deserves to be widely read and will provoke many conversations.” The author uses the memoir format to trace her own experience feeling betrayed by artists. At one time she enjoyed Woody Allen’s movies, but was relieved to learn of a little free library filled with Woody Allen stuff so she had access to research materials for writing this book without needing to pay for them. What’s a person to do if you love the art, music, or book but don’t approve of the behavior of the artist, musician, or author? And don’t get me started on asking the same question about politicians, preachers, and theologians. These are questions I’ve pondered myself, so when I came across this book that explores the morality of cancel culture I decided to see what the author had to say. Claire Dederer is a memoir and essay writer who I had never heard of but she decided to look into this topic once she hit a weird personal wall when struggling to come to terms with the fact that she still is able to absolutely adore Polanski's movies while knowing of and being repulsed by the atrocity he committed. Why? How? Why? So she started thinking and exploring art by what we now like to call "problematic" people and our relationship with that, and then #Metoo happened and suddenly cancel culture for all kind of things was en vogue and she realized her subject of interest had gone viral. So she expanded and wrote this book (and I believe a viral article in between).But the book becomes personal for her when it comes to her children where it somewhat slips into memoir. This was a choice that took too long to get to, and a choice I don't think particularly fit into the book completely well (and I find this particularly amusing given how Dederer critiques memoirs and explicitly tells us what a memoir is and should be), but, without it, I wouldn't have known about Joni Mitchell or how to review the sixties and feminist violence through Plath and Solanas. Thankfully, the last few chapters tie the pretty bow on how we should go about monstrous artists with Cleage's 𝘔𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴. However, as mentioned above, Claire Dederer seems ultimately disinterred in actually evaluating a lot of the deeper questions around these phenomena and I think this is for two reasons. Part of this is her personal desire to humanize the category that she identifies with - monster - and the other is because she seems to believe that people are fundamentally interested in this question for some sort of desire to be "good" and promote their morality and separate themselves from those they call monsters. Dederer seems to be interested in evaluating this as a philosophical question and therefore her answer is a philosophical answer about theory and ideas. But real people were and are being hurt by these people. She quotes a woman who experienced sexual abuse's changing relationship with Miles Davis, but not those who experienced sexual abuse by prominent artists. Everything is one level removed. Were none of Danny Masterson's victim's available for comment? Could you not find anyone actually working on enacting alternate means of justice willing to be interviewed? What a treat it is: funny, lively and convivial, constantly in argument with itself… Dederer’s tone and willingness to be wrong and confused, along with her seductive, intimate style, bring the subject to new life… How rare and nourishing this sort of roaming thought is and what a joy to read. How moving, too, the underpinning adoration that allows the difficult questions to be asked. You are left wishing Dederer would apply her generous mind to every other niggling unfinished hang-up that haunts our culture.”