Have you ever chuckled politely whilst an elderly relative has said something slightly bigoted or even racist? It happens and can cause a lot of anguish in liberal grandchildren because it's hard to care about someone who is ignorant or even mildly racist and it's even harder to let them get away with it.
Someone in my life came out with something like this last year, he was a comic book artist and writer. He is now, and in hindsight always has been, a grouchy, narrow-minded and misogynistic fascist but should this undermine his creative output which I had previously enjoyed?
I grew up with comic books, every time I visited my Dad's childhood home I was treated to a plethora of Marvel, DC and 2000AD visual treats. I lapped it all up, I obsessed over some of the stories and would re-read them every single return visit we made. Obviously I then found other sins in my teenage years like booze, women and the school camcorder (not all at the same time!) so comics were neglected slightly, however after reading a copy of Watchmen at a friends house I re-ignited my passion for comics.
Ten odd years later and much space in our very small flat and my affair with comics is still going strong, mostly filled with trade paperbacks because there's just not enough room to store single issues. I read comics to be entertained but also because, maybe foolishly, I was under the impression that most people who read comics are of a liberal persuasion or at least all the comic fans I know are. Nobody I know wants to be Rorshach or Captain America, in fact you'd be hard pushed to find any comic creation any of us want to be, except Spiderman but that's just because we were all teenage boys once!
The idea that comics are written by pseudo fascist “blokes” kind of shatters the idyll a bit. If I was naïve before it's because of people like Alan Moore and Warren Ellis who seem to wear their liberal/anarchist stance on their sleeves and who excited me with quantum physics, dimensional mathematics & literary history rather than the usual trappings of modern superhero comics. Art Speigleman made me weep using mice, Bryan K Vaughan mused on femininity and disillusionment with patriarchal society, Grant Morrison theorised about religion using Wile. E. Coyote and Neil Gaiman studied humanity through fantasy. It's always an intellectual whirlwind ride and in these writer's cases, never a right wing one.
Should we allow the political leanings or personal beliefs of an artist whose work we admire, without knowing their ideals, to tarnish the work? Should we allow the way somebody acts in their personal life to affect our perception of their creative output? Let me open it up to those who don't particularly know or like comics, did you get rid of all your Joy Division CD's? We all love the songs, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is one of the high points of 1980's music and still stands up even without nostalgia clouding it, but some people believe that Ian Curtis was also a bit of a racist or definitely a right wing voter who also flirted with Nazi iconography!
Maybe it was him being young or maybe it was all just a quirky fascination with Hitler but still not someone I'd have round for tea. I like 'Lethal Weapon' & 'Mad Max' but should I never watch those because Mel Gibson has been in the news seeming to be heinously anti-Semitic? Should I let a comic book writer's comments about the Occupy movement smear the nice artwork he once produced?
Art transcends. Art becomes immortalised. Art lives through history, the beauty of a Joy Division song isn't tarnished on fresh ears by his outdated politics. The art of Van Gogh isn't sullied by the fact we don't know if he hated black people or not, the works of Hieronymous Bosch aren't ruined for me because he was a man of faith. The artwork rises above petty human relationships or ideas, it becomes miraculous. Obviously there are works of “art” like 'Mein Kampf' which are so addled with bigotry and preposterous content that they cannot be separated from the ideals of those who created them. I think this instance with the comic artist in question falls somewhere in the middle of these, his work is sometimes intuitive and the artwork is obviously skilled however the substance, in hindsight, has always veered towards pathetic hatred masked as superhero fiction, the words of Batman or Leonidas rather than the creator. Now I think the veil has been lifted and we can all see his ageing visage behind each of the characters he ably drew, none more than his latest, which I haven't read but seems to directly correlate to his hateful and scaremongering views.
I don't believe that all art should be tarnished by those who create it but we should be mindful of the beliefs of those in the world around us. It's always in our power to discuss the rights and wrongs of peoples actions or beliefs and the more we stay aware of ignorance and persecution the more we can do to prevent it. 'Maus' by Art Spiegleman touches on this more eloquently than I ever could. People change and the words they once spoke or the words they will speak in their future are always in some part due to their surroundings and their society at the time, fear and lies create new fascists everyday. I'm not going to let these changes affect the art or music I love or once loved, what are you going to do?
P.S: There's a charity shop in Brighton which will soon have some famous artists comic books in it if you fancy them, the artwork's lovely but the words smell a little bit like cow poo.
