In my other article I talked about creatives that got trashed on substances and all that fun stuff, but not their personal lives. If you wanna go read more about that follow this link: *insert link here*! Now most of the people I talked about were actually pretty terrible human beings when you look at their lives, most of them abused some sort of substance so that they were able to cope with the big overarching issues that they couldn’t hope to fix save for drowning them in booze. Now therapy and self reflection hasn’t been a mainstream idea for all that long so it kind of makes sense when you think about it. Since these creatives have horrible issues some might think it right to scrutinize their grand works as a response to their not so hospitable tendencies. Simply put, things that were ok in years past are sometimes not ok in years future. Things don’t always age quite as well as we hope they would. Other things age like fine wine, but not everything does and I feel we need to get over ourselves in the present and enjoy things for what they were. I think that when you view a piece of art, or a book, or a movie, or a piece of music, or anything that is the result of creative processes you should look at it in a vacuum and see the perspective in time it has. Sometimes perspective is irrelevant depending on the work, other times it is very much relevant. I find it best to observe a piece of creative work in a vacuum; disregarding the stuff outside of that particular piece of work. Of course some things you have to regard things in reality, but oftentimes we are viewing works from the past and historical context can be temporarily disregarded until further analysis after the analysis of it as a creative piece. View a work for itself, let it stand alone so we can analyze it in a vacuum. Intense breakdown of a creative work does not need the influential information about the creator, it ruins and distorts something with bias initially. I am of the opinion that we do not need the creator to enjoy a piece of creative expression. Oftentimes some of the best paintings have no name attached to them, they remain a mystery in author and it allows the work to stand alone and be judged without biases towards the creator applied towards the painting. You can appreciate something without knowledge of the creator or their thoughts and opinions swaying your viewpoint. We can enjoy works at a surface level without complex understandings of the inner working thoughts of the brain that made a hand make brush strokes. Oftentimes removing the creative responsible for the work from the equation means the interpretation of the work is better. People perceive and interpret a work better when no knowledge of the works creator is involved for cross examination. Oftentimes this is what leads writers to use pen names when creating works, they hide behind a mask to become anonymous. Anonymity is a wonderful and powerful mask that many employ as to tell stories and things they themselves would be ridiculed for thinking. As they say “Give a man a mask and he will only tell your truths. Take it away and he will only tell you lies.” We show our true selves when we hide behind a mask. So why not ignore creative works with authors? Well authors or creators want to be recognized for what they have done. Recognition by the public is important to most who value the opinions of others. We should observe works without creators, as to enjoy the works. But I think if you wish to understand greater context you should research and find out the information about the authors. I think that preliminary analysis of something should not be tainted by our knowledge of someone or a situation and should be viewed as if through the eyes of a child. Does this spark joy? Does this spark anger? Then upon thinking of things such as that we can dive deeper into the world of the author. The lore behind the work, the bonus features on the DVD if you will. Now, of course some things need bias otherwise they make no sense. Certain things need bias to exists. Political cartoons are an excellent example of something that definitely needs bias for it to make any semblance of sense. And other things need context, or perspective, because sometimes the author is so bad that you don’t need to view a work with a degree of respect you would have in a vacuum. As individuals it is up to you to be educated enough to be able to delineate between those sorts of things, whether or not you need to know full context and perspective for a work or not is subjective. Everything is subjective sadly, it is up to you and your own beliefs. I believe that you can love a work and hate the creator of that work. But you still love the work for what it is as a piece of cultural expression. However, you as the reader might have a completely different view point. Some things you can overlook, such as Picasso being a horrible misogynist or like an entire generation forgetting all the bad things about Elvis. It is up to you to decide as an individual, you shouldn’t argue with others to try and prove your viewpoint because it is literally just a singular view that you have that might be ever so slightly different than everyone else’s view. Another thing you have to keep in mind is the point in history when a work was created. The historical context is oftentimes something I think of as the cherry on top. It’s a good thing to keep in mind that artists tend to have periods, much like a teenager having a goth phase and then a jock phase or something along those lines. So lets say I show you a beautiful painting of a puppy, it’s super adorable! You look at it and go “AWWWWWW! So cute!” But then I turned around and told you it was painted by Hitler. Suddenly you feel horrible for saying “AWWWWWW! So cute!” a moment ago. Cause you just admired a piece of creative work created by Hitler. This is what I mean when I say we should look at the perspective and context for a work. In my mind, anything made by Hitler is an instant “Do not pass go, Do not collect $200” Hopefully it is for you as well. The point is that you have to keep in mind perspective, but if you know perspective and you can forgive it then you should admire a work for the work. Except of course in the case of it being by Hitler. You can’t forgive that shit. I can forgive Ernest Hemmingway for being an insufferable ass but being a good writer. I can’t forgive Hitler for genocide so I can admire his pictures of dogs. Certain things its ok to look past and understand it was a different time, other things like actually genocide not so much. So love the work, hate the creator, rationalize with context and perspective.

Thanks for joining me through this interesting article, I know there’s a thing that says as soon as you bring up Hitler in a conversation you’ve effectively lost your argument. Since your literal defense is Hitler. Now I believe this to be true in most cases, but I think that by using him as a bad example/extreme example it is an effective way to get the point across. I think that disregarding an entire creative work because of something minorly problematic in comparison to Hitler dog paintings is silly. Honestly, some things you can’t observe in the vacuum. Other things you can. I still enjoy Harry Potter even though J.K. Rowling is saying problematic things online. These things are always an interesting case by case basis type of thing. Hopefully you enjoyed some of my points in this piece!

-Ben