Kat Rosenfield writes on the newly found predilection for censorship on the left, and implies a question that may be more interesting that it first appears:
The subtext is a profound shift in the idea of what it means to “deserve” a career as a writer, as if book deals are a reward for good moral character rather than compensation for quality work. When Penguin Random House declined to publish a new collection of works by Norman Mailer in January, the predominant sentiment was frustration—not that the renowned writer’s ideas were suddenly too provocative for print, but that he hadn’t been canceled ages ago for stabbing his wife. It is this sensibility that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captured in a series of essays in 2021, writing, “What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.” [Persuasion]
Or, to simplify, what sin must be committed in order that we deny to the writer, painter, creator, the rewards of having committed the act of creation?
Or is it wrong to assume that an artist wants to sell their creations to consumers of art? (I don’t think it’s wrong to make that assumption. The writer wants to know others appreciate your words, and what you try to convey, and I can only assume the same applies to other artists.)
So we assign the sin, thus dividing creators into those allowed to enjoy the fruit of their labors – the knowledge that others have consumed their art, a statement notable for its inexactitude – and those that are disallowed.
Disallowed from …. being paid? No, from knowing they’ve been appreciated.
No, from being appreciated. A subtle but keen difference.
Wait. Uh. Doesn’t that mean the audience didn’t …?
Who all is being punished here, anyways?
OK, why do we like art? (Yeah, I know, but ’tis only a rhetorical question, to stir the blood and remind one of the eternal question, Is there anything wrong with a chocolate chip cookie that won’t be solved by eating another chocolate chip cookie?)
So art springs, outside of some limited exceptions, from the brains of humans. It conveys ideas, processes, projected results. Do we value, such as in the case of Mailer, the ideas of those we think are morally repulsive?
But, wait, art colored by the moral mindset of the immorally repulsive, if I may coin a phrase, can it have a genuine artistic value as well?
I pretend to no conclusions, just the questions to haunt the absurdly arrogant. Or do the left not serve an ethereal tea to Banquo?
I’m just so lost.
