When Authors Go Bad (or Actually They Always Were and You Just Didn’t Know)

I dare say it has happened to many of us: the author of a beloved text is in the news because they have perpetuated some horror or another. Reactions vary: shock, grief, outrage, denial, guilt, clinging on to the beloved text with your fingernails and gnashing your teeth at people. And perhaps most troubling of all, the sense of the ground shifting beneath you.

How much simpler it would be if we could just gently close the door on the author’s crimes and get on with the unambivalent enjoyment of their work.

A bit more complicated, yes. Should we be separating the art from the artist? Is such a thing possible, or desireable?

It is absolutely true and valid that we can throw authorial intent out the window and engage solely with a text itself. There is a lot to be said for this idea, especially if we are interested in interrogating the text for itself to see what it is actually doing, apart from what the author claims it is doing. Defenestrating the author can be both fun and useful! And, aside from enabling deeper critical analysis, it can also allow us to detach ourselves from the problematic behaviours of the people who authored the books we love. Especially if a text has helped us through a hard time, there is huge value in allowing ourselves this comfort.

However, there are a few good reasons why this separation needs to be complicated a little bit. The most important one is that if we are merrily excising the author from their work, we run the risk of ourselves losing accountability for the harm that our engagement with it might be doing. This is extra true if the author is still alive and kicking and being an asshole.

For example, if I say that I am separating JK Rowling from the HP franchise so that I can continue to purchase the books, watch the adaptations, visit Universal Studios, play the video games, and so forth, I am engaging with the text in a way that actively harms people via the capitalist structure that we all exist within. That is to say, when I spend money of HP, that money goes in part to the author, who uses it to fund anti-trans legal advocacy groups (among other hateful things). Likewise, purchases of Neil Gaiman books are now funding his obnoxious PR machine and his team of lawyers working to discredit the victims of his abuse. So if we are interested in not ourselves doing harm in the world, we cannot separate the art from the artist completely.

So what, then, can we do?

Well, for one thing, we can recognize and accept that there is no easy answer. Truly the only way forward is to embrace the messiness. If that sounds uncomfortable, it is. But take what critic and columnist Jenny Hamilton had to say in a fantastic BlueSky thread—she made a strong case for something we rarely see: the idea that there is actual benefit to grappling with this kind of dichotomy.

Life is messy. People are complicated. We can love something and also acknowledge that its creator has done or continues to do harm. The important part here is that the harm is “now our moral duty to name.” If we want to live in a world where everyone is safe and everyone is valued, this piece can’t be left behind. It’s why we can’t just blithely take a scalpel to the art and the artist and slice them apart.

But acknowledging that we can’t get away from the author is hard, y’all. Our connection to a book (or other piece of media) can feel like a part of our very identity. It therefore goes beyond betrayal when the author turns out to be monstrous—it can feel like a part of ourselves is monstrous too, since we identified so strongly with their work.

Crucially, having loved something created by a problematic artist is not a moral failing in ourselves. And here is Jenny Hamilton again:

Please, please resist the urge to beat yourself up by feeling like you were in some way complicit in the badness of the author because you were a fan of their work. This is not true: none of us need to hold any kind of shame for the things that we love and that were meaningful to us. At the same time, all of us need to make careful choices about moving forward in relationship with these creators and their works.

This does not necessarily mean jettisoning a text we love from our lives. There are lots of ways in which one might continue to engage with a beloved text in the wake of upsetting revelations about its author. Fanfiction and fanworks have a long history of being transformative, of taking texts and queering them in all sorts of ways, of making space for things that readers want and need without giving a damn about the author’s opinions. Taking the power away from the author by creating transformational works is valid and healing.

You can also lean in to the paradox of bad people/beloved works by taking things apart. The podcast Witch, Please chose to grapple with JK Rowling by doing deep dives into the HP books, applying critical theory and close reading. The Buffering the Vampire Slayer: Once More with Spoilers podcast does a similar thing with Buffy. Co-host Kristen Russo demonstrated her own willingness to sit in the cognitive dissonance in episode one:

If that still makes you uncomfortable, buckle up and consider what author Ursula Vernon astutely pointed out in her own BlueSky post:

This piece of insight is a bit of a gut punch, but it does ring true. The ability to manipulate words so that they evoke a feeling in someone else is a skill that can be used for good or for evil.

Finally, it is important to remember that when we pour our whole selves into love of a book or a show or any kind of beloved creation, the capacity for that love and the creativity it inspired already existed within us. Something about that text resonated with us, but it is not only about the text. The joy, emotion, inspiration, transformation—those parts were in you, waiting to be ignited. You do not have to leave those behind, even if your relationship to the text has changed.

Actor Wil Wheaton wrote a thoughtful response to fans who were rocked by the revelations about Joss Whedon and the abuse that the actors on Buffy the Vampire Slayer endured while working on the show. He wrote,

And so in a roundabout way we are back to the separation of the art and the artist, I suppose. But I would argue that this is something different than separation. This is about claiming something—our own capacity, perhaps, both for love and for finding a voice to say “this is not okay with me.”

Rather than cutting off the author, it is more useful, more honest, and full of far more potential to allow ourselves to have found meaning in something created by a flawed human being, to commit to going forward in ways that do not replicate or enable harm, to resist putting people on pedestals, and to work towards a deeper and more nuanced understanding of ourselves and others, one that can include cognitive dissonance and embrace paradox.

There is no universe in which this has a downside. It is natural and good to grieve the loss of something we thought was real, something that may have even felt foundational to our sense of self. But more awareness is never bad, even if it feels destabilizing at first.

And so I will leave you with a line from Ruth Allen, the author of Weathering:

• To read Jenny Hamilton’s insightful Bluesky thread in full, go here. You can also find her excellent takes and reviews on her website Reading the End and in Reactor Magazine.
  

• Charlie Jane Anders on J.K. Rowling and Separating the Art From the Artist
  

• Interview with Wil Wheaton: How to Separate Art from Problematic Artists
  

• Witch, Please podcast
  For more critical theory about the author as a construct (as opposed to a person); the author as a celebrity; and the complex relationships between authors, fans, and media, check out:
  Witch, Please: The Author
  Witch, Please: Celebrity Studies
  Witch, Please: Fan Studies Revisited
  

• Buffering the Vampire Slayer: Once More with Spoilers podcast
  

• Ruth Allen via The Marginalian: Rupture Precedes Revolution