I recently came across a thoughtful and challenging essay entitled “Slippery-slopism and False Gods” by Paul Lucas. I will summarize his thinking in order to make my own comments, but I am unlikely to do him justice, so I invite you to read his own words.
The case he makes is that it is morally wrong to consume the art of morally depraved artists both because this gives the artist further financial support to practice his depravity, and because that depravity is almost certainly injected, perhaps in a subtle fashion, into the artist’s work.
That is an extremely brief summary; if you are inclined to dismiss that out of hand, I again urge you to read the original.
Lucas makes his case well, using Roman Polanski as a concrete example. Polanski committed a variety of vile acts, including drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl, before he escaped justice. He also regularly got standing ovations and spirited defenses from Hollywood types—the same Hollywood types who would later, hypocritically, throw Harvey Weinstein under the bus when they realized which way the wind was blowing.
Lucas argues that defending the art of a wicked artist leads inevitably to defending the wickedness of the artist himself, hence the “slippery-slopism” in the title of his essay.
Continue reading “Tropical Pedo Beams, or, The Danger of Roman Polanski”