Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” columnist for the New York Times, asks in a blog post, “Can you Hate the Artist but Love the Art?” As his main case study he cites the recently deceased Budd Schulberg, legendary screenwriter and namer of names to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The HUAC testimony of Schulberg, Elia Kazan and others is too complex a subject for me to tackle right now, but I’d like to add one thing to this ongoing, decades-long debate. I believe — no, I know — that it is possible to despise the thuggish anti-communism of HUAC while also despising the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. And I find it annoying that the same people who condemn Schulberg and Kazan as “perfidious” have no problem lionizing artists, like Lillian Hellman and Bertolt Brecht, who were the creepiest of Stalinists. Why no pained arguments about their moral failings? Let’s not weigh these matters of cultural history with our thumb on the scale.
And yes, obviously, you can hate the artist but love the art.
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