Big Shiny Robot: Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling and the fall of beloved creators 

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With more and more of our favorite artists publicly turning into monsters, it's getting difficult to know where the line needs to be drawn in separating the art from the artist. It used to be easy. You didn't have to know anything about an artist or hear about them at all, and could just enjoy art as you encountered it. However, with the age of the internet, social media, tabloids and 24-hour news coverage of celebrity bowel movements (thanks TMZ!), we are much more intimate with details of the private lives of these artists—both in terms of their opinions, and the horrible deeds they may have committed. That means we're asked to draw a moral line between what behavior we're willing to financially support by consuming their art, and what we'll avoid by abstaining from it, no matter how much their art might have meant to us in the past.

The most recent prominent example, of course, is Neil Gaiman. Gaiman has been one of my favorite writers for a long time. He cut his teeth in comics writing the DC Comics series The Sandman and co-wrote, along with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and books like American Gods and Anansi Boys. He wrote Coraline and reimagined The Jungle Book in a cemetery as the wildly popular The Graveyard Book. He's written some of the best episodes of Doctor Who, and he's been an inspirational teacher of writers. More than that, he exhibited a façade of feminism and progressive idealism, with a soft voice that eschewed toxic masculinity. He was a beacon of positivity in a world that wanted to tear itself apart.

Beneath that charming surface, unfortunately, lurked a secret.

Gaiman's been fairly credibly accused of awful behavior—not just an instance or two, but a pattern of behavior of using his status and power to sexually assault women for years. Reading the most recent article—to which he responded, and didn't really deny in any meaningful way—was enough to make my stomach turn.

I don't want to give him more of my money. I can't erase the joy and lessons his work gave me to this point, but I don't have to support him any further.

It's the same line I drew with J.K. Rowling after she came out as a raging transphobe on the internet, continually supporting bigoted, anti-trans causes financially and silencing those who would point it out.

I don't need to contribute another cent to her, since I know she's going to continue to use her money to victimize others with the proceeds.

But what about long-dead artists like Alfred Hitchcock? In the years since his passing, Tippi Hedren has spoken about the abuse she allegedly suffered at his hands. According to Hedren, he ruined her career because she refused his sexual advances. This is definitely something that would force me to rethink supporting new Hitchcock pictures. Or what about the beloved children's author Roald Dahl and his well-documented antisemitism?

For me, I think the line can be drawn where an artist is gone and can neither benefit financially nor further abuse anyone else or propagate harm. My consumption of their art can no longer enable them. My support is immaterial at that point.

Really, there's no such thing as "ethical consumption" under capitalism, and there is likely to be a monster who benefits somewhere on the chain of consumption for just about anything you might buy. And the more expensive that good was to make or process, the more likely that is.

The best thing you can do in any case is to support local artists. Even if a local artist turns out to be horrible, at least the money you spent supporting them stayed in your community.

It seems important to note, though, that the vast majority of artists probably aren't monsters. It's just those like Gaiman and Rowling who give a bad name to those who are on the level. And it's a shame.

It's entirely up to you where you draw the line for yourself. It sucks to think that something into which you invested so much of yourself was created by a monster, and that you might then have to change your relationship with it. I know. But that relationship does change.

There are people who divest themselves entirely. Some folks I know only get Harry Potter merch on Etsy from independent artists, the books from used bookstores, and plan to watch new media from pirated sources. There are people I know who have covered up all related tattoos and treat their formerly-beloved franchises like Voldemort as He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Whatever your line is, just make sure you have one. Mindless consumption of art, news or anything else is how we got ourselves into the current predicament in the world. And the last thing we want to do is dig that grave any deeper.