The monsters. Separate the work from the artist? by Claire Dederer (Ed. Grasset, 346 p.), finally a book that dares to ask this question! The global #MeToo movement, by freeing the voices of women victims of rape or sexual assault, has focused on the villains, either the real or potential aggressors, and the victims, real or potential. But the others? The lovers of actors, directors, singers who enchanted us, entertained us, made us dream, laugh, cry, before suddenly falling, falling, falling away, and transforming into villains, even monsters unworthy of our admiration?
What to do when you've loved watching Woody Allen films all your life? How to react when we have always considered Depardieu as the greatest living French actor and Polanski a genius of the 7th Art? Must we now look secretly, with a broken heart, The last metro, The Purple Rose of Cairo or Rosemary’s Baby?
For a long time the question only arose for Bertrand Cantat – to listen or not The wind will carry us? Now the question arises for an avalanche of artists, on this side or the other of the Atlantic, ranging from Johnny Depp to Jacques Doillon, from Depardieu to Gérard Miller, including Patrick Bruel, Slimane, Marylin Manson, Edouard Baer, Nicolas Bedos, Philippe Caubère, Luc Besson, Lomepal, Jan Fabre, Placido Domingo and now even Gérard Darmon.
Separate the man from the artist?
How can you feel disgust and admiration at the same time? How do you love a work while being deeply angry with its creator? Should we try in vain to separate the man from the artist? Claire Dederer puts herself in our place. Easy: there is no one more in love with art and artists than her. The book opens in 2014, while she is researching Roman Polanksi, her favorite director, and finds herself helpless in the face of a paradox: being able, and even wanting, to always watch his films, while being aware of his predatory behavior with Samantha Geimer.
Solution? There isn't any, let's just say it straight away. Claire Dederer does not seek to resolve the ambivalence of the situation with the wave of a magic wand. Despite all the bad things she hears from Woody Allen or Polanski, despite the morally reprehensible behavior, their work continues to attract her, seduce her, touch her. Only option: live with it. Understand that art does not come from nowhere. And admit that there will be stains from now on.
“You can watch the Michael Jackson documentary or not, Leaving Neverland by Dan Reed, which addresses the sexual abuse accusations against the singer, but whatever you choose to do, you will eventually be aware of its contents, you will hear about it. And this information will leave an indelible stain on his work. We don't choose to see this stain, it's just there. We usually say We must separate the work from the artist. I think it's impossible. This indelible stain appears whether we like it or not, like spilling wine on a carpet.
Collective responsibility
It’s then up to everyone to position themselves. And without feeling guilty! “The way you consume art does not make you a good or bad person,” Claire Dederer exonerates us. Who draws a parallel with ecology, denouncing the fact that we rely excessively on the small gestures of consumers – recycling, not using plastic straws – the survival of the planet while climate change is a global problem “ which is the fault and responsibility of governments and corporations.
“Stopping watching Woody Allen films is not going to solve the problem of sexual harassment or assault in the cinema world. Institutional and legal responses are possible. Capitalism makes us believe that it is up to us to solve the problem, on an individual level.”
The Monsters is the first work translated into French by Claire Dederer, born in 1967 in Seattle where she still lives. Journalist, film and literature critic, she has published two other equally personal essays, Poser: My life in twenty-three yoga poses et Love and Trouble – a midlife reckoning. Quivering with humor and humanity, intelligent, courageous, erudite and deeply nuanced, The Monsters is an essential and welcome contribution to the debate.
Because if in recent years, whistleblowers, media and courts have focused a lot on the crime committed by accused artists, Claire Dederer is interested in the link between the public and art. “Being a fan of a cultural figure helps us define ourselves. This is a very intense relationship which is not new: just think of the female admirers of the Beatles.” But the development of social networks, and the media omnipresence of certain artists, has further intensified this relationship.
Victims heard
Claire Dederer remembers that as a teenager, the lives of the artists she admired remained shrouded in mystery. From now on, it is difficult to ignore the private lives of artists. Was it better because you could concentrate on creating art? Or did this confine us to naivety and blindness?
The question of the impact of the MeToo movement implicitly runs through the book. If cultural institutions, from film studios to theaters via museums or publishing houses, are now “aware of the problem”, for Claire Dederer, the real good news is that the lives of women there have changed. “We listen to them, we believe them, we treat their intimate testimony seriously. And that is priceless. » Another immediate legacy: long crowned with a post-romantic glory making him untouchable, the artist is no longer exempt from moral judgment.
Should he therefore be morally irreproachable? “We all have something monstrous within us – no one escapes it,” recalls Claire Dederer. For her, it is not a question of “cancel culture”, of “cancellation”, but of “reconciliation”: because nothing is more precious than our link to artistic creation, and we must do everything to maintain it. Art is vital to many of us, it helps us live. And we cannot do without creators, human as they are.
So, is it still possible to love the films of these “monsters”? We asked personalities from the French-speaking cultural world to answer this question:
Chicca Bergonzi, Director of Promotion, Swiss Cinematheque
“Personally, today I no longer want to listen to Bertrand Cantat, I have a lot of trouble seeing Depardieu in certain roles and The Valseuses is a film that has always been unbearable for me. But I'm not going to deprive myself of seeing a Truffaut because Depardieu plays in it! The subject is highly debated within the film library community. There are no single solutions or points of view. Often, we feel a generation gap. Today, it is out of the question to schedule a Depardieu or Doillon retrospective. Legal proceedings are underway which must be respected. Respect for potential victims is essential.
It is also essential to remember that we are against all types of censorship and that our mission consists of promoting and transmitting our cinematographic heritage, which includes films linked to now controversial artists. These films must be accompanied, contextualized, but not made invisible. Our job is to make people understand that cinema is a living art, which involves human beings with their talent but also their flaws.”
Ariane Moret, director of the Théâtre du Jorat
“Some of my favorite artists have withered lately, that’s for sure. The cult that we have long devoted to the stars, the power that we have long attributed to all-powerful artists, all of this is being called into question, so much the better! There was too much abuse for too long, too much complicit silence too. I was a child when, for example, I discovered the world of Woody Allen, I am forever imbued with it. What I learned as an adult about the man Woody Allen is superimposed on this ancient impregnation and admiration, but does not replace it, even if my gaze is no longer innocent. This is not true in the same way for all “tainted” films. A Polanski with a perverse theme will have its effect redoubled and my gaze will be even more disturbed.
However, I will not deprive myself of seeing films involving actors or directors implicated by MeToo, because it would be detrimental to collectively punish an entire team. “Ethically incorrect” films should be systematically preceded by a warning, spectators would watch them in any case. The recent cancellation of the film The last tango in Paris at the Cinémathèque française following the intervention of Judith Godrèche raises an important question: to what extent are we prepared to accept the notion of “in all circumstances”?
Thierry Jobin, director of the Friborg International Film Festival (FIFF)
“In 1928, Charlie Chaplin was worried by people who wanted to ban his work for moral reasons. Could we today imagine no longer showing Charlot's films? If so, then we should also deprive ourselves of Hitchcock's films, for example, whose behavior with the actresses was deviant to say the least. The history of art is full of similar cases which demonstrate that contemporaries have little influence. Whether for Depardieu or for other fallen names, we can decide to no longer broadcast their films on TV. But it is time that ultimately brings order. Out of the hundreds of films by Gérard Depardieu, to take this example again, there are bad ones, good ones, and there are those that go beyond the star.
The most important thing is not to eradicate them, but for cinema to take advantage of the scandals to “purge” problematic behavior on film sets, too often plagued by sexism and psychological abuse. I worry about the possible confusion between justice and morality: in the United States, Kevin Spacey has been cleared by all the courts he has been through, but continues to be ostracized by the industry. This is a trend that seems dangerous to me.”
Christine Salvadé, head of the RTS Culture unit
“It was simpler before. When the lives of artists were an anecdote. When we allowed ourselves to love a painting for its artistic strength, without having to trash its author. Simpler, but so incomplete. Since I know with what brutality Picasso vampirized his models, I can no longer content myself with looking at the woman crying like a fabulous cubist masterpiece. The behavior of an artist affects his work much more than what anyone is willing to tell us on the university benches. Current awareness is necessary.
But this reversal of value was so rapid that the danger now is that The Young Ladies of Avignon no longer recognized as one of the paintings that opened the way to abstract art. It’s all a question of the pendulum.”
Stéphanie Pahud, writer, lecturer and researcher, University of Lausanne
“When I am offered or when the desire comes to me independently to enjoy a work (book, film, album) now blacklisted for “monstrous contribution”, as I strive to align values and actions and that the reminders of vigilance are loud enough to no longer lazily “close my eyes”, I feel what the philosopher Baptiste Morizot calls the “moral smearing of contradictory empathy”. I then become a “diplomat”: I weigh social, political and ethical arguments, sensory perception and context to decide.
Above all, I am careful not to communicate my verdict, knowing that it risks being interpreted as an ideological-identity symptom and that I cannot conceive of the complexity of such issues being reduced to binary positions.”
