Should I feel bad for listening to cancelled artists?

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The number of artists being “cancelled” seems to be growing every day. But is it ok to continue to enjoy the art they made even if they’re awful people? Today on The Bunker, Rafael Behr sits down with philosophy professor Mary Beth Willard, author of Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists, to explore whether we can truly separate the art from the artist, uncover the real power of cancelling an artist, and ask: how do these choices shape the future of art and accountability? • Buy Why It’s OK To Enjoy Immoral Artists through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund The Bunker by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/bunker for £100 sponsored credit. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Rafael Behr. Producer: Liam Tait. Audio editors: Tom Taylor and Simon Williams. Managing editor: Jacob Jarvis. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Instagram | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We run adverts on our podcast so we can pay our team and our freelancers,
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0:16.4	What kind of weekend are you in the mood for?
0:19.2	Well, with Disney Plus, anything is possible.
0:22.1	Whether that be two days of twists and turns with only murders in the building,
0:26.7	drama and fine dining with The Bear,
0:29.3	or a journey back to feudal Japan with Shogun.
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0:39.6	Learn more at Disneyplus.com.
0:53.3	Welcome to The Bunker. You'll need to know for news and politics.
0:56.7	I'm Raphael Bear.
0:59.0	Now it hardly counts as news that great actors can be unpleasant and our favourite rock
1:03.2	stars once behaved badly.
1:05.2	The devil has the best tunes famously.
1:07.5	And we'd get pretty bored only listening to music or reading books by people of outstanding
1:11.6	moral virtue, assuming we could even define what that looks like. But we also live in a consumer
1:16.5	society, where our choices in the market can be taken as expressions of who we are. And maybe we don't
	...

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