The Morality of the Artist and the Art
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Leaving Neverland”, a two-part TV documentary broadcast this week, details child sex abuse claims against Michael Jackson. The renewed allegations have prompted a debate about whether we should stop listening to his music. Some believe a boycott takes an important moral stand against the late singer’s alleged crimes. To pay any such artist the compliment of our appreciation, they say, is to undermine the victims. Others think the moral character of the artist has no bearing on the worth of the art. In his essay ‘The Death of the Author’, the French literary critic Roland Barthes argues that a book and its creator are entirely unrelated. Is he right? Does a work of art have intrinsic moral value? Or should we reappraise certain works in light of the questionable behaviour and beliefs of the cultural figures that created them? Charles Dickens, who has a worldwide reputation as a compassionate moralist, was also (according to recently-unearthed letters) a ruthless husband who tried to have his wife locked up in a lunatic asylum because "she had outgrown his liking.” Should we judge any public figures (now or in the past) by their private lives and prejudices, or should we rate them instead on their competence and achievements?
Producer: Dan Tierney
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.7 | Good evening. Michael Jackson was perhaps a shallow talent on which to focus a deep debate about the morality of art. |
| 0:11.0 | Michael Angelo's work was sublime and he was pretty strange. |
| 0:14.9 | Dickens was English literature's compassionate moralist, yet we now know he tried to push his wife into a lunatic asylum to get off with a younger woman. |
| 0:22.5 | But nobody's making documentaries about them this week, and nobody's calling for their records to be banned, |
| 0:28.4 | so we're stuck with him. Jacko was certainly popular, as well as nippy on his feet. |
| 0:32.7 | Nearly a decade after his death, Radio 2 devoted a whole day to his music on what would have been his 60th birthday. |
| 0:38.8 | This week, though, a television documentary details lurid allegations. |
| 0:43.6 | He's sexually abused children, and lots of people are saying his music shouldn't be played anymore. |
| 0:49.5 | Their view is that art is the creature of the artist and should be judged in the context of what we know about his |
| 0:54.9 | or her character, actions and beliefs. Others say that art has its own intrinsic moral value |
| 1:01.4 | to be taken on its own merits. A good job too, they say, as many, if not most, great artists, |
| 1:06.9 | were weirdos, if not worse. Should artists be judged by what they did or what they were like? |
| 1:12.5 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:13.5 | Our panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times, |
| 1:15.8 | Claire Fox from the Academy of Ideas, |
| 1:18.0 | Anne McElvoy, senior editor of The Economist, |
| 1:20.5 | and Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive at the RSA. |
| 1:24.1 | Claire Fox, I won't ask you if you're a Jacko fan, |
| 1:27.3 | but are his records, if you've got lots of them, on their way to the dustbin? |
| 1:31.0 | No, it's not that I'm a fan of his, |
| 1:33.7 | but I suppose if I were to take the same stance, |
... |
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