When Lata Mangeshkar passed away just over a week ago, two of the first five thoughts that came to mind included a dreamlike strain of her singing ‘Hum Ko Hum Hi Se Chura Lo’, and the fact that maybe she was bigoted and threw a bit of weight behind the Indian right wing, appreciating the very damaging Hindutva sentiment that affects minorities across the border. Like Lata, you could be the sweetest soul with the sweetest voice and the gift to hold and command an audience that spans continents and generations, but one black mark against the pristine record of your artistic history can and will lose you marks.

When we speak about separating the art from the artist, it isn’t the ‘cancel culture’ we speak of. You could cancel the person sitting to your left at work for applying moisturizer at their desk instead of at home. We could cancel that one elderly, scholarly relative who just thinks the establishment has a lot of good ideas. But the art and the artist who prepares it is a separate debate.

Separating art from its creator is choosing to see how that artist, with this work, fit into that time, and is relevant now to the influence it generated.

British filmmaker Mobeen Azhar, who has reported on and documented everything from Pakistan’s gay culture, to understanding why a young person might want to work with the Taliban, is flexible when considering art and artist as separate entities.

“In the social media space, I think we’re more and more tuned into making judgements about art based on the perceived values of the creator. If that’s your stance then so be it, but I think we should all be prepared for disappointment as some really great art has been created by some very shitty people,” says Azhar.

We could, for example, as an Urdu-speaking nation, revere the early Urdu literary masters: Mumtaz Mufti, Ahmed Bashir, Ibne Insha. We could revere the work they produced so much that we might choose to ignore that they were actually exactly the kind of boy who gets canceled by your girlfriends in this era. If you are so inclined, casually read through Mufti’s essays on his peers in Aur Aukhey Log, and find yourself just slightly being alarmed/scandalized by the cavalier attitude towards their long-suffering wives and children, as they pursued their singular goals and women who challenged their passions.

Here, we’re ready to give a pass for personal life and lifestyle, and take a humility check before casting stones and aspersions. But what of broader philosophical and political ideologies that don’t just affect a person and their family, but whole communities and movements spread around the globe?

Ahmer Naqvi, freelance writer, dives deep into what art might mean to the individual, and why taking that into consideration may be important.

“Whenever you create something as a creator, how people choose to interpret it and interact [with] it, and what they take away from it is out of your hands. People can choose to interpret a work of art in exactly the opposite way that was intended to and there’s nothing really that can be done about that,” he says.

What Naqvi gives us here is leeway, a little flexibility, to continue admiring our heroes and favorites unfettered by guilt.

“Any opinion expressed about work of art – and when I say work of art, I’m using that very broadly - the opinion reveals a lot more about yourself than it does about that work on its own,” he furthers. “What I’m getting at is that there is no stable, objective meaning of any creative work. This is something that the artist intends, perhaps, and then there is something that the person consuming it takes away from it and it’s not necessary that there will be some sort of overlap.”

Across history, cultural figures that have been glorified, leave a bloody, at best morally grey trail in their wake. As we grapple with more insight and awareness about issues that were usually never spoken about even two decades ago, we find that once we really lean into the process of learning, we must pick a side.

If you are able to draw very clean lines between art, artist, and personal ideology, then congratulations, you are home free. In fact, since just the very act of living incites so much guilt on the daily for most people, one thing less to poke away at our conscience is welcomed with open arms.

But he presents the other side just as fairly. Naqvi argues that when we are moved by a work of art, we will develop “affection” for the creator.

“There’s a creative work that kind of affects you spiritually, emotionally, takes you to different places,” he says, “[it] inspires you and comforts you, and so when it does so much for you, you feel gratitude.”

This gratitude, of course transfers to anything tangible associated with the work, at the helm of which sits the artist.

How many of us have grown up and grown older reading the Harry Potter series? So many of us have followed the books, the films, the sequels and prequels and side literature, and still many more have felt less marginalized, more seen because of the Potter universe. But perhaps every single fan has been supremely turned off or at least taken aback by J.K.Rowling’s opinion on the trans community.

The argument here, of course would be that as borders between identities and affinities blur, we too should remain fluid, and if not fluid, at least be as tolerant and accepting as possible. This, for someone as prolific as Rowling, would mean choosing their words about certain communities wisely, so as not to seemingly endorse those opposing them.

Azhar, a self-proclaimed, “die-hard Prince fan”, who has both made a film about the icon and written a book about him, says that though he, “often imagines Prince as other-worldly, [he] must acknowledge that he was often difficult and even antagonistic. I know this because I’ve interviewed so many people that worked with him and loved him and it’s evident that Prince had real issues with control.

“Prince’s music is so often ethereal, beautiful and even prophetic. Prince, however, was just a man. Knowing that Prince had good and bad days doesn’t change how I feel about his work.”

If we are to look at Pakistan’s entertainment and pop culture icons, we will often find that some of the most loved figures within these industries have been severely problematic. Whether it was fooling around with underage girls, or profiting from specific political/religious ideologies, a lot of Pakistani stars current and past, might not fit within the updated frame of what a lot of audiences would find morally acceptable now.

More recently, Pakistan has been divided over having to view the art in light of its artist. Whether you believe one or the other, chances are, either Meesha Shafi’s, or Ali Zafar’s music has been tainted for you forever.

As Azhar puts it, the great divide between what is okay and what is not is “compassion”.

“I have taken Michael Jackson off my party playlists because I don’t want to trivialize the suffering of survivors of child sexual abuse. I can dance to ‘Off the Wall’ in my own time. I don’t need to play Michael to a room full of guests because it would be insensitive.

“Impact is the key thing for me. As with everything in life a little consideration can make a lot of difference,” is the bottom line for him in this matter.

Ahmer Naqvi, however does add one more layer to the debate. The insight perhaps comes from a place of experience: Naqvi, along with five colleagues, had resigned from passion-project Patari following a harassment investigation against the then-CEO, Khalid Bajwa.

(Read story here) 

If we do continue to engage with a work of art, be it a song, a book, a play, or font (Mobeen Azhar uses the example of Gill Sans: using it doesn’t harm anyone, but Eric Gill remains a “monster”), we are, at the end of the day, profiting the artist, not the work of art.

“If someone is cancelled, or is revealed to have done something terrible and then you choose to stream their music, or attend their show, or watch their film, then you’re also contributing to their bottom line; you’re literally patronizing them or supporting them through your money,” says Naqvi. “And then that becomes a moral dilemma as well because, you know, even if you want to separate the art from the artist, the money goes to the artist, not some abstract entity.”

As both Naqvi and Azhar point out in their ways, there isn’t one correct opinion, or one absolute way to address the question of choosing to patronize art produced by a terrible human being.

Across history, cultural figures that have been glorified, leave a bloody, at best morally grey trail in their wake. As we grapple with more insight and awareness about issues that were usually never spoken about even two decades ago, we find that once we really lean into the process of learning, we must pick a side. Perhaps you can excuse someone for uninformed actions, but acts of evil, conducted at a large scale, or a singular act that may derail lives and careers, have to be considered with a lot more context and compassion.