A review by oatmilktea
Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People? by Claire Dederer

challenging hopeful informative reflective

4.0

As a fan of many of Neil Gaiman’s works, I came across this book at the right time. 

Dederer made many good points. I liked the visual of the stain, especially when she added the dynamic of parasocial relationships: 

“This dynamic makes the stain more destructive—the more closely we are tied to the artist, the more we draw our identity from them and their art, the more collapsed the distance between us and them, the more likely we are to lose some piece of ourselves when the stain starts to spread.” (56)
 
With that said, her line of argument towards the end concerning consumption under capitalism felt like an easy way out of the conundrum. I agree that there is no truly ethical consumption under capitalism but that doesn’t mean consumer choice doesn’t matter at all. With our choices, we set signals, whether we show the demand for, let’s say, sustainable products, or a certain cultural phenomenon. I believe that if our goal is to make an artist irrelevant, we have to make their art irrelevant too. My go-to-example is Harry Potter. As long as people go to HP theme parks and buy HP merch and talk about the new HBO production, JKR will stay relevant, and with her, her bigotry. 

(On that note, I’m glad Dederer mentions Rowling, but her “mask off” moment was in 2019, not 2021, and she has said much more hateful things than what Dederer quotes. Later though, when talking about Valerie Solanas, Dederer makes a fantastic point about radical feminism that applies to Rowling as well: “[Solanas] sacrifices a true vision of liberation on the altar of gender esentialism.”) 

All in all, this book offered wisdom and food for thought, and it helped me navigate the ambiguous waters of loving a “monster’s” art a little better than before. 
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