Damn, and I was just about to get some work done.
You'd be surprised how many people in America are "pro-war." I feel pretty confident when I say that the man who wrote Imagine (which is sung and quoted at nearly every single peace rally) is anathema to people whose world-view requires extreme aggression, belligerence and a near-complete lack of empathy. Not all Lennon fans are peaceniks, but I'd be willing to bet that there aren't too many extreme nationalists who enjoy Lennon's work.
There's a pretty big chunk of humanity that doesn't fit into either the peacenik or the extreme nationalist category though. The sort of people who might or might not support any particular war for various reasons.
It is true, only Meat is Murder is about vegetarianism but, like Lennon, Morrissey is a singer who stands for something. He may not sing about animal rights all that much, but he is an icon of the movement. Besides, we're not talking about someone who eats meat (plenty of Morrissey fans do that), we are talking about someone who supports blood sports.
He is an icon
for the movement, and his vegetarianism no doubt is a very significant and emotionally loaded thing for vegetarians. But they are also largely the only people with strong feelings of any kind about that issue. To most non-vegetarians, the issue of vegetarianism simply isn't emotionally loaded at all, one way or the other.
I agree, it isn't necessary to share an artist's political views to enjoy their work. There is a difference, however, between political differences and moral ones, and I see blood sports as a moral issue.
But again, people who aren't particularly opposed to them almost by definition don't. For most people it's not a difficult divide to bridge, from that direction.
I always think of T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound in cases like this. Great poets, both, but I always hit an emotional road-block when I think of their anti-Semitic tendencies, especially at the time when they were writing, and especially given their brilliance. Honestly, anyone who uses the word Kike has undermined their ability to appeal to me emotionally. Call me reactionary or simplistic, but I cannot get around that. One should be able to separate the artist from the art, but that is a bridge too far.
Well, there
is a limit, I agree with that. Andrej Belyj's
Rossija!, with its hysterical panegyric to the brute force of Russian nationalism, is a case in point for me. Which reminds me that I should get around to checking if there's any chance it might have been ironic.
As for philosophy, that is an entirely different matter: I expect all great philosophers to be mad.
seconded.
I agree, absolutely. I seek out aesthetic experiences that challenge me, and shake-up any comfort that I may have left. The experience of otherness is essential to being a whole, functioning person. This is how we grow.
However, there are some absolute moral lines that I cannot cross, and animal cruelty is one of them. There are few things I find as reprehensible as the exploitation, torture and killing of animals for sport or financial gain. I have friends who have hunted (although none will admit to hunting now), and these are people I'm fond of. However, I cannot participate in any enjoyment of that pastime, no matter how many times I've willingly listened to their passionate arguments.
Okay, so there might have been a problem for you with an artist who wrote lyrics eulogising fox hunting. But it doesn't neccessarily work the same way in the opposite direction.
Again, this isn't politics, this is morality - two entirely different things.
Perhaps not entirely?
Music is the most emotional art form. Literature appeals so strongly to the intellect, and painting and sculpture bridge the divide, but music goes straight to the soul.
If I enjoy a person's music enough, and I bother to learn something about them (which is actually somewhat rare), I'm often pleasantly surprised to find that they are both morally and politically very much in tune (literally, you could say) with my beliefs. This is not to say that I cannot enjoy the work of someone across the political divide, but it just doesn't happen all that often. There is a lack of resonance.
Oh that's because, like most good artists, you're left wing. I'm right wing. To me it happens all the time.
So, again, David Cameron is free to enjoy Morrissey as much as he likes, but to me there is an emotional disconnect between advocating for blood sports and being a fan (not just a casual listener) but a fan of someone whose core moral beliefs run counter to his own.
I'm repeating myself now, but I just don't think a non-vegetarian who'd like to see the re-introduction of fox hunting on the grounds of its deep traditional roots in the english countryside would regard these as even essentially moral issues, and much less as core ones.
On a deeper level, you seem to make the argument that the general spirit permeating a distinctive artist's work carries over into the whole and that as such you tend to encounter opposition if you go into it more than superficially, if your own values are fundamentally different? Maybe. It seems a reasonable assumption, though again the appreciation of otherness would tend to counteract it. But David Cameron probably wasn't fully shaped Tory politician of national significance at age 14, or whenever he discovered the Smiths. When you fall in love with music at that age, it's not something that you easily discard just because you happen to grow up to be something that doesn't fit the demographic profile of that music. And after all, there is no shortage of things to continue to love in the Smiths or Morrissey that are completely beyond any politics or the values connected with it.
cheers
