How do we reconcile our admiration for Woody Allen’s films with everything we know about Woody Allen’s conduct? Can we balance the bad behavior of Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso or Roman Polanski with what their art has meant to us in our own lives? When an artist does something most consider unforgivable, can we listen to their music, can we watch their films, can we love the work—even after everything?
Claire Dederer dives headfirst into these and other contradictions in her smart and deeply personal new book, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. Lisa Yun Lee, my comrade and friend for many years and co-host for this episode, joins me in conversation with Claire for a deep dive into the meaning of freedom and the challenges we face in this specific cultural moment.
Featured Poem:
‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
– from As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden
Free Write:
Recount an experience where you worked to love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.
Resources:
- Paris Review: What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?
- Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth, by Pearl Cleage
- The Queer Art of Failure, by Jack Halberstam
- Abolition. Feminism. Now., by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie
- The Feminist and the Sex Offender, by Judith Levine and Erica Meiners
- We Will Not Cancel Us And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, by adrienne maree brown
- Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, by Linda Nochlin
- Dialectics of the Body: Corporeality in the Philosophy of Theodor Adorno, by Lisa Lee
Under the Tree Podcast 