Art created by a twisted mind cannot be trusted

The argument

People who commit sexual abuse think and perceive life in a twisted manner. To believe that it is acceptable to sexually abuse a coworker takes a particular kind of personality and outlook — one in which another person's refusal does not register as something that settles the matter. That outlook is not confined to the moment of the offence; it is how such a person sees the world generally. Where it comes from matters to the argument. Just as serial killers often became who they are through conditioning and abuse when they were young, sexual abusers frequently have past experiences that shaped them. The point of the comparison is that the outlook is deep-seated rather than situational — formed early, and running through the whole of a person's perception rather than sitting in one compartment of it. That is why the art cannot be separated from its maker. When such a person expresses themselves through their work, it will inevitably contain traces of this outlook on life, because art is made out of how its creator sees things and there is no other source for it to draw on. The traces need not be explicit, and they are most consequential when they are not: an assumption about what people owe each other, carried in how a story is told, works on the viewer without ever being stated. Those traces then rub off on the audience. This matters most because so many consumers are young children, who are more susceptible to conditioning and inclined to believe what films tell them about how people behave. A child has no independent standard against which to measure what is being shown. On this view that makes such work a dangerous product to consume, whatever its artistic merit.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is quite unlikely that simply because someone watches a movie by Harvey Weinstein, they will gain a sudden urge to sexually abuse their coworkers. His most famous movies, from Shakespeare in Love to The King’s Speech, have almost nothing to do with sexual abuse and coworkers, so it is unclear exactly where consumers will gain the wrong message from. Additionally, most people simply watch movies and consume art passively, not obsessively pour over every single message that is being told to them and internalize everything. Simply because an artist isn’t being boycotted also doesn’t mean that the artist will just be loved and accepted. Consumers can watch Weinstein’s movies while acknowledging the fact that he is a sexual abuser, and they can tell their children that as well.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Most art produced by sexual abusers aren't even related to sexual abuse [Rejecting P2] Parents can simply tell their child about the director before they watch the movie