Should We Separate the Artist From the Art?

Kenny Sun from Boston, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The recent controversial actions and words of famous rapper Kanye West should have made his music less popular, but it is still just as popular, which brings up the question of whether we should separate artists from their art.

Artist Kanye West, now known as Ye, flooded recent headlines for wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt in a Yeezy fashion show. The Southern Poverty Law Center said the term is associated with a neo-Nazi group with that same name that was founded as “a racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter” that described itself as “dedicated to promotion of the white race and taking positive action as a united voice against issues facing our race.”

Fans are having mixed reactions to his recent controversies because they appreciate West for his music.

“[I like] his beat, flow, and catchy songs. Not only that, but [he] is very versatile, having songs to match any mood,” sophomore Adrian Metadio said. “I don’t defend Kanye [but] I like his music, not so much his character as of now.”

And that leads to the question, should we still support the works of artists described as problematic? In Metadio’s case, it really depends.

“I wouldn’t say I support cancel culture, as I believe people can change,” he added. “However, this really depends on certain factors such as what they were controversial for and when.”

“I don’t like Kanye West as a person,” sophomore Javier Cintron said. “[But] I believe people can still listen to his music despite Kanye’s controversial antics. His art is undeniably great, and this is a case where we have to separate the art from the artist.”

Kanye is not the only controversial celebrity this year. Another celebrity that received backlash for their actions was Will Smith.

Will Smith is one of the most awarded and beloved actors of all time, with his most recent awards for his role in “King Richard”, which won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, finally making him an Oscar-winning actor.

The same night Will Smith won his first Oscar, prior to accepting his own award, he walked onstage to slap actor and comedian Chris Rock after he had joked about his wife’s hairstyle, who had been suffering from alopecia areata which causes hair loss. His actions ruined the whole mood of the night and he refused to leave the event when he was asked to.

Even though Will Smith should have been canceled and criticized by the majority of the public, most of the public just made a joke about the whole situation. They also mostly still support him and enjoy his content. If he were anyone else, he would have been instantly canceled.

"Will Smith is too big to cancel, even after committing assault on live television in front of tens of millions of people,” the CEO of crisis PR agency Red Banyan, Evan Nierman, said in an interview with Newsweek. "Already, he has been given special treatment because of his A-list celebrity status including being allowed to stay at the awards show despite his violent outburst."

Even though Will Smith broke the rules of one of the biggest award shows of the year in front of millions of people, he is still too big to be canceled. People do not want to cancel him since many see him as one of their childhood heroes, which is caused by the nostalgia from watching “The Fresh Prince of Bell Air”. However, they should criticize him as a person regardless of whether many still see him as their favorite character in their favorite tv show or movie.

“For Smith fans, it seems that if Will is canceled, then everyone else is too,” senior contributor Dani Di Placido wrote in an article for Forbes.

Di Placido wrote this article because various celebrities started to criticize Will Smith’s actions during the Academy Awards, but they were met with backlash from Will Smith’s fans. An example of this is Zoe Kravitz making a post about her Oscars outfit and calling out Will Smith in the captions. Instantly after she made the post, some weird quotes resurfaced where she made inappropriate comments about Jaiden Smith, Will Smith's son. She was not the only celebrity to get attacked by Will Smith fans. Some others included Jim Carrey, Hailey Bieber, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

This year has been a struggle for these two celebrities, but even though the public criticized them as people, their fans still support their art. Which brings up the question, at what point do we separate an artist as a person from the art they make and the characters they play?