Art Versus Artist Part Many

The copyright status of the works of H.P. Lovecraft turns out to be more complicated than you might imagine. Lovecraft was divorced and had no children; the estate passed to an aunt upon his death, who followed his expressed wishes—though they weren’t in his will—and passed executorship of his literary works to his friend R. H. Barlow. Who then killed himself, apparently because he was afraid his homosexuality would be revealed, having already passed the rights to a man named August Derleth. It’s actually quite the rabbit hole. Also it turns out he may have been modifying his views about race later in life, which to be fair had always been more about class anyway. Either way, you can cheerfully buy that officially licensed Cthulhu merchandise without knowingly giving money to a racist.

That has, in recent years, become my dividing line. It’s more complicated with movies, especially given how many other people are involved in movies, but if something is strongly tied to one specific person, I consider the facts of that one specific person. Will harm be caused by giving that one person money? Will that one person see my association with the works as support for the person or cause? Will engaging with the work mean that the person gets more work or attention or just fat sacks of cash money? Because if it will, the work doesn’t need my engagement.

My joke for years has been that, the day Tom Cruise dies, I am watching the hell out of Far and Away. I love that movie. It’s silly as hell. The history is deeply sketchy. And apparently while Nicole Kidman developed a good Irish accent for it, she had to rerecord her lines. She had by that point lost her accent. (Her character should’ve had an English one anyway, being the daughter of landlords and all.) Various of the other actors don’t even have that excuse. I love it anyway, because it’s silly. But I haven’t seen it in literal decades, because I do not watch Tom Cruise movies.

Will my one pair of eyes influence how much money Tom Cruise is given for Untitled Tom Cruise/Space X Project? Well, I haven’t heard much about that one, so maybe the intense hatred for Elon Musk has put that one on hold. But that’s just it, isn’t it? So many people hate Elon Musk so much that it’s changing the world. Tesla stock has been plummeting. The resale value of the cars likewise. They put a bunch of women on a Jeff Bezos-run space program to make us hate billionaires less, and it seems to have made people hate space more. Which I have to tell you is the wrong reaction; fund NASA instead, kids.

But Mission Impossible 8 comes out later this month. I’ve heard, rightly, a ton of backlash against John Lithgow for signing on to the upcoming Harry Potter series. Nick Frost is getting some, too. Consensus holds that the kids in it are trying to break into the industry, which is hard, and it’s hard to blame them. But adults with established careers are choosing to be in a series that funds the vicious treatment of trans people in the UK. That’s not okay. They should all know better, and we’re firm on this. On the other hand, where’s the complaints against Angela Bassett or Hayley Atwell? Hell, Janet McTeer is in both the Harry Potter show and the Mission Impossible movies.

Wait—is it that people don’t care about how toxic Scientology is because the people it hurts most are the mentally ill? Is that it? I’m glad we care about trans people enough to really work to sink JK Rowling and anyone who associates with her. We should. Trans rights are human rights. I’m also on board to hate anyone who goes after a specific ethnic or religious group. We can sink the careers of all kinds of bigots. Can and should. But bigotry against the mentally ill should sink careers, too.