The death of Nobel Prize-winning author, VS Naipaul, highlighted his genius and controversial politics. Should we scorn the art because of an artist's indiscretions?
Trinidadian-born, British novelist, who penned the wonderful A House For Mr Biswas, died at the weekend after a battle with illness. His birthplace was mentioned a lot in the obituaries is because of his surprising political stance. He believed that India was a slave culture, Africa had no future, Islam was "calamitous" to colonisation and that Indian women wore a bindi to indicate their heads were empty.
The BBC called him a modern philosopher, but these opinions are shared by many retirees the country over. Go into any care home and you'll find the antiquated and backwards opinions of men claiming women shouldn't speak, black people shouldn't live in the neighbourhood and Muslims are terrorists. Brexit showed that this stance is more popular than first thought.
This isn't philosophy, but his talent as a writer can't be denied.
He's not the only one who's had his or her personal life, indiscretions and politics mar their career.
Who can forget the furore and fatwah issued on Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses? The aftershock of Partition still very real in the minds of these two firm friends.
Then there's Kevin Spacey... I know, bear with me on this... He's a talented actor, one of the best, I'd say. He stole 7even from Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, and he was only in it for about 15 minutes at the end! He played the wonderful Kaiser Sozay in cult classic, The Usual Suspects and who can forget the phenomenal Frank Underwood in House of Cards.
I'm not defending him in the slightest, he took advantage of his powerful position to sexually assault a string of men. His career ended overnight (I have an issue with this, as sexual assault, rape and violence against women is not punished as harshly or as quickly - I mean a rapist was still voted into the most powerful seat in the world).
Does this mean we stop watching American Beauty or LA Confidential? Or do we separate that even though Kevin Spacey's action were appalling and it's right he's career has ended with the incredible body of work he's done.
Take, for instance, Eric Gill. He's impressive. Seriously impressive. If you're a Londoner, you're surrounded by him every day. He came up with the typeface Gill Sans, which is used in the London Underground's iconic design. If you've seen the BBC building at Great Portland Street, you would've undoubtedly seen his elegant, art-deco sculptures.
What if I told you he was an unstoppable sex machine in the worst sense - he had sex with his sister, daughters and dog. Despite being a devout Roman Catholic (although given the volume of sex scandals plaguing the Catholic church, we shouldn't be surprised) he still saw the world as "any hole's a goal".
Does this mean we should stop using Perpetua in our documents or TfL should remove all traces of Gill Sans and replace it with Helvetica? Hell, no.
If we started shunning artists because of what they do in their personal lives, there wouldn't be any art left.
We wouldn't read Heidegger because he was a Nazi. We wouldn't enjoy Balthus paintings because of his pedophilic tendencies. We wouldn't even watch Alice in Wonderland because of Lewis Carroll's inappropriate relationship with the real-life Alice.
And those are the things we know about. I'm pretty sure people have been silenced about Jimmy Page's love of underage sex slaves*, David Bowie's love of rent boys* or Frank Sinatra's connection to the mob*.
Also, some people are forgiven, like Michael Jackson's Jesus juice incidents, Chris Brown beating up Rihanna, Quentin Tarantino abusing his leading actress, R Kelly keeping underage girls and Ben Affleck sexually harassing interviewers. Then there's protecting personalities, like Jimmy Savile.
I don't know how I feel about it. In my world, if you hurt someone, you should be punished. If I did those things, I'd be in jail. They're forgiven because of their legend, so shouldn't we enjoy the reason why they've not faced retribution.
On the other hand, when I watch James Franco, I can't help but think about what a creep his is, I now cringe when I watch Louis CK's stand up and I can't bring myself to listen to anything from Lostprophets.
Can anyone claim to live a completely moral life? While Eric Gill had no morals when it came to his family members, he was a fervent critic of fascism. While white supremacist Cecil Rhodes exploited, abused and raped Africa, he also built railways, universities and de Beers. Winston Churchill was a racist, as was Gandhi. The White House, Pyramids and Great Wall were built by slaves. The British Museum (built with the compensation slaver Hans Sloane gained from abolition), Hugo Boss (designed Nazi uniforms), VW (Beetles were commissioned by Hitler), Fanta (invented by the Nazis to fill the Coca-Cola gap during the war), IBM (automated the system to count liquidated Jews), Bayer (developed Zyklon B, used to gas the Jews) and Golden Virginia (the plantations worked by slaves) all have roots in genocide and slavery.
And how many world leaders are corrupt (Trump, Erdogan, Assad, House of Saud, Kim Jong-un, Rouhani, Putin, Jinping, Duarte, Netanyahu, Henry Kissinger and our very own Tony Blair, to mention just a few) and yet we actively voted some them into office.
If we were to shun everything that was immoral, we'd have nothing left. What we can do is change the culture itself, so people don't think white supremacy is acceptable or slavery is "just how it works".
The sad thing is that the world is still run by perverts, murders, racists, misogynists, corruptors, war criminals and shysters. While we may enjoy their artistic and entrepreneurial offerings, we shouldn't forgive them, reward them or abscond them of any wrong-doing.
Bringing this back to copywriting and the art we sell to make corporate fatcats lots of money, I get judged on the quality and value of my work. It's what I have to do to pay the mortgage, buy wine and go on holiday. Even though I'm part of this evil, capitalist system that puts profits before people and the planet, I don't want what I write to be judged against this moral standard.
I don't want to write genius copy that converts 100% of customers, etc. if people are going to look at me and say, "ewwww, but it's for an oil company". Just enjoy the work and fight the good fight by not buying anything, lobbying or joining pressure groups**.
* Allegedly
** I fight the good fight from the inside by pitching green initiatives and getting rid of the staff Nespresso machines.
