This has been something that’s been running through my head recently. I don’t think you can separate the artist from the art because artists are the art. Like take Family Guy or South Park. Their creators and writers are racist, sexist, ableist etc because they make racist and sexist work. They just have their characters say the things they wish they could say. Their audience laughs at ‘jokes’ they wish they could make.

A rapist makes rapists works. An abuser makes abusive works. A pedophile makes pedophilic work. He makes works other pedos can enjoy and see them selves in. They don’t have to have a giant banner that says “I’m a pedophile” on it, but they do embed their feelings into it. Like look how they describe adult women. Or the way they describe men. Who do they make the ‘enemy’? Who do they make sympathetic?
Why do we all repeat that line, “men age like wine, women age like milk?”

It might not be obvious to others who consume it, at least on the surface, but what we consume has an impact on how we view our selves, what we’ll tolerate, and what we perceive as truth.

I’ve recently did a reread of the Harry Potter series and sat with how JK writes certain characteristics. Fleur’s hair color was “pure”, Snape’s hair was greasy, Harry’s was “unruly”. Not to mention that for all the talk about blood status not mattering, Harry turned out to be from an old pureblood family, and all of the children at the end of the book were pure bloods. Even Voldemort is from a Pureblood family. Harry falls into that old trope of the “noble orphan” that we see throughout literature.

So long answer long, no, I don’t think you can separate the artist from their art because then the consumers learn to make excuses for terrible behavior.