Other than the aforementioned Spacey, here is a short, off the top of my head list of men in the film industry who have committed sexual misconduct: Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Woody Allan, Lewis C. K., Jeffrey Tambor and Morgan Freeman. (That's a lot of names I can think of without trying to think or research.) These names show up in the credits of a lot of good movies and TV. #Timesup for watching them? (I feel bad about that line, but it stays in.) Do I need to throw out my DVD of The Shawshank Redemption? I say no. I think the art speaks for itself separate from the artist, but the art can be tainted and changed by the artist.
The obvious first step with these men is to throw them out of Hollywood and that seems to be happening. I don't think I would watch a new movie staring Spacey, but I am watching the new season of Arrested Development where Tambor plays a role in the ensemble. (So, I guess I'm a hypocrite.) I don't think Arrested Development is hurt by Tambor's presence because he has a relatively small part in a large cast and he's playing basically the same character he does in real life.
L. A. Confidential is a great movie and Kevin Spacey was good in it. It may not have been his best work, but he also didn't have a very large or well-developed part. The accusations against Spacey do affect how I see the film. At the time it came out, his character's pursuit of justice for a homosexual (who wasn't actually homosexual) murder victim was supportive of gay rights. But, now it is a reminder of how Spacey attempted to use coming out of the closet as an excuse and distraction to try to get away with his crimes. Mostly, I found myself trying to find hints of the monster behind the mask. But, Spacey had a knack for playing slimy characters who weren't quite what they seemed, so his presence always had me searching for a twist.
To illustrate why I think these films are not irreparably ruined let's jump over to another form of entertainment: sports.
Joe Paterno won a lot of football games...or did he? As a quick refresher, Joe Paterno was the head coach at Penn State and he hired Jerry Sandusky as his defensive coordinator. During this time Jerry and Joe were winning football games, Jerry was also making the time to rape a lot of children. Paterno was at a minimum aware of Sandusky's crimes, if not actively protecting him. This makes the pair of them the worst sort of awful examples of humanity. Because he was such a dreadful person, the NCAA decided that Paterno's wins didn't count. (Eventually, a judge forced the NCAA to give the wins back because this decision had financial ramifications for people unrelated to the crimes or the cover-ups.) Penn State was right to smash Joe Paterno's statue, but the NCAA was wrong to erase his wins. The fact is the record books are full of the feats of rapists, drug addicts and some, I'm sure, are good people. There is no asterisk next to Roberto Clemente's 3000 hits saying "And he was a great guy." Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy while leading the league in rape allegations. Oscar Pistorius is the fastest murder on no legs. If the NFL kicked out all the domestic abusers, could they even make one full team? The record book is not a place for moralizing. It exists to tell history. What is on film is our record book. What happens off screen is backstory for the commentary tracks.
Hey, this is random. But what do you think of this painting?
In L. A. Confidential, Exley is introduced as the annoyingly and unerringly ethical cop. And yet, by the end of the film, he's shot a fleeing suspect, fucked a hooker, shot another suspect, with his hands up, in the back, and agreed to hide the extent of police corruption in order to get a promotion. The first act could be considered a heat-of-the-moment forgivable transgression and the last two were arguably necessary in the cause of justice and cleaning up the police force. (The fucking the hooker bit was not a crime, an obvious trap and incredibly stupid.) Do these dips into the moral grey grounds make him a villain? I don't think so. Do they make it harder to call him a hero? Absolutely. Should they build him a statue? No. If they built, him a statue to keep African-Americans in their place in the 1960s, should we tear them down today? No, I think that would be a reminder of a point in our history were we decide to build such a statue. (Needless shoehorn.) In my opinion, his ethically questionable choices do not wipe out the good he did. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Acknowledging that Hitler made some decent paintings does not mean you approve of everything he did.
Perhaps you draw these ethical lines in slightly different places. That's ok. There are no definitive answers to these questions. As long as we can agree that all of the non-fictional characters mentioned are dreadful people, who should not hold elected office, we can chose to watch or ignore their work as we see fit. (And have a friendly argument about the ethics of the fictional characters.)
To play us out, welcome Micheal Jackson singing about how he should really cut back on the pedophilia.
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