When Michael Jackson was accused of pedophilia for the second time, I donated my copies of Thriller and Bad to the Friends of the Library. I removed him from our family playlists and changed the radio stations on the first beat of his songs. I do not watch Roman Polanski's movies and my husband has a firm stand against anything by Woody Allen. When I turned 30 and realized I was the same age as Sylvia Plath was when she abandoned her children, I stopped re-reading her work and started reading Ted Hughes. She was the better poet, but he was the better parent. Child abandonment through suicide is tragic, not artful or romantic. Plath’s crime is not necessarily her suicide, but instead her confessional poetry that dwells in depression, self-loathing, blame, and anger. These are not places that I want to visit anymore, so her art no longer captures me.
Plath as well as her contemporaries Anne Sexton and John Berryman, who all committed suicide, are great examples of how artists aren’t known for their stability. Substance abuse problems, divorce, adultery, spousal abuse, child neglect, mental illness and suicide run rampant in the art community. Unfortunately, the more tragic an artist’s life is the more appealing he or she becomes to the masses. There has been a longstanding belief that good art can only be born out of great tragedy, simply not true. But, are there tragedies so sad and crimes so awful that the artist’s work should not be separated from the artist’s life? Is there a point that you should say, “You are not a good person and I will no longer support your art,” or does art always supersede life?
