Nevyn, on 11 March 2019 - 04:49 PM, said:
I just don't go in for the notion of pressure on others to boycott as if anyone who still consumed the art is compounding the alleged crime.
Well, just as each person has their personal line on their own consumption, it's only right that they have a personal line for general complicity too, isn't it? Why should it be otherwise? Sure, expect people to recognize that listening to "Ignition Remix" that you paid for long ago on itunes is a different act than playing R Kelly in your DJ set, or buying R. Kelly concert tickets. And all are different acts than a Hollywood firm putting an R Kelly song on a movie soundtrack, or in an advertisement. But in the end, if you're going to do any of those things, you have to accept that people are going to react accordingly to any and all of them depending on their lines. Hopefully -- and almost certainly likely -- an average person will react to "I know what he did, but this song got me through a really tough time in life and I can't part with it" differently than "Yah I know, and I don't care, I'm getting backstage passes." But you can't domineer people's reactions to your behavior, regardless.
I would also say, regarding pressure, that the reason one may feel so much pressure to boycott scumbag artists' work so keenly is because it's novel. The pressure to ignore that scumbags' indiscretions and abuses, to let em slide, even to recognize it but separate art from the artists, etc. -- whatever you may think of those notions -- is a constant pressure that is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 'boycott them' side, moderate and hardliner both. It's just so ubiquitous that we're used to it. It's basically a part of us like mercury in tuna.