Elia Kazan...Genius or Lowlife?

[daniwong]

Originally posted by Elspode
Excellent parallel, Dave, because Frau Reifenstahl is widely regarded as a genius filmmaker as well.

This is the sort of thing I was hoping to examine in this thread. After all, Kazan made some very important films about ethical and moral issues ("Gentlemen's Agreement", about prejudice against Jews, for one), and was known to have certain high ethical standards. That's what makes him such a paradoxical example...does the good he did by enlightening the masses about various societal issues outweight the harm that was done by his implication of his former fellow Communist Party members in the House proeceedings of 1952? Do we tend to overlook people's shortcomings and screwups because we find them to be appealing, talented, attractive? Is that right if we do so?

Oh goodness. Started thinking about this. I love art and films and music - but then thinking what if my favorite artist/director/musician hated asians? (I'm 1/2 chinese) I don't know that I could be militant and either just take art for art or just not like it because of someone's personal politics. I'm in between. God thats a hard question. Dangit - now I'm gonna be thinking of this all day. Thanks.