Stephen Armstrong dives into Claire Dederer’s new book, Monsters, A Fan’s Dilemma, grappling with the issue of great work by monstrous men
Claire Dederer’s first big problem is Roman Polanski. In the opening chapter of this agonised grapple over her relationship with art and its artist, the Seattle journalist recalls settling down to watch Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown. She could, she explains, feel his greatness. She sets two facts side by side – first, Polanski made Chinatown, often called one of the greatest movies of all time. Second, Polanski drugged and raped thirteen-year-old Samantha Gailey.
Dederer has been wrestling with the problem for some time. In 2017, at the inception of #MeToo, her essay “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” for the Paris Review described rewatching early Woody Allen films in the light of abuse allegations made against him. The thrust of that piece is the thread of the beautifully writhing first half of the book. Doing her best to display her self-doubt at every stage, she revels in Annie Hall and is horrified by Manhattan, in which Allen’s character is dating a schoolgirl.
Reaching out to teachers, experts and her friends, she receives dismissive or incomplete answers. The problem, she realises, is not with the work. It’s with the audience. Via Marxist theory and abused children, she ties herself in knots that somewhat confine her argument – but her process, and her consideration, is essential. Polanski survived the Holocaust, she points out. He raped a girl. Rosemary’s Baby is brilliant. “The real question is this,” she says. “Can we love the art but hate the artist? When I say ‘we’, I mean you.”
So what? While the overthrow of workplace brutality that #MeToo started is finally seeping through organisations like the CBI and Plaid Cymru, in Hollywood the great uncancelling is underway. Johnny Depp is working, Amber Heard is not. Mel Gibson returned after his antisemitic rant. Kevin Spacey is working on two movies this year. It’s hard to make movies from jail, but that seems the only barrier.
Cancelling culture – as opposed to cancel culture – has moved from #MeToo calling out abusers to an electoral gambit for right-wing politicians using the culture wars to gain power. Although only 4 per cent of Americans think the question of which topics can be taught in school is the most important issue facing the country, so-called parental rights legislation passed under Ron DeSantis’s governorship has led to the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries including The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Judy Blume’s Forever.
Only in America, eh? DeSantis recently backed Kemi Badenoch’s “war on woke” during a UK visit. Research by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals found that a third of UK librarians had been asked to censor or remove books, with the most targeted books involving empire, race and LGBTQ+ themes. Some have faced threats if they refuse to do so.
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, Sceptre, £20 out now
Photographs Fairchild Archive/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images
