It's a Little Strange How So Many of the Artists That I Used to Love I Now Hate

I recently re-watched Stardust Memories and Celebrity for The Fractured Mirror, my upcoming book on American movies about the film industry. I coincidentally have also been re-reading my 2009 memoir The Big Rewind for an upcoming Substack project. 

In my book from fourteen years ago I reverently include Woody Allen in a chapter on my Jewish heritage and how strongly identify with Judaism culturally, if not religiously, despite technically not actually being Jewish because my mother was a gentile. 

I can see why the much younger me singled out Allen as someone who made me proud to be Jewish. It’s hard to overstate the impact his movies had on my development as a thinker, writer and a humorist. 

I wanted to be Woody Allen when I was a kid. I remember devouring his collections of short pieces and worshipping his seventies golden age as a cinephile. 

I have a much different opinion of Woody Allen these days. He’s no longer a hero or a seminal influence. Instead he’s someone I legitimately hate. 

I should state up front that I do not know whether Allen is a child molester. That is a thorny, complicated and controversial subject I do not want to get into. 

If Allen is not a sex criminal he is at the very least a misogynist, a narcissist and someone with little consideration for other people. 

Panning movies by a filmmaker I once loved made me think, yet again, about how many entertainers I once adored that I now hate. 

My dad taught me that hate is a strong word and a strong idea that should be reserved for people and things that deserve it. 

Yet I can legitimately say that I hate Woody Allen along with two other controversial funnymen I once considered, if not my favorite living comedian, then at least one of my favorite living comedians. 

I spent many, many years foolishly praising Louis CK as a philosopher, deep thinker and peerless creator who single-handedly elevated television to an art form with his genius. 

Oh sure, I'd heard dark rumors about his unfortunate personal proclivities, namely an unfortunate tendency to whip out his dick and masturbate in various professional and semi-professional contexts but I wanted to believe they weren’t true because I wanted to go on unproblematically enjoying his material. 

I don’t think of CK as a genius anymore. I think of him as an unrepentant sex criminal. I similarly used to look up to Dave Chappelle as a comic genius and the creator of one of the greatest and most important sketch shows of all time. 

Now I just see him as a professional transphobe with a whole lot of other egregious shortcomings as well. The man brought Elon Musk out at a show, for some reason, and sided with Musk when his own fans lustily booed Musk for being such a deplorable piece of shit.

For a very long time I would have named Kanye West my favorite producer AND rapper. It went beyond that. I was inspired by Kanye and his journey. I identified with his ambition and self-consciousness. 

The Trump thing was a deal breaker. That was followed by an endless series of further deal breakers. Then came the whole loving Hitler and the Nazis and hating Jews kerfuffle and I was mortified that I ever liked the dude at all, let alone paid a fortune to see him live, both as a solo artist and with Jay-Z. 

I’ve had seven years to get accustomed to my former favorite rapper being a staunch Conservative and all around horrible person. Yet I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that Kanye isn’t just a MAGA guy; he’s a legitimate Nazi, or at least a man who has nothing bad to say about his beloved Fuhrer. 

It’s depressing, is what it is. I always knew that Kanye was an asshole and a loose cannon who was constantly embarrassing himself but I deluded myself into thinking that he was my asshole and loose cannon, that he was an asshole and a loose cannon on the side of good. 

It’s not uncommon for me to have a Kanye lyric float through my mind and think, “I can’t be a fan of that guy anymore. He loves Hitler and I’m Jewish.”

I similarly used to enjoy the music of R. Kelly and that dude is the proprietor of an underage sex cult. 

When I was a teenager my favorite artist was Morrissey and the Smiths and now I can’t listen to him because he’s a racist right wing creep. 

Don’t even get me started on Ricky Gervais. 

It’s not unusual for people to lose some of the passion they once had for their favorite artists as they get older. For example I love the band Blur but I haven’t listened to them in ages. They just sort of seem to belong firmly in my past rather than my present. 

But it is unusual to go from love to hate, from identifying strongly with a musician or comedian to despising them.

Then again the opposite of love is not hate but indifference and I still feel very strongly about the artists I’ve mentioned above. That intensity has just gone in an antithetical direction. 

I’m going to be more cautious in my fandom going forward, both because so many of my favorite artists turned out to be terrible human beings but also because I’m forty-seven years old and getting a little old to be so regularly and bitterly disillusioned. 

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