Life Acts or Life’s Work?
When it comes to how we judge a famous person, should we focus on their actions in private life, or should we more or less confine our judgment to the work they produced to become famous in the first place? The question may be easy in some of the more sensationalized cases of modern times. But what about cases that are more in the gray areas, or cases that are so long ago there are no living witnesses?
It is probably not a stretch to say there are few people who still appreciate the standup comedy of Bill Cosby (especially at the time of posting). His private actions, which he does not deny, were perverse, irreparably harmful, and self-serving. The same would go for R Kelly. But what about Michael Jackson? Although never convicted of a crime, all of the tort claims against him were settled out of court, and although the settlement amounts were not disclosed it is not hard to imagine they were outrageously expensive. This would tend to prove something other than Mr. Jackson’s innocence, yet many of us are hesitant to damn him, pointing to his extensive discography and charity work.
The question becomes even more difficult when examining a public figure from years past. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, is revered by many today as the whimsical, fantastic, creative author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and other works. But did you know that during his life he was an upper class arch-conservative and an ordained deacon in the Anglican Church? Did you know that his frequent outings with the children of the Liddell family were the cause of concern and inevitable “break” between the two families (this included little Alice Liddell; despite Dodgson’s constant denials that his works were based on any real-life children, the acrostic that concludes Through the Looking-glass spells out her full name)? Finally, did you know he often sketched and painted pictures of nude pre-pubescent girls, and that about 8 years’ worth of his diaries (coinciding with his Liddell family associations) have gone missing since his death?
Now, none of this constitutes conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, and many people over the years have preached against applying modern standards to the Victorian England life of Dodgson. However, when you view all these facts in their totality, it becomes hard to defend him without looking like a stalwart ‘Lewis Carroll’ apologist. And there are many apologists…it seems as if the further back in time the public figure lived, the more apologists there are. Standards of behavior do change over time, sure, but some basic moral principles have in fact not changed much in many centuries. So why are we so quick to judge some and so slow to judge others? I don’t have a good answer, other than to say the question is worth examining.
Here endeth the lesson on life acts versus life’s work.
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