I have long wrestled with my feelings surrounding how to cope with the love of a ‘thing’ when the creator of said ‘thing’ turns out to be against everything you believe in, everything that makes up your worldview. Do you suddenly stop loving the art, the music, the book, the film, the franchise, the legacy? Can you continue to love it without endorsing the person behind it? Is there a sliding scale of villainy that allows the continued love of something to be okay depending on what the person behind it has done?
This is not an uncommon occurrence. It has been repeated multiple times in history and will no doubt continue to be repeated well after I am gone.
Heroes turned villains in the music industry
What do you do and how do you (or can you) reconcile when the much-beloved musician, whose legacy continues to live on long after they have died, turns out to have had questionable proclivities towards younger girls? A musician who pioneered a genre yet lived a life of controversy? A renowned blues guitarist who backed the ideology of Enoch Powell?
Elvis Presley
Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this dilemma is the enduring legacy of Elvis Presley. Considered to be the ‘King of Rock ‘N’ Roll’, hundreds of thousands of people every year flock to Graceland, his former home and indeed where he died. Millions listen to his music and he has long been the inspiration for cover versions such as: ‘You Were Always on My Mind’ by the Pet Shop Boys or JXL’s remix of ‘A Little Less Conversation’. His music has also been interpolated such as is the case in ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Can’t Help Falling in Love)’ by English rock band Spiritualized.
However, behind the flamboyance, the charm, the groundbreaking music that has lasted for generations, the enduring legacy and the fans, lies a darker side that is rarely spoken about. We often hear about the prescription drugs, his battle with addiction and his erratic behaviour. What we hear less often about is his obsession with younger girls. When Elvis met Priscilla Presley, he was 24 years old; she was just 14 years old. They started a relationship soon after, with Priscilla saying that she experienced her first real kiss with him. Two months before her 18th birthday, they moved in together. They married when she was 21, and he was 32. During the marriage, Elvis was allegedly controlling and coercive, and it ended in divorce after just six years. Yet despite this being a part of his legacy, his music and his public image live on untarnished. It’s seen in society as okay to love Elvis; he has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest singers of all time and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
Jerry Lee Lewis
It would be remiss of me while we are looking at the music industry not to mention Jerry Lee Lewis. Nicknamed “The Killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis was described as “rock ‘n’ roll’s first great wild man”, and in 1986 was one of the inaugural inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He helped pioneer the rockabilly genre and was perhaps best known for the hit songs: ‘Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On’ and ‘Great Balls of Fire’. The latter was cemented in history when it was featured in the 1986 film Top Gun and also performed in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick.
Unlike Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis did suffer a public fall from grace when, in 1958, it emerged that at the age of 22 he had married his 13-year-old first cousin once removed, Myra Gale Lewis Williams. This marriage produced two children, the first of which was born when Williams was just 14 years old.
However, the fall from grace did not last, and his music lives on through cover versions and films.
Eric Clapton
Eric “slow hands” Clapton built his career off blues music and is considered one of the greatest rock and blues guitarists of all time. He cites Muddy Waters, B.B King, Freddie King, Albert King, Buddy Guy and Huburt Sumlin as his guitar playing influences. All were blues legends in their own right and he even went so far as to describe Muddy Waters in his 2007 autobiography as “the father figure I never had”.
It came as a huge shock when in 1976 he voiced his support for far-right politician Enoch Powell at a concert in Birmingham. Clapton, visibly drunk, addressed the audience in a vile racist rant. Given the nature of the speech he made I have chosen not to quote it but you can find the transcript here. Perhaps one of the most shocking parts of this rant was when he ended the speech with “Keep Britain White!” At the time that was the National Front’s slogan. This speech caused huge backlash and was one of the main catalysts that led to the Rock Against Racism movement. Later, in 2004, Clapton would again praise Powell, however by 2018 he would renounce his former self, stating: “I sabotaged everything I got involved with. I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music.” He blamed his former drug addiction for his past behaviour.
Heroes turned villains of the silver screen
The film industry is also littered with heroes turned villains. Recently we have had high profile cases through the #MeToo Movement which exposed Harvey Weinstein as the sexual predator he is. It has long been known there was such a thing as the ‘casting couch audition’ in the acting world. Yet despite advancements in the protection of actors and the increase in survivors speaking out, concerns over sexual abuse in the film industry are still rife. The recent allegations against actor and musician Jared Leto are just one example. So, what happens when an acclaimed director, producer or actor seemingly gets away with sexual assault?
Roman Polanski
One cannot talk about heroes who turn out to be villains without discussing Roman Polanski. Polanski is a multi-award-winning film director and actor. He holds three Academy Awards (Oscars), two Golden Globes, three British Academy Film Awards (held annually by BAFTA), 10 César Awards, a Golden Bear and a Palme d’Or. But behind these accolades lies a criminal past. In 1977, when Polanski was 43, he was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. He pled guilty to statutory rape in order to get a lesser sentence of probation, however the evening before his sentencing hearing in 1978, and upon learning that the judge was going to reject his plea bargain, he fled the US and relocated to Europe. He has remained there ever since. But perhaps more alarmingly, many of the awards he has won remained in place long after his conviction. In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that the Academy expelled him, over four decades after his rape conviction. While it’s understandable that films he directed are still shown, after all the actors in them should not suffer as a result of his behaviour, the question remains whether he should have been allowed to continue to work in that field, let alone receive over 20 further awards and whether the industry should have blacklisted him well before 2018.
Louis C.K
Louis C.K is an award-winning comedian, actor and filmmaker whose career has spanned more than four decades. He has won six Emmys and three Grammys amongst other awards. In 2017 he was the subject of numerous accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple women who claimed he had forced them to watch him masturbate. These allegations dated back to as far as 2002. Faced with these allegations and mounting pressure he admitted them to be true and suffered a brief fall from grace. However, in 2018 he made a comeback and returned to the spotlight – even winning one of his three Grammys in 2022. With his career back in full swing, it appears he has not been held accountable for his past behaviour.
Kevin Spacey
In 2017 actor Anthony Rapp accused Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him when he was just 14 years old. Spacey, while stating he did not remember the events, apologised to Rapp, citing “deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour”. In 2020, Rapp sued Spacey but lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages. This led to 15 other people coming forward with accusations of sexual misconduct and assault being levied against Spacey, detailing a pattern of predatory behaviour ranging from the 1980s up to the late 2010s. Despite numerous high-profile lawsuits and court cases, Spacey has never been found guilty, however unlike the others mentioned here his career has never recovered.
My own personal battle
I have long faced my own personal battle between the love of something and the disappointment, disgust and outrage at the person behind it. I fell in love with a series of books when I was perhaps at the lowest moment in my life and have often attributed them with saving my life. This sounds overdramatic. It isn’t. I was in a very dark place both emotionally and mentally and as a result of those battles, I was in a bad way physically. I picked up the first book when I was 19 years old. A funny age to get into them, I suppose, but I was looking for a distraction. From the opening line, I was hooked. It gave me a place to escape. To forget the past that had so abruptly caught up with me and to ignore the present and feelings of desperation and emptiness. It created this universe where I could just go to forget everything. Including who I was. I would sit there and just get lost in this incredible world where everyone was accepted, where loyalties were tested, a world that increasingly got dark and yet somehow, through the trials and tribulations, good won over evil, love won over hate. And for the few hours that I would sit reading each book, I felt alive again and, perhaps more importantly, I felt hope. I won my battle over my own demons, at least to the degree that someone can (for me, the fight was over, but the battle is one that I deal with regularly), but my love affair with this universe continued. Every book release, I would get the book on the day of the release, and for the next however many hours it took me to read it from cover to cover I was immersed in that world again.
Then that world was shattered. It sounds silly really, but I felt deep sadness when I found out that the creator of this amazing, accepting world was completely obsessed with the genitals of strangers and had quoted Hitler. I was left utterly bereft. Here was this world where we were told that good triumphed over evil, where we saw love win over hate, where we saw redemption arcs and people standing side by side, through love, through loss and fighting for their survival, and yet the creator of that universe did not believe in the very thing they had gifted the world – belonging and acceptance.
The search for reconciliation
I have battled with this for years now. Can you love something without endorsing the behaviour of the person who created it? Is there a sliding scale of villainy? Does still loving something mean you are justifying the actions of the person who gave you that love? Is the Elvis fan who dresses up as their idol and attends Elvis conventions justifying his predatory behaviour? Is watching The Pianist normalising rape? Are you endorsing racism if you love the songs of a band whose guitarist endorsed the National Front?
But perhaps the bigger question is can you still love the legacy of something even if the person behind it is the complete antithesis to your very moral fibre? This is a question that nearly a decade on I am still asking myself. So far, I have yet to get past the question we started off with: what do you do when your heroes become villains?
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