Separating art from the 'artists'

Sanitizing History does not clean things for us to use without thought

Hello everyone, your favourite written radio is back! Just want to say a quick thank you to all 500 (now 600!) of you subscribed! Arbitrary milestones are arbitrary, but it is still a great feeling that so many people out there seem willing to tune into irregular (to put it mildly) broadcasts :)

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On today’s episode, I want to leave you with a question that I have been grappling with, and it relates to a sensitive topic, so it will be an exercise for me if I can navigate these waters successfully, while still asking and making a point. The question essentially boils down to: if a horrible person who has committed horrible acts in the past or present, but also manages to create something worth appreciating, how do we appreciate it, or should we in the first place?

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Origins of the Question

A couple of years ago, I decided to start watching House of Cards. For some context, I am the last to know anything about actors, actresses or anything: I often refer to actors by the names of the characters they played in the last movie or series I watched.

At the time I really enjoyed the show. Found myself binge-watching it over the span of several weekends. I thought that Frank Underwood was an amazingly written and acted character, the epitome of political sleaze advancing through the ranks to the top. After the second season, I decided to look up the actor behind Frank Underwood to see in what other shows or movies he was present in. As you can imagine, much like the show’s name, all my enthusiasm for the show came tumbling down after a quick google search and multiple articles.

So the question arises- is it ‘right’ to enjoy this show? Should I even recommend it to others, even if I really enjoyed it? Is it enough to simply enjoy the art while forgetting or ignoring the artist?

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Unfortunately, Kevin Spacey is not the only instance of a rise and precipitous and dishonorable fall in fame. At the highest furor in the 2010’s, names of famous musicians, actors, artists or famous people were dropping almost daily after years of neglect, to the point where people were sardonically praying that their favourite celebrity would not be next. After the initial wave abated, the insatiable machine of social media began to turn its sights further afar, to the point where those already served by father time were being targeted.

How do we deal with this?

What appears to be a common approach is to strip what gives that person their ‘power’ that let them abuse it in the first place- movie appearances for actors, music plays and concerts for singers and musicians, job titles and opportunities for producers. If they are currently engaged in a project, they are either quietly dropped, withdrawn or their character written out.

However, what about the work already done? Do they still deserve credit for what they’ve done? If not, can we still appreciate what has been done, and more importantly, what if they could have much more to give? Perhaps we need to consider a specific case to try to ascertain what should be done. Let’s take a look at Operation Paperclip, one of the most extreme examples that we can use.

Paperclips

The year is 1943. The war is starting to turn in favour of the Allies and the Soviet Union. Seeing the American machine gathering steam and the Soviet steamroller beginning to roll, the Nazis knew that they would be simply outproduced to death. As a result, they began desperately turning to innovations in war technology to produce ‘wonder weapons’ that, while few in number, would tip the scales of war. As a result, some of the weapons developed were:

• The V1 and V2 rockets, the first cruise and ballistic missiles

• The Messerschmitt ME 262, the first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft

• Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, the first rocket powered aircraft

• The ‘big cats’ tanks: the Tiger, King Tiger and Panther (we have already briefly covered them in an earlier broadcast)

• The StG 44, the first assault rifle

In fact, it wasn’t just weapons that the Nazi’s developed, their advances in general rocketry, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fuels, aviation and in non-combat related areas, advances which have influenced the worlds’ future designs, such as attempts in swept-wing, flying wing, and even VTOL, or even patents for methadone.

Therefore, as the heated war began to wane and cool off into a cold one, the allies and the Soviet Union each began assembling lists of high priority scientists, with states aims to expatriate them and any technology back to their own countries. Eventually, under Operation Paperclip, around 1,600 scientists were transferred from Nazi German lands to the USA for further work (the Soviet equivalent being Operation Osoaviakhim).

Many of these scientists went to to play crucial roles in many American research and civil departments, earning many prestigious awards and fame along the way. Two Quick examples to illustrate the point:

• Werner Von Braun: Dubbed the “father of space travel”, was crucial to the Nazi development of the V2 missile, developed the rockets used for Explorer 1, the first american satellites, and was the lead architect for the Saturn V, which delivered the first people to the moon, and gold to the USA in the Space Race.

• Hubertus Strughold: Dubbed the “father of space medicine”, was the chief of aeromedical research for the Luftwaffe, played an instrumental part in developing the field of space medicine, developing life support systems and other considerations for human life in space.

As these people and their work were transferred from Nazi Germany, their past was either overlooked or diminished, put to work and eventually granted citizenship. At the time, very few of these scientists faced any repercussions for their past actions or affiliations.

As for the two mentioned above, Strughold was subject to multiple investigations which failed to indict him, but after his death, connections to gruesome human experimentation become more apparent through release of classified documents, which led to his reputation, recognition and awards being quietly stripped from him. Braun’s legacy is less clear cut, as although it is known fact that he was a member of the SS and the production of the V2’s depended upon slave labour, his ‘motivations’ and lack of clear connection to the slave labour leave his apologists for room for maneuver.

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A Corporate Diversion

To an extent, this can be extended to companies too: After all, these weren’t passive entities during war time. To give some blunt examples, Mitsubishi made the Imperial Japanese Zero’s, Hugo Boss designed the Nazi German uniform and Porsche was involved in supplying the Nazi armies with vehicles. But companies (at least outside the USA,) are not people, and should arguably be held to a different standard- but higher or lower?

Instinctively, I’m not entirely sure. As entities, firms have fundamentally different motivations and reasons for existence compared to us: profit maximisation, compared to utility maximisation. However, corporations reside in our world, not us in theirs (firms were not made in God’s image after all). This suggests that perhaps they should be held to a standard that are, at the very least, complementary with ours. I’ll save further deliberation for another broadcast, but it is an interesting question…

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Fallout

Looking at Operation Paperclip, it seems at though the world took on an “I can fix them” toxic relationship approach, setting aside any prosecution of their actions in return for humanity-positive research, work and progress. It is easy to criticize the move, but even now, looking back with all the hindsight we now have, it would be difficult to logically justify not redoing Operation Paperclip all over again if the need/chance arose.

Sure, it’s not a good look to win the ideological war against fascism and Nazism, only to take the biggest brains behind the ideology and integrate them into your world, but if it was necessary to win the larger ideological battle against Communism, perhaps it is justified. Even if one argues that these scientists and engineers did not influence the trajectory of Western technological development, the fact that they did not end up in Soviet hands and speed up theirs does count for something.

Considering their impact on humanity’s progress, how should we digest these people and their impact? It’s obviously wrong to ignore any new information that sheds light on the dark past, but I also think it would be vain and pointless to completely remove them from our history nonetheless. The same way that crudely saying “the Nazis helped the USA get to the moon” ( a wild statement in and of itself) feels wrong, so does erasure of history also feel wrong, no matter how selective or justified.

Whatever the answer, it was still quite the revelation to see the extent of former Nazi scientists and personnel still had a presence and even an influence in a post WW2 world. It also serves as a reminder that people, not money or technology or anything else, is the root of all evil: The same technology that delivers payloads onto civilians can also propel humanity to conquer the last frontier, it is up to the person to decide what to use it for.

creatum ab humanitate

Perhaps the answer is to attribute their work to humanity in general, celebrate the work while forgetting the worker. - creatum ab humanitate - created by humanity, could replace the name of the person in any credits. Any benefit from the enjoyed work, such as royalties, would be diverted from the perpetrator to another destination (how this would be done without any corruption or embezzlement is for greater minds). For instance, whenever someone looks up who helped pioneer space medicine, the answer is simply “creatum ab humanitate”, a recognition of everyone who came before us who directly or indirectly led to this creation.

The issue is do we do this lightly? I don’t think everyone and anyone can be removed from the annals of history, only to be reversed in the future anyway- this would devolve this sentencing into little more than virtue signaling in the moment, something insidious in its own right.

In order for this not to be a trivial punishment or decision, strict conditions would need to suffice in order to fully separate the art from the artist. Perhaps by order of a court, and within a fixed window frame when the person retires or dies.

However, ultimately I believe that this is not the right approach: sanitizing ( or looking through a modern lens at) history or the provenance of things does not clean them for us to use without thought. Although the past does not define us, it does mould and shape us into who we are, and by bleaching things into categories of good and bad, it strips the nuance of the past, making the present and future more muddy: such behaviour inevitably causes us to categorize things and people around us right now, even if the ink has not yet dried on their story. This can be seen in these “us v.s. them” elections across the world, and the apparently widespread inability for one political leaning to understand the other.

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Overall, maybe the best thing we can do is accept all the facts and behave accordingly. Sure, maybe the USA wouldn’t reach the moon and be able to plant the american flag there first without Werner von Braun or Hubertus Strughold: but lets not call them the “fathers” of space travel or space medicine. Frank Underwood is an incredible character, but lets not rush to cast Kevin Spacey in the next potential blockbuster.

Make sure to give this broadcast a coherence score!

That’s all from me for now, but stay tuned for future broadcasts,

This has been Kunga’s Written Radio,

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