“How many more of our idols have committed some sort of transgression, or have been weak or passive or cowardly?”
IMAGINE admiring the stories of a popular author, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, whose tales provide great insight into the dilemmas and conflicts in the minds of women, and then finding out months after her death that she had committed something reprehensible?
Imagine, too, looking up to yet another famous writer whose work has been turned into TV shows and whose imagination has delighted readers, and then discovering that he had used his stature and influence to coerce several women into engaging in acts against their will?
I refer to writers Alice Munro and Neil Gaiman.
Canadian Munro, who died in May last year, became controversial after her death after it was revealed she had done nothing and in fact stayed with a man who had abused her own daughter.
Munro’s daughter, Andrea, wrote an op-ed piece in the Toronto Star where she said her stepfather, Gerry Fremlin, got into her bed and assaulted her when she was nine years old. She told her mother about this in succeeding years, but Munro did not do anything to make her husband accountable for the damage he had caused her daughter.
A Dec. 2024 piece by Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker called “Alice Munro’s Passive Voice” pieces together the timeline of the revelations against the stories Munro had written at different periods that might have coincided with what she knew and how she felt.
Andrea said her mother “reacted exactly as I had feared she would, as if she had learned of an infidelity.” Fremlin admitted to the abuse but said Andrea seduced him, like a Lolita. And while Munro temporarily left Fremlin, she eventually took him back. She stayed with him until his death.
Later on in her life, Munro developed Alzheimer’s and, in some moments, appeared to acknowledge what had happened to her daughter. According to the article, in 2019, during a lucid conversation with her other daughter Jenny, Munro was supposed to have exhaled loudly and said under her breath, “How awful….it was beastly of me not to get rid of him.’”
Earlier this month, an article titled “There is No Safe Word” written by Lila Shapiro appeared in New York Post and its website Vulture. It details how British author Neil Gaiman was accused of sexual assault by at least eight women. One of them, Scarlet Pavlovich, was babysitting Gaiman’s son when she was assaulted. There was also a podcast, aired last year, where four of the women narrate their experience of violence with Gaiman.
(In his blog, Gaiman responded: “I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual activity with anyone. Ever.”)
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There are many others in different fields whose work have been celebrated but who were later on shown to be fallible at best and criminal at worst.
A sense of betrayal on the part of fans is reasonable. It could be difficult to separate the creation from the all-too-human creator. If one grew up reading the stories of either of these two authors, or following the work of any celebrated artist, for that matter, discoveries such as this could lead them to negate all the good things they gathered from the work, diminish its value, be disillusioned, or lose interest in the field altogether.
But such feelings arise from putting idols in a pedestal. In our eyes, especially in the eyes of younger, impressionable followers, idols could do no wrong, and their brilliance in their work necessarily translates to perfection in everything else.
It prompts us to wonder: How many more of those we look up to have committed some sort of transgression, or have been weak or passive or cowardly, or have lived a life that is so different or even contrary to the impression they give or the persona they exude? What would we do if we found out that yet another idol turns out to have feet of clay?
Different people could react differently to such revelations, depending on the gravity of the offense, the impact of the work on their personal lives, or their previous interaction, if any, with the creator.
We could always acknowledge good work and learn from it, but also to remember that people are frail and flawed, and it would not do any good to assume they are otherwise. Art, after all, is essentially about navigating the brokenness and imperfection of the world and of the human condition. We could be disgusted enough to stop looking at their work, or if we could compartmemtalize. It’s our call.
It’s setting expectations low, sure, but it will save us from heartache, disillusion, or worse, apathy.
adellechua@gmail.com