Words In Review: Monsters, Obsessions, and Geniuses

There’s a rumor that next month’s Cannes Film Festival will feature a new movie from Woody Allen, the famous/infamous writer-director who’s married to his ex-wife’s daughter and whose adoptive daughter accuses him of sexually abusing her — an allegation Allen denies.

An author has just written a book about what it’s like being a fan whose favorite artist is accused of monstrous behavior. Woody Allen appears in the book. So does Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Picasso, Hemingway, and more.

The book "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma," by Claire Dederer wants you to pay attention to the words we choose. Words like “monster.”

“It’s a very lively, almost childish word, in a way,” Dederer said. “But it became problematic for me as I wrote because of the way it othered the person — ‘I'm not a monster. That person is a monster.’ It made what is not OK in human behavior ‘inhuman.’ We all have parts of ourselves that are non-ideal, and potentially monstrous.”

She’s not saying we’re all equally villainous, but she doesn’t like when a word lets us disassociate ourselves from someone to the point of a creating a different species: the monster.

Dederer says part of our suffering when a favorite artist does wrong involves another word: “obsession.”

“We use this language of obsession as a kind of swagger: ‘I’m not just a fan, I'm a superfan!” I am this thing, this thing is me, we have become one,” Dederer said. “I'm not saying we shouldn't have fandoms and fan relationships. But sometimes the idea of ‘obsession’ is expressing a desire to collapse with the thing that we're a fan of.”

So, you’re “obsessed” with a musician, a writer, a painter, a performer. You feel connected to them. Then it turns out they’re a monster, and that’s a dilemma. You might resolve that dilemma with the help of a third word: “genius.”

“The word ‘genius’ is so important because it’s a hall pass,” Dederer said. “Once you put it on someone, it excuses everything they do. And it also excuses me for still loving them!

“The genius is the person who gets to do whatever he — emphasis on he — wants. The genius is channeling something bigger than himself, he has this divine inspiration, a muse, something flowing through him that helps create this fluid, exciting work. And with that flow of divine inspiration comes license. Because if you have this external force feeding you, making you make this incredible work that people love and also is making a lot of money, then your other impulses become protected — because you don't want to turn off whatever it is that's flowing through this guy! If his freedom means making Guernica, but also putting out a cigarette on someone's cheek, well, it's all this male energy that is for good or ill.

“We so value the work that we take all the other bad behavior with it. And we're thrilled by it, this bad boy thing. Life is boring and here's someone bringing you a plot, and incredible work. That becomes fetishized. The image of this free man with a license to do whatever he wants is one of the dominant expressions of 20th century art — Picasso, Hemingway. It reaches its apotheosis in the culture of rock in the '60s and '70s, hilariously, this freedom becomes more and more limited, because these male rock gods all do the same sh** over and over and over!”

Dederer advises “Words In Review” fans to be careful what we say.

“Words can be a tool to reveal truly lived and truly felt experience. And those words can be the tool of obscuring that experience. So, holding up words that are obscuring the truth and trying to figure out what's actually going on — and at the same time using words to seek clarity and truth — that’s the crux of everything I do.”