Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer

8 reviews

monalyisha's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.75

I absolutely loved this. Dederer set out to write an ambitious book & she achieved her goal. Not only that, but she came off as being the kind of “cool” that I’ll only ever aspire to be. Her musical references range from Joni Mitchell to PWR BTTM with all the (plumbed) levels of complexity that implies. Ironically & infuriatingly, the effect is that I now want to watch/read/listen to all of the media she questions the morality of consuming.

I want to (re)watch Annie Hall. Remembering how much I loved Rosemary’s Baby, I want to dive into Polanski’s catalog. Of course, these creators are men who have committed terrible deeds (e.g. anal rape of a 13-year-old). Do we just forget that? 

Dederer says no. She also doesn’t tell her readers NOT to watch/read/listen. Like any good thinker, she gives us more questions than answers. This isn’t a guidebook. Dederer won’t solve your ethical dilemma. She will ask you to lay bare your own reasoning and emotions, your insecurities, your doubts, your loves, your biases. She’ll do it by modeling this behavior on the page. She doesn’t let herself squirm away; she questions whether she is, herself, a monster. She unflinchingly tells you why she sometimes worries she might be.

Ultimately, she’ll tell you not to discount beauty or community. She’ll advise you not to place an undue emphasis on individual consumption. She’ll focus on systemic evils. She’ll tell you that “the way you consume art doesn't make you a bad person, or a good one. You'll have to find some other way to accomplish that.” She’ll encourage you not to forget about these other ways.

I do have a single criticism, which comes in the form of two words: “The Stain.” This is a concept Dederer introduces early on in the book and it’s something that she returns to repeatedly: how an artist’s biography can “stain” their work (spreading backwards and forwards through time), like wine spilled on linen. Unfortunately, this metaphor spills out of her in the chapter about Michael Jackson. 

She writes, “The image of the stain immediately took hold of my brain (an especially poignant image in the context of Michael Jackson and the bleached anti-stain of his skin).” YIKES. Following this logic, blackness becomes “the stain.” I don’t for one second believe that Dederer intended to equate the two. But I wish she’d introduced the metaphor in the chapter about Picasso, when talking about his paints. For me, this single line about “the stain” became a stain on my total & unabashed enjoyment of her book. But I’m trying to convince myself that it was more a quick & clumsy fumble with a cup of coffee than a shattering of a full glass of Cabernet. It might come out in the wash.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Racism, Rape, Suicide, Transphobia, Antisemitism, Murder, and Abandonment

butlerebecca's review against another edition

dark reflective medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, and Murder

hedgielib's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Murder, Abandonment, and Alcohol

jainabee's review against another edition

challenging dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

I am so glad this book exists because I NEEDED it. It needed to exist in the world. The question of how to balance fandom of my favorite works of creativity with the toxic and destructive behaviors of the creators is an issue that torments me. Dederer directly addresses some of my own pet monsters; Woody Allen, David Bowie, JK Rowling, Miles Davis. This book makes me think a LOT. This book is very uncomfortable in a vitally important way. This book challenges me in ways I needed. The chapter comparing and contrasting Valerie Solanas and Sylvia Plath (!!!!!) flipped my wig with the brilliance of unexpected insights about how women respond to the violence of misogyny. The chapter about Lolita is a sparkling gem of brilliant insight and analysis that might be the best review of it I've ever read (spoiler alert: Nabokov is not a monster, though he is a genius). This book is FULL of triggering content, as it describes the crimes of the creators. No way around that. The point of the book seems to be to face the monsters directly and feel the extremely uncomfortable dilemma between loving something, even the monster, "even after everything." I got a lot to think about here.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Antisemitism, Medical content, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Alcoholism, Cursing, Drug abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Racism, Xenophobia, Grief, Murder, War, and Classism

Minor: Drug use, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Dysphoria

I need to read this book again. And probably again.

cpalmerpatel's review against another edition

This would've been a great book if they had included just a little bit of critical research. Their "lit review" consisted of emailing an old professor to ask him what's written on the topic and upon being told there wasn't anything, set out to fill the gap with their own personal opinions.
 I'm not entirely sure who's the intended audience for this book. Other film critics? Or maybe her usual audience? ie the people that turn to film critics as the authority on whether a film is good or bad. She drops in names of people without explaining 1) why they're famous and 2) what they've done that was monstrous, assuming you already know and it leaves you turning to google to fill in the gaps. When she discusses a film, she talks about characters and setting in a way that assumes that everyone has seen it and appreciates it's "genius". I'm not convinced that any work of art can be described as "genius" and it left me with the feeling that the author wrote the entire book in order to justify why she continues to love her favourite movies even though the men creating them were rapists.
 She also focused more on men and when the discussion turned to women it centred on the classic dillemma of the working mother trying to balance mum mode with work mode, except exasperated here because art ("real art"?) isn't "work" but a madness or passion. 

It was okay, and sparked some ideas but not as stimulating as I thought it was going to be. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual violence, Antisemitism, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Genocide, Racism, Sexism, Transphobia, Mass/school shootings, and Murder

dexkit10's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Murder, and Abandonment

bi_n_large's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, and Abandonment

Moderate: Alcoholism, Death, Drug abuse, Racism, Antisemitism, and Murder

marywahlmeierbracciano's review against another edition

challenging medium-paced

5.0

Wow wow wow.  Memoirist and former film critic Claire Dederer tackles the timeless and timely question of what to do with the art of monstrous men in this insightful book.  She discusses the masterworks and wrongdoings of artists of a variety of media (film, music, literature, visual art), threading through each section the larger message of the book, which is gradually unveiled amid subjectivity, cultural awareness, and good humor.  All this through a feminist lens which critiques capitalism as well as cancel culture, respecting above all else the individual’s connection to the art, “even after everything.”  Don’t miss this fantastic book for all who consume.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual violence, Murder, and Abandonment