there's a section in the perks of being a wallflower where the main character(charlie) is given ayn rand's the fountainhead to read by his teacher. the teacher tells him when you read this "be a filter, not a sponge". this reminds me of a story my brother told me. he was visiting some friends and when he told them he was reading ayn rand they were horrified. they hadn't read her, but had heard about her and already condemed her work based on what they had heard about the author's personality. it got me to thinking, are people these days unable to be a filter? are we unable to read something from a different point of view and learn something from it even if we don't agree with everything in it?

if this is the case, it seems to be a scary development. when i was in high school one thing my friends and i strove for was to be open minded. i'm sure we failed in a number of ways, but compared to the people we were surrounded by we were much more open minded. i remember reading ayn rand around this time or shortly after high school and i knew very little of ayn rand's philosophy aside from what is in her books. would of i felt differently if i had heard bad things about her philosophy? maybe, maybe not.

how related is a work(a painting, a film, a piece of music) to the creator's personality? if an artist does questionable things in their private life should it affect how i feel about their work? how related are the two? i think there is no blanket answer for those questions. there are situations where i won't want to support an artist because of their politics or what the money they make off me is being used for. but that seems to be a rarity these days, and i'm not certain it's the right way of going about things. is it just a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water? boycotting an artist is not the same thing as boycotting a corporation after all. i wouldn't condemn a person based on who their parents are so why do it with a work of art?