Respect for women: Boycotting a movie misses the point

Yes, I know: 15 years ago, "Birth of a Nation" star and filmmaker Nate Parker was acquitted on charges of rape and sexual assault. But though a jury concluded that he wasn't guilty of a crime, I can't help believe that he used a woman who he knew was vulnerable.

He's repugnant. But that doesn't mean I won't go see his movie.

I get where the writer Roxanne Gay is coming from when she said in the New York Times that she "cannot separate the art and the artist," but I can. I — we — do it all the time, and unless we're going to start boycotting every tainted artist's work, we're hypocrites. I may think Parker, the person, is a lowlife, but he has produced a work of art that I'll assess on its own merits.

We consume and experience films (and music, and, for that matter, sports) for many reasons. To be enlightened, to be entertained, to experience beauty and grapple with ugliness. As humans, we need this, emotionally and intellectually. And while the artists who offer this to us are linked to their work — it's their work, after all — they aren't the work, themselves. And their pasts, however repellent they are, don't negate the value in what they create.

The controversy over "Birth of a Nation" isn't unique. Many artists, some who've inspired millions, have exhibited loathsome behavior in their private lives. In recent years, Woody Allen has become a pariah over allegations that he sexually abused Mia Farrow's daughter, Dylan. But no one questions the import of his oeuvre, and his films still open to much fanfare. "Braveheart" — Parker's acknowledged favorite film, to which "Birth of a Nation" has drawn comparisons — won the Oscar for Best Picture. But Mel Gibson, its star and director, who informally advised Parker on his project, is known now for his racist and misogynist rants.

I'm currently enjoying the biography of author Patricia Highsmith, a noted anti-Semite, and I simply can't be sure a more detestable person ever existed. But I can't deny she wrote fabulous psychological thrillers.

When I'm delighting my niece with a reading of Dr. Seuss's classic, "The Cat in the Hat," I confess that his racist depictions of African-Americans and Japanese-Americans couldn't be further from my mind.

But even my exceptions are arbitrary. Rick James went to prison for tying a woman to a chair and burning her with a crack pipe. But if "Super Freak" comes on at a party? I'm on the dance floor. And in some cases, I can't adequately explain how I ultimately drew the line between moral judgment and aesthetic merit.

Neither can society. Two years after former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was captured on video hitting his wife, no NFL team will sign him. We don't really talk about John Lennon's acknowledgment that he hit women. And very few of us took the opportunity to revisit Dr. Dre's track record when "Straight Outta Compton" was released last year.

I can best explain my decision to go see "Birth of a Nation" the way Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim explains his choice to perform the work of anti-Semite German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner, in Israel, where it is unofficially banned. "Well, I think it's obvious," he says, "that Wagner's anti-Semitic views and writings are monstrous. … Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings. It is noble, generous, etc."

He notes that there's no character in Wagner's operas equivalent to Shylock, but William Shakespeare isn't held at arms' length in the same way.

Parker isn't Wagner, of course, and if the growing chorus of skeptical reviews is a guide, I doubt "Birth of a Nation" will be "Die Valkyrie." But I want to evaluate and maybe even enjoy it for myself.