You Should Never Have Heroes

I really like a lot of what Neil Gaiman has written. The Sandman comics were a revelation to me when I first encountered them, ironically working for a comic book distributor. The interplay of words and images was more deftly done than anything I had encountered before. Many of his short stories and novels spoke to me. I enjoyed his writing, even tried to learn something from it, as a failed writer. But I never considered him a hero or tried to be like him. And I think, maybe, that makes dealing with the revelation that he is most likely an abusive rapist easier for me to deal with.

Gaiman is credibly, in my eyes, accused of sexual assault by multiple women in a New York magazine report. The report is an expansion and deepening of accusations and information that have been reported in other sources. A lot of people are, understandably upset. So am I. it is never pleasant to find to that someone has been abused, and it is worse to find out that the abuser was someone whose work you admired. But I feel no need to apologize, like some, about my appreciation for the art he created. Nor do I need to pretend, or explain to the world, that I never liked him. His personal failings do not change his art.

The first time I was disappointed by a hero was in middle school. I was, and still am (that historical novel will get written one day, I swear!), an enormous history buff. One of my social studies teachers and I talked about history between classes because yes, I am exactly the enormous dork you all think me to be. In one of these discussions, some information about Churchill came out that led me down a path to discovering that Churchill was, in fact, an imperialistic asshat.

I was crushed.

How could the man who stood up to Nazism be a bad person? I think my aversion to having heroes could be traced back to that realization. Because again: enormous dork.

Churchill could be an anti-Nazi scourge, a drunk, and an imperialist because he was a person. And people are collections of good things and bad things. The presence of bad things does not eliminate the good that the good things have done in the world. And the presence of the good things does not excuse the bad that the bad things have brought to the world.

This works in all areas of life. AOC is perhaps my favorite politician. She fights, her policies are mostly correct, and she seems to be correct about how to best advance those policies. But if it came out tomorrow that she, I don’t know, was a secret Red Wings fan (okay, maybe not that bad, but you get the point), I would not feel any compulsion to defend her. You should admire actions, not people. By doing so, you can hold onto the good without needing to rationalize away or excuse the bad.

This is not to say that you should not look at Gaiman’s art exactly the same way. Revelations about people can color your opinion of their work. I am not likely to pay for anything directly by Gaiman again, and may give up on the Sandman show, as much as I was enjoying it. Putting money in the pocket of someone whose pile of bad things is quite so large is not something I consider to add to my pile of good things.

But I will also not feel bad about how Gaiman’s art has affected me. Those pieces of art, those good things, do not cease to have moved me, do not suddenly change from good to bad, because he is a bad person. I also don’t need to take him off his pedestal because I never put him on one to begin with. I admired certain of his actions, the way I admire AOC’s politics and willingness to fight to advance them. But in both cases, it is the action I admire, the action I consider worth emulating, not the person.

People are people. No one is perfect, and some, like Gaiman, are very bad indeed. We don’t need heroes, in my opinion. We just need to be able to emulate the pile of good things people bring without excusing or rationalizing the bad things that accompany their route through life.

None of this is profound, but I think it still worth mentioning. If Gaiman’s art spoke to you because of the good in it, you don’t need to toss those specific good things from your own pile of good things. You merely need to avoid adding to your, or others, pile of bad things by excusing or rationalizing his bad behavior.

You don’t need heroes. You just need to recognize and emulate good actions.