How far are you willing to go for art?

This is a post containing rough thoughts, originally written at 3:47 AM today, when I woke and couldn't fall asleep again. They were meant to build on a previous post.

Like all night thoughts, they seem more brilliant at the time. Still, I see no need to polish or extend this.

Thanks to Candace (Muse and Fury) whose almost poetic comment here at this blog prompted me to publish this draft.

(And now the preamble is almost as long as the post itself.)

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The re-occurring issue is: how to engage with art that propagates hatred of women.

The answer depends on 1) when the art was created, 2) how bad it is in it's attitude towards women, and 3) how good the art is.

The quality of the work determines to what degree I tolerate (2) in order to keep engaging with the art.

In some cases the trade-off isn't enough for me and I drop the art. For instance, with the TV show "The Sopranos", I hung in there until (2) tipped the scales of (3).

In Steinbeck's case, I'm not willing to miss out on the art, so I need to figure out how to deal with the misogyny. One way is to blog about it, and see if others feel the same, what their thoughts are, and what wisdom they might offer me as I progress through East of Eden.