I hate coincidences.

My book club picks a different theme and accompanying book(s) each month. In June, we decided our July theme would be “Giants,” and our picks were I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman. In June, that was no problem. In July, however, a former nanny of Gaiman’s kids and a fan accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct. In the process of typing up this post, three more women came forward with allegations against Gaiman, bringing the total to five.

With that in mind, I started Odd and the Frost Giants with some reluctance.

It was ill-placed. I enjoyed it. Not my favorite story revolving around Norse myths—that would be either Magnus Chase, the Norse Saga of God of War, or Gaiman’s own American Gods—but still a quick fun read.

After I’d finished the book, more news broke. YouTuber D’Angelo Wallace dug up old allegations about comedy YouTuber Cody Ko: namely, that he had a sexual relationship with vlogger Tana Mongeau when she was seventeen and he was twenty-five. I’m subscribed to Cody Ko and have been for years, but I’m currently debating if I’ll stay subscribed.

Engaging with two different creatives right as their improprieties were revealed to the world has made me return to what I’ve come to call the Good Will Hunting problem.

See, the first time I saw the film Good Will Hunting was in the spring of 2019. I loved it! It’s one of three movies I’ve bought off the iTunes Store, I liked it that much. But there are two hangups. Number one: I watched it in 2019, and Harvey Weinstein, the hand-picked producer of Good Will Hunting, was exposed for making Hollywood his own sexual hunting ground in 2017. Number two: The film’s co-writer and co-star is Ben Affleck, who not only faced his own sexual misconduct allegations after Harvey Weinstein’s crimes became public knowledge but was additionally accused of complicity in Harvey Weinstein’s crimes, being one of many celebrities who kept Weinstein’s predatory nature an open secret.

Which brings me to the Good Will Hunting problem: what should we do with good art made by bad people?

Granted, sometimes the question gets answered for us, regardless of the art’s quality. Once Bill Cosby was exposed as a rapist, The Cosby Show became persona non grata to the rerun circuit. I assume the same thing happened to 7th Heaven after Stephen Collins admitted to being a child molester in 2014. After Dylann Roof gunned down ten members of a black church with the hope the murders would be the opening salvo of a race war, photos of him proudly displaying a Confederate flag kicked off a fresh wave of debate about the flag, with more people than ever standing against it as a public symbol. One of the casualties of the debate was The Dukes of Hazzard, a show about a trio of cousins driving around in a Confederate flag-adorned car, the “General Lee.” Most networks rerunning The Dukes of Hazzard dropped the program after the Charleston shooting and have kept it out of their rerun rotations.

At this point, some of you might be thinking, “When an artist does something bad, drop their art. Duh!”

To that, I say yes…and no.

I’ll admit: I experienced schadenfreude when The Flash film bombed last year. Considering that Ezra Miller went on a crime spree in the midst of the film’s production and Warner Bros. did exactly nothing to punish them, it felt like their just desserts that the film cost them so much. But, as a movie TikToker I follow pointed out, The Flash’s box office crash and burn means more than Ezra Miller having a dip in their career. The cast and crew, who signed on to the production years before Miller went mask off, also suffer because of the movie’s poor performance. And even though we might be tempted to accuse the crew of complicity, the 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike revealed how often film crews do their job overworked and unpaid, even on productions where the lead actor isn’t an abusive predatory maniac, and that they often take these jobs for lack of better options.

Then comes the connectedness factor.

A couple of times now when different corporations’ workers have gone on strike, I’ve seen circulating images of what products to not buy to make the company’s pockets hurt. It’s only when you see lists like this that you realize how many pies corporations have their fingers in. Workers at Kellogg’s factories going on strike back in 2021 is how I found out Bear Naked granola, Nutri-Grain cereal bars, Pringles chips and Morningstar Farms plant-based sausage are all Kellogg’s products.

There’s a similar level of connectedness in the world of entertainment. One example I recently found out about: Francis Ford Coppola, acclaimed director of classic films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, considers fellow director Victor Salva his protege and produced Salva’s film Clownhouse. Salva is a registered sex offender who spent fifteen months in prison for molesting one of the underage stars of Clownhouse during the film’s production. After Salva’s release from prison, Coppola, no doubt knowing of the heinous things Salva had done, still executive produced Salva’s most famous movie Jeepers Creepers. So, even if you consciously avoid Victor Salva’s films, as James A. Janisse of the Dead Meat YouTube channel has gone on record as doing, if you watch a Francis Ford Coppola film, you’re kind of supporting Victor Salva.

So, is there a definite answer to the Good Will Hunting problem?

No. Sorry to set you up like this.

What you do with problematic art is ultimately up to you. But, if you want a guideline to dealing with problematic art, I can tell you my standards. (Joke’s on you: I’ll tell you whether you want to know or not.)

If I get a whiff of any of the following, I’m dropping it like Netflix drops shows that don’t instantly do Stranger Things numbers.

Art as a victory lap. The example of an artist using their art to brag about getting off scot-free is Chris Brown. After being arrested and dragged in the media for *checks notes* beating Rihanna unrecognizable, smashing her head against a car door, and unsuccessfully trying to bite her ear off, Chris Brown somehow managed to make a comeback. What was his first song post-controversy, you may ask? “Deuces,” a song where he reframes his ex-girlfriend wanting nothing to do with him after he nearly beat her to death as a scenario where he was the victim, and he decided to break up with an unreasonable harpy and throw his deuces up to herrrrr.

A truly despicable example of someone getting secondhand sick kicks through their art is fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Bradley’s second husband, Walter Breen, was convicted of child molestation in 1990, the same year they divorced. Fifteen years after Bradley died in 1999, her daughter revealed that Bradley and Breen had both sexually abused her and that Bradley had turned a willful blind eye to Breen’s other victims. In light of that new information, Bradley’s tendency to include incest in her novels took on a sinister new light: using the fantasy worlds she crafted as an elaborate way to relive her crimes.

Art as justification for heinousness. There’s a downside to following music YouTubers like Todd in the Shadows and Anthony Fantano: you tend to learn about so-called lost music, which is often lost for very good reasons. So it is with Tyga and his quickly buried single “Stimulated.” He wrote the song in response to public backlash towards his relationship with then sixteen-year-old Kylie Jenner. Tyga was twenty-four when the relationship started. Because Tyga is an idiot, he included the line “They say she young, I should have waited/she a big girl, dog, when she stimulated,” all but confirming that he’d had a sexual relationship with the teenage Kylie Jenner.

Propaganda. Does this need examples? I don’t think it does.

Conspiracy theories. The older I get and the more history I learn, the less patience I have for conspiracy theories and the people who peddle them. Why could constitute a post of its own, but the short version: the heinous things the world’s governments have done are public, easily accessible knowledge, so why do we need to write fan-(hate?)-fiction about the government being corrupt and evil? Yeah, anything that treats conspiracy theories as anything other than ignorance is being hand delivered to the nearest destructive object by yours truly.

The Good Will Hunting Problem isn’t a mathematical equation. There’s not one definitive answer to it, and it’s a question that must constantly be reevaluated. But I’ve answered it as best as I can.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do what’s apparently difficult for guys my age: not try to pick up teenage girls.

Noah Keene

Noah Keene graduated from Calvin University in December 2021 with a major in creative writing and a minor in Spanish. He currently resides in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He spends his free time reading and putting his major to good use by working on his first novel. See what he’s reading by following him on Instagram @peachykeenebooks and read his other personal writing by going to thekeenechronicles.com.