[MUSIC] Today the term Evil Genius appears to be a well-accepted social meme. There's a Dr. Evil, an Evil Genius video game, an Evil Genius mouse cartoon. A Netflix documentary series called Evil Genius about bank robbers and even a beer called Evil Genius with the logo EG compressed. But what do we mean by an Evil Genius? Was Adolf Hitler an Evil Genius or a genius at all? It depends once again on how one defines genius. To repeat my definition of genius and remember it's just one person's definition. A genius is a person of extraordinary mental powers whose original works or insights change society in some significant way for good or for ill across cultures and across time. Here's a shorter definition Just for evil genius that I've taken off the internet. Evil genius quote an intellectually brilliant person who excels at using his or her mental abilities for negative or harmful ends, end quote. According to either of these definitions, Adolf Hitler would qualify as a genius of the first order. He changed the lives of tens of millions of people and in 1940 came close to destroying Western civilization as we know it. But a friend from New York once said to me, hold on, Hitler was no genius, he was just a psychopath. The genius must change society for the good. Okay, probably so or certainly possibly so, but to disallow the possibility of an evil genius, my friend would have to craft a definition of genius that stipulates that a genius must do good but no ill or evil. Did genius Hitler leave any lasting good? Did Mao Zedong? The ascendancy of Mao said by Western observers to have led to the deaths of millions through starvation and forced labor camps but he remains a national hero in China because he set the stage for millions of Chinese to rise out of poverty and for China to become a world superpower. A Yale student once said to me quote to this day, my grandmother reveres him because she was one of the students who was able to leave her small village and go to college. On the other hand, I know a lot of musicians, artists, and composers whose lives were ruined by Mao. One of the reasons my dad wanted to leave China was due to the communist government of Mao end quote. So even within one and the same family, Mao Zedong represented both good and ill. How much ill must we tolerate from the genius? Perhaps if the ill doesn't extend beyond one's immediate circle, then the genius is not so bad. But that raises a question. Must the families of the genius sacrifice themselves to serve the genius? Should Shakespeare have State home in Stratford on Avon to help nurture his family and not have abandoned them for London the city that made him happy family but fewer great dramas? Should Paul Gauguin have stayed with his wife and five children in Copenhagen instead of sailing off permanently to Tahiti? Again, happy family, but then far fewer Polynesian paintings to view in museums around the world. But wait today, museums find it difficult to exhibit Gauguin's Tahitian paintings without being attacked, and perhaps was good reason. Gauguin left a legacy of sexual encounters with Tahitian teenage girls and called the Polynesian people whom he painted savages and barbarians. Do we really want to hold up as a role model someone who undermined the sanctity of youth in the female body and engaged in overt racism? As the New York Times recently asked in a series of articles, is it time Gauguin got canceled? The term cancel culture denotes a modern form of ostracism in which prominent people are exiled from social or professional circles for transgressions, real or perceived. Christopher Columbus, for example, has been largely canceled owing to his treatment of indigenous peoples in the Western hemisphere. More recently, those canceled or nominated for cancelation include the following geniuses, at least geniuse according to my definition of the term. Philosopher David Hume canceled by the University of Edinburgh, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson canceled by the school board of San Francisco all three for accommodating or exploiting the institution of slavery. Abraham Lincoln was canceled by the same board accused of lacking empathy for native Americans. A statute of Theodore Roosevelt was recently taken down in New York city for similar reasons. Of the presidents curved on Mount Rushmore all have been canceled by one group or another. Ludwig Van Beethoven has been nominated for cancelation by progressive music critics who hear his assertive and sometimes violent classical music as excessively masculine and overbearing. The question of Beethoven's cancelation seems wrongheaded to me. It misses the point of music. Music by itself cannot engender any offensive or immoral act. The cases of Hume, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt caused me to ask well, how much of a role does intent to harm play? And how much above the moral standards of the day must the genius or any person rise? How far seeing must the genius be? I'm really not sure. Similarly, how depraved must a genius be to be canceled? Genius, Michael Jackson, and genius, filmmaker Woody Allen had been canceled owing to substantiated charges of child molestation. For example, Picasso came very close to child molestation when he began sexual relations with Marie Torres Walter when she was 17 and he 45. Picasso also once struck wife Olga and dragged her around the floor of their right bank apartment. In Picasso's later left bank studio, Dora Maar was knocked unconscious by Picasso. And when wintering with Francoise Gilot, Picasso put out a cigarette on her face, said Picasso to Gilot in 1952 every time I change wives, I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around now to complicate my existence. Maybe that would bring back my youth too. You Kill the woman so you wipe out the past she represents. Despite Picasso's behavior, no one seems eager to cancel him. Too big to cancel? The Yale Art gallery has not removed any of the several fine Picassos it holds. Indeed, in 2021 the gallery honored Picasso with a four-part lecture series. As Jock Reynolds, the director emeritus of the Yale Art Gallery has asked quote. How much are we going to do by way of a litmus test on every artist in terms of how they behave? End, quote. The nation of Israel applied such a litmus test to the genius Richard Wagner and canceled his music. Wagner is arguably the most important person in the history of modern theater. Lights out in the theater, seating only during the intermission, the orchestra in the pit these are all Wagner's ideas. Epic fantasy series such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are built on Wagnerian models. But Wagner was a virulent antisemite. In 1850, he published an article titled Jewishness in music, in which he accused Jews of being cultural parasites who fed off the healthy artistic material of other people. Quote The Jew has never had any art of his own end quote. Wagner described the sound of the Jewish voice as hissing and shrill and buzzing and grunting end quote. In an 1869 expansion of this article on Jewishness, Wagner came close to suggesting something akin to Hitler's final solution. Quote, I cannot judge whether the decline of our presumably our pure German culture could be halted through the violent expulsion of the corrosive foreign element, end, quote. In other words, the Jews, Adolf Hitler's leader equated himself with the hero Voltan from Wagner's ring cycle. Hitler also incorporated phrases from Wagner's anti-Semitic writings into his own speeches and socialized with Wagner's descendants, but was what Hitler did with Wagner's fault. Beginning in 1938, musicians in Israel refused to perform the music of Wagner. And the debate has continued down to the present day to perform Wagner in Israel or not to perform Wagner in Israel. Some, understandably, are not willing to forgive and forget either the acts of an evil genius, Hitler, or the music of perhaps an evil genius Wagner. Some are willing to forgive and forget to allow Wagner to be banned for a time and then be culturally rehabilitated. And some are willing to say that Wagner's music should never have been banned in the first place. The work of art must be separated from the worker who created it. The sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nannerl Mozart seems to have thought that way, that genius by its very nature deserves a free pass. At the time of Mozart's death in 1791. The press in Vienna accused him of being indifferent toward his family, but sister Nannerl defended his memory in these terms. Quote, it is certainly easy to understand that a great genius who is preoccupied with the abundance of his own ideas. Again, preoccupied with abundance of his own ideas and who soars from earth to heaven with amazing speed is extremely reluctant to lower himself to noticing and dealing with mundane affairs. End quote. More than 200 years later, an observer of the American comedian, the late Robbins Williams said the same sort of thing about him. Quote Robbins was a genius and genius does not produce normal men next door who are good family men and who look after their wives and children. Genius requires its own way of looking at and living in the world. Finally, a modern-day example of genius and morality playing out in the courts, even as I speak, that of creative genius, songwriter R Kelly. Kelly has been named by Billboard magazine as the most important hip-hop artist between 1995 and 2010. Is perhaps not necessary to go into all the sorted specifics of the charges against Kelly involving sex crimes, racketeering, and disruption of justice. Kelly's record companies have canceled his contracts, but a quarter of a billion people have watched and every day more people continue to watch his videos on youtube. Some schools have canceled Kelly's popular graduation song, I believe I can fly, but others, including the US Air Force Academy at least until the time of this filming have not what to do. To sum up. It seems to me that there are at least three positions regarding genius and a moral standard that one can take. Position one, morality is a precondition to creativity. A scene Qanon, a genius must not only act morally according to contemporary standards but also act morally according to the standards that may come to be in the future. Thus, even in regard to morality, it is the task of the genius to see and hit a target that no one else can yet see. Transgressors, even geniuses, and all they create should be canceled. That's possibility one. Now, the opposite possibility two. Morality and exceptional human accomplishment play out again on two separate tracks. When considering the meaning, value, importance of a work of art or science the creator is irrelevant. A work of art, a scientific discovery exists in its own sphere. We should not care who created it. As novelists Arthur Koestler said in 1960 for quote, the principal mark of genius is not personal perfection, but originality the opening of new frontiers end quote. According to this opinion too, it is possible to hate, despise the artist, the genius, but love the art. Possibility three, something of a middle ground society should not condone but should tolerate at least less harmful acts of a genius. As writer Mary Anne Evans nom de plume of George Eliot said, quote. The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. End quote. Or as former US President Barack Obama said less poetically. People who do really good stuff have flaws. Evans and Obama seem willing to put up with transgressions of a minor magnitude, suggesting that we should be willing to take one for the team. The team being all of us because on the whole, the genius makes better for all of us. Possibility four. None of the above. Which works best for you? If possibility four, none of the above post your own answer on the forum discussion board at the home page of our course. Again, I'm no genius and I and others will benefit from your thinking on this contemporary issue on morality when and if to cancel a genius.
