[...] I wanted for there to be a universal balance, a universal answer, though I suspected maybe that balance is different for everyone. A friend who was gang-raped in high school says that any and all work by artists who’ve exploited and abused women should be destroyed. A gay friend whose adolescence was redeemed by art says that art and artist must be separated entirely. It’s possible that both these people are right.

—

We don’t always love who or what we’re supposed to love. Woody Allen himself famously quoted Emily Dickinson: “The heart wants what it wants.” Auden said it more nicely, as he said almost everything more nicely: “The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.” The desires of the audience’s heart are as crooked as corkscrews. We continue to love what we ought to hate. We can’t seem to turn the love off.