Should we make art from telling stories without consent about living people who harmed us?

 “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I've been ruminating (again) this week on the ethics of creating art that is clearly and identifiably about living people, especially when that art is scathing, revelatory, or born from a place of pain.  

The immediate catalyst of this thinking has been listening on repeat to an album that will end up being one of my top albums of this year for sure: Lily Allen's West End Girl. If you are unfamiliar, the album charts the catastrophic breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor, David Harbour, and zero punches are pulled. Allen is explicit, raw, and so clearly hurt by what she says Harbour did, that IF the album is an accurate or even semi-accurate narrative, the conclusion is clear - the Harbour who emerges from the connected web of songs is an irredeemable shit.

Of course, there is (as always!) the giant IF hanging over that statement. It is unclear, and no one but those involved know the answer to this, how much of the lyrical picture is hyperbolic or fictionalised for the sake of creating a coherent and devastating story. (Allen herself has stated that she used conflation and blurring in several areas, with the named character "Madeline", for instance, acting as a stand-in for more than one real person, none of whom actually have that name). It's also Allen's story, and makes no pretence to be anything else, which means the perspective is one-sided.

All of that said, it is, in my view, an outstanding concept album, that marks a return to the end-to-end storytelling in music that I have so enjoyed in the past. My own disclosure is that Lily Allen is one of my problematic faves (she has a pretty dreary history of bad behaviour, a lot of it while in the grip of addiction but that doesn't fully excuse it). I really like most of her music despite not thinking she's a great person, but this album hits harder for me than anything else she's ever released. I do think that's a testament to the strength of the music, and Allen's willingness to excoriate herself (the neediness and rejection sensitivity that she doesn't sugarcoat would be a humiliating thing to admit) as well as tearing up the reputation of her ex. 

I also appreciate the way the album - and perhaps Allen herself - forces people to reinterrogate the damaging impact of the trope of the perfect victim. Allen is very far from perfect (or blameless) in the way she lives her life, but two things can be true at once - she can be imperfect, and she can also have been victimised by someone else. Sympathy for terrible things done to a person (that they did not cause themselves) shouldn't be limited to how worthy you think the victim is. Recent history has given us many opportunities to practice this kind of empathy.

That was a really long preamble to get to my main point, which is this - I often wonder how ethical it is to go full scorched earth on living people in art, perhaps especially when you are a famous / successful artist with a dedicated fanbase that will parse every line in a song or a book to squeeze out every drop of potential meaning. (Taylor Swift's considerably more elliptical songs about past relationships spring to mind here, and the way her fans autopsy them for evidence of malfeasance by others). 

In the case of Allen's album, it is going to be really hard, maybe impossible, for most people who vibe with it to ever see David Harbour even neutrally again. I myself have noted an instinctive lip-curling of disgust at seeing his photo in a puff piece about the Stranger Things press tour, and this is the first season of Stranger Things that I haven't raced to consume - I haven't started it yet, and I might not ever do so. It's both a distaste for the version of Harbour that Allen presents, and also a strange kind of embarrassment - I feel like I know much more than I should about the man's private life, more than I ever want to know about any celebrity. It's really hard to suspend disbelief and lean into an acting performance with Pussy Palace and 4chan Stan running wild in my head.

So, what's the ethical position here? Harbour could reply, but he's not a musician and has no shot at making any statement that will cut through against the power of Allen's prodigious talent. Does that mean that Allen, in producing an album so explicitly linked to her relationship and to Harbour (there is no possibility whatsoever that anyone could be confused about this), has savagely rebalanced the power between them and obtained revenge in a way that's ethically compromised, given that Harbour is unlikely to reputationally recover from the damage? 

That is the question!

The writer Anne Lamott, famously, is of the view that the right to speak about / make art from one's own life is absolute, and this includes the naming of people and their actions, no matter how damaging the impact of that might be to those people (see quote above). 

The implication is that this license exists only in the context of honesty - telling the truth about what people did, not making up straight lies - but that in itself is, of course, a slippery concept both with relationships and with art. I have no doubt that most artists try to tell *their* truth in their art, but as the saying goes, there's often my version, your version, and the third-party observed truth somewhere in between. Even when the facts are not in dispute, the meaning of those facts is subject to interpretation, which can be both generous and extremely ungenerous (and people reacting in pain are notably unlikely to take a generous view of the actions of those who hurt them). 

This is a problem that confronts memoirists who want to make disclosures too, of course, and there is a reason why many choose to wait until the subjects of their revelations are dead (it's not only to protect themselves from libel actions!) Taking potshots, however thoroughly earned, at living people from the fortress of your art might be (OK, is) emotionally rewarding, and some amazing art arises from it. Heck, I'm a poet who is not above writing the odd diss poem, although I have never shared or published them. But the impact on the living is real, and can ripple out far beyond the particular irredeemable shit you are taking aim at.

Can artists use their lives and the things that happen to them as fuel? Of course! All artists do this - where else would the spark come from if not your own emotions and experiences? But there is a real difference between creating fictional people loosely based on real people from your life, or even encoding ambiguous references (a la Swift), and just straight up trashing an identifiable person. Of course, if people want you to write warmly about them, they should behave in a way that earns that; but if things go sour and a person behaves badly to you, do you still retain any responsibility to them? Do they lose their right to privacy because they harmed you? The answer may be yes (I would argue it definitely IS yes when the actions are criminal or where there is still a substantial risk to others who may be vulnerable) but it's not always straightforward, and it's a question that anyone who mines their life for art should actively engage with every time they write a song as devastating as Relapse or Just Enough. 

I think Allen did answer that question for herself in the penultimate song on the album, Let You W/In,  and clearly came down on the side that this was justified action. Who am I to cast doubt on that for her? That said, it is still a question that I will always consider for myself whenever I write poetry or memoir, and I think it's right that I should, and take it seriously and thoughtfully.