Neil Gaiman "cancelled"?

Orphia Nay said:
Anyway... I think one reason Gaiman has sued over the NDA breach is to scare off other victims from going to the media.
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It will be interesting to see whether he wins or not. From his perspective, I could see why he would want to sue. He thinks he paid her a lot of money for her silence, and by breaking her silence, he didn't get what he paid for. So he wants his money back. However, it may be unenforceable anyway. You could argue that there is a public interest in not enforcing this sort of NDA.
I have signed an NDA myself, but these are related to my job, and cover confidential business information and that sort of thing. Not sordid behavior.
 
Derail moved to AAH.
This is not the thread for discussion of trans issues.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin
 
Puppycow said:
You could argue that there is a public interest in not enforcing this sort of NDA.
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You don't have to argue it--an NDA that seeks to keep confidential the details of sexual harassment complaint in an employment relationship, without the explicit consent of the complainant, is unenforceable in New York.
 
mumblethrax said:
You don't have to argue it--an NDA that seeks to keep confidential the details of sexual harassment complaint in an employment relationship, without the explicit consent of the complainant, is unenforceable in New York.
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If you say so. IANAL. According to the New York article, it is actually a "demand for arbitration" rather than a lawsuit. The contract (NDA) states that any disputes over the contract must be settled through arbitration, according to the article.
Last winter, Wallner also filed a claim for arbitration, shared with New York, against Gaiman. She accused him of breaching his end of the NDA, alleging that his lawyer had held onto videos, photos, and text messages she’d sent him during the course of their sexual engagement. The NDA demanded that both she and Gaiman destroy all such materials after signing it. Wallner and Gaiman’s claims against each other will be dealt with in the coming months through arbitration, the process dictated by the NDA they both signed in 2021. In a statement, a spokesperson for Gaiman said, “Caroline Wallner’s purported claims are completely meritless. We have no doubt that we will prevail in arbitration — and that Ms. Wallner’s actions will result in her having to pay Neil’s legal fees.”
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By the way, this was not "an employment relationship" in Wallner's case. If memory serves, she was a tenant who couldn't afford to pay rent. Gaiman took advantage of that rather than simply evict her. Definitely sordid at the bare minimum.
 
He seems to have developed a whole array of seedy behaviours, but clearly the main one is leveraging advantages he had over a bunch of women.

Of course, if the allegations are true.

On the other hand, we have claims that these are just gold-digging whores and that any suggestion that there is coercion here is relying on the “pseudoscience” of psychology.
 
Puppycow said:
If you say so. IANAL. According to the New York article, it is actually a "demand for arbitration" rather than a lawsuit. The contract (NDA) states that any disputes over the contract must be settled through arbitration, according to the article.
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Doesn't really matter. If an NDA is unenforceable, it's unenforceable.

Puppycow said:
By the way, this was not "an employment relationship" in Wallner's case. If memory serves, she was a tenant who couldn't afford to pay rent. Gaiman took advantage of that rather than simply evict her. Definitely sordid at the bare minimum.
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Yes, it was. She (and her husband, initially) were compensated with housing for acting as caretakers on the property.

Whether that constitutes an employment relationship for the purposes of the relevant law isn't clear, but she was not a paying tenant at any point, and there's a reason she hired an attorney who specializes in employment law.
 
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I've never read more than maybe one of Gaiman's comics (although I have read many, many others.) But recently I found not one, but two giant collections of Sandman graphic novels, both about an inch thick, in the Little Free Library kiosk nearby. They're in great condition, and they could have fetched $15-20 on eBay. But I will get around to reading them this summer and probably putting them back there or in another kiosk.

I really don't care about any of the ◊◊◊◊ that's being talked about in this thread.
 
alfaniner said:
I've never read more than maybe one of Gaiman's comics (although I have read many, many others.) But recently I found not one, but two giant collections of Sandman graphic novels, both about an inch thick, in the Little Free Library kiosk nearby. They're in great condition, and they could have fetched $15-20 on eBay. But I will get around to reading them this summer and probably putting them back there or in another kiosk.

I really don't care about any of the ◊◊◊◊ that's being talked about in this thread.
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Fine, but this is not a thread in which we evaluate or praise his works.
 
We did talk about separating the artist from the art earlier, and I think we agreed that it's easier when the artist is safety dead. Preferably a long time ago. I have to say that these revelations have caused me to think differently about some aspects of Gaiman's work, including  Sandman and American  Gods. Maybe it will only be possible to put it all into perspective in retrospect. It may take some time.
 
Puppycow said:
If you say so. IANAL. According to the New York article, it is actually a "demand for arbitration" rather than a lawsuit. The contract (NDA) states that any disputes over the contract must be settled through arbitration, according to the article.
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Right, so you ignore their demand for arbitration, then they try to sue you for breach of contract, and the court dismisses their suit because the contract isn't enforceable.
 
Rolfe said:
We did talk about separating the artist from the art earlier---
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Indeed. Why should the art be tainted just because the artist is an arsehat?

The example I often use is a personal one. Composer Richard Wagner was a very nasty individual - an unapologetic and rampant anti-Semite. Nonetheless, my absolute favourite piece of classical music is the "Tannhäuser Overture" (particularly when performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Herbert von Karajan).
 
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smartcooky said:
Indeed. Why should the art be tainted just because the artist is an arsehat?

The example I often use is a personal one. Composer Richard Wagner was a very nasty individual - an unapologetic and rampant anti-Semite. Nonetheless, my absolute favourite piece of classical music is the "Tannhäuser Overture" (particularly when performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Herbert von Karajan).
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I think I mentioned that precise example earlier. I am a lifelong complete Wagner nut. I will crawl over broken glass to see most of his operas. I have something like 18 DVD box sets of the Ring. (Booked for the new Parsifal at Glyndebourne next month, at vast expense.) That was the example I had in mind when I said, it's easier when the artist is safely dead, preferably a long time dead. Also, Wagner's nastiness was basically all talk. He had Jewish friends, although from time to time he was a bit mean to them about it. He wrote a highly inflammatory and offensive anti-Semitic pamphlet which was over the top even for its time (his wife was even worse mind you), but he didn't do anything.

People (yes, Barry Millington, I'm talking about you) have carved out careers trying to prove antisemitism in Wagner's work, and have convinced only likeminded colleagues. The thesis about hidden musical sequences in Meistersinger is beyond tenuous. Beckmesser (Hans Lick originally) was an overt dig at a critic Wagner didn't like, not an antisemitic trope. When someone published something about antisemitism in the Meistersinger music, he merely said, let him think what he likes. Wagner being Wagner, if he had deliberately seeded the score with coded messages, would undoubtedly have said, goodness, how clever of him to have worked it out. Didn't stop Barry Millington though!

Gustav Mahler (a Jew) looked at the character of Mime in Siegfried and saw a Jewish cariacature, and seems to have rather admired it. (What could I make of that part if I had the chance!) But to me it's more comparable to Rowling's goblin bankers. Anyone using that middle-European dwarf archetype is risking falling foul of that accusation. The idea that the Alberich and/or Mime are intended as evil cariacatures of Jews doesn't really hold water. Alberich enslaves his own people and in at least one of my DVD sets he's portrayed (not unconvincingly) as Hitler.

I asked a Jewish friend and fellow Wagner nut about allegations of antisemitism in Parsifal and got back a long email going into far more detail about Jewish theology than I really wanted to know, the tl;dr version of which was "don't be silly".

I think there's a decent case that Wagner's unpleasant character traits, and in particular the antisemitism, simply aren't present in his work. Getting closer to the Gaiman allegations, while Wagner has a reputation for being a womaniser, the number of his affairs is pretty modest for a celebrity of his time, and while the frilly pink bloomers (he was autogynaephilic) and his housekeeper is a lurid story, there isn't the breath of a suggestion that it wasn't entirely consensual. She was apparently devoted to him. He never raped anybody and he never coerced anybody.

In contrast I can look at Gaiman's writing in the light of knowing what we now know, and re-evaluate quite a lot of it in that light. Things which were disturbing when they appeared merely to be the work of a fertile creative brain become a lot more disturbing when you know more about what has been going on in that brain. I think it's going to be a while and a few books of literary criticism before this is all worked through.

And in that context, what is your opinion of the conundrum I outlined in this earlier post in the thread?

Rolfe said:
I actually have a first-hand example of the dilemma created by the cancelling of Neil Gaiman.

I'm writing something about Wagner's Ring, and in the chapter dealing with act 1 of Die Walküre I'm discussing the identity of a new character who has just been introduced, real name "Siegmund", but he is going by the alias of "Wehwalt". The audience is being given progressive hints that this fugitive young man is in fact the son of Wotan (Odin), chief of the gods. There is one more hint than is generally recognised, and may well not have been intentional on the part of the composer.

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I was quite pleased with myself for being able to bring in the Gaiman reference, as it brought the word "Wednesday" right into play as an actual name applied to the character. Now I'm wondering if I should delete that bolded sentence, even though the relevance is completely unaffected by any of Gaiman's transgressions. Thoughts?
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There's quite a few things in various books that start to feel a lot more disturbing now.
 
@Rolfe, yes, it makes a difference if we think that the art is an actual reflection of some kind of odious behaviour. There has recently been a case of a hip hop artist whose own lyrics were used as evidence of murder as apparently the artist was specifically bragging about committing it.

I mean, if diaries one day emerge showing Anthony Burgess and a bunch of his literary friends actually went out on rape and murder sprees after getting wasted on Moloko plus to the sounds of Ludwig Van, it might make us rethink whether we can enjoy the novel Clockwork Orange.
 
alfaniner said:
For writing advice, I've always heard "Write what you know." That made me worry about Stephen King for a while.
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Yep, Ernest Hemingway would say, if you're stuck, write the truest sentence you know, and the rest will follow.

Which of Gaiman's sentences ring true? I've only read one of his books, Stardust (borrowed from a library).
 
Orphia Nay said:
Yep, Ernest Hemingway would say, if you're stuck, write the truest sentence you know, and the rest will follow.

Which of Gaiman's sentences ring true? I've only read one of his books, Stardust (borrowed from a library).
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That bit in Sandman where artists gain inspiration by kidnapping a Muse and raping her seems a little on the nose these days.

I think this is less a case of "write what you know" and more a case of "the artist informs their art".
 
alfaniner said:
For writing advice, I've always heard "Write what you know." That made me worry about Stephen King for a while.
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I think what Stephen King knows best is the human condition. It's what allows him to write such engaging characters, and such compelling visions of the mundane and familiar of our daily lives. It's also what allows him to imagine the most horrific scenarios, and tell us how they would play out in a way that is as relatably human as it is absolutely terrifying.

I would say that for all Gaiman's knack for the fantastical, King is by far the better writer. Not least because King seems to have been born with an innate empathy that Gaiman apparently lacks.

Tragically, it seems probable to me that a lot of Gaiman's natal empathy was burned away by the Church of Scientology. As a result, his fantasies are not as grounded in his essential humanity as they might have been.
 
alfaniner said:
For writing advice, I've always heard "Write what you know." That made me worry about Stephen King for a while.
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Well, plenty of his characters are writers and alcoholics, and the stories are often set in Maine. He absolutely does write about what he knows.
 
theprestige said:
I would say that for all Gaiman's knack for the fantastical, King is by far the better writer. Not least because King seems to have been born with an innate empathy that Gaiman apparently lacks.
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Indeed. His withdrawl from sale of his 1977 book "Rage", about a school shooting, pretty much demonstrates that. I can't see Gaiman doing something like this under similar circumstances.
 
angrysoba said:
Well, plenty of his characters are writers and alcoholics, and the stories are often set in Maine. He absolutely does write about what he knows.
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Stephen King is kind of Exhibit A for why that advice is facile. He also writes about haunted hotels, murderous ghost twins, ruthless killers, cynical bible salesmen, vengeful gypsies, reluctant psychics, soulless killers, and comically evil space aliens.
 
smartcooky said:
Indeed. His withdrawl from sale of his 1977 book "Rage", about a school shooting, pretty much demonstrates that. I can't see Gaiman doing something like this under similar circumstances.
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And Stanley Kubrick withdrew the movie, A Clockwork Orange, after some incidents in which people emulated the droogs (which makes a nice call-back to what we were talking about earlier).

But now I am confused.

Weren't you the one insisting that Neil Gaiman has committed no crime but is himself a victim of a gold-digger who is probably guilty of even greater crimes?

I could have sworn it was you, and yet here you are saying now that you don't think Gaiman would do anything so noble as Stephen King if there were a hypothetical case of .... something... something... which is not at all clear.
 
theprestige said:
Stephen King is kind of Exhibit A for why that advice is facile. He also writes about haunted hotels, murderous ghost twins, ruthless killers, cynical bible salesmen, vengeful gypsies, reluctant psychics, soulless killers, and comically evil space aliens.
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Hence alfaniner's earlier joke.
 
angrysoba said:
@Rolfe, yes, it makes a difference if we think that the art is an actual reflection of some kind of odious behaviour. There has recently been a case of a hip hop artist whose own lyrics were used as evidence of murder as apparently the artist was specifically bragging about committing it.
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I'm not sure exactly who that was, but I think I have heard of it. I do remember a Key & Peele skit about something like that. I don't want to derail, but here it is.
 
theprestige said:
That bit in Sandman where artists gain inspiration by kidnapping a Muse and raping her seems a little on the nose these days.

I think this is less a case of "write what you know" and more a case of "the artist informs their art".
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I was harking back to what Silly Green Monkey said, yes.:

Silly Green Monkey said:
It does make that Sandman plotline where authors are getting their prize-winning stories by raping a captive Muse hit a little differently though.
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