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Is This Okay? • Can You Support An Artist If Their Personal Life Is Problematic?

"If people stopped supporting their art, they would think a lot more before they did stuff."

We're back with another episode of Is This Okay? On this episode, we talked about Nate Parker and the rape allegations that have been making headlines right before his anticipated film The Birth of a Nation hits theaters. This raised the question: Should you still support artists when they've been accused of a crime?

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Seventeen years ago, Nate Parker was accused of rape. With his recent film The Birth of a Nation hitting theaters this month, there is a divide between people who still want to support the film and people who want to boycott it because of his past.

So we had our friend Kwesi come in and give his perspective on whether or not Nate Parker as an individual should be separated from his work.

One of the points brought up was that the alleged victim was no longer able to voice her side of what happened because she killed herself three years ago...

...and Nate Parker, on the other hand, has been able to speak out.

But because of the nature of the film and the cultural commentary it could provide, there's a moral question many people are struggling with:

It seemed like the group was left confused, because while they want to see an important film, they don't want to support a problematic person.

Whether we were going to see the movie or not, we could all agree that the situation has taught us to get more information about people before supporting their work.