Harry Potter fans have struggled with JK Rowling's views on trans women. Some of them are so distressed by that they've stopped reading Harry Potter. But for a lot of people leaving the Harry Potter fictional universe would be extremely difficult. And one way that they manage it is to think, well, JK Rowling does no longer own Harry Potter for us because that bird has flown and now resides. So that's a way of remaining a fan of that universe.
What to do with the art of monstrous men? That’s the question Claire Dederer grapples with in Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. She wonders whether she can or should continue to love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? And if it’s possible to divorce the art from the artist.
How do we now view the glorious, technicolour paintings of Paul Gauguin’s works from Tahiti? The writer Devika Ponnambalam has imagined the life of one of his muses Teha’amana in her latest novel, I Am Not Your Eve. Gauguin was 43 when he first arrived on the island in 1891 and made numerous teenage girls his ‘unofficial wives’.
The science writer Michael Bond is interested in the psychology behind fandom. In his book Fans he looks at the pleasure of tribalism and sense of belonging, but also what happens when one’s hero falls short, and the cognitive dissonance needed to continue to stay true to a monstrous genius.
Producer: Katy Hickman