The Interview

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2:02That's paycord.com slash leaders. Before we start, one production note. In this episode, we again have quotes from Roll Doll. Rather than just have me read them in my terrible British accent, we decided to bring them to life. So we use an actor's performance and some custom software to create a doll-like voice. Okay, onto the episode. Roll Doll sits comfortably at home, giving which should be a casual breezy phone interview to a popular magazine called The New Statesman. It's 1983. Doll is at this point without question the most famous and most successful children's author of all time. The BFG came out just last year and was a phenomenon. The Witches is about to be published a critical acclaim. On the phone with Doll is Michael Korn, a young theater critic. Korn is just at a college. He's not an experienced journalist or some sort of master interrogator. This isn't some kind of brilliant gotcha moment, but Doll is in one of his dark moods. Korn asks about a book review that Doll recently wrote.

3:02The book centered on the very thorny topic of Israel's invasion of Lebanon the previous year. Doll decides he doesn't just want to talk about the book or his review of it. He wants to widen things. He wants to talk about the Holocaust. You know, the generational tragedy where 6 million Jewish men, women and children were systematically exterminated. It might be the most softball topic at all of journalism. Anyone in their right mind recognizes the immense scale of the horror and expresses a firm desire for it never to be forgotten and to never happen again. Instead, here's what role Doll says to the young journalist. There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity. Maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. And then he goes on to say, even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. Ugh, okay. This is what we've been waiting for folks. Here we go.

4:04For my hardpod guests, imagine entertainment and parallax. I'm Aaron Tracy. And this is The Secret World of Roll Doll. Episode 7 Now, if you're worried we're about to waste a whole lot of time dissecting one unrepresentative quote that didn't really reflect who Doll was or what he believed in, don't be. The quote I just read wasn't a one-off comment. There's extensive evidence of Doll's bigotry. Doll biographer Jeremy Treglon records a bunch of problematic stuff that Doll said and did throughout his life. At his social club, for instance, Doll's daughter Tessa remembers her father complained about the number of Jews who were members. He got drunk one night and stood up to make a speech. Diners and nearby tables told him to shut up. Doll was thrown out and his club membership was revoked, says Treglon. Doll's editor, the legendary Robert Gottlieb, who worked with so many brilliant writers from Nora Efron to Tony Morrison to Robert Carrow,

5:04he believes that Doll's prejudice against Jews grew worse after he and Doll had a falling out. Now, a little context. Career wise, Doll was on top, having already published most of his iconic children's books. But in his personal life, Doll was a bit of a mess. He had divorced Patricia Neal after 30 years of marriage. He was in constant physical pain from back surgery, stunning from that crash in the desert decades earlier. And while he's having all this career success, he's very insecure about people thinking he can only write for kids. So, when he's offered the chance to review a book about Israel in a literary journal, he sees it as a rare opportunity to write for adults, and he's going to make the most of it. As I mentioned, the review comes out in 1983. It's not excusing Doll to say that certain prejudices were more common in mainstream culture back then. Just look at our movies of the era. Some of the biggest films of 1983 to 1984 were 16 candles, the John Hughes classic, featuring long duck dong, the Chinese exchange shouldn't. Trading places, the Eddie Murphy breakout, which includes Blackface, along with a bunch of class-based stereotypes.

6:09Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where Indian characters are depicted as either noble mystics or bloodthirsty savages. And on TV, Threes Company is the big show, which is basically one long gay panic joke. Now, a confession. I still love some of those movies, and that's part of why this is so complicated. I can still laugh at a lot of the jokes in trading places, and just ignore the offensive ones. But I know I'm in a privileged position to be able to do that. And of course, not everybody wants to do that. So, back to that book review. It's just as problematic as the interview he gives about it. For the journal, Literary Review. The book tells the story of the recent Israeli siege of Beirut. But, in his review, Dog goes beyond the contents of the book. He takes the opportunity to write a passionate denunciation of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he broadens into an attack on Israel and Jewish people everywhere. And, yes, this has a ton of contemporary relevance. The same stuff is happening all over again today.

7:10Here's the beginning of Dog's Book Review. In June 1941, I happened to be in, of all places, Palestine, flying with the RAF against the Bishi French and the Nazis. Hitler happened to be in Germany, and the gas chambers were being built, and the mass slaughter of the Jews was beginning. Our hearts played for the Jewish men, women, and children, and we hated the Germans. Okay, so far. Dolls throwing in some of his own biography to relate to the contents of the book. And then, he continues. Exactly 41 years later, in June 1982, the Israeli forces were streaming northwards out of what used to be Palestine into Lebanon and the mass slaughter of the inhabitants began. Our hearts bled for the Lebanese and Palestinian men, women, and children, and we all started hating the Israelis. Okay, so he's connecting what he saw as a pilot in the war with what he sees now. But then, he ramps up to this, referring to the Jewish people. Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly

8:12from being much pitted victims to barbarous murderers. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world, and then, in the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion. It is as though a group of much loved nuns in charge of an orphanage had suddenly turned around and started murdering all the children. He continues, it is like the good old Hitler and Himmler times all over again. Wow, there's a lot there. Like calling a whole race of people, namely the Jews, barbarous murderers because he opposes the actions of a handful of people in the Israeli government. Honestly, I'm just not enough of an expert in these issues to do this conversation justice. So, I want to bring in someone who is. Yeir Rosenberg has dedicated his professional life to studying and thinking about this stuff in a really brilliant way. Yeir is a writer for the Atlantic. He's also written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, you name it.

9:14He speaks around the world on the topic of anti-Semitism. And, I love this. He's credited with pointing this sarcastic internet term, Gerbil's Gap, which is the amount of time between a negative event transpiring in the world and someone finding a way to blame it on the Jews. I'm going to ask Yeir to help provide context for various things to all said. We all have different styles. I may be into Levi's, and you may be into Fendi or Mu Mu. But we all should be into Poshmark.com. Right? Because we can all find exactly what we want to fit our style. Poshmark has millions of new and pre-lift pieces. Vintage, luxury, men's, women's, children's. Everything from car heart to coach. Head to Poshmark.com. Sign up with code podcast 10 and get $10 off your first purchase. Do you ever feel like you're drinking from a firehouse? Pay course intelligent HR solution empowers leaders to turn down the pressure. Their unified platform includes payroll, talent management, compliance software,

10:16and a lot more, connecting you to the people, data, and expertise you need to drive long-term business results. Visit paycord.com slash leaders and go from work flood to workflow. That's paycord.com slash leaders. Magnesium supplements? You've mastered that. Now take it to the next level. Upgrade to solar-ray magnesium glycinate from the number one magnesium brand and health food stores. With a 50-year legacy of quality and trust, solar-ray triple tests every raw ingredient for identity, purity, and potency. The result? Expertly-key-related magnesium for powerful muscle, bone, and relaxation support that fits your daily stack. Shop solar-ray magnesium glycinate on Amazon or solar-ray.com. These payments have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That ugly red couch you've had for a decade? It's been living with you way longer than you ever thought it would. Because let's face it, great quality furniture just feels out of reach. Or it used to.

11:16Until you found home sense. The days of overpaying for good taste are done. Now, you can fill your home with the standout pieces you've coveted, but couldn't afford. And you can finally kick that sad sofa straight to the curb. Welcome to Home Sense, the home of no compromise. First up, I ask Eier why blaming all Jews for the actions of the Israeli leadership is thought to be anti-Semitic. Yeah, so there's a general human tendency here and a particular anti-Jewish one. Generally speaking, a lot of prejudice takes the form of people looking at a minority group and saying, anybody in this minority community that does anything or says anything, reflects on the entire group and every person in it. Such that if you're a member of a minority, you're collectively culpable for what anyone else in that minority may say or do anywhere no matter where they are and no matter your connection or lack thereof to those people. And that's not unique to Jews, right? That's textbook, racism, textbook, bigotry. I think the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes after 9-11,

12:19which was people taking out anger at a specific group of fundamentalist terrorists on every day Americans who happened to have some identifying characteristics that they associated with them. And so that is the general human tendency towards prejudice. That's, you know, an old, old thing that many of us have experienced or seen. And then there's this specifically Jewish version of it where you see people saying that, yeah, old Jews are to blame for anything else. Any other Jew did in my perception. But you have to think of Rogdal in this particular context. He was raised on a continent that for centuries persecuted, abused, expelled, and murdered Jews over allegations of what other Jews, thousands of miles away, did in the Middle East. Namely, they allegedly killed Jesus. And that was seen to justify centuries of anti-Semitism on the European continent. Rogdal grows up in that place, right? That sort of way of thinking about Jews and, you know, as part of what pays the way for the Holocaust and the ideas that the Nazis spread. It's not particularly new. It does get secularized later on, where the Jews in Europe and the United States and elsewhere get attacked over whatever Jews, thousands of miles away in the Middle East may have done.

13:22And that somebody is angry about. It's not exactly different. It's just the names changed. And so in that way, dollars reflecting a general human tendency towards prejudice and he's also reflecting a very age-old story that people tell about Jews. And I think actually, he's not particularly unique in this respect. As you can see, this is a very common way of thinking about minorities as mendacious monoliths. What is unique is us asking the question and saying, maybe we shouldn't do that. We're the exception. He's actually the rule. Interesting. And I mean, we see this a lot today. Obviously, what's going on in Israel and Gaza right now is, you know, on the front page every day. And people are doing it again. People are blaming Jews in America, Jews all over the world. What the Israeli government is doing right now to the Palestinians? Yeah. It's a very similar dynamic. If Rodal was alive today, he would be doing the same thing. He'd be blurring these lines between actions committed by an Israeli government and a specific place in time for specific people with all Jews around the world, rather than treating everybody as individuals and judging them based on those characteristics. It's disheartening and obviously it's wrong, but it's just something that's always been with us as human beings.

14:24It's a sort of a shortcut we use for thinking about minority groups that we don't know well. Rather than trying to get the know them and to understand them in their complexity and diversity, we often try to reduce them to stereotypes. And in some cases, that means negative stereotypes or the worst thing that anyone has ever said or done in that group. There's a parallel to this because it's a very old thing ever since Israel has existed. There have been people who have been angry about this or that Israeli policy that have taken that out on the Fox image Jews and before Israel existed. Whatever Jews in the Middle East did was also taken out on, you know, any nearby approximate Jews, no matter what connection they had to what happened in that place. Dole also makes reference to quote those powerful American Jewish bankers. Any asserts that the United States government is quote utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there. Can you talk a little bit about those anti-Semitic tropes? Sure. There are two kinds of anti-Semitism generally speaking. One is the personal prejudice. This is the kind of bit of tree that most of us are familiar with, which is, I don't like that person because they're different. They're too Jewish. They're too Muslim. They're too black.

15:25And that's a social prejudice and it's very harmful to the people targeted by it. There's also a different kind of anti-Semitism. That's the conspiratorial expression of anti-Semitism. And this one pods it's the Jews are a sinister string-pulling cabal that is behind all the world's social and economic problems. It's a theory about how the entire world works and it all traces back to Jews. And if you see something going wrong, there's definitely a Jew behind it, right? You perceive that there's an invisible hand. It belongs to an invisible Jew. And so Rodal here is expressing that. He did it at my understanding as in other contexts as well. Not just saying Jews controlled. The banks, not just saying they controlled the government. He also said they controlled the media. Jews are 0.2% of the human population, right? If you were to think about this logically, even if they punched 100% above their weight, they would have 0.4% of the power. It's just not how the world actually works. In reality, of course, Jews have been persecuted and exterminated for much of their existence because they are a tiny group that doesn't really have this kind of power influence. And Jews themselves are extremely diverse and fractious and disagree with each other.

16:25And there are many different sects and different beliefs. And they all argue with each other. And anyone who's ever spent time in a Jewish community or with Jews or around a Shabbat or Passover table knows, right? That Jews kept set. The thermostat won't learn how to, you know, I don't know, control Western civilization. But again, this is a sort of a very longstanding stereotypical way of thinking about Jews. And, you know, dollars reflecting it. In the case of, you know, Jewish bankers and others controlling the government, you might wonder, how did two out of every three European Jews get killed on the Holocaust? If this incredible Jewish conspiracy was there running the show, it seems extremely bad at its job. And similarly speaking, there's so many when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, America put it under an arms embargo, which is a very strange thing to do if the Jews control the government. There's a lot of examples of this in history. Lots of Jewish activists did lobby Franklin Delano Roosevelt to try to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz, the death camp, where some Jews were being killed, and he didn't do it. Lots of Jewish activists tried to get the United States and other countries to lift their immigrant quotas to allow more Jewish refugees to flee the Holocaust.

17:25They didn't do it. There are so many examples of this. It's kind of perverse. The anti-Semitic worldview is kind of an inversion of the reality. It's positive that this tiny group of Jews determines the fate of all the non-Jews, but in fact, logically speaking, right, the large non-Jewish majority of the world decides what the world is going to be like for a lot of different minorities, not just Jews. Here's another one, and this is one I'm certainly less familiar with than the other tropes. Talking about Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Doll said, quote, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me, but they, meaning the Jews, were always submissive. What is that about? So this is more complicated than simply some sort of anti-Semitic idea. It's actually a critique that many people have leveled against Jewish victims of the Holocaust, which is a hard thing to do to critique victims of the Holocaust, but it's been done. And some of those people who leveled that critique ironically were people that Doll hated. Scientists, some scientists said that the problem of the Jews of Europe is that they didn't defend themselves and that they weren't strong enough. And so that they need a state and an army of it and things like this can never happen again.

18:28And the irony is that Rodol was criticizing these Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the same way as some of the founders of state of Israel criticized their Jewish forebears. And yet, he doesn't support anything that Israel does militarily. And Doll says that Jews were too weak and pathetic and they went like lambs to their slaughter and they didn't fight back. But then when Jews go along and say, you know what, we're going to found a state and have an army, and then we're going to fight back when we perceive ourselves to be threatened. Well, then he says they're incredibly evil, bloodthirsty, and militaristic. Heads, Rodol wins, tails the Jews, lose. And this is a very common way that bigots relate to minorities they don't like. Basically, there's nothing they can do that is right. And they're attacked for absolutely contradictory things. No matter what they do and no matter how they change, they're always subject to the same prejudice because when prejudice comes from prejudging, you've already prejudged the community and then you come up and backfill the justifications afterwards. To go back to this specific instance for just a second, just because it's really something I don't know about, there's an idea among people that the Jews during the Holocaust

19:29should have wrestled their Nazi guards to the ground more. They should have gotten together and wrestled them. What is? Yeah, no, so I think so exactly. So this is good because you give me a chance to say something. I should have said the outset, which is I think it's an unfair critique, whether level by Zionists or let all by Rodol the anti Zionist. I think the idea that the Jews could have somehow overturned or fought back in any really effective capacity against this Nazi empire is not a reasonable critique. That being said, the other thing to note is that plenty of Jews did. The critique is wrong because plenty of Jews did attempt to fight back. The reason we know it wouldn't work is because they failed or they weren't successful in saving so many of the Jews. You have the Warsaw ghetto uprising, perhaps the most famous example of resistance to Nazis, but it did ultimately fail. You similarly had plenty of Jews who joined the various resistance movements in different European countries against the Nazis and helped fight back and also helped spirit Jews and others away to safety. All of these things actually did happen and they did make a difference, but they weren't the same thing as defeating the Nazis. It wasn't something that the Jews in their tiny numerical rounding

20:30or in the human population ever could have possibly done. So it's a good that you circle back because I do think you actually kind of at the foreground by saying, I think, personally, the critique is wrong. It's historically wrong and it's morally inadequate. At the same time, it is very revealing about Dal that he can make this critique and then at the same time attack Jews for being so pathetic and so inept and so weak. And then when they act strong and they're militaristic, then they're evil for being blunt thirsty and villainous, did he ever spell out what he actually thinks Jews were allowed to do and what they should be or is it no matter what they do, they can never please roll Dal. That was the Ayer Rosenberg, staff writer at The Atlantic, an author of the newsletter Deep Shuttle. I also want to mention that while Dal died without apologizing for his anti-Semitic comments, years after his death, the Dal family did issue a formal apology. It was around the same time that Netflix purchased his old catalog. Here's the statement in its entirety, which you can also see at rolldal.com slash apology. The Dal family and the Rolldal story company

21:31deeply apologized for the lasting and understandable heart caused by Rolldal's anti-Semitic statements. Those prejudice remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Rolldal's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, and is absolute worst, Rolldal can help remind us of the lasting impact of words. So, what do we supposed to do about this? Do we accept that apology from his family? Do we chalk it all up to it being a different era? Or do we stop reading Dal? Stop giving his books to our children. One thing that makes it especially complicated for me is that Dal's personal prejudices didn't really make it into his books as far as I can tell. Some critics say they see anti-Semitic tropes in the witches. It's possible, but I don't know if I agree. And if we can't definitively locate those problematic views in his writing and he's no longer profiting off the sales of his books, does it still make sense to stop reading them?

22:31I'm fascinated by this question. I'm someone who constantly does the mental gymnastics that's required of all of us when we can see marked from previous generations. I'll just say that right. Some of my favorite writers and favorite filmmakers have done awful things. I don't want to have them over for dinner, but I still read the novels, still worship the movies. And of course, it's not always even previous generations. The writer Alice Monroe, who died not long ago, was revealed to have stayed with her second husband after learning that he'd sexually abused her daughter. With role-doll, I think the issue is even more complicated by the fact that we encourage our kids to consume him. I would never allow a babysitter with clear open prejudices to be around my kids in real life. Why should authors and filmmakers be any different? Maybe because we think we have more control over how they're presented to the kids? Like, we can offer a warning. We know it's in there, and what's not in there. We know nothing crazy is going to be set off the cuff, the way it might be if a bigoted old grandmother or somebody was left alone with them. Also, forcibly taking away books and movies feels like a slippery slope.

23:35It feels a little bit like censorship, and I hate the idea of that. I firmly believe that experiencing art is essential to being human, and that art has the capacity to do great things, even if it's created by crappy people. And I'm absolutely including children's books in that definition of art. All kinds of art can affect positive change. Often, even more than protest movements or marches or elections can. Just look at how Americans started becoming more tolerant of gay families thanks to a silly network sitcom, Will and Grace. For your information, Will, Walter was the love of my life. You said that about each back street boy at one time or another. I also totally buy the argument that America was only able to finally elect a black president because they saw prosperous, lovable, familiar, black family on TV every week in the 1980s. Namely, the Cosby's. How's it going? Great. Nesson already gave us some fascinating stuff. Yeah, we can be pretty fascinating at times. We're on a way to Theos Room now. Are you going inside?

24:37Yeah. Well, I would just like to say that the condition of certain rooms in this house do not necessarily reflect the views of management. Thank you. And yes, the idea that Cosby is responsible for anything good at this point is hard to believe. But of course, there are tons of other examples of popular art creating positive change in the world. I was commissioned by A&E a few years ago to write a four-part limited TV series about how breakfast at Tiffany's jump started the feminist movement. And Tiffany's managed that really positive outcome while also containing one of cinema's most egregious examples of anti-Asian stereotyping. Namely, Mickey Rooney's performance as Holly's upstairs neighbor. The racism in Tiffany is so egregious that it feels like you can use it as a teaching moment if you watch it with your kids. The much scarier thing to me is when the bigotry is more subtle, which brings us back to doll. I can't help thinking about a very scary, maybe very pertinent metaphor suggested by doll himself in maybe his greatest book.

25:38In the BFG, he writes that his hero has the ability to influence children's thoughts by delivering specific dreams to them while they sleep. In the story, it's an act of kindness by a sweet, loving creature. But what if the guy delivering those dreams and influencing children's thoughts wasn't so sweet and wasn't so loving? What then? To get a better understanding of this really important issue, I want to talk to a few people, people who are really thoughtful about this stuff. I did read him growing up and I enjoyed his books. That's the voice of a great Roxanne Gay. She's a best-selling writer and critic. She's written novels, short stories, and even a Marvel comic. Your smartest, most engaged friend has definitely forwarded you one of her essays at some point. I'm very excited to talk to Roxanne about all of this. She has really strong, clear feelings on the subject. We all have different styles. I may be into Levi's, and you may be into Fendi or Mu Mu. But we all should be into Poshmark.com.

26:38Right? Because we can all find exactly what we want to fit our style. Poshmark has millions of new and pre-lived pieces. Vintage, luxury, men's, women's, children's. Everything from car heart to coach. Head to Poshmark.com. Sign up with code podcast 10 and get $10 off your first purchase. Do you ever feel like you're drinking from a firehouse? Paikor's intelligent HR solution empowers leaders to turn down the pressure. Their unified platform includes payroll, talent management, compliance software, and a lot more. Connecting you to the people, data, and expertise you need to drive long-term business results. Visit Paikor.com slash leaders and go from work flood to work flow. That's Paikor.com slash leaders. You already take magnesium, smart move. But here's the thing, not all mag lie is created equal. Solarase magnesium glycinate is fully keylated, never blended, or buffered.

27:38That means it's actually designed for optimal absorption and gentle digestion. If you're ready to upgrade your muscle, bone, and relaxation support, choose a quality mag lie that's perfectly keylated for ultimate absorption. Shop solarase magnesium glycinate on Amazon or solarase.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That ugly red couch you've had for a decade? It's been living with you way longer than you ever thought it would. Because let's face it, great quality furniture just feels out of reach. Or it used to. Until you found home sense. The days of overpaying for good taste are done. Now, you can fill your home with the standout pieces you've coveted, but couldn't afford. And you can finally kick that sad sofa straight to the curb. Welcome to home sense, the home of no compromise. What I want to talk to you about is, you know, Dal also said some very anti-Semitic things.

28:38And I struggle with whether or not I can read his work. And sort of even more importantly for me, I guess, can I give his books to my little kids to read? Which leads to kind of a larger question about whether we can ever separate an artist's private beliefs from their public art. So I think you've written really wisely about this topic. And I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about your own experiences grappling with that question. Yes. I mean, it's a question I think about quite a lot. And certainly as a feminist, it's a question I'm asked about a lot. And I for one, don't believe you can separate the art from the artist. Nor do I think you should. I think that we are who we are. And that influences the art that we put into the world in some way. Now rolled all rough, some amazing books like James in the giant peach, Charlie in the chocolate factory. He's a consummate storyteller. And certainly generations of children have fallen in love with his work.

29:38So the legacy is there, but there's also the legacy of virulent antisemitism. Yeah. And the reality is that there are plenty of children's authors out there who have written very good books who also are not antisemites. And so when people sort of ring their hands about this, I get a little frustrated because this is not the only game in town. And what really people want is like a morality hall pass because oh, he's a genius. Like so are lots of other people. And so like read what you want truly enjoy what you want, but accept responsibility for the fact that you are willing to overlook some truly bad behavior for your enjoyment or for someone else's enjoyment. That makes sense. When Nate Parker's birth of a nation was going to be released in 2016, you wrote a really great piece for the New York Times about just what we're talking about not being able to separate past accusations against Parker for sexual assault from his movie. Reading the piece, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but it felt a little bit like one of the things that troubled you most about that situation was how he handled it.

30:41He sort of made the apology all about himself with rolled doll. It's tricky, right? Because he's not around to defend himself anymore or apologize for that matter. And I'm not saying he would apologize. In fact, he probably wouldn't, but who knows? Does that play in for you in terms of long dead artists? Like do you have trouble reading a ground Poe knowing that he married his 13 year old cousin or T. S. Eliot or Norman Mailer or more recently Alice Monroe? What does it do for you when it's sort of someone who is not around to defend themselves or not defend themselves? I mean, that doesn't even factor for me. I think that it would be great if these people could apologize, but I doubt that most of them would be apologetic because most of them would not think that they had done anything wrong or they would be like, yeah, I said it. And I believe it and say what? It just doesn't even factor and I have no problem not reading these people. I just don't because there's so much amazing literature out there. And I know, for example, a lot of people feel a true sense of loss over Alice Monroe, but every time I think about her incredible short stories, I have far more empathy for her daughter, who she was willing to sacrifice because of her own weakness.

31:55I'm a human being. I can understand sort of that she, you know, why she made that choice of choosing her husband despite the harm that he was doing to her child, but it's not OK. And I'm not speaking for anyone else. I'm only making these decisions for me. And you know, a lot of times people really overestimate the power of writers in terms of like, oh, what do you mean I can't enjoy this thing I want to enjoy? Like, do what you want, but what you want is for me to say it's fine. And I can't say that because I don't think it is, but I also, who cares what I think? What do you think? So I don't struggle with these things in that I just tend to value the dignity and the lives of these people's victims far more than the people who have made such a gree just mistakes themselves. And the counter argument often is that we're all human and we all make mistakes and that is absolutely true. We are all flawed and I include myself in that, but I also know that I'm never going to be an anti-SMI.

32:59I'm never going to be transphobic. I know who I am. There are some mistakes most of us don't make. I'm never going to commit sexual violence. So I think that we have to also remember that these are things are a matter of scale and that we can't compare our normal human foibles and flaws with people who are criminals and bigots. I think that makes a ton of sense. When I buy a Mel Gibson movie or rent a Roman Plansky movie or buy a Kanye West song, I feel like I'm giving them money. And that bothers me. It sounds like for you, it's not as much about whether or not we're sort of enriching them or helping them. It's more just you have trouble enjoying it, right? Is that right? I have trouble looking past, you know, like for example, I used to really enjoy Kanye West's music before we found out who Kanye really is. I just can't enjoy it anymore because every time I start to be like, yes, listen to that beat drop because he is brilliant.

34:00And I acknowledge that he's also truly a horrible person. So I just can't and that's just the way I made up. I don't even think about the enrichment thing. I think people really overvalue their dollar. Kanye Rich is already wealthy by his music down by his music. It's not really changing his bottom line. I mean, I don't think we should consume his music. I don't think we should enrich him or fatten his coffers, but I do think that for me, it's just something I can't do. And I don't, when that even can't, I, of course, I could. I don't want to. I can no longer enjoy the Cosby show. And I loved that show. I loved it because we weren't really allowed to watch TV growing up. And that was one of two things we were allowed to watch. It was that. And I'm a little house on the prairie. You know, it's sad. And I definitely lament, you know, the loss. Do you think a writer's personal views always or their prejudices or their outlooks or their viewpoints always find a way into the work.

35:00And if they don't, does that change the calculus at all? I don't think that a writer's views always infused themselves into the work. I do think that there are some writers and other artists who are very capable of hiding their true selves. But it's rare. It's rare. I do actually think that's what makes world dolls such a tough one. For the most part, you really would not know his beliefs if you didn't know about it. If you didn't go and like look up information about the artist, certainly that's, it's not something I ever knew about until recently, like in the past decade. It's challenging. And I think that what a lot of people need to believe is that genius and genius art matters more than the crimes of the genius artist and the toxic beliefs of the genius artist. We hear that quite a lot with Woody Allen with Roman Polanski, especially with like the whole slew of anti semites.

36:02And I firmly understand that for some people, that is just the case. And it is, you know, I just disagree. I think that you can't separate it. Now, when people just say like, yes, he's an anti semite and he made amazing work. That's more honest that you acknowledge it. And you're going to consume the work regardless because you feel like it offers more than the damage done by whatever the toxicity or the crime is. And I think that more people believe that than not. Unfortunately, but I'm sure you're talking to Claire Detterer. Yeah, we are actually. Yeah, she wrote an amazing book about this that I thought was really, really well done, where she grapples with these questions. And when people are at least willing to grapple with the questions, I find that more interesting than actually sitting around worrying about these horrible people because again, that's more honest that yes, some people are ambivalent about this or some people really struggle.

37:03Some people don't know how to sacrifice these works of art for the sake of the greater good. And, you know, I do think it's at least important to have those conversations and a book like monsters, which Claire Detterer wrote, I think are interesting entrance into the dialogue about this. A huge thanks to Roxanne. And I totally agree with what she said at the end there about who to speak to next. First thing, if you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself. I'm Claire Detterer. I'm the author of Monsters of fans' dilemma. Here my conversation with Claire in our next episode, she feels really differently than Roxanne about all this. We'll also get into the nitty-gritty of an explosive controversy regarding Doll's work, 32 years after his death that seemed to get the entire world talking about him again. The secret world of Roll Doll is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for I Heart Podcasts, created and written by me Aaron Tracy, produced by Matt Schrader,

38:07post-production by Windtale Studios, with editing, scoring, and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips, editing by Ryan Seaton, music by APM. Executive producers Nathan Clokey, Kara Wilker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phillips and Eleven Labs. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the secret world of Roll Doll on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright 2026, Imagine Entertainment, I Heart Media, and Parallax. We all have different styles. I may be into Levi's, and you may be into Fendi or Mu Mu. But we all should be into Poshmark.com. Right? Because we can all find exactly what we want to fit our style. Poshmark has millions of new and pre-lived pieces. Vintage, luxury, men's, women's, children's.

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