This is about freedom to let your imagination be shared. To let whatever beauty you have conjured up in your mind out. Spread out on the canvas. It could cause a smile, it might cause disgust, it might cause excitement, it could cause lust, and it could cause anger. But that is what art is supposed to do. It's supposed to cause an emotional response. If the response is negative, so be it. That doesn't change whether that art should exist or not.
Maybe the beauty the artist has conjured up is evil, brutal, sad, depressing. The human brain conjures up gods and demons. Good and evil is invented by humans. You have to explore these things. Why would this image cause rage? Cause lust? What about yourself can you learn from your reaction to something?
No. Instead of the anger and rage against one's self and humanity in general it is deflected back to the artist. It's their fault you're upset at the image. Their fault they came up with this art. They must be at fault. Whatever evils or monstrosities that they've made come to life in their images must be their real desires. In fact, those things written or drawn are things they want to do. Things they want to inflict on others. They are dangerous. Wrong.
How incorrect. How absolutely bonkers is that thinking? If this were true, we better call the mind police. Just because someone has drawn something horrible doesn't mean they are the only ones that have these things floating around in their mind. People are able to inflict great pain, death, and evils against one another whether it's been drawn or written out or not. You really think there has been no murder, rape, violence before someone wrote it out or drew a picture of it?
People, please. Separate the artist from the art, the writer from the fiction. These are explorations. Explorations of the things that excite, disgust, delight, and anger us. They aren't meant to condemn the artist. These aren't confessions of the artist's desires in reality. But even if they are. Desires do nothing without action. Fantasy stays fantasy until acted upon. Have more faith in humanity that people can explore and experience things they should not and would not act upon against someone else in reality.
To me, it's a shallow way of thinking. Put Stephen King in prison for the rest of his life. Give George RR Martin the death penalty. Burn the books. In fact. Any artist that has created something evil or a story without a happy ending. As it means they are also an evil person.
