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agonyaunt2020-11-12 12:53 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2020-11-12 12:53 pm
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Dear Prudence: My Ex Is Upset About the Way He’s Depicted in My Art.
Q. An artful PSA: Recently, an ex of mine contacted me about some digitally altered pics I had posted detailing experiences I went through with him. He wanted me to remove them, as they did not portray him as the “nice guy” everyone knows. I had always kept my promise of never posting them when we were together, but nothing was said or implied about after a breakup. I’m an artist and writer. Sometimes these guys become my muse or source of inspiration when I need to express my thoughts and feelings at the time. They also serve as PSAs for people in similar situations who might feel as if they are going through, let’s say, domestic violence. Sure, I know there is a risk, but am I obligated to take down my artistic creations when there are no names attached to these pieces? I should add he was never a follower of mine on these sites when we were together.
A: “Obligated” in what sense? Morally, legally, relationally? How “altered” are these pictures, and was the alteration in service of increased anonymity for him, or in heightened dramatic tension? Did you, say, blur his face a little bit, or did you fictionalize the scenes entirely? I can’t help but suspect that what you altered, and in what direction, is the most important question and you declined to elaborate on that front because you weren’t sure it would help your case. I don’t think it’s relevant whether your ex “followed” your social media page when you were together. If he’s still recognizable in the pictures you’ve posted, I don’t think it’s relevant that you’ve withheld his name, either; if he might reasonably expect people to be able to identify him in the pictures, he certainly has a right to object. At that point you’ll have to use your own judgment to determine whether you think his objection holds water.
If you don’t care about staying friends with your ex, that’s a relevant data point. You might at that point decide you want to stand by your artistic decision, even if he objects to it or threatens legal action, and perhaps consult a lawyer yourself. But there’s a difference between “I want to keep it up because it’s true and operating as a PSA” and “I want to keep it up because it’s my art,” and it will be important for you to decide which assertion you want to make.
A: “Obligated” in what sense? Morally, legally, relationally? How “altered” are these pictures, and was the alteration in service of increased anonymity for him, or in heightened dramatic tension? Did you, say, blur his face a little bit, or did you fictionalize the scenes entirely? I can’t help but suspect that what you altered, and in what direction, is the most important question and you declined to elaborate on that front because you weren’t sure it would help your case. I don’t think it’s relevant whether your ex “followed” your social media page when you were together. If he’s still recognizable in the pictures you’ve posted, I don’t think it’s relevant that you’ve withheld his name, either; if he might reasonably expect people to be able to identify him in the pictures, he certainly has a right to object. At that point you’ll have to use your own judgment to determine whether you think his objection holds water.
If you don’t care about staying friends with your ex, that’s a relevant data point. You might at that point decide you want to stand by your artistic decision, even if he objects to it or threatens legal action, and perhaps consult a lawyer yourself. But there’s a difference between “I want to keep it up because it’s true and operating as a PSA” and “I want to keep it up because it’s my art,” and it will be important for you to decide which assertion you want to make.
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That said, I'd chat with a lawyer
*: what I mean by essentially true: I wrote a story where the protagonist lived with a cruel fundamentalist family member, based in some parts on my childhood experiences. In the story is a scene where the protagonist's family member reacts to her dyed hair by pulling her hair and chopping it off. This is based on my mother's practice of forcibly putting makeup on me by grabbing my nose, grabbing my chin with her fingernails pointed inwards, then letting go my nose to pick up the makeup. It's not the exact same action but both include deliberate infliction of pain and deliberate unwanted modification of a child's appearance. So I think it's an essentially true scene even if it's not exactly what happened.
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"experiences I went through with him"
"they did not portray him as the “nice guy” everyone knows"
"people in similar situations who might feel as if they are going through, let’s say, domestic violence."
Like, is the LW being cagey because they don't like admitting they're a survivor? (Which is normal human behavior, and might be what's happening here.) Or are they being cagey because the "experiences I went through with him" are "now that we've broken up I get to be petty about every time he was unfair in a fight where we were shouting at one another." (Which is also normal human behavior.)
Because if it's the latter, than sure, LW can put the art up, but if they want ethical absolution for doing so, they should learn the difference between what you can do, and what you can do while still feeling like you're the righteous one.
(Also I have more questions about level of anonymity. Can mutual friends identify him from image or context? Can his current and former employers? Can his mom? And did you "digitally alter" by blurring his face, or by putting a realistic looking fake swastika tattoo on his arm? For that matter, internet trolls regularly make incredibly abusive photoshops of people they brigade; are we sure LW isn't doing that?)
I am not usually so suspicious of LWs but there's something so cagey in the way this is written, which might, to be fair, be because they're trying to keep this anonymous and that means they need to leave out details.
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If they're taking photos that they promised would not be posted, altering them to materially change what they appear to portray, but leaving people completely recognizable, and then sharing them around everywhere they can, that's asshole behavior even if the portrayal isn't wildly inaccurate.
If they're taking, idk, blurry arms and clothes that nobody who didn't know the context could ID, or altering them so heavily nothing can be ID'd, that they took with the expectation that maybe someday they would end up in the art resources pile, and using them as a small part of clearly manipulated, complex compositions, maybe. Ex is probably justified in being angry but that doesn't mean they were wrong to make and post the art, just that post-break up there is usually a lot of justified anger around.
The careful way they phrase it makes me suspect it's the first.
If the ex was a violent abuser and they are posting photos accurately depicting that abuse as a way to make his abuse public, assholishness questions no longer apply.
If they had a crappy breakup, or even if say the ex cheated but just in an averagely shitty way, and LW is dramatically altering photos in order to make them look bad, or use them as an stand-in for the concept of any abusive ex in their art or something, then they don't get to say it's okay because it's for a good cause.
There is a lot of range between those two but way they carefully hedge about what ex actually did while making it sound as bad as possible makes me suspect it's closer to the second.
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On the other, sometimes different people have/remember different truths. There's a proverb: "the axe forgets. the tree remembers." I remember once trying to talk to my parents about some incidents from my childhood and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about. I can see LW not wanting to argue over whether her ex doing This thing or That thing was plausible.
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Also, I'm seeing people slip into she/her for the LW, is there something I'm missing that tells us that?
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It's still kind of a stretch though. Especially if ex didn't explicitly give permission to use them after the breakup.
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(BTW that reminds me that the plural in the above-quoted section also makes me skeptical of the theory that the ex acted badly and the LW is just telling the truth about their experiences: if it was about the ex's behaviour, why would it be lumped in with LW's past practice of ex-related-art?)
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Very well said. I've been thinking that my first take on this was too sympathetic to the LW.