It’s actually quite… complex. It depends on the nature of the bad things they did.
- Exhibit number 1: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a writer and a Nazi. He is most famous for his novel Will O’ the Wisp, which was the basic of two famous movies. The man was actually against Nazi initially. If you dig deeper, you can see a sense of hopelessness that haunted him throughout his life. He seemed to turn to the Nazi in hope that it would grand him a new sense of meaning, because he was already pretty disillusioned about the French society before WWII. He mistakenly thought the Nazi would improve France. In this case I can root for both the man and the novel, because the novel reflected his inner struggle.
- Exhibit number 2: Roman Polanski, the director of Chinatown. Chinatown is an absolute masterpiece, except for the fact that it seems to be a portal for Polanski’s fantasy. Polanski was accused of raping a minor, and Chinatown also has a woman who was raped by her father and gave birth to a child, and in the end the father was never caught. I had quite a mixed feeling toward this. On one hand, Chinatown is a thought-provoking movie about corrupt businessmen and greed, but on the other hand, the director is also a person he wanted to portray in a bad light. It’s unclear whether he wanted a justification for his action or a mockery toward himself through the movie.
- Exhibit number 3: Ruggero Deodato, the director of Cannibal Holocaust. Cannibal Holocaust started off as a satire toward the media and how “civilized” people look down on other races. But the production process of the movie was hell on Earth. Actors and actrices were mistreated, animals were killed, everyone on set was forced to perform certain dangerous scenes without any safety precaution. Deodato even pushed his movies on bootleg markets just to get more sale. I just can’t enjoy that movie. It seems like an exploitation movie in an art disguise, and I despise the director too. I would never want to be near him.
So yeah, the relationship between the art and the creator to me is quite complex, and they are not mutually exclusive. I base my judgement on their behavior and the art they produce, whether there is any connection between the two.