Defending art can make you a co-conspirator in abuse – as the male cast members of Arrested Development show

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. This low key, hysterical defensiveness will be familiar to anyone who read The New York Times’ round table interview with the cast of Arrested Development. Its ugliest moments – which went viral on social media – arise from New York Times journalist Sopan Deb following up on the revelations Jeffrey Tambor made to The Hollywood Reporter on 7 May about having a “blowup” on set with Jessica Walter. The male cast members instantly leapt to Tambor’s defence, led by a garrulous Jason Bateman, who used a range of psychologically pressurising techniques to minimise Walter’s emotional reaction. This paranoia has led to some cinephile purists proudly refusing to let accounts of criminal behaviour affect their cinematic reads: “I knew that Harvey Weinstein was a sexual gangster,” wrote the director Paul Schrader in an October 2017 Facebook post, “That wasn’t what offended me about the man.” On the flip side, there are also activist critics who proudly refuse to let the artistic value of a work affect their account of it after wrongdoings on the part of the maker emerges.