Editor’s Note: “Hiding in the Flood” was written alongside a companion A&E’s Reporter Notebook piece co-written by Senior Staff Writer Matthew Pham and Contributing Writer Amna Shafi explaining the allegations in more depth. Read their piece first for context.
How do we discern monsters in the shadows of homogeneity? This is the question raised in the wake of sexual assault allegations against celebrated British author Neil Gaiman. Through his fictional works and outspoken social media persona, Gaiman platformed himself as a progressive, a champion of women and queer rights, and an altruist for the marginalized. These contradictions highlight a crucial notion regarding these types of figures: Your ally may not be your friend.
In the realm of fiction and fantasy, the projection of idealism and hope holds a hefty weight. Much of Gaiman’s work has toiled with a metatextual reckoning of storytelling, from “The Sandman” and its use of dreams as vehicles to explore the power and necessity of imagination, to explorations of personal history as an identity tether in “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.” Gaiman envisioned worlds of shadow and desolation, contrasting eons of history with the sprawl of urbanity and making sure that the souls of kindness and compassion won out in the end. Through Death, through Coraline, through Lettie Hempstock, his fictions served as a gateway to trailblazing reality — to reimagine how the world could be.
Gaiman’s real-world actions have shattered those fantasies. He is a manifestation of the worst monsters in his creations, where his actions align with those antagonized in his work. His eloquence afforded him the ability to aggrandize his fictional female characters, while his power and wealth from those aggrandizations allowed him to demean and assault the real members of those marginalized groups. The conceit that storytelling is a vehicle to impart tenets and pieces of oneself to the world is broken when the storytellers themselves betray these tenets, making these beliefs falsely-proclaimed platitudes.
The separation of art from the artist — especially in a literary space — is nearly impossible. In other media such as film and music, artists’ processes are more overtly collaborative, whereas in prose, the artistic voice and personality of an author remain the most prominent feature. The progressive rhetoric and topics in Gaiman’s work will remain worthwhile and evergreen, despite his appropriation of them to accumulate power and wealth; what is now worthless and even dishonest, however, is reading these values from his mouth.
The advent of the #MeToo movement opened up the floodgates to positive change in Hollywood, with individuals coming forward and sharing the sexual and psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of powerful moguls and other notorious wealthy men. This signaled a shift in the industry’s power imbalance, where more survivors are able to speak up against their abusers and more ethical workplace practices are implemented, such as the use of intimacy coordinators in film productions.
However, it also created a vacuum for “good” men to occupy — men who commodify and parade behind the language of allyship to obfuscate their egregious acts from the public. Amid the flood of discussions regarding consent, boundaries, and safe spaces, knowing the “right words” to say in a conversation as a person with privilege makes it easy to be celebrated for public statements of support, especially for men, from whom any shred of empathy is championed. In an era of self-parody, many are prone to recognize the irony of performative activism for self-serving purposes, where the masses ridicule the patterns and motivations of “male feminists” on social media platforms. In those instances, the creators and their audience have the awareness to recognize the shallowness of such an approach. With dishonest male “feminists” like Gaiman, their goodwill is a through-and-through lie.
As the waves of allegations of abuse continue to wash up, more and more perpetrators will continue to sublimate themselves in the language and good graces of the “righteous.” But what is most important is to advocate for the marginalized groups leading these movements, rather than circling around those with the tallest podium and loudest microphone. These are the issues that matter most to the communities the average person belongs to; broader societal topics and their ramifications trickle down into day-to-day life. Open your ears to the world and to people around you who need your help, and help them. Allyship can no longer be granted clemency from the soapbox — wade in those waters and take action so that the stories of the oppressed are not washed away.