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00:00Artists are often free spirits, and sometimes they apply that freedom to their relationships, too, without their significant others being aware.
00:08From writers to singers to actors and beyond, there's long been a trope that creatives are so filled with passion and emotion that they just can't help but spread their love around.
00:19Sometimes this takes place in acknowledged, consensually open relationships, but often it seems to come through cheating.
00:26Cheating that they often find ways to put into their art for all to see.
00:29Of course, people of all kinds can and do cheat, but artists have spearheaded this trope to some degree in the popular culture because they keep making art about them doing it.
00:38So why do artists seem so obsessed with this rather destructive form of love and telling us all about it?
00:46Creatives are often framed as being driven by a fire burning within, one that often pushes them towards drama or even anguish in an effort to feel more deeply.
00:54They want to feel big emotions that they can then translate into their work to create a big impact.
00:59Infidelity has long been a theme across literature, music, and film because it pricks those most tender emotions.
01:05Love, betrayal, secrecy, lust.
01:08She's a real sweet girl, and you know I got a boy.
01:13From Federico Fellini's 8 1⁄2 to Fleetwood Mac's entire discography, cheating plucked from real life and amplified for an audience has become the basis for some of our most well-known and beloved media.
01:24And you can find it hiding in some pretty surprising places.
01:28For example, while Eyes Wide Shut is based on a 1923 novella called Dream Story, director and co-writer Stanley Kubrick was said to have based much of the main couple's strife and alliances with infidelity on real-life couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
01:41While everyone generally agrees that cheating is bad in real life, when it comes to artists, the idea that it's in some way connected to their creative output gives them a big get-out-of-jail-free card, in much the same way that people might be willing to overlook a haughty attitude from a star.
01:56And some of the most iconic real-life Hollywood couples, who were often upheld as the pinnacle of perfect relationships, began through infidelity.
02:04Humphrey Bogart was married when he began dating 19-year-old Lauren Bacall.
02:08Paul Newman was married when he got with Joanne Woodward.
02:11Cheating is, in a word, commonplace in Hollywood.
02:14But not everyone decides to put their infidelity into their art.
02:18Art reflects life, and so it makes sense that it would reflect all aspects of life, not just the good or acceptable ones.
02:25Artists sometimes see their life, and everyone else in it, as fair game.
02:29All part of a story in which they are the protagonist.
02:32And so this can lead to them working out their problems, with themselves, with their choices, with the people around them, on our screens and radio waves.
02:39Many great songs, love songs even, were actually about cheating.
02:43Either being the one cheating, or being the other person.
02:46A few stolen wounds is all that we share.
02:53On screen in particular, cheating has become an easy way to stir up drama in a romance, creating an automatic villain in the other person, or an obstacle to love in the spouse of the one desired.
03:02It's become an easy shorthand framing that filmmakers can use to quickly let the audience in on a well-known setup without too much explanation.
03:09Though, as we discussed in depth in our video on the other woman trope, this trope can be used as a way to flatten and villainize a female character without ever having to look at her as a full person, or think about her motivations or needs.
03:20And since infidelity is such a pervasive trope in general, it can be kind of hard to avoid forever.
03:26So it's not like everyone who has ever written or played a cheater necessarily is one in real life, of course.
03:31My marriage has survived several affairs already.
03:34Oh. Ready?
03:36I've just never been party to them.
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04:57When the person writing the film or show is pulling from their own life and choices, it can sometimes feel like they're working overtime to justify their infidelity.
05:05But other times we do get to see a more multifaceted view of the cheater and their choices.
05:10Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, is said to be loosely based on his divorce from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh,
05:16and the accusations of cheating on the rather questionable timeline of the beginning of his relationship with Greta Gerwig.
05:23Life with you was joyless!
05:24What, so then you had to go and f*** someone else?
05:27You shouldn't be upset that I f***ed her! You shouldn't be upset that I had a laugh with her!
05:31The story frames his cheating within the larger context of the unhappy marriage.
05:35Neither of them are happy and it's led to them both making the other miserable through their choices,
05:40not necessarily working to justify the wrongdoing, but rather instead to unpack the not-so-happy truths
05:45that can lie at the heart of a relationship that's been stretched past its limit,
05:49where cheating is just one of a multitude of ways you can hurt a partner.
05:53Carrie Bradshaw was loosely based on writer Candace Bunchell, who started using the name as a pseudonym in her real-life New York Observer column,
06:00where she wrote about her own adventures.
06:02She said she began using the name as a cover so that her parents hopefully wouldn't realize that they were reading about her sexual pursuits in the paper.
06:08Big is also allegedly based on a real person, former Vogue publisher Ron Galati.
06:13While he and Candace did date for a time, there's no indication that their relationship was as fraught or toxic as the one that ended up becoming the centerpiece of Sex and the City.
06:21But in Carrie, we can see how the idea of being a free spirit and a writer allows Carrie to justify a lot of her own less-than-savory behavior.
06:30While she would judge others for doing the same things, when she does it, it's justified because it's different.
06:35It's just her nature, and she's the main character.
06:38You're the other woman.
06:39I am not the other woman.
06:41I'm not.
06:42I mean, I know I am, but I am not that woman.
06:47Musicians often have a more direct connection to the art they share in terms of how it's consumed by the public.
06:52They aren't writing for or directing a character.
06:55These words are coming through the musician themselves.
06:57Like with every other topic under the sun, infidelity often makes an appearance somewhere in a musician's discography,
07:03whether they're the perpetrator, victim, or third party waiting in the wings.
07:07And because, like writers and filmmakers, musicians aren't afraid of confronting the more unsavory sides of their own relationships and choices,
07:13a surprising amount of the time in their songs, they're not the scorned party, but in fact, the one doing the cheating.
07:19I know that he knows I'm unfaithful and it kills him inside.
07:25Ariana Grande, for example, has a long history of entering into relationships with people who have not yet left their previous ones
07:33and hasn't been afraid to put that directly into her songs.
07:36Waves were made when it was revealed that she had begun a relationship with her Wicked co-star, Ethan Slater.
07:46Both were married at the time, and Ethan and his wife had just welcomed a new baby.
07:51Though there have been attempts to, uh, amend the timeline on when they actually got together.
07:56They didn't open up about the relationship publicly, but Ariana did include a song on her recent album,
08:01essentially hand-waving away any issues anyone might have with the whole relationship.
08:05The business is yours, the mine is mine. Why do you care so much? Who's the right?
08:11Ethan himself has been a smaller part of the conversation, which is certainly in part due to the other woman problem,
08:17but it's also just because he's less famous and hasn't really made any of his own art that he could put his side of the story into.
08:24But it's in his ex-wife's story that we see the important other part of the equation that can so often get left out of the cheating artist trope.
08:32Sometimes both people in the relationship, the cheater and the person being cheated on, are artists.
08:37And so we actually do end up getting to hear both sides of the story in a major way.
08:41But often it's a rather uneven relationship, where only the cheater themselves has this platform.
08:47And so that can end up being the only side of the story we get,
08:50the side attempting to justify or dismiss the pain caused by the cheating.
08:53You don't think about how she'd feel if she found out?
08:55Yes, I think about it all the time.
08:56No, you don't.
08:58You think about what would happen to you if she found out. You don't think about her.
09:02Ethan Slater's ex-wife, Dr. Lily J, for example, had no real platform.
09:06And so has spent the time since the dissolution of their relationship,
09:09not only having to hear one of the biggest pop stars in the world release a song about getting her husband,
09:14but then also having to see them go on a promo tour together for one of the biggest films of the year.
09:19But she recently was able to share her side of the story with an article in The Cut,
09:23where she was given the space to unpack how terrible it felt to uproot her life for her childhood sweetheart,
09:28only to have him ditch her and their newborn baby.
09:31She wrote,
09:31Days with my son are sunny. Days when I can't escape the promotion of a movie associated with
09:36the saddest days of my life are darker.
09:38She also opened up about how, while the artists may get to just float on,
09:41using scandals as a part of their art,
09:43it can have real negative consequences for everyone else left picking up the pieces.
09:48She wrote,
09:48It's hard to measure an absence, and I can't say for sure how much my career has been impacted by what's
09:53out there online. But there have been hints along the way, like the job offer that dissolved
09:58without explanation after yet another tabloid news cycle, or the patient who's scheduled for
10:02a first appointment, but seemingly vanishes. But she also noted how, even with all of the pain she
10:08had to endure in the public eye, she is finding ways to move forward. Slowly but surely, I have
10:13come to believe that in the absence of the life I planned with my high school sweetheart,
10:16a lifetime of sweetness is waiting for me and my child.
10:19We can't and shouldn't try to police human emotions, or what people are or are not allowed to
10:25include in their art. Infidelity is a very real part of the human experience, so it has its place
10:30in art just like every other point of conflict. Also, so much of art is about drama and passion,
10:35so it might feel a little empty if no one ever opened up about doing anything bad. Really,
10:40the point when looking at this trope is to make sure we're not forgetting the framing in which
10:44we're experiencing these stories. Whose side gets told, and whose gets left out.
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