All excellent points.

I would add that personal baggage - personality, temperament, and background - also come into play over issues like this. I am a serial compartmentaliser, and I daresay there are complicated psychological reasons for that (I won't bore you with my life story). However, on an intellectual level, I can appreciate both sides of this issue; on the one level, the artist's life, experience, and - in Polanski's case - crimes informing the work, and on the other, a mental separation of this is the film and this is the artist.

However, I find that as a default I incline far more towards the latter, to quite an extreme. The question of Polanski's criminality (to me) is an entirely separate issue, for which he absolutely should face justice. I certainly don't give him a free pass in that respect just because I like his films. But nor does the subject come up in my mind when I watch his films, quite honestly.

That's just me. Everyone is different. I'm not saying my perspective is better or superior. But obviously what I am saying (in the main article) is that I will not be told what I can and cannot watch by people from whom I neither seek nor require permission.