CaptainMcQuigg said: Works of fiction portray characters as they are (in the writer's imagination).
People will go to any lengths to make excuses for artists, as seen with Mel Gibson. Because it is all fiction, and the author never makes his viewpoint known, he can get away with anything -- he is just "portraying behavior," not approving of it.
Why not just show porn and then say the author doesn't approve of it?
Think I'm joking to make a point? No, that has happened. There is a guy named Lars Von Trier, a provocateur film director, who has said he converted to Catholicism at 30. Yet he makes scandalous arthouse films, one of which ( The Idiots ) shows people fornicating on screen -- I mean for real and explicitly, not simulated. And he is now making another film like this.
Still, he is considered a "spiritual" director, whose films often deal with the Last Judgment and the apocalypse, and people take his conversion seriously -- despite how he has also said that at various times he has been a Jєω and a nαzι. It is known that he likes provoking people, yet he is still taken seriously as a director who poses profound questions, who engages with God, etc., when any Catholic who knows the basics of the faith would be appalled at the level of evil of what he is doing.
The other day at CMRI, a pious woman excused Shakespeare for his scurrilous plays by saying he was writing to the audience of his time. We have now reached the logical conclusion of this illogic. Because of von Trier's talent, he gets away with murder -- not with God, but with the naive and deceived people of our time.
So there is your explanation about why many trads defend these artists. They see what they want to see. If there is a crucifix in a film, or some half-hearted tacked-on pseudo-moral lesson, they are convinced the director is Catholic. You wonder why Antichrist will fool so many people? Just imagine how many excuses will be made for this ultra-charismatic figure, who will be as likeable as an angel.
But I won't be too harsh, I was the same way once. It's almost like we are starving in a spiritual wasteland, and so we become desperate for a drop of water, and we find it in this filthy trash.