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Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

theguardian.com

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Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#71

Post by chrisweekly »

toyg wrote: post #69
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's mythically important that a Nazi piece of shit gets punched in the face by Just a Kid from Brooklyn. But is it as mythically important that a sandal-wearing goatsherd from Helmand province (AK-47-totting or not) gets punched in the face by Just a Kid from Brooklyn? What about Captain America punching civilians in Sarajevo, as the Sarajevo TV building is being bombed in the background? Iraqi soldiers confronti…

> no modern "bad guys" can do unambiguous, demented evil as well as the Nazis used to The Nazis were complete shits on an unprecedented scale, but there was quite a bit of "demented evil" done by Americans too in WWII, like carpet-bombing European cities and interning citizens of Japanese ancestry. The world has never been simple. "Black & white" is always a result of hegemonic propaganda more than actual conditions.…

Typo? (2011-09-11-> 2001-09-11)

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#72

Post by empath75 »

sirspacey wrote: post #58

Reading this again, I cannot miss the irony that Alan is accusing our culture of the very thing he has done - retreat from the complexities of conflicts in our modern culture. Racism and sexual violence are at the top of that list. FWIW, discussing either of those topics as a white, middle-class, middle-aged male doesn't come with a lot of natural/implied moral authority. For the philosophically inclined among that g…

Even if you agree that it’s preferable that certain topics be addressed by particular groups are are most affected by them — at the time Alan Moore was writing originally, that wasn’t an option. Either a white male wrote about it or it didn’t get written about, for the most part. He (and the rest of the British Invasion) opened a lot of doors for various topics to get addressed in mainstream comics for the first time.

Since then, the doors have opened wider for a more diverse group of writers in comics, and that’s a good thing, but I don’t think you should be too angry at Alan Moore for at least trying to address complex issues in an intelligent way.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#73

Post by WillyOnWheels »

pmoriarty wrote: post #55

Moore's own words in full[1] are far more interesting, provocative, and well-written than this Guardian summary. [1] - https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-...

Alan Moore has dedicated his life to writing comic books and hating Grant Morrison.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#74

Post by remarkEon »

taneq wrote: post #53
Theodores wrote: post #3

It sounds like Alan Moore has had enough of the media and journalists. Well meaning that they may be individually they are collectively like a passive-aggressive narcissist eager to latch on to the slightest thing to bring the man down. It sounds to me that he just wants to get out of this abusive relationship and get on with his life. The point of the article - that there is something weird about grown adults and th…

> as if it was serious art When you start talking about whether things are "serious" or "real" art or not, you've lost sight of what art really is.

What absolute nonsense.

It's pretty easy to identify serious vs. non-serious art, and we'd been doing it for thousands of years. Great epics in music and poetry, literature and painting are great because they are serious. What's happened now is that if you level the critique the parent did, we get your reaction - a subtle insistence that we must consider all art serious, no matter how lazy it is.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#75

Post by Retric »

humanrebar wrote: post #36
mikeash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some of it is just a change in the terms we use. Take Guardians of the Galaxy for example. A fun superhero movie! Except it’s really just a science fiction movie that avoids the “SF” term. It’s pretty similar to something like Star Wars in terms of the characters and technologies shown... but for some reason, Luke Skywalker isn’t a “superhero.” Or consider the Greek myths. Instead of superheroes, they had “go…

I agree with the Greek mythology point, I just made the same one in anther comment. But I wouldn't consider Guardians or Star Wars to be science fiction since "what if" is not a huge element of either. I'd consider each to be "space operas" and have more in common with adventures (Indiana Jones, The Mummy), fantasy (magicians and monsters), or Westerns than science fiction proper.

Star Wars is almost pure fantasy. Lightsabers block blasters because they are Bow vs sword analogs. The big evil is a guy in a robe who shoots lightning from his fingers etc. Hell the armor even seems to be purely asthetic.

Replace 'spaceships' with boats and 'planets' with islands and the entire story works just fine.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#76

Post by ycnoqkdn »

maxerickson wrote: post #51
humanrebar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that comics are a retreat from that... Except most comic book stories are about heroes that are morally compromised in various ways: their pasts, their methods, the unintended consequences of their actions, etc. What's more, outside of issue films, I have a hard time thinking of much popular film these days that is black and white.

It doesn't quite fit into the black and white mold, but most modern action heroes are 100% righteous, which is a similar thing. Take the incredible scene in Iron Man 1 where Tony Stark flies halfway around the word, kills a bunch of men (probably for good reason) and then almost kills an allied pilot. These events weigh so heavily on him that he cracks wise with his buddy on the phone while they are happening.

Or the scene in Iron Man 3 where his (privately-owned) autonomous drone-suits bludgeon a bunch of rogue veterans to death on a boat.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#77

Post by krapp »

Retric wrote: post #75
humanrebar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the Greek mythology point, I just made the same one in anther comment. But I wouldn't consider Guardians or Star Wars to be science fiction since "what if" is not a huge element of either. I'd consider each to be "space operas" and have more in common with adventures (Indiana Jones, The Mummy), fantasy (magicians and monsters), or Westerns than science fiction proper.

Star Wars is almost pure fantasy. Lightsabers block blasters because they are Bow vs sword analogs. The big evil is a guy in a robe who shoots lightning from his fingers etc. Hell the armor even seems to be purely asthetic. Replace 'spaceships' with boats and 'planets' with islands and the entire story works just fine.

Star Wars is science fantasy in the style of old 1930's pulp serials and stories like the Lensman series or Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books... which still makes it a subset of science fiction, if not necessarily by modern standards.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#78

Post by ThatGeoGuy »

CommentCard wrote: post #54
simonbarker87 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be because the kids who these stories were initially aimed at, grew up and became adults, DC/Marvel realised they could “adultify” the plots and appeal to the same audience now 20-30 years older to expand their demographic leveraging nostalgia and thus make more money?

I'd argue that the vast majority of superhero movies are engineered through focus-group testing to be as palatable to as many people as possible that they become bland. Logan was the only genre movie in recent memory that eschewed this formula and confronted the messy topic of the senescence of the age of the superhero.

Which is an interesting counter-point to Alan Moore: just because a (sizable) portion of superhero movies aren't thrusting culture forward, doesn't mean that they have to be.

Having familiar characters in a known environment can certainly help pick the audience up to get them to a point where more complex topics become palatable. The fact that these characters are "superheroes" is incidental, and not terribly important to the overall plot of the movie.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#79

Post by chiaro »

hguant wrote: post #19

I don't see how this is news. Alan Moore has been decrying and hating on superheroes for the entirety of his career, for largely the same reasons throughout. This is great when it's communicated through his work - showing what comics could be without superheroes, or critiquing the genre from within (Watchmen and Marvelman/Miracleman reboot come to mind), but his personal disdain for the consumers of his products is o…

This would seem to be a fundamental disagreement over the cultural responsibility of creators. The simple Batman=cool paradigm is outdated for the modern world and attempts to update it such as Nolan's shoe-horned and instantly forgotten wall street raid have fallen flat. Amazingly, the most "escapy" version of Batman recently, Lego Batman, has most capably addressed this when the new police commissioner advocates an expansion of community involvement instead of, quote, "punching poor people". Batman punching criminals in alleyways doesn't make sense in today's world and if media is facilitating a retreat from this reality, then criticism on these grounds is just.

Re: Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore [2014]

#80

Post by chiaro »

maxerickson wrote: post #48
humanrebar wrote: post #29

Moore says: > I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times. And Tolkien said: > There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish [mythology] (which greatly…

Superman is pretty much Hercules for the jet age. Born special, good at trying, wildly powerful, noble, etc.

Adding immigrant parentage to the list would update it to be, per Moore, "most relevant and sufficient to [the] times".
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