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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]

#101

Post by Iv »

pmoriarty wrote: post #94
Iv wrote: post #82

I wholeheartedly agree. More than the simplistic worldview they offer, what I I find distressing in superheroes culture (that contaminated other genres as well) is that it promotes a narrative of the providential individual, set to save the day. Teams are 4 or 5 persons max, bigger organizations are seen as either evil or incompetent. We are losing the taste for collaborative work. We are promoting the idea that only…

Exceptional individuals making a difference has been the stock and trade of almost all fiction, of religious and mythical literature, and even a lot of non-fiction like biography and history, for thousands of years. You have a tough road ahead of you if you want to convince most creators that this is the wrong direction. That said, there have been some literary periods when writing about ordinary, completely unexcept…

Fiction has always focused on heroes, but organizations used to play a bigger part, especially for the generation that remembered WWII.

Take the Star Wars franchise. Most of the original trilogy is about a bunch of heroes helping a huge resistance movement against a bigger empire. In the end, the heroes are the drops that tip the scale in the rebellion's favor, but the rebellion had to push all their might to make that possible.

Look The Force Awakens: a bunch of clueless heroes, dismissing the while rebellion, manage to make a big thing go boom with almost no external help.

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

#102

Post by nnfy »

pmoriarty wrote: post #24
nnfy wrote: post #17

Perhaps comics are beginning to fill the void left by retreating religion. It is comforting to imagine a world in which things make sense, where good triumphs over evil, where you have an opportunity to be a part of something larger than yourself; especially when you're working a dead end job and you feel like your nation is falling apart. Unfortunately, unlike most religion, comics and comic based films are lacking…

"Unfortunately, unlike most religion, comics and comic based films are lacking in the "nutrition" that religious escapism can provide, in the way of community and self improvement, so we end up with man children withdrawing from society." Rejection of society and worldly things, and withdrawal from them both has been a rather common practice in religions for millennia. Religious hermits and ascetics, and moralists es…

I dont think the people who withdraw into the world of comics do it for quite the same reasons as " Religious hermits and ascetics, and moralists".

This seems to be a newer phenomenon, possibly because we now live in a time where it is possible to contribute little and still survive for the majority of a population.

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

#104

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

remarkEon wrote: post #74
taneq wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Great epics in music and poetry, literature and painting are great because they are serious.

That is a difficult claim to back up if you look at the literature from Greece and Rome that was thought worth preserving over the centuries. A lot of plays by Plautus, for example, are pretty low comedy comparable to our low comedy today, but they nonetheless entered the canon of “great art”.

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

#105

Post by RyanOD »

interfixus wrote: post #89
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 have only ever watched two thirds of a Starwars movie. That was some 35 years ago on television, and it struck me as utterly stupid and pointless. Bad science, bad space, bad soundwaves in space, silly costume party in a bar, idiotic storyline, and ill-conceived characters. Didn't ever come back for more. It was obvious to me then that this was simply a concoction of fairytales and tall stories with a new coat of H…

I'm curious...what stories sustain your attention?

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

#106

Post by samirillian »

humanrebar wrote: post #67
samirillian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're missing his whole point, which is the use of superheroes as a kind of escapism from the complexities of life. Citing superficial similarities to mythical figures is just a way of sidestepping his actual arguments.

> Citing superficial similarities to mythical figures... I think you missed why I quoted Tolkien. There's something compelling about a common mythology for a culture. The modern cosmopolitan culture, American especially, doesn't have an ethnic, racial, or language identity to fall back on when exploring identity, struggle, the merits of sacrifice, moral issues, etc. Mythological figures allow us to explore these them…

I get the idea of having some sort of shared cultural touchstones. But there are plenty of candidates for that role.

Not to belabor the point, but why the guys in tights and not, say, the characters from the Abrahamic faiths? Well, you say, it's dangerous to mix faith with fantasy. But that's exactly what the old myths did and what Tolkien could do by implicitly associating his stories with Christianity, and exactly what Batman will never be. So much for the structural similarities between the Superman and Hercules.

But, again, this is all beside the point. The devil is in the details. There might be nothing inherently wrong with making superheroes the source of a shared cultural vocabulary about "spiritual" questions: what is right, what is wrong, what is bravery, etc. But how has it actually unfolded, in the world, right now? Again, Moore argues that, in the concrete, it has led to a kind of infantilism.

You bring up the Dark Knight. I don't personally like what I took away as the message of the Dark Knight, but I understand if you do. But can you name a single other example with actual critical value? Or do the vast majority just serve to make unhappy people, sleepwalking through life, continue unhappily sleepwalking?

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

#107

Post by interfixus »

RyanOD wrote: post #105
interfixus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have only ever watched two thirds of a Starwars movie. That was some 35 years ago on television, and it struck me as utterly stupid and pointless. Bad science, bad space, bad soundwaves in space, silly costume party in a bar, idiotic storyline, and ill-conceived characters. Didn't ever come back for more. It was obvious to me then that this was simply a concoction of fairytales and tall stories with a new coat of H…

I'm curious...what stories sustain your attention?

There needs to be rules, there needs to be consistency. Which more or less means my kind of story has to masquerade as some kind of realism. So ... science fiction of the reasonably hardboiled kind, certain kinds of mainstream literature - doesn't need much of a plot if it's worth reading for the humour and the language. I do read some stuff considered de rigueur in nerdy circles. Neal Stephenson yes, as in Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle (but - you guessed it - disliked Snow Crash enough never to finish it, and found REAMDE tacky and movie scriptish). Heinlein, Gregs Bear and Benford, that kind of stuff. Quite a few British writers, as long as they're not Tolkien og Lewis.

I should probably escort myself out of here. I never did get into computer games either...

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

#108

Post by eli_gottlieb »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #61
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This has been a half formed thought bouncing around in my head, but I think part of the reason for the resurgence of comic books and superheroes is the simple fact that we live in a complex world where there are very few instances of Good and Evil. We live in a subtle, complex, and nuanced world, where if you take the time to dig in to an issue, you find more complexity...and a lot of really morally compromised peop…

>> 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…

>Maybe comics can't just go on pretending the world is all black and white, when most of us can see around us that this is not the case.

The film was set during WW2. If you portray Captain America punching Iraqi soldiers in 2004, well yeah your film deserves to fail.

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

#109

Post by sirspacey »

olavk wrote: post #97
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…

> One way to do that is to be the listener as they take the pulpit. So you are basically asking Alan More to shut up and stop producing literature because he is white and middle aged?

Definitely not. Your previous comment (he still publishes vs participates in journalistic debates) makes a lot of sense. I'm saying that, personally, I haven't found a way to bring my values to these conversations in the public space that doesn't feel awkward, so I focus on sharing the talks/posts of those I agree with who do share that identity. Not to put words in your mouth, but perhaps you feel as I sometimes do that our right as people to participate in this public debate is being challenged or questioned on our identity alone. As much as I'd like to argue that isn't a basis for exclusion, there is something to consider in it. It's a hypothetical for me, a reality for others. That gives me pause. It doesn't mean the other person's interpretation is one I must or should adopt, but it seems unwise to form opinions that exclude their experience when talking about the rules that should govern society. The poster above pointed out that in Alan's case, those points of view weren't really even in the market without him and the British invasion. That's context I hadn't considered here. I was curious to see what the holes in my viewpoint were and that's certainly one.

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

#110

Post by chrismcb »

visarga wrote: post #86
maxerickson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What I don't like about Superman is his powers: they lack imagination. He's just strong (like a tractor or a crane), fast (like an airplane or rocket), has laser eyes (like... lasers), extremely sensitive hearing (like spy microphones) and X-ray vision (like microwave cameras). So he's not transcendent at all - we already have all his powers with the help of banal devices. Superman = just a regular man + devices = To…

Superman was created in 1933. A lot of those things didn't exist or barely existed. Shoot airplanes were still in their infancy.
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