Epic putdown on todays' culture from Alan Moore

[dholliday]

He is a cult comic-book writer, commenting on the mainstream cultural obsession with DC/Marvel superheroes.

"To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence. It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. 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."

Bold/underline from me. EPIC putdown of modern culture that. I for one agree with him.


The full interview is here. He's very wordy, but talks quite a bit of sense.

His other main point is this:

"sexual violence, including rape and domestic abuse, should also feature in my work where necessary or appropriate to a given narrative, the alternative being to imply that these things did not exist, or weren't happening. This, given the scale upon which such events occur, would have seemed tantamount to the denial of a sexual holocaust, happening annually.

In the real world there are relatively few murders in relation to the staggering number of rapes and other crimes of sexual or gender-related violence, but this is almost a complete reversal of the way that the world is represented in its movies, television shows, literature or comic-book material.

Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."

Controversial for sure! But a debate that needs to be had. We've got kids being desensitised to violence by way of movies and video games, yet we dare not show them sex (not even talking about rape scenes, but graphic consensual sex).

 

[noharmdone]

Are you ok mate ?

 

[dholliday]

Are you ok mate ?

You've max-negged me 13 times in the last 4 hours, then you come on this new thread to ask me if i'm ok?

You're on a massive wind up.



@everyone else, let's be on topic, please I find Alan Moore's provocative comments interesting.




^^

 

[Blue 1]

He is a national treasure.

 

[Moomin]

 

[Allezfan]

I would bother debating his points. (I feel like in particuar he's missing the point with rape scenes massively, in that having desensitised our children from the horrors of murder by making it ubiquitous arguing we should obviously do the same with rape is ridiculous. And as he notes rape is far common than murder and, of course, survivable, so more people who have been raped are going to consume media and might not want to be confronted by it. And that's not even getting into the way rape is actually one of the the more common forms of female sexuality shown in the media and that it's often portrayed in a sexy manner, it's not rare for women to be full frontal in scenes like that, for example. You can show female rape scenes on tv (and there is a huge ammount of rape in popular culture, law and order svu is an entire tv show where there's a rape victim every week, so he's not exactly flying the flag for a minority view) but what you can't show is women masturbating.)

But frankly why bother, if he actually had any intellectual or cultural authority he wouldn't have spent his life writing picture books for overgrown menchildren still living with their parents.

 

[dholliday]

He is a national treasure.

I confess I've never heard of him until reading this.

I would bother debating his points. (I feel like in particuar he's missing the point with rape scenes massively, in that having desentisied our children from the horrors of murder by making it ubiquitous arguing we should obviously do the same with rape is ridiculous. And as he notes rape is far common than murder and surviable, so more people who have been raped are going to consume media and might want to be confronted with it. And that's not even getting into the way rape is actually one of the the most common of female sexuality shown in the media and that it's often betrayed in a sexy manner, it's not rare for women to be full frontal in scenes like that, for example. You can show female rape scenes on tv (and there is a huge ammount of rape in popular culture, law and order svu is an entire tv show where there's a rape victim every week, so he's not exactly flying the flag for a minority view) but what you can't show is women masturbating.)

But frankly why bother, if he actually had any intellectual or cultural authority he wouldn't have spent his life writing picture books for overgrown menchildren still living with their parents.

Good solid reply that. I can see your argument that Moore is using that excuse as a defence mechanism for how often he portrays rape. I'd say I agree more with your view here.

On the other hand, and something Moore didn't really get into, is that we definitely have an issue in our culture of showing violence in movies/video games openly, whereas (consensual) sex, and as you point out masturbation, is seen as something which is more censorable, even tho' masturbating/sex is something literally everyone does, and is 'essentially' harmless.

Moore's point would've been better served had he focussed on this, rather than the rape thing (to back that up he'd probably have to write more consensual sex/masturbating scenes and less rape).

 

[BlueLlama]

He draws pictures for teenagers so I'm not really arsed what he says but the idea of mainstreaming rape so in comics is not really a good idea

 

[Allezfan]

I honestly hate Moore so I have something of a bias here.

I think he has a ridicously high opinion of himself for someone who makes his living writing words for someone elses drawings in picture books using other people's characters to an audience of a few thousand world wide.

And his argument about pop culture eating itself is almost entirely hypocritical when the vast majority of his works is based on other people's characters.

His last major work for instance is a porn comic staring the female leads of wizard of oz, alice in wonderland and peter pan having lots of sex with each other. Which you know even if I hadn't grown out of needing pictures in my books at 8, I still wouldn't exactly view as 'relevant and sufficient to its times'.

 

[Allezfan]

He draws pictures for teenagers so I'm not really arsed what he says but the idea of mainstreaming rape so in comics is not really a good idea

Please, you overestimate him.

He gets other people to draw pictures for teen agers. He just fills in the speech bubbles.

 

[BlueLlama]

Please, you overestimate him.

He gets other people to draw pictures for teen agers. He just fills in the speech bubbles.

I stand corrected.

So he is basically just trying to drum up a bit of controversy to get some interest in his pathetic psuedo porn comics.

Bell

 

[Moomin]

Please, you overestimate him.

He gets other people to draw pictures for teen agers. He just fills in the speech bubbles.

Sounds like what I used to do with school textbooks years ago, just add a speech bubble onto a photo with a witty comment.

 

[dholliday]

I honestly hate Moore so I have something of a bias here.

I think he has a ridicously high opinion of himself for someone who makes his living writing words for someone elses drawings in picture books using other people's characters to an audience of a few thousand world wide.

And his argument about pop culture eating itself is almost entirely hypocritical when the vast majority of his works is based on other people's characters.

His last major work for instance is a porn comic staring the female leads of wizard of oz, alice in wonderland and peter pan having lots of sex with each other. Which you know even if I hadn't grown out of needing pictures in my books at 8, I still wouldn't exactly view as 'relevant and sufficient to its times'.

That explains why he's so wordy in his interviews then. To intellectualise his work (which some Guardian readers probably fall for).


I still agree with his first point, that todays' culture is lacking a proper cultural Zeitgeist.


Cutting comment from a fan of his work:

I'll continue to enjoy Watchmen, From Hell and Swamp Thing while disassociating them from their creator. I call it the Polanski maneuver.

 

[Black Belt Jones]

Never understood how his role as the writer was so dominant to that of the artist in comic books - I think the artist of the watchmen (Dave Gibbons?) basically agreed with him though. Said he didn't feel like he had any real creative input into the series, it was Alan's show. Hard to understand given the whole medium is pictures.

Anyhow, agree with Artetafan that Moore's commenting from a completely marginalised position - no one reads comics and suggesting superheros occupy the cultural mainstream is laughable in that context.
I guess he has a point if you consider cinema, though. Don't think anyone could argue that Hollywood films are full of superhero bollox, must be a main driver of the industry. Most of them stem from comic books originally.

 

[dholliday]

I guess he has a point if you consider cinema, though. Don't think anyone could argue that Hollywood films are full of superhero bollox, must be a main driver of the industry. Most of them stem from comic books originally.

The superhero cinema is even more OTT in 2014...so much of mainstream Hollywood's budget is going to those characters.

It's killing (mainstream cinema) culture.

In that, he had a point.