Alan Moore on Superhero Movies

I used to argue that the rise of popularity of children literature and movies among adults is a sign of an increased infantilization of our society. Star Wars, Harry Potter, super hero movies (and many, many other examples in between).

But over time I changed this view: I don't think it's such a new phenomenon anymore. The mainstream always consisted mostly of simple stories with almost no emotional and philosophical ambiguity. In the 80s we had action movies with "super-heroes" saving the world. In the 90s we had a mix of love stories and blockbusters with a clear cut boundary between good and evil.

Furthermore, cinema attendance in the US has not changed much in decades. It could be argued, perhaps, that movies play a bigger cultural role today, but that could just be the result of recency bias.

My point is... the percentage of people who continue their intellectual and emotional development past adolescence has always been small. It could be that in some ways this phenomenon is more apparent today due to social media. But that doesn't mean that the rate of infantilization among adults has increased.

> There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’... the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.

This resonates. I think during the Golden age, there was a much more optimistic sense of what those in power were doing for the little man. As scandals after scandals appeared in the following generation of politicians, that optimism was lost, and writers had to scramble to meet the attention of a more jaded audience.

While I think he might have an interesting point to make, these interviews don’t convey it. I wish he would write an essay on the subject instead of letting media outlets speak for him via a handful of hyped up quotes