Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Superheroes a 'cultural catastrophe', says comics guru Alan Moore (2014)

theguardian.com

116 pointschippy93 comments

I've noticed a similar trend - I am now in my 40s, and we played games, read comic books, watched TV and movies growing up... but we never made them part of our self-identity. But recently, people's media consumption is part of their identity. From Whovians to Bronies, people are starting to treat their entertainment as core pieces of who they are.

I find it odd. But maybe that is just part of getting old... that you don't quite understand the youth of today.

I actually think that marketers have simply gotten better.

Same as it ever was. Trekkies. Yankees fans. Smiths fans. Goths. Deadheads. Beatlemania. Hippies. The Beats. Greasers. Flappers. Oscar Wilde fans. We didn't invent popular culture this generation.

The difference is, we have the Internet to actually create large communities centered around these interests. This makes it look like more people are involved, when in fact all the separate islands of fans have simply been bridged together.

And the internet has enabled those fans to be continuously engaged in their interests.

Where trekkies/ham operators/beatlemaniacs might have assembled once in a while or yearly at a convention, now they can stay with their tribe all the time. What's the cultural impact when that happens?

My knee-jerk reaction is to say the people become more insular, but perhaps the opposite is true.

If trekkies come from all over the country, from different age groups, backgrounds, perhaps interacting with your internet trekkie tribe all day will give you a broader picture of things.

In that sense it may be an exchange of intellectual depth for breadth. In a time of a broad globalism that may be just the sort of population you want.

What's more, generally the shared interest is used as a social glue, not as a sole topic of discussion. Case in point, the fact that on Hacker News we are discussing this.

I have a freind and co-worker who is on the more extreme end of the "brony" spectrum. He's still plenty capable of interacting with those of us who've never seen an episode of MLP.

Didn't ham operators talk to each other all night long over random and often amazing distances? That was kind of the point.

Okay, yeah, bad example. I was trying to think of groups that actually met F2F in the days before the Internet.

To be sure I read you well: you state that people are actually defining their identity by consuming media which would be different than knowing you are being influence by contemporary culture on some level, right ? (I tend to agree).

Simon Pegg expressed a similar sentiment in May of this year http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-05-19/simon-pegg-critici...

"part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste... Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes... Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously!”

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - C.S. Lewis

People who go on about others not growing up perhaps need to look at themselves. Positioning themselves as better because they're 'adults' because everyone else is acting like 'children', they may find they never actually left high school and are trying desperatly to be the cool kids.

well said not sure why you got a dv

I haven't downvoted, but I could see how others might have. The CSL quote is a good one. It's important to maintain a certain child-like wonder in the face of encroaching adult jadedness. Unfortunately, non-quote part of the comment is pure spite. Nobody here is "going on" about how being more adult makes them better, but just in case someone did our commenter stands ready to psychoanalyze them as being stuck in high school and thus dismiss them in the exact same say s/he apparently resents superhero-comic fans being dismissed. "I'm rubber, you're glue" is just childish, which is not the same as child-like, and only drags the conversation downward.

The OP said "perhaps" they need to look at themselves - if that's pure spite a lot of NH readers are living in cloud cuckoo land.

"Perhaps" can be used to indicate true uncertainty, but often it's just a kind of weasel-wording used to avoid accountability for one's own words. How do you tell the difference? One way is to look at whether succeeding statements which build on the "perhaps" continue the uncertainty. Are phrases like "in that case" or "would be" present, or are such follow-ons stated with certainty? Perhaps the commenter was making a truly conditional statement. Perhaps s/he is just a cowardly asshole. Oh look, I said "perhaps" so we're all OK, right? Sorry, doesn't work that way. Sometimes deniability isn't so plausible after all. When you consider that same person's next comment, I think the reality of that "perhaps" is pretty apparent.

A personal take is that adults are children that are better at hiding their asshole behavior.

I think there is some truth to this. Children can be extraordinarily vicious and unempathetic.

I am now curious. How do you determine that people "go on" about others not growing up versus people reflecting about their stage in life and how others seemingly, and sometimes quite objectively, have not? How does C.S. Lewis figure "critics treat 'adult' as a term of approval" and not as a fair and contrasting comparison to those that appear not to have attained a certain level of maturity that under "normal" circumstances one would expect them to?

Sounds like he has been got at by some new "friends" - of course the oldest stories (The Illiad The Odyssey Gigamesh) feature super heroes.

If its good enough for Homer its good enough for me!

Super heroes? The characters from Greek legends are often deeply flawed. Achilles, the fleet-footed mankiller, may be a great warrior, but he is also the guy dragging the body of Hector, Patroclus' killer, around Troy out of revenge. Heroes (in the classical sense of the term) are very different from "heroes" as we understand it. They are larger-than-life figures, rather than embodiments of desirable qualities.

Iron Man is an alcoholic, Batman has some deep psychological issues, yadda yadda. Same thing.

Those are surface flaws, designed to give the appearance of wrongdoing. Despite how heavily Batman's internal struggle is emphasized, he never does anything less than noble. Contrast that to Achilles' treatment of Hector, which even in the context of ancient Greece is presented as being beyond the pale.

There is no objective reason to consider comic books as childish and James Bond has been a super hero since before that term was even coined. Heck look at the amount of beatings he take in basically any movie, yet he is rarely damaged at all.

Like in Die Another Day, where he's imprisoned and tortured for over a year? Or like Casino Royale, where he's tortured to the point that he loses the ability to have children? Or Skyfall, where he's shot and falls from a bridge and is so injured and traumatized that he's rendered unfit for duty and only allowed to return to the field thanks to M's override?

In Die Another Day he barely spends any time in hospital before he escapes, swim a mile or so then go to a fancy hotel and is back to his normal self after a quick shave and exposing a plot to blackmail him.

So I would crack this up to him being a super hero - not impossible to take down, but way more difficult that any real human could be.

As for the rest they are part of the reboot and I wasn't thinking of them, in fact I had forgotten they existed until you mentioned them.

Way to miss out on the past decade of Bond films, then?

A counter-example to the following point is that the recent "Avengers: Age of Ultron" movie included debate on contemporary transhumanism, although that could be Joss Whedon's writing influence:

"..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.."

Another reason for shorter copyright terms:

"..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.."

For centuries the cultural touchstones were all retellings of classical Greek or Roman myths, or Bible stories. Modern media's exploration of Marvel's canon or the expansion of the Star Wars mythos is no different than Shakespeare rebooting Cleopatra and updating her with analogs to contemporary politics.

Human thinking and reasoning gets short-circuited by too much vividness. The difference between those previous eras and now is that our fiction may have become dangerously vivid.

How will we handle Oculus, Magic Leap, HoloLens, etc?

Same way that we handled other new technologies before (e.g. the alphabet, the printing press, perspective art, the Internet, etc.)

We’ll stumble along for a few decades making more entertaining toys (along with a few interesting tools) before we end up realizing a new and powerful epistemology that launches us into the next great age civilization.

Or, we could end up with Huxely.

Nonsense. Media vividness isn't a quality of the media -- it's attributed by the viewers. People will perceive the media of their day at the same level of vividness that they would have, in the past, perceived the media of the past. It's self-adjusting.

By vividness, I’m talking about the relative powers of various kinds media to impress us; e.g. that television is more vivid than radio, which is more vivid than writing. I wasn’t talking about the impressiveness of special effects specific to visual media. The idea is that since live-action media is more vivid than cartoons and comic books, it might be the case that either it is displacing better media for dealing with complex topics (e.g. books), or monopolizing a particular media that could be put to “better” uses (i.e. more art films and historical dramas)[1]. But, this isn’t a new argument, Neil Postman devoted an entire book to it 30 years ago [2].

Also, the word “nonsense” really wasn’t an appropriate rejoinder because I wasn’t making a deductive argument in the first place. Rather I was suggesting that there might be evidence that using increasingly more vivid media for ever more trivial things is a net harm to society.

[1] I say this as someone who is guilty of watching superhero movies almost exclusively (I even paid to see Iron Man 2 in the theater five times).

[2] https://www.google.com/?q=amusing%20ourselves%20to%20death#s...

I think he's dead on about the relative proportion of violence/murder versus rape in popular media, particularly the US. Part of it might be the puritanical history of the US. Why is it more acceptable (gauged by PG-13 rating systems) to show killing and violence than even show a breast or two people making love? You'd almost think the latter was a crime instead of the former. The general squeamishness of media on these issues completely distorts the real-world statistics of murder versus domestic violence and rape. So calling Moore out on it is more a statement of current US norms and is very different than other cultures like Japan.

I don't know why you contrast violence and rape, as rape implies violence. And the squemishness about rape doesn't have to say anything about the viewers attitude to sex on the screen. I don't mind movie sex at all, and I abhor 99% of all movie rape or threat thereof. It seems like it's the singular way that hack writers know how to put women in peril, and it's nearly always played for cheap drama and thrills.

As for why violence goes down easier. The violence that is done in blockbuster movies has little to do with real violence, it is extremely stylized, it is about as far from reality as romantic movie sex is from real sex. And it is even more so in superhero movies.

> I don't know why you contrast violence and rape, as rape implies violence.

No, it does not. There are many instances of rape without violence e.g. adult with an unwilling minor coerced into having sex.

Do you really not consider that an act of violence?

I'd consider that a violent act, but it is very different form the kind of violence displayed on your tv screen, which is the original point.

Rape is very different from showing a breast or two, or two people making love.

There are many illustrations of murder which include the psychological impact on the victims. I really haven't found any material that empathizes with me, as a rape victim. Instead, every rape and sexual assault scene in Hollywood is 1-5 minutes long and triggers me into wanting to cry and rock back and forth.

I haven't seen any of his work regarding sexual violence, but there is a lot more depth to it than just the illustration of it. People who write about it who have never experienced it nor researched it sufficiently will not portray rape in a way that demonstrates the impact it has on the victim. It is often exaggerated and minimized as 'part of the life' of the character that endures it. The reality is that it is like your life was made of glass and rape is the bullet that was shot through it, creating cracks that continue to crack in everything that is connected to it, and sometimes the whole thing shatters and you can't ever imagine how to go back to the person you were before you were raped. You don't know how to put the pieces back together and neither does anyone else. But yet you are expected to keep on going. Happiness without sadness is a thing you don't understand, and you acknowledge that you may never understand. Fear is your best friend and your worst enemy. You might become repulsed by your own body. Your identity may fracture and your sense of reasoning and rationality may twist and warp. Labels follow you everywhere. It is a violation of life.

That sounds awful. How long has it been? Does it get any better over time?

It's been 10 years. I have objectively gotten better, I take better care of myself. Even when I feel like I can not go on, I still get out of bed and I do my daily routine, whether it is going to work or going to the gym and doing my chores. I've hidden in the bathroom at work to cry, and I've had many nights where I've gone to sleep wishing I would not wake up in the morning.

I have had some wonderful conversations with people online, and that gives me hope that I will be able to feel happy and be able to recognize it when I feel it. I make art, I make music, and I take great care in learning about computer science and code, and making improvements in it. I have an interest in philosophy and a love of knowledge in general, and I often think it is amusing to me that I use abstract maths to distract myself from traumatic memories, a bit of a quirk that I like about myself. I have my moments where I feel like I think I might love myself and I know who I am, few and far apart they may sometimes be. The last 5 or 6 years have been like a hurricane for me. I still struggle with a lot of things, but I think it has gotten better.

Have you looked into Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)? I've heard it has good results for long term trauma.

I have, I met with a licensed psychologist who did this in my area, but we didn't proceed because my experiences as I described them were things he did not think he would be the best with helping.

That's rough. No one deserves this much anguish and suffering.

You mentioned lack of relatable narratives in the media, I think I know one you might find close: "CSI: special victims unit". I only watched one episode, but I found it touching so there is hope the rest of it is close too.

Perhaps more importantly, there must be a way for you to have your feelings acknowledged by real, live people. Is there a sex crime victim support group where you live? If there is, I encourage you to attend it, both for you own sake and for the sake of the other people there - they need to be understood in their pain as much you need it. More broadly, what you describe sounds close to PTSD, and anyone who's gone through that hell will readily relate to your story.

I know I should, but for right now talking on the internet about it (with the ignorance about whether I am truly anonymous blanketing me) is the most I can do. I have had bad experiences in group therapy, I did not find it helpful.

I have been diagnosed with PTSD, I know I show many symptoms of it. It makes me upset that it may have held me back in achieving goals in my life, but I just know that regardless, I need to take things slowly. I have too many emotions that distract and cloud my ability to think clearly about things I consider very difficult (mostly stuff in computer science and math).

So I just go really slow, as slow as I need to, and I wait for things to click, and then they do. I just try to forget that the rest of the world is still rushing by, and I remind myself that none of that matters to my own personal understanding about the things I want to learn about. I get discouraged a lot, and sometimes my mind can really feel completely clouded, and nothing I do seems to help it, and I can become very afraid that I will be lost in confusion forever. That I am either past my prime, or that I never really was smart, or that I'm too damaged to really persist and actually see the fruits of my labor. Sometimes I think it is good enough to be convinced into persisting despite knowing that I never will actualize, but that thought saddens me in an exceptionally destructive way.

I know I am strong and that if there's anything that really keeps me wanting to live day to day, it's being able to experience learning in the right way, and I consider myself lucky that I get to do that even though I work.

Individual therapy? It's hard to find a good match, so just keep trying people until you find someone you like.

Thank you for sharing, and I know it doesn't mean much but I'm sorry that such a thing has happened to you.

Thank you for your compassion. It does mean something.

Japan has a well-known rape culture. And we're talking about Comic Book Guys getting off on highly triggering violence against women, to the extent of using them as punchlines. Take Grant Morrison's observation:

"But I don't know. There's been lots of things, the sexism in DC because it's mostly men who work in these places. Nobody should be trying to say we're taking up a specifically anti-woman stance. I think it would be ignorance or stupidity or some God knows what. I was reading some Alan Moore Marvelman for some reason today. I found one in the back there and I couldn't believe. I pick it up and there are fucking two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn't find a single one where someone wasn't raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn't a misogynist but fuck, he's obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape!" (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/grant-morrison-on-the...)

This is just an idea but, does depiction of sex lead to horny people who end up accidentally making babies which leads to abortions or often unwanted kids which often leads to dropping out of school and poverty?

On other hand depiction of murder and other violence appears to lead to nothing. In fact as is often pointed out even though apparently media is more violent than ever violent crime rates are down.

I don't know. I know I've seen articles about studies that claim violent movies make people more violent in the short term, and I've also seen studies that show the crime rates are down while apparently violent entertainment is up.

I have no idea if similar studies have been done for sexualized entertainment, influence on sexual behavior and unintended consequences. Maybe you could look at various cultures, the amount of easily accessible sexualized entertainment, and sex related consequences those cultures have. I suspect it might be similar to violence where countries with more accessible sexual entertainment have less sexual consequences? But of course those same countries also have many other cultural differences as well.

The murdered are gone, and the raped are at the theaters, watching it, and experiencing it again. This is cruelty in the name of entertainment.

He's right there's value in making the issue visible. But if he was really concerned, he'd think about it deeper, and maybe ask the opinion of related associations, weigh the pros and the cons of inflicting psychological harm.

No, I think it's just that he likes the beauty of evil. It's just a tool in his box to make mature art for mature people who are beyond superheroes, and beyond good and evil.

But he's an artist, and I don't blame him. (I blame Obama)

The sons of murdered also go to cinemas...

Moore has been preaching this since forever. I think his position could be divided to two, slightly different points. I am not sure if he agrees, but this is my take on what Moore is saying:

>1. (Superhero) comics were originally children's entertainment, almost a century ago. It is an unhealthy sign that not only we're still stuck with them, they are now deemed acceptable for adult consumption.

Interesting thing is that this isn't limited to capestories. The whole genre of YA fiction seems to be focused on this kind of "entertainment literature", with similar (on meta level) formulaic characters and stories.

And maybe he has a point; even the "realistic takes" on the genre, "grown-up post-modern deconstructions of inherent sillyness of common assumptions and tropes of caped vigilantes" and that kind of stuff ...it was already done decades ago (people like Moore himself). Yet still Marvel and DC go on and on with the same old stuff, maybe with some "adult" twist or to (like a debate on transhumanism, or making a the protagonist troubled anti-hero, or something), while re-hashing the same 'kiddie' storylines and action. Maybe we are just more self-conscious about this (TVtropes is a thing).

However, I think Moore is making a mistake assuming that in the "golden olden days" any more significant majority of people 'graduated' to a more serious (whatever that means) forms of fiction.

Even if it's "unhealthy" (I don't agree), it's not like this kind of fiction is anything fundamentally new. As soon as there was the physical possibility of pulp fiction, pulp fiction appeared, and most of that stuff was utter rubbish. (And even before 1920's pulp, there was 1800s cheap literature; most of it was similar melodramatic rubbish, too.) And best of them remain in public consciousness even today. Is popularity of Sherlock Holmes that different thing, on a fundamental level, than popularity of Batman or Superman? Good grief, Moore himself did Extraordinary Gentlemen!

2. (Superhero) comics are not original form for entertainment of our time; we should come up with something new of our own that reflects our time, not just repeat the same and old and tired. For example, instead of trying to come up with a totally new idea, movie industry just makes yet another superhero movie for their next blockbluster candidate. Or DC/Marvel makes yet another 'new' superhero (exactly like the old ones, just different powers and costume which is just 'make-up'), or comes up another variation of old plots for old ones. The Spider Man or Batman aren't going anywhere on any fundamental level, and there isn't new and innovative replacements.

Well, I think this is a more valid point, but it has more to do with the current (unhealthy) economical logic of Western mass entertainment industry than with something 'deeper' in our culture.

I love Watchmen, but I went straight to /r/nottheonion with this https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/3du90o/superhe... .

slightly off-topic: if you didn't watch it yet, you should rush to see this documentary about Alan Moore. They mind of this guy is a fascinating universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mindscape_of_Alan_Moore

(2014)

Alan Moore pops up every so often just to bum everybody out. Superheroes are a fun, stupid and occasionally brilliant genre. They're the Westerns of the 21st century.

Lighten up Al.

You might like to read deeper on why mainstream superhero plots follow such a peculiar formula... Are they trying to teach adolescent boys something?

> "These “heroes” are purely reactionary, in the literal sense. They have no projects of their own, at least not in their role as heroes: as Clark Kent, Superman may be constantly trying, and failing, to get into Lois Lane’s pants, but as Superman, he is purely reactive. In fact, superheroes seem almost utterly lacking in imagination: like Bruce Wayne, who with all the money in the world can’t seem to think of anything to do with it other than to indulge in the occasional act of charity; it never seems to occur to Superman that he could easily carve free magic cities out of mountains.

> "Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas. Clearly, we are supposed to first, without consciously realizing it, identify with the villains. After all, they’re having all the fun. Then of course we feel guilty for it, re-identify with the hero, and have even more fun watching the superego clubbing the errant Id back into submission."

> "It’s in this sense that the logic of the superhero plot is profoundly, deeply conservative." (http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/super-position/)

Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas.

Interestingly, Metropolitan Man touches on this. At a certain point in the plot, Superman approaches a villain and asks him to identify the most productive things he can do with his superpowers, recognizing that stopping robberies isn't it.

It's actually a fantastic work of fiction, I highly recommend it.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10360716/1/The-Metropolitan-Man

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2305

> seems... a bit monotonous...

> Oh, that reminds me. Keep your speed constant at all times.

A superhero is a balancing force. He does not create because that tips the scales the other way.

Superman cannot play god, but instead only intervene when evil goes too far.

The point about making and building is one that has always seemed odd to me. For the most part, superheroes can't help what they are - they became that way through genetics or accident. (Counterexample: Iron Man) On the other hand, many of the supervillains demonstrate very high levels of ingenuity and determination. Many of them have had to overcome even greater adversity or tragedy than the heroes. I'm not fond of seeing distinctions between entrepreneurship and criminality blurred like that, while the hereditary aristocracy get a moral pass. Things have gotten more nuanced since the so-called golden era, but these themes/memes need to die faster.

You have a few superhero stories exploring these themes (eg, The Authority or the old Squadron Supreme miniseries from the 80s), but yes, most superheroes seem to lack ambition and imagination.

This is related to the observation that while superheroes are frequently rich, they never earned the money themselves. The explanation I've seen is pretty straightforward -- the morality of things requires that superheroes not care about money or other human goals, since if they did care about them, they'd just take them. Villains can work to service their own goals because they're villainous.

I am annoyed by people who claim to be "geeks" and "nerds" because they read comics and watch Marvel movies, but who are amazingly ignorant about science. Just the other day, I met one: Thought the solar system was around 10 million years old, and that the prediction of the Sun going red giant in 4.5 billion years was some kind of BS guess. He was ready to render judgement on the entire discipline of astronomy but had basically no idea about the findings and methods of astronomers, other than vague notions that there are stars and planets up there.

I'm sure there are people who are annoyed by folks who claim to be "geeks" and "nerds" because they read science articles and memorize scientific facts, but who are amazingly ignorant about culture.

I'm sure there are people who are annoyed by folks who claim to be "geeks" and "nerds" because they read science articles and memorize scientific facts, but who are amazingly ignorant about culture.

Summary: "Geek" used to mean "has real knowledge." Not so much anymore.

It used to be that the appellation of "geek" would indicate a good working knowledge of science, and a healthy attitude towards knowledge of all kinds. It's more a workable epistemology that I miss in today's "geek" set than science. Really, the guy I describe above is hardly better than a young earth creationist -- his ignorance of highly relevant science is just as large. The chief difference is only that his preferred mythology get a better movie directors and bigger box office returns. I love Marvel movies and read comics myself, but I know enough real-world knowledge to place them into the realm of "sheer awesome/entertaining nonsense." A world full of people who lack the pieces of their high-school education to do just that is kinda a scary place.

The "geeks" have taken over the world, but huge swathes of them are now effectively the "Idiocracy" with different cultural trappings.

Those people would be imbeciles.

Dude sounds like he's stuck in his own head.

He seems lucid enough.

His points about rape are on mark. It seems to tie in into general pattern of squeamishness when it comes to sex.

His point about superheroes being detractors from reality is an interesting one. Not sure if it's as bad as he claims, but it makes sense.

Dude has a large, popular and critically acclaimed body of work behind him. I'm interested to hear from him.

his head is quite well regarded by many people.

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