Alan Moore: A rant I've had building for some time now.
I would say, that if you’re talking about a line of progress, if it can be called progress, that runs from Berthold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, to Donald Cammell’s Performance, to Harry Potter, I don’t think you can really see that as anything but a decline. I will also point out that if you’ve got, I believe twenty percent of young people polled said that they would be embarrassed if their mates caught them reading. That would seem to me to be a decline, and also I would say that if you’ve got the Avengers movie as one of the most eagerly attended recent movies, and if most of those attendees were adults, which I believe they were, then if you’ve got a huge number of contemporary adults going to watch a film containing characters and storylines that were meant for the entertainment of eleven year old boys fifty years ago, then I’ve got to say, there’s something badly wrong there, isn’t there? This is not actually cultural progress.
If I saw that written by a columnist for The Times, or a Conservative politician, then I would sigh and move on. But Alan Moore is supposed to be reasonably smart. Picking three pieces of work that aren't even in the same fucking media as each other, and then comparing them as if they were in any way the prime examples of media in the time they were created is the kind of ridiculous, self-serving, idiocy that drives me up the wall. And then to complain about Harry Potter in one breath, and then about people being embarassed to read in the next, when millions of kids read their way through books big enough to break a toe if you dropped it? GAH!
Also, he's apparently surprised that the best-selling movie appealed to teenagers, and the mass market. As if that was somehow a sudden occurrence in the movie business. And to compare back to Performance, _that_ wasn't even well received when it first appeared!
I recently read the new League spin-off Nemo: Heart of Ice, and was terribly disappointed. I haven't enjoyed ay of the League books since the Martians turned up, they felt like they turned from "Fun romp with lots of background detail thrown in for fun" into "Hunt the reference, with a threadbare plot attached." It's a massive shame, because the first two volumes are absolutely marvellous.
(I also get very fed up with him performing constant archeology on other people's work, while decrying it when other people dare to use any of his. It's hideously hypocritical, and the fact that he can't see comes across as remarkably self-delusional.)
Edit: Grumpy enough to forget to link to the interview.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
If I saw that written by a columnist for The Times, or a Conservative politician, then I would sigh and move on. But Alan Moore is supposed to be reasonably smart. Picking three pieces of work that aren't even in the same fucking media as each other, and then comparing them as if they were in any way the prime examples of media in the time they were created is the kind of ridiculous, self-serving, idiocy that drives me up the wall. And then to complain about Harry Potter in one breath, and then about people being embarassed to read in the next, when millions of kids read their way through books big enough to break a toe if you dropped it? GAH!
Also, he's apparently surprised that the best-selling movie appealed to teenagers, and the mass market. As if that was somehow a sudden occurrence in the movie business. And to compare back to Performance, _that_ wasn't even well received when it first appeared!
I recently read the new League spin-off Nemo: Heart of Ice, and was terribly disappointed. I haven't enjoyed ay of the League books since the Martians turned up, they felt like they turned from "Fun romp with lots of background detail thrown in for fun" into "Hunt the reference, with a threadbare plot attached." It's a massive shame, because the first two volumes are absolutely marvellous.
(I also get very fed up with him performing constant archeology on other people's work, while decrying it when other people dare to use any of his. It's hideously hypocritical, and the fact that he can't see comes across as remarkably self-delusional.)
Edit: Grumpy enough to forget to link to the interview.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.