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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Essentially he finds their success embarrassing and a sign of society’s arrested development, with accusations of racism to boot.
Edited by Beatman1 on Nov 18th 2019 at 1:27:42 PM
What the hell, are we in a middle of an unknown plague that causes old men to scream at clouds?
What's next, the dead are going to come up and express their disapproval too? Can't get any older than a literal decayed skeleton.
Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 18th 2019 at 10:33:33 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.Maybe? Stranger things have happened.
Real talk though, I really don't see the problem Alan Moore has this time. I would argue that superhero movies are giving us a chance to know more about heroes and villains we never knew too much about or didn't have the time for it.
Like, how many have known about the Guardians of the Galaxy before the movie was coming? And how many knew about the Eternals before anyone even danced around the idea of a movie for them? If anything, this is more like an evolution to how future storytellers get ideas. Plus, we are getting representation from other spectrums, like Kamala Khan was only around since, what, 2013 or 2014? No way she's getting to show up, right? Boom, Disney+ show.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 18th 2019 at 1:42:48 PM
Scorcese: I have legitimate concerns about the monopolization of the industry.
Viewers: How could anyone say anything meaner?
Alan Moore: Hold my beer; Superheroes are literally the Klan.
Eh, it’s no surprise to me considering Watchmen contains a hero whose identity is pretty much “Lynch-Man”. No, he’s not a guy with David Lynch themed powers.
Tom Clancy keeps making (bad) video games from beyond the grave, so anything is possible.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Moore's problem isn't apparently with the superhero movies themselves, but with their target audience: "mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century."
He thinks of this as a bad thing, however, I think of it as a good or neutral thing. People want to be reassured — as one YouTube video put it, Disney is really good at "weaponizing nostalgia." So the MCU movies are weaponized nostalgia for a childhood in which we read comics or watched cartoons, a relatively simpler time in our lives. This isn't even anything new — look at Happy Days or Grease. The MCU just added superheroes to the mix. We've always been reassured by entertainment; Moore just doesn't like it that's it's superheroes.
His statements about race and the overwhelming number of white superheroes is also correct and something lots of people have commented and criticized Marvel and Disney about as well. He takes a bit too far with his reference to Birth of a Nation as the "first superhero movie" (it wasn't, it was clearly an adventure film), but his overall point is solid: having 99% of the superheroes on screen be white and male is a white supremacist's wet dream.
Edited by alliterator on Nov 18th 2019 at 11:08:46 AM
His argument doesn’t seem to add up
The MCU has a far larger audience than comics have enjoyed for decades now
A lot of people are being introduced to the characters, not wallowing in nostalgia
Forever liveblogging the AvengersThe MCU has a far larger audience than comics have enjoyed for decades now
You know how some people have nostalgia for a '50s that never existed? This is the same thing. Watching superhero films is a reassurance that superheroes exist, pinging a kind of nostalgia in ourselves for a time in which we were younger and believed in such things.
Edited by alliterator on Nov 18th 2019 at 11:50:56 AM
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He never said they weren't.
He's saying that the genre is abetting the part that uses their fandom as an excuse to stay comfortable in the privilege of nostalgia. This is actually something that's being made aware of a lot more in today's fandoms: the fact that fandoms are full of traditionalists who won't let go of the past and make things difficult for new and different people with new and different perspectives is an actual, serious problem in pop culture today, and dismissing someone bringing up as "old man yell at cloud lol" is counter-productive at best, enabling in favor of something that needs to change at worse.
Racism (and sexism) is absolutely a part of that - the most visible part, one should argue - and given all the shit we've gotten in the last few years with mainstays of fanbases, including the MCU's fanbase, throwing fits and making national news for railing against anything inclusive that upsets that sense of comfort and nostalgia - black superheroes, female superheroes, etc and so on - trying to claim he's just whistling smoke for bringing it up is, to be blunt, kind of an awful perspective to have.
That said, where I think he's mistaken is his belief that the current model isn't taking steps to circumvent that. It's true, yes, the MCU has historically gone for old fashioned white and male protagonists and has only really in the two years taken steps to actually circumvent that, but they are trying and the MCU is run by people - at least on a creative level - interested in getting rid of the millstone of the past and making the brand more inclusive and a stronger experience for everyone.
He's looking at the symptoms and not really paying attention to the cures being administered. But that's because the symptoms are bad in the first place.
His criticism would have more oomph if Perlmutter was still in charge. Perlmutter is basically the archetype of what Moore is talking about: a traditionalist who stays that way, even though it negatively effects society, because it's both the way he is used to and the way he knows how to make money.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 18th 2019 at 11:57:34 AM
We apologize for our ignorance, KnownUnkown-sama. We are preparing hara-kiri as we speak.
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.Don’t taunt him
He is a great and powerful magician and once blew someone’s head up
Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Nothing new under the sun. Alan has hot takes for everything.