The great Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and The Killing Joke, shared his opinion on the superhero movie genre during an interview… almost three years ago today.
Moore’s comments might be a little dated, but given the criticism Martin Scorsese has received over the past few months for his thoughts on Marvel movies not being cinema, we thought Moore’s statement about the state of superhero culture being “both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying” is worth discussing.
Here’s what the iconic writer had to say during his interview with John Higgs, courtesy the Alan Moore World:
“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. The continuing popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest, combined with a numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum. ”
Source: Screenshot via John Higgs YouTube BlogMoore went on to suggest the movies lack diversity is troubling, and while that might have changed, but at the time of the statement, he couldn’t have been more right:
“These books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”
Do you agree with Moore’s comments about the state of the superhero genre? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Alan Moore World