Duelling with giant phalluses–But Tastefully!
I would prefer to write about something a little more lighthearted, but, alas, more on Moore seems to be called for:
From http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Comics&action=page&obj_id=50999
The interviewer is complimenting Mr. Moore’s work:
“I think what really hit home for me were the single-page splash illustrations that Melinda did that showed more literal interpretations of the fantasy aspects, like when Peter Pan and Captain Hook are dueling with their giant phalluses out, or when Dorothy’s being taken by the Tin Man character. I was thinking that they almost look like something out of HEAVY METAL, except tasteful and even epic.”
A reader here tells me I should not condemn pornography without having read it: in effect, he is urging me to read pornography.
Um. Riiiiight.
Does that strike anyone but me as a somewhat tortured bit of logic? Do I really need to pore over the splash page pictures of Dorothy ‘being taken’ by the Tin Man in order to have the right to voice an objection?
Another reader says that pornography between the three grown-up girls is not child-pornography. Strangely, he seems to think I should object to kiddie porn but not to lesbian porn starring favorite childhood fairytale characters.
Come now. We all know why Mr. Moore selected the characters he did: because they are innocent and sweet, and come from the Victorian Age, an age of moral uprightness, an age and a people the Pervertarians loathe and hate. It is sweetness he hates. It is innocence he hates. He chose Dorothy, Wendy, and Alice precisely because they were sweet and innocent, and his wish is to demean them.
Mr. Moore regards this as a crusade, as carrying the banner of enlightenment to the foolish rubes, to write pornography: it is raising the standards of art. We hicks in flyover country are just too unhealthy to know what a superlative thing a beaver shot of Dorothy Gale might be.
The vehemence and inarticulate nature of the pro-pornography response seen here in the comments boxes betrays that we are dealing, not with a mere difference of opinion, but with blasphemy. I mean the pervertarians here regard it as blasphemy to condemn making little girls into porn stars. Condemning porn offends their religion.
It is a religion without god, to be sure, but so is Confucianism and Zen. It takes as its main principle the idea that any honest and authentic emotion, what we call temptation, must be indulged, and that any act of self-restraint or virtue, what we call virtue, they must condemn as dishonesty, censorship, vice, narrow-mindedness, or the vaporings of one’s maiden aunt, akin to Nazism. In other words, they call evil good and good evil.
No doubt it seems I exaggerate. I do not. In the interview referenced here by Alan Moore, Mr. Moore states his reason and motive for writing LOST GIRLS:
“It struck me that even though there have been many artists who’ve dabbled in the erotic and the pornographic in the past, most of them have done so anonymously, even if the work they’ve produced has been absolutely wonderful. They have not wished to associate that work with themselves, which means that there’s a whole area of art that is more or less completely ignored. And I wouldn’t have thought that we’d have that much culture that we could completely ignore this huge treasure trove of art and literature. It just seemed a bit strange to me that we seem to be laboring under this very odd idea that there is something wrong with looking at depictions of people having sex, and there must be something wrong, because you might get aroused. And yet, it’s perfectly alright to have the most insanely elaborate and intricate acts of violence portrayed everywhere.”
And again:
“You know, it seems a bit strange that we should, just for the sake of prudishness and not wishing to scare the horses or upset our maiden aunts, be prepared to tolerate a kind of unhealthy pressure cooker sexual atmosphere that evidently does turn out a fair number of monsters. And so, it was for all of these reasons that I thought, ‘Why not do a piece of pornography that is every bit as valid and as beautiful as you would expect from any work of art?’”
It also seems to be the ne plus ultra of rhetoric to point out that Mr. Moore does not read the livejournal of an obscure midlist SF writer. Foolish thing to say. Do only folk more famous than Mr. Moore have the right to critique him?
No, my objection is not that he is a little man, my objection is that he is a great man, a great writer, and that he is using his great powers for evil rather than good. He is bringing his considerable powers of artistry and persuasion, and has devoted his muse, to promoting and normalizing perversion and filth, to denigrating innocence. He is trying to poison our concept of what it means to be a little girl. To him, a little girl is not someone who grows up to fall in love, marry, and be a mother in her own turn (as happens in the end of PETER PAN), to him, a little girl is a porn star waiting to be taken by the metal shaft of the Tin Man, eager to be sexually awakened by bellhops or other grown-up little girls from fairyland.
Gross.
PETER PAN is a story about the boy who never grows up: the joys and dangers of childhood are held over beyond their natural span. We have here a movement, one that dominates our culture, about children who a never allowed to be children, but must be celebrated as sexual objects as soon as possible. It is truly Nazism for me to voice an objection to this?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
