"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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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.."
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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."
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
That seems a bit of a generalization. Everyone is different, and deals differently with being raped. While I've read reports like yours where rape causes significant trauma, I've heard and read about others where the people can easily deal with it and move on, even to the point where they complain about the people who get traumatized by it, thinking they shouldn't make such a big deal about it.
I wonder how much of our reaction to being raped is influenced by society's idea of how they should react to it, similar to how a toddler sometimes only starts to cry after he noticed the people around him are acting in a way as if something bad happened. Anyone knows of other cultures where rape is treated differently?
Your comment has echoes of how people used to think about child sexual abuse - it only becomes a problem for thechild if the adults make a fuss.
We know now that child sexual abuse can be very harmful to the child even with optimum adult reaction to that abuse. We can see changes in the size of bits of the brain, for example.
Similarly the stigma associated with rape victims (although its improved markedly in the developed world, it still seems a problem and even more-so in some middle eastern countries). I can't help but think our puritanical attitudes toward sex and its attendant 'cult of virginity' contributes to that stigma; the notion that the victim is somehow existentially damaged.
Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position?
"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad", is probably one of the most careless, senseless, benevolent quips you can possible make to someone who has been raped. No wonder the judicial system is so flawed when it comes to the victims of this horrible crime.
I am so sorry to topoligel who has to read your comment. I'm so sorry to topoligel, just in general. I wish there was something I could do myself, to make things better, other than be a kind, caring, empathic person, and try to do as little harm in my life as possible. I am so sorry the above comment was even uttered. No rape victim needs to hear something like that again
Thank you for your response. I have developed the strength to be able to respond back to comments like that, or to ignore them. I have heard them all my life. People like you existing and continuing to have the strength to exist like that is enough. I try to be a person like that too. Make sure that you are kind, caring and empathetic to yourself.
Thanks for articulating what I felt when I read that comment. I would have responded, but just about everything I came up with would have violated the site guidelines.
I know this is a popular anti-intellectual position, but it's simply wrong. It's possible to reason about the world even without having experienced a specific phenomenon.
I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it.
The fact that some people have a negative emotional reaction to certain ideas is unfortunate, but ultimately the onus is on those people to avoid centers of intellectual discussion like HN.
Being able to reason about matter is another thing entirely to being able to reason about what it is like to have a particular (very negative) personal experience.
We're not talking about an abstract negative emotional reaction to an idea we're talking about a concrete emotional reaction to an experience.
Why do you feel like you have to show people the door because they don't agree with your particular concept around 'intellectual discussion'?
Enimodas is discussing people's reaction to it, in entirely objective and measurable terms. His specific, empirically checkable claim: some people respond differently than topoligel.
The emotional reaction I was referring to is to enimodas ideas. Specifically, if some people are unable to handle certain ideas (such as the ones enimodas expressed), it's not the responsibility of the world to suppress those ideas.
Yes, he was. But you're not. You're labeling those that challenge him to verify he has that particular experience as either anti-intellectual and/or simply not welcome here.
Yes. The people challenging whether he has had a specific experience are attempting to distinguish a privileged group of speakers/thinkers, and and wish to deny the right of anyone not part of this privileged group to use their intellect on this topic.
I don't know how else to categorize that as anti-intellectual.
See also, "only priests/prophets/etc can reason about theology" or "only muslims suffering the shame of being related to a rape victim can reason about honor killings". Same idea - if you aren't part of the privileged group, your intellectual reasoning is somehow suspect.
No, that's not the same. You can reason about it all day long but you can't simply pretend that not having the experience puts you on an equal footing with someone who has that experience. So it helps to know whether or not the person speaking has the experience or not. Just like talking to an astronaut about experiencing space flight is probably going to give you a better SNR than talking to someone who has been stuck in a mine all their lives long.
As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal.
The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing which is something we all have way too much experience with and touches on the 'you have the right to extend your arm as far as my face' bit so that also doesn't apply.
A person with experience may have some specific piece of knowledge, but no one claimed enimodas was incorrect for that reason. Nor did enimodas claim his knowledge was coming from a particular experience that he lacked.
As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal...The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing...
Wait - are you using reason without having the specific experience or being a member of the privileged group? How does that work?
> I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it.
Yes, I have. There's a certain resentment that comes with this question. Because it means that to comment on this issue my rape must in turn be deemed legitimate for my words to be legitimate. To be short on details for reasons that I hope a compassionate person might understand, it first started with things that probably don't fall under the category of 'rape' so much as molestation. Sexual assault is the legal term. But I was a child and had to live with this person for years, one half of the family knew and the other half denied everything.
I spent years locking my door every night, because if I didn't I had to worry about them coming into my room, waking up with their leer hovering over me. I've definitely been traumatized by this aspect. To this day I'm afraid to sleep with the door open. I rationalize it to myself as a fear of malevolent spirits but it's fairly obvious what the true fear is.
That's probably not good enough for you, and for that I resent you further.
Ultimately upon reflection I find that it wasn't so much the molestation itself that was particularly bad, at one point in high school I noted to myself that I'd rather re-experience it once every three days than experience three days of school. (I wasn't particularly bullied, I just despised school itself that much.) What was absolutely traumatizing was what happened after. The denial, living with this person that's not being held accountable for their actions.
Having to deal with the fact that you're not allowed to talk about what happened or you're a dirty liar, or you'll start a huge argument, or this or that will happen. The one thing you want most is validation, and validation is in short supply. Even for the victim of a more 'traditional' rape we can see this in action. How your friends are forced to take sides because of the huge weight of what a big deal this is. (http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/ever...)
I didn't want things to be a big deal, I just wanted them to acknowledge what happened and take steps to make sure it didn't happen again.
(As a final note of pedantry, that's not what benevolent means.)
>Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position?
Do you mean anecdotal evidence triumphs statistics, or for lack of being able to find statistics about this, the difference of human experience?
>"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad",
You must have misread. I did not diminish her experience anywhere, I only said others can have different experiences, and quoted one.
Next to that, I asked a question. I know most people interpret those kind of questions as a more 'polite' way of saying something they already believe, but I seem to be in the minority of people who don't make judgement calls about everything and anything, and I don't know of some special sign (like the irony sign or a /s) I can put after my question to let the reader now it's an honest question.
People might have multiple ways of thinking about their own experiences, and some of these ways are collected from people around them, the culture they grew up in. Some of these ways are truths that reside within themselves - their own feelings. The truth that an individual knows inside of the themselves can only talk about themselves, it can not describe how another individual feels about their own self awareness.
People may share empathy between similar feelings, but this does not mean that one person should try to project their way of having emotions onto another person, as if there is a 'right' way to have emotions and a 'wrong' way to have emotions. Emotions are not actions, they are emotions.
For me, as a rape victim, being raped affected my feelings in a way that was traumatic. No one else can tell me what my feelings were from the experience I endured. So now that we can take this as a fact, instead of an opinion, we are getting somewhere in understanding how to define rape objectively, using subjective (but qualified) terms. The reason I feel those feelings is because I was raped.
You don't have to make a judgement call. But some things can only be known on an individual level, and it is up to you to decide whether you believe that person, and that is all you can do as far as 'knowing' anything about it without experiencing it. From that, you can direct your life and how you interact with and understand the world. But that is the limitation you are at.
I do not know what it feels like to be a rape victim who does not feel like it harmed me significantly. I do not know how I would communicate with them because I have never had to. I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.
>I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.
I think you might be misunderstanding the perspective quoted there. It's not about the rape being trivial so much as being no more a salient feature in their life than breaking a leg or some other traumatic but ultimately temporary pain. I'm sure somebody who felt the way you described exists but they're an extreme outlier.
I know that for me, the thing that feels most like reliving the experience is going through the calculus of whether I've suffered enough to be able to accept my own experience as legitimate. Retelling the story triggers that feeling rather than the feeling of the actual events.
I tried for several minutes to write you advice, but couldn't be confident that anything I might say would help. I hope your inner life gets better and you find peace.
I can understand the first paragraph perspective as being a valid one, but I can not understand how that would prompt a rape victim to complain about rape victims who want to shed light on rape as a crime. I know some people are immature and think that it's a grab for attention, but I think that these are immature and / or unresolved coping methods.
I had a therapist suggest to me that that was what I was doing to myself, re-traumatizing myself every time I remembered it. I do not think so. I think having a parent scream at me that what I experienced was not rape, was traumatic. I think having a parent prod and poke until I described my rape in detail was traumatic. I think my rape was traumatic, I felt violated. I think it continues to affect me sexually, to the point that I am almost hopeless in having a normal sexual life.
I do not desire living a life of suffering, but I allow myself to feel the sadness and the emotions that trauma caused. I have had people mock me and call me cruel names and say very cruel things, some people I was very close to, over the incident. I was convinced that I hated myself because of it, because of the whole thing. It was painful to accept that I had been raped, but it was not as painful being raped. I had almost been brought to believe that remembering being raped was suffering that I willfully brought onto myself. For me, beginning with that premise was mental hell. I could never resolve the feelings I had, I couldn't explain why I was crying all the time for what seemed like no reason. Everyone around me wanted a reason, but the reasons I gave when I had them weren't enough.
For me, talking about my rape when it is relevant helps me. Feeling like I have firm position and understanding of what happened to me helps me. Feeling like I am emotionally and intellectually strong despite my past (and how my past has affected me) helps me. I am genuinely sorry for what you experienced. In a similar light, I can not be confident with anything I can say to you to help, because maybe you have already found inner peace and balance. I'm just okay. I'm sad, but I'm okay with being sad, because there are lots of things that happen in life that are valid things to feel sad about.
The problem is that people who say "Oh my rape was no big deal, I'm fine, you should get over it" are a) likely deflecting their own trauma and b) not being at all helpful to the "whiners" who have experienced trauma from rape. I found your comment to be marginalizing, at best.
There is no excusing rape or calling it anything other than it is: a violation. Anyone who marginalizes rape, even your anecdotal victims, are 100% wrong. Even if one person is able to walk away from a rape without significant, crippling trauma, there are still dozens of others who will never, ever be the same.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadHis 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.
"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!”
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.
No, I'm just saying shut the fuck up.
If its good enough for Homer its good enough for me!
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.
"..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.."
I find it odd. But maybe that is just part of getting old... that you don't quite understand the youth of today.
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?
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.
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.
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...
Lighten up Al.
> "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/)
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
> seems... a bit monotonous...
> Oh, that reminds me. Keep your speed constant at all times.
Superman cannot play god, but instead only intervene when evil goes too far.
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.
No, it does not. There are many instances of rape without violence e.g. adult with an unwilling minor coerced into having sex.
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.
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.
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 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.
I wonder how much of our reaction to being raped is influenced by society's idea of how they should react to it, similar to how a toddler sometimes only starts to cry after he noticed the people around him are acting in a way as if something bad happened. Anyone knows of other cultures where rape is treated differently?
We know now that child sexual abuse can be very harmful to the child even with optimum adult reaction to that abuse. We can see changes in the size of bits of the brain, for example.
Isn't this like a vet complaining about other vets that have PTSD because he/she doesn't have PTSD?
Well, have you been raped, or are your opinions purely formed from a third party position?
"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad", is probably one of the most careless, senseless, benevolent quips you can possible make to someone who has been raped. No wonder the judicial system is so flawed when it comes to the victims of this horrible crime.
I am so sorry to topoligel who has to read your comment. I'm so sorry to topoligel, just in general. I wish there was something I could do myself, to make things better, other than be a kind, caring, empathic person, and try to do as little harm in my life as possible. I am so sorry the above comment was even uttered. No rape victim needs to hear something like that again
I know this is a popular anti-intellectual position, but it's simply wrong. It's possible to reason about the world even without having experienced a specific phenomenon.
I've never experienced life at the nanoscale, but that doesn't mean I can't reason about semiconductor physics. I've never experienced outer space, but I can still reason about it.
The fact that some people have a negative emotional reaction to certain ideas is unfortunate, but ultimately the onus is on those people to avoid centers of intellectual discussion like HN.
We're not talking about an abstract negative emotional reaction to an idea we're talking about a concrete emotional reaction to an experience.
Why do you feel like you have to show people the door because they don't agree with your particular concept around 'intellectual discussion'?
The emotional reaction I was referring to is to enimodas ideas. Specifically, if some people are unable to handle certain ideas (such as the ones enimodas expressed), it's not the responsibility of the world to suppress those ideas.
I don't know how else to categorize that as anti-intellectual.
See also, "only priests/prophets/etc can reason about theology" or "only muslims suffering the shame of being related to a rape victim can reason about honor killings". Same idea - if you aren't part of the privileged group, your intellectual reasoning is somehow suspect.
As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal.
The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing which is something we all have way too much experience with and touches on the 'you have the right to extend your arm as far as my face' bit so that also doesn't apply.
As for priests and prophets, they're all talking to themselves and on that front everybody is equal...The honor killings bit is related to the ethics of killing...
Wait - are you using reason without having the specific experience or being a member of the privileged group? How does that work?
None of those things are subjective experiences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBrW2Pz9Iiw
It was considered a turning point in the debate, from what I understand.
Yes, I have. There's a certain resentment that comes with this question. Because it means that to comment on this issue my rape must in turn be deemed legitimate for my words to be legitimate. To be short on details for reasons that I hope a compassionate person might understand, it first started with things that probably don't fall under the category of 'rape' so much as molestation. Sexual assault is the legal term. But I was a child and had to live with this person for years, one half of the family knew and the other half denied everything.
I spent years locking my door every night, because if I didn't I had to worry about them coming into my room, waking up with their leer hovering over me. I've definitely been traumatized by this aspect. To this day I'm afraid to sleep with the door open. I rationalize it to myself as a fear of malevolent spirits but it's fairly obvious what the true fear is.
That's probably not good enough for you, and for that I resent you further.
Ultimately upon reflection I find that it wasn't so much the molestation itself that was particularly bad, at one point in high school I noted to myself that I'd rather re-experience it once every three days than experience three days of school. (I wasn't particularly bullied, I just despised school itself that much.) What was absolutely traumatizing was what happened after. The denial, living with this person that's not being held accountable for their actions.
Having to deal with the fact that you're not allowed to talk about what happened or you're a dirty liar, or you'll start a huge argument, or this or that will happen. The one thing you want most is validation, and validation is in short supply. Even for the victim of a more 'traditional' rape we can see this in action. How your friends are forced to take sides because of the huge weight of what a big deal this is. (http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/ever...)
I didn't want things to be a big deal, I just wanted them to acknowledge what happened and take steps to make sure it didn't happen again.
(As a final note of pedantry, that's not what benevolent means.)
Do you mean anecdotal evidence triumphs statistics, or for lack of being able to find statistics about this, the difference of human experience?
>"Yeah, I heard it's not so bad",
You must have misread. I did not diminish her experience anywhere, I only said others can have different experiences, and quoted one.
Next to that, I asked a question. I know most people interpret those kind of questions as a more 'polite' way of saying something they already believe, but I seem to be in the minority of people who don't make judgement calls about everything and anything, and I don't know of some special sign (like the irony sign or a /s) I can put after my question to let the reader now it's an honest question.
People may share empathy between similar feelings, but this does not mean that one person should try to project their way of having emotions onto another person, as if there is a 'right' way to have emotions and a 'wrong' way to have emotions. Emotions are not actions, they are emotions.
For me, as a rape victim, being raped affected my feelings in a way that was traumatic. No one else can tell me what my feelings were from the experience I endured. So now that we can take this as a fact, instead of an opinion, we are getting somewhere in understanding how to define rape objectively, using subjective (but qualified) terms. The reason I feel those feelings is because I was raped.
You don't have to make a judgement call. But some things can only be known on an individual level, and it is up to you to decide whether you believe that person, and that is all you can do as far as 'knowing' anything about it without experiencing it. From that, you can direct your life and how you interact with and understand the world. But that is the limitation you are at.
I do not know what it feels like to be a rape victim who does not feel like it harmed me significantly. I do not know how I would communicate with them because I have never had to. I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.
I think you might be misunderstanding the perspective quoted there. It's not about the rape being trivial so much as being no more a salient feature in their life than breaking a leg or some other traumatic but ultimately temporary pain. I'm sure somebody who felt the way you described exists but they're an extreme outlier.
I know that for me, the thing that feels most like reliving the experience is going through the calculus of whether I've suffered enough to be able to accept my own experience as legitimate. Retelling the story triggers that feeling rather than the feeling of the actual events.
I tried for several minutes to write you advice, but couldn't be confident that anything I might say would help. I hope your inner life gets better and you find peace.
I had a therapist suggest to me that that was what I was doing to myself, re-traumatizing myself every time I remembered it. I do not think so. I think having a parent scream at me that what I experienced was not rape, was traumatic. I think having a parent prod and poke until I described my rape in detail was traumatic. I think my rape was traumatic, I felt violated. I think it continues to affect me sexually, to the point that I am almost hopeless in having a normal sexual life.
I do not desire living a life of suffering, but I allow myself to feel the sadness and the emotions that trauma caused. I have had people mock me and call me cruel names and say very cruel things, some people I was very close to, over the incident. I was convinced that I hated myself because of it, because of the whole thing. It was painful to accept that I had been raped, but it was not as painful being raped. I had almost been brought to believe that remembering being raped was suffering that I willfully brought onto myself. For me, beginning with that premise was mental hell. I could never resolve the feelings I had, I couldn't explain why I was crying all the time for what seemed like no reason. Everyone around me wanted a reason, but the reasons I gave when I had them weren't enough.
For me, talking about my rape when it is relevant helps me. Feeling like I have firm position and understanding of what happened to me helps me. Feeling like I am emotionally and intellectually strong despite my past (and how my past has affected me) helps me. I am genuinely sorry for what you experienced. In a similar light, I can not be confident with anything I can say to you to help, because maybe you have already found inner peace and balance. I'm just okay. I'm sad, but I'm okay with being sad, because there are lots of things that happen in life that are valid things to feel sad about.
There is no excusing rape or calling it anything other than it is: a violation. Anyone who marginalizes rape, even your anecdotal victims, are 100% wrong. Even if one person is able to walk away from a rape without significant, crippling trauma, there are still dozens of others who will never, ever be the same.
"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...)
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.
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)
>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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mindscape_of_Alan_Moore
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.