Yay, my favourite grumpy wizard man. Hahaha, he’s saying “I told you so” on his “adults enjoying superhero movies is an indicator of emotional arrest”.
Fandom is: - Wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture, without which said culture will atrophy and die, - Sometimes a grotesque blight that poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and sense of entitlement
In the beginning ‘fan’ meant ‘enthusiast’ but less Edwardian-sounding. Early conferences were miniscule, self-organised, non-corporate. Most of the attendees were actively involved in publishing or contributing to fanzines, or would go on to work in the industry.
Frank Bellamy was a British comic-strip author, he did Thunderbirds. Very significant historicalyl apparently.
Across the board, early fandoms were involved in the creation of popular culture, not just its consumption. Zines, fanzines, pamphlets and so on. Forming bands &c..
Then things changed, commercialised, creators > works &c. &c.. Moore extracts himself from fandom by becoming a furious and unfathomable hermit.
Nowadays, he sees fandom as older on average, and fed primarily by [that most dangerous of emotions] nostaglia. Additionally it had become wealthy; regularly buying comic books is simply too expensive for poor/working class people to afford. It had become gentrified. Additionally, it considered itself priviliged, and has stopped contributing to or creating popular culture, just consuming and complaining.
His grandson tells him this happens in the Pokemon fandom too xD
The unhealthy and annoying fandoms have an outsized impact on society (c/o, what “I was a Teenage Exocolonist” review has to say about “wholesome gaming”.) Moore argues that culture has become fan-[service]-based, which… maybe? I think franchises are just kinda shit as a whole tbh regardless of the fanservice. I guess… no actually I reckon he does have a point. At least the mainstream. Luckily A24 are still making films you have to think about.
I think he misattributes entertainments being cancelled prematurely due to adverse fan reaction to fans rather than executives being homophobic or whatever.
Ah yes, comicsgate and gamergate did suck.
Says the general trend toward saleability, not substance, as also behind the rise of populism. Which is true, I guess, but like… did they drive each other, or correlated or?
My takeaways:
- Oh my god Moore has written a new urban fantasy novel based in London!!!! OOOOO i want to read that!! Lol, was he invited to write a piece for it and then just went on a tirade instead?
- I think he’s largely correct that fandom has become much more consumption oriented
- But online! The internet is the great disseminator of popular culture. All the fanart and fanfic (a lot of which is basically original work at this point), whole fan communities about works which only exist online.
- idk, i keep wanting to go “in my experience”… but I’m not a normal person wrt media.
- I guess like… i seek out works that are tricky and that challenge me, and my family/people react strongly against the idea that that is somehow desirable. They just want a warm bath of comfy culture.
- I think Alan is mostly right. E.g., if indie comics displaced mainstream comics in “what do most people consume” - things would be better! There would be lots more different, smaller, popular things that would result in a wider variety of views and ideas and so on. And that is clearly linked (in reverse) to capitalist tendencies towards monopolisation and so on. Corporate-controlled-culture.
- I should make some comics.