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## Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore

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Ancient History
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### Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore

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Post by Ancient History » Fri Oct 26, 2012 4:37 am

Since some people have evinced interest, a brief review.
Sexual Ideology is a collection of seriously academic literary essays about the work of Alan Moore, focusing primarily on his graphic novels and more acclaimed comic runs like Swamp Thing and The Ballad of Halo Jones. There are fifteen essays divvied up into three sections, and each one is authored by a PhD or PhD candidate. If you're thinking that and the $40 price tag dissuades casual readers from this book, you're probably right.
Don't get me wrong, there is some good, solid criticism and analysis in these essays, but as a whole the efforts are disparate and don't build to any kind of singular thesis or picture of Alan Moore. Rather, theses are mostly your typical English or Women's Studies majors essays discussing some specific theme in some specific or very small body of work. I think this restriction is probably the greatest weakness of the book as a whole - there are several references to Moore's essay on pornography 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom, but nowhere have I found a reference to Voice of the Fire, to quote one example. None of the writers ever focuses on an exhaustive look at any particular work in relation to the rest of Moore's stuff - so, for example, Neonomicon is rated a couple pages in one of the essays near the back, but Moore's "The Courtyard" is never mentioned at all as far as I can find.
It's hard to say that any one part of Moore's work has been neglected, though the essays in the book obviously skew toward the big ones: Promethea, Swamp Thing, Ballad of Halo Jones, The Killing Joke, From Hell, Lost Girls, V for Vendetta, and even the chapter on Fanny Hill he made up for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Watchmen is somewhat underrepresented, but that's probably only because those essays rated their own book.
The stand-out oddity is "The Poles of Wantonness: Male Asexuality in Alan Moore Film Adaptations" - which is bizarre because not only does Alan Moore have relatively little to do with his adaptations, but he often openly hates them. Honestly, the film adaptation bit is more of a talking-point to address the fact that Alan Moore sometimes chooses to use deliberately asexual characters - characters for whom asexuality is a preference just as other people may be instinctively heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, etc. Sadly, the author - Evan Torner - appears to have trouble really coming to grips with the subject, and falls back and forth between the film adaptations Moore had almost nothing to do with, Moore's own writing, and very stolid references back to Sartre and academic definitions of sex-whatever. Still, even with Torner's fumbling there are a few interesting insights to stumble across in his essay.
Or maybe the weird one is the third essay with its ludicrously long title:

> When "One Bad Day" Becomes One Dark Knight, Love, Madness, and Obsession in the Adaptation of The Killing Joke into Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight

By Joseph Michael Sommers.
Now, let me be clear that both of these essays are fine for what they want to do - examine the crux of the comics-to-film zeitgeist. I might have suggested they do it somewhere else, since the rest of the book talks about mainly comics, but it's a fair cop. I think both essentially miss the point a bit, however. Also, Joseph Michael Sommers is going to hell for using the phrase "Transmedia Dialogue" - and in a section heading, no less.
I really like Zoe Brigley-Thompson's "Theorizing Sexual Domination in From Hell and Lost Girls" because she starts off with Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators. If you're going to be talking about sex and women in comics, that's a great start. Better yet, it's a start that your average internet-savvy comics reader can grab a hold of. It is erudite and sometimes political, but never strays too far off topic. In discussing From Hell, she even quotes Anne McClintock:

> [C]ontrolling women's sexuality, exalting maternity and breeding a virile race of empire-builders were widely perceived as the paramount means fro controlling the health and wealth of the male imperial body politic.

Nice.
So there is some good stuff in there - honest looks at what Moore has written, the context of it in the story, the philosophy behind it, some relation to his other work - but it is buried and needs digging out. I might have preferred a longer work on the subject, with wider coverage of everything he's written to give more perspective. As it is, I don't think there is any single essay I can point to as earth-shattering or terribly provocative - but that's par for the course as far as these things go.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:26 am

> Ancient History wrote:Sexual Ideology is a collection of seriously academic literary essays about the work of Alan Moore,

> Ancient History, quote-mined wrote:Don't get me wrong, there is some good, solid criticism and analysis in these essays, but as a whole the efforts are disparate and don't build to any kind of singular thesis or picture of Alan Moore.

And thank fuck for that.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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theye1
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Post by theye1 » Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:46 pm

Did they include an essay on how batshit crazy Alan Moore is or how he's incredibly overhyped? Despite being admittedly brilliant writer, he's also produced a lot of shit.
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History » Fri Oct 26, 2012 1:43 pm

No and no.
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Cynic
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Post by Cynic » Fri Oct 26, 2012 4:45 pm

theye1: Everyone knows Moore is batshit crazy. I mean, you just have to read his shit, look at his face, or read about his shit or read about his face.
On the overhyped angle: I think any writer who puts down a ton of text is going to have some good and usually more bad.
I mean, Alan Moore's disciple Neil Gaiman's comic work is decent only for "Sandman" and his run on "Miracleman." I find most of his other shit pretty damn lackluster. His early graphic novels such as "Signal to Noise" or the latter "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch" are some standout ones. But his comic career is pretty much that.
Even his career as a novelist is pretty sketchy. "American Gods" is hit or miss. "Stardust" is pretty amazing. "Neverwhere" works well because he had already plotted it out as a tv show before he went to it as a novelization.
I think he really found his niche when he started writing board books and books slated at the 10 and under crowd. "Odd and the Frost Giants" is small but pretty good. "Blueberry girl" and "Crazy hair" are still great stories to read to my kid. I think those are probably some of his best works yet. "The Wolves in the hall" was kind of a miss for me. I haven't touched "Coraline" yet.
His work in film is mostly bad. I mean "Beowulf" should just be destroyed and not even talked about.
Last edited by Cynic on Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.

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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Oct 26, 2012 5:57 pm

Gaiman worked on the Beowulf movie?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Cynic
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Post by Cynic » Fri Oct 26, 2012 6:25 pm

Screenwriter. I know the screenwriter doesn't have much say in the final product but I've read the actual screenplay and it's pretty bad.

> Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.

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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Oct 26, 2012 6:59 pm

Ah, didn't know that. By the same token, Whedon was an uncredited writer for Alien Resurrection.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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sabs
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Post by sabs » Fri Oct 26, 2012 8:05 pm

Yes, he wrote the piece of shit script that was Alien Resurrection. What is most incredibly surprising, is that he's hailed as a HERO for doing it. Apparently the first 2 scripts were so gawdoffaly bad that the script that became Alien Resurrection is considered to be a jewel.
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Maj
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Post by Maj » Fri Oct 26, 2012 8:17 pm

Thanks, Ancient History. It's not nearly as interesting as it sounded at first. Glad you found some value in it, though.
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Red_Rob
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Post by Red_Rob » Fri Oct 26, 2012 9:03 pm

> Prak_Anima wrote:Ah, didn't know that. By the same token, Whedon was an uncredited writer for Alien Resurrection.

I have a friend who is a total Whedon fanboy, and we use this to tease him mercilessly when he starts gushing. That and "What happens to a toad when it gets hit by lightning?"
Which I guess just shows everyone has off days. Alan Moore has produced enough certified classics that I think you can forgive the odd less than stellar work.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Oct 26, 2012 9:08 pm

…I actually kind of like Alien Resurrection.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Sat Oct 27, 2012 12:43 am

> Prak_Anima wrote:…I actually kind of like Alien Resurrection.

Alien Resurrection has Rom Perlman, which is always a plus, and some interesting themes. Really, all the action scenes could be removed (except those that involve Ron Perlman kicking ass) and it would be a better movie. The clone!Ripply and RobotGirl stuff works pretty well, the actual alien stuff, not so much.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Sat Oct 27, 2012 12:51 am

The aquatic aliens were awesome. The baby alien was an interesting concept (which was originally supposed to have a giant cock).
...those are the only two alien scenes I remember. Also, you can see some Firefly prototypes in it, like the guy in the wheelchair is a bit like Walsh with Mal's attitude and Kaylee's mechanical skills.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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theye1
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Post by theye1 » Sat Oct 27, 2012 1:12 am

> Cynic wrote:theye1: Everyone knows Moore is batshit crazy. I mean, you just have to read his shit, look at his face, or read about his shit or read about his face.
> On the overhyped angle: I think any writer who puts down a ton of text is going to have some good and usually more bad.

While I agree, people talk like he's comic book jesus or that everything he touches is gold.
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Cynic
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Post by Cynic » Sat Oct 27, 2012 2:01 am

In terms of the last 20 years of Comics, Moore might as well be the comic jesus. He reinvented the landscape. He brought in an entire generation of artists into the mainstream because people saw that this guy from Britain is good. Maybe we should go and see if there are other people who do this comic stuff over there.

> Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.

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Red_Rob
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Post by Red_Rob » Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:57 pm

> Prak_Anima wrote:…I actually kind of like Alien Resurrection.

My only comment on this would be invalid as we are not allowed to wish death on people on this forum
Seriously though, Alien Resurrection was such a complete departure from the tone, style and quality of the series it almost seems like it was made for a different audience. In which case why bother making it an Aliens movie?
Simplified Tome Armor.
Tome item system and expanded Wish Economy rules.
Try our fantasy card game Clash of Nations! Available via Print on Demand.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities” - Voltaire
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules » Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:07 am

I have not seen any of the movies unless Prometheus counts, but I picked up a novelization of Alien: Resurrection when I was like 15. It seemed kinda cool.
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erik
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Post by erik » Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:47 am

> hyzmarca wrote:

> > Prak_Anima wrote:…I actually kind of like Alien Resurrection.

> Alien Resurrection has Rom Perlman, which is always a plus, and some interesting themes. Really, all the action scenes could be removed (except those that involve Ron Perlman kicking ass) and it would be a better movie. The clone!Ripply and RobotGirl stuff works pretty well, the actual alien stuff, not so much.

Ya know, I would have enjoyed Aliens 4 way more if they just took out the aliens. Coulda been 'French Firefly crew finds new Ripley, evades UW-BS Corp and blows up space station full of frozen eggs'.
I really did not like the new human-alien baby mix thing.
Still, I like Aliens 4 way more than Alien 3. I kind of have a hankering to watch it right now.
p.s. avoracio, if you like monster-suspense movies, Alien is super. If you like a monster hunt movie, Aliens is great. If you like self-punishment, 3 is fantastic. 4 has campy charm and is best if watched in the original French.
[edit: I won't let facts or reality dissuade me from these points, et oui c'est mon méthode préférée pour regarder la quatrième]
Last edited by erik on Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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