ICONIC graphic novel writer Alan Moore has admitted he should “take a certain amount of the blame” for the superhero stories that have “infantilised” culture and helped create conspiracy theorists QAnon.
Moore, who wrote the hugely popular Watchmen and V for Vendetta as well as for Superman and Batman at DC Comics, said “simplistic stories” were “genuinely dangerous” and had helped pave the way for Donald Trump.
Moore told a How To Academy event last night that “superhero narratives” often show audiences “an unbelievable fantastic threat to humanity, that will be averted by an equally unbelievable fantastic saviour”.
“That’s well and good as a children’s story, but if that settles into people’s consciousness” he said, they then often apply it to politics and the world around them. He pointed to adherents of conspiracy theory QAnon, who believe there is a global child sex trafficking ring, and helped storm the US Capitol a year ago after the election as one example.
“The fantastic unbelievable threat is going to be the underground democrat peadophile demons that were suggested by QAnon, and the equally unbelievable superhero saviour that is working behind the scenes to rescue us all will be ‘The Donald’, who’s even got a superhero name” Moore said.
He continued: “Imagination is the source of all magic of wonder, but it’s also really dangerous, because if the imagination is not trained, then that’s when it becomes potentially quicksand”.
Moore also criticised modern fantasy books for repetitive use of “tropes” like “dragons and dwarfs and orcs”. Fantasy is potentially a more infinite world than the one we live in, yet we explore so little of it” he said.
Emma caught up in star’s web
POOR Emma Stone. The Hollywood actress was badgering London-born star Andrew Garfield to ask if he was in the latest Spider-Man film, only for him to play the fool. “Emma kept on texting me, she was like, ‘Are you in this new Spider-Man film?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She was like, ‘Shut up, just tell me,’ and I kept it going,” Garfield says.
Garfield, who dated Stone after they appeared together in a series of Spider-Man films from 2010, says he enjoyed “playing werewolf” about the film. What a difficult ex.
Ad spoof doesn’t work for Sorrell
— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) January 15, 2022
LABOUR have reclaimed the Seventies Saatchi & Saatchi dole queue advert “Labour isn’t working” to mock the Downing Street party revelations, depicting the Tories in a conga line, inset. But ad guru and former Saatchi man Sir Martin Sorrell tells us he is “not impressed”, with the copycat, as it is “lacking in originality or much thought”. “They need a good original, integrated campaign given the momentum they clearly have,” he says. Is he offering his services?
Writer’s life ‘is only for the wealthy’
AN AUTHOR has hit out at the publishing industry, saying “you have to be already wealthy to take part”, as pay is so bad. Dawn Finch, a children’s writer and librarian, explained online: “I’ve now managed to squeeze one writing day in a week. To do this I have to work late hours six days. I’ve had bestselling books & won poetry awards, but still can’t afford to find time to write.”
When we approached Finch she told us she was too hard-pressed to comment. The Londoner has heard of applicants to big publishing houses being advised to have a “private income”. One for the few, it seems.
North-South drinking divide
EPIDEMIOLOGIST Tim Spector became one of the unlikely faces of Covid thanks to his Zoe symptom tracker app, which was downloaded five million times. He’s also used it to send out diet surveys and has come back with a result that warms the cockles of The Londoner’s heart. At the height of pandemic, he told an Intelligence Squared event, his app showed “Southerners suddenly became more alcoholic and Northerners less alcoholic”. Sounds like they could do with some levelling up.
SW1A
TRACEY CROUCH MP is missing her teddy bear, Cuddles, who was lost in a hotel last week. Cuddles was a gift from her four-year-old son Freddie for when she was working in Parliament. Crouch says Freddie is “fine”, but “truth is I’m not… really it was a substitute for cuddles with my boy while I’m away.” Someone find that bear.
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THE “most annoying” protest descended on Westminster yesterday, hoping to stall Priti Patel’s new Police Bill and rules allowing authorities to curb ill-defined “serious annoyance”. Suggested items for protesters included a Jeremy Clarkson mask, a “musical” children’s toy or their younger brother. Triggering.
