Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 31, 2019 9:33:33 GMT -5
TV personality Bill Maher has a decidedly unkind opinion of comic-book fans, calling them immature and in need of growing up. Peter David recently replied to Maher's comments with an appropriate comparison to baseball fans, who don't seem to incur Maher's displeasure despite dressing up as their heroes, arguing about which one is best, and paying entirely too much money to vicariously enjoy victory over some opponent.
Naturally Maher is the kind of professional whose ratings (and therefore income) depend on generating controversy, and on having people talk about him. If it were not comic-book fans, he might have decided to mock people who eat guacamole, to ridicule Ford Fiesta drivers or to heap scorn on collectors of old Soviet memorabilia. All while dropping names in a smug fashion to emphasize how well-read he is. (He won't mock anti-vaxxers, though, because he's something of a medical crank... Closer to Gwyneth Paltrow, say, than to Louis Pasteur).
Peter David understand that, but nevertheless points out that many of Maher's assertions are not just inflammatory opinions but are factually wrong. Maher's apparent insistence that comic-books are all about super-heroes, for example, strikes one as particularly short-sighted. It should also be emphasized that even in the case of adults enjoying comic-books actually meant for children, there is no reason for Maher to resort to name-calling. Alice in Wonderland is a children's book. So is The Hobbit. So is the entire Harry Potter series, and I would argue that the vast majority of "genre" fiction, while not especially meant for children, rarely reaches the level of adult sophistication that a hoity-toity critic like Maher pretends to expect of any published work. Seriously, who could seriously argue that The Da Vinci Code or a Tom Clancy novel is in any way more adult than any number of comic-books people in this community could easily name?
To a critic who replied that certain literary works now considered very important had once been derided as minor or even as downright bad (things like Shakespeare's works or Moby Dick), Maher responded with disdain that "no, King Lear or Moby Dick were never considered bad, which you would know if you read other things than comic-books" (or words to that effect). Such a reaction, naturally prompts any decent keyboard avenger to google a few contemporary comments on Moby Dick, and lo and behold, it is easy to confirm that the novel was not unanimously well-received:
"We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book … Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature—since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist.” –Henry F. Chorley, London Athenaeum, October 25 1851.
...which, I should add in the same tone, Maher would know if he deigned to interrupt his self-performed sigmoidoscopy from time to time.
It's all right not to like comic-books. It's all right to consider that this or that activity practiced by our fellow citizens smacks of immaturity. Reading comic-books, reading adventure novels, reading anything except philosophical treaties, watching movies meant solely to entertain, consuming sweets or potato chips or soft drinks, listening to pop music, buying a big truck, riding a motorcycle when you're over fifty, dressing like a teenager, waiting hopefully for the Christmas season... A large part of enjoying life as an adult comes from pleasures rooted in our childhood. Is it "adult" to deny it? To pretend we don't enjoy pulling a good prank on a friend or to laugh at a fart joke? How about embracing it, and making of the child we were a part of the adult we are now?
I'd agree with Maher if he was talking about people who did nothing but read comics. As with anything, a steady diet of only one thing is not salutary. However, the comic-book fans I frequent also happen to have very diverse interests and are quite knowledgeable about science, history, literature, music, fine arts, philosophy and more; furthermore, the list of famous and respectable people who enjoy comics is long indeed (starting with President Obama, say).
Naturally Maher is the kind of professional whose ratings (and therefore income) depend on generating controversy, and on having people talk about him. If it were not comic-book fans, he might have decided to mock people who eat guacamole, to ridicule Ford Fiesta drivers or to heap scorn on collectors of old Soviet memorabilia. All while dropping names in a smug fashion to emphasize how well-read he is. (He won't mock anti-vaxxers, though, because he's something of a medical crank... Closer to Gwyneth Paltrow, say, than to Louis Pasteur).
Peter David understand that, but nevertheless points out that many of Maher's assertions are not just inflammatory opinions but are factually wrong. Maher's apparent insistence that comic-books are all about super-heroes, for example, strikes one as particularly short-sighted. It should also be emphasized that even in the case of adults enjoying comic-books actually meant for children, there is no reason for Maher to resort to name-calling. Alice in Wonderland is a children's book. So is The Hobbit. So is the entire Harry Potter series, and I would argue that the vast majority of "genre" fiction, while not especially meant for children, rarely reaches the level of adult sophistication that a hoity-toity critic like Maher pretends to expect of any published work. Seriously, who could seriously argue that The Da Vinci Code or a Tom Clancy novel is in any way more adult than any number of comic-books people in this community could easily name?
To a critic who replied that certain literary works now considered very important had once been derided as minor or even as downright bad (things like Shakespeare's works or Moby Dick), Maher responded with disdain that "no, King Lear or Moby Dick were never considered bad, which you would know if you read other things than comic-books" (or words to that effect). Such a reaction, naturally prompts any decent keyboard avenger to google a few contemporary comments on Moby Dick, and lo and behold, it is easy to confirm that the novel was not unanimously well-received:
"We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book … Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature—since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist.” –Henry F. Chorley, London Athenaeum, October 25 1851.
...which, I should add in the same tone, Maher would know if he deigned to interrupt his self-performed sigmoidoscopy from time to time.
It's all right not to like comic-books. It's all right to consider that this or that activity practiced by our fellow citizens smacks of immaturity. Reading comic-books, reading adventure novels, reading anything except philosophical treaties, watching movies meant solely to entertain, consuming sweets or potato chips or soft drinks, listening to pop music, buying a big truck, riding a motorcycle when you're over fifty, dressing like a teenager, waiting hopefully for the Christmas season... A large part of enjoying life as an adult comes from pleasures rooted in our childhood. Is it "adult" to deny it? To pretend we don't enjoy pulling a good prank on a friend or to laugh at a fart joke? How about embracing it, and making of the child we were a part of the adult we are now?
I'd agree with Maher if he was talking about people who did nothing but read comics. As with anything, a steady diet of only one thing is not salutary. However, the comic-book fans I frequent also happen to have very diverse interests and are quite knowledgeable about science, history, literature, music, fine arts, philosophy and more; furthermore, the list of famous and respectable people who enjoy comics is long indeed (starting with President Obama, say).
