quote: Sheesh, Luke. If that "Pop Magic" is non-fiction, then you can consider my opinion of Mr. Morrison as having fallen several dozen notches. Just what the world needs: more two-faced, quasi-religious motivational speakers. He rails against the viral structure of corporate sigils while reprogramming his audience into thinking along non-rational lines. Look at his methods: flashy wit, slogans and/or buzzwords, reliance on our low attention span, contempt for outsiders, promises of salvation, prosperity or coolness. He's no different than any commerical, publicist or preacher; he's more interested in spreading his paradigms and than examining them for flaws.
OK, the introduction, the stuff about being a corporate speaker and what not, is fiction. It's just wacky old Morisson humor. The rest of it, the instructional portion of it, is serious.
And what's irrational about scientific experimentation? What's irrational about saying "try these methods and find something that works for you"? Morrison didn't create these methods, nor are these methods part of some money making scheme. You can find a ton of information on chaos magic at Chaos Matrix for free, or try chatting in the Magick forum of this site. This has nothing to do with dogmatic religions or quasi-religious motivation, just open minded experimentation.
And if it is all bull shit, does that make Morrison's writing any worse? If anything else, it makes it more interesting. Perhaps all this magic stuff's just a publicity stunt to sell more comics. If so, what's the problem? So long as the comics are good and thought-provoking, I'm down.
Before you condemn a practice (in this case, magic) you really should do some more research. Check out more about chaos magic and magic in general, and maybe read some interviews with Morrison himself to get a better idea of what he's doing.
quote: Lozt, apart from the now-obvious authorial hypocrisy in "Digital Koncentration Kamp One," it had four major flaws.
Sounds to me that you're with "contempt for outsiders." Could you show us some examples of the errs of our ways, please?
quote: First of all, it was a pointless detour, adding nothing to the ongoing storyline.
I thought it was a meaningful detour. It took some time out of the the major happenings to show Marvel Boy doing some good for earth despite the fact that that they killed everyone he cared about. This seems very relevant now, now that I think about it. Anyway, it established the character as a good guy, not just a revenge driven alien.
quote: Second, it struck me as being inherently anachronistic, both in the chronological and spatial sense, like a twelfth-century blender or a Marxist alien from Epsilon Eridani. An intelligent, adaptive religion would have been more plausible, since spirituality is, based on our history at least, more likely to be universally pervasive than a certain system of economics.
I disagree. It seems to me that American society is not based on religion, but on economics. Frequently the economic systems take advantage of people's spirituality in order to make profit. But it seems to me much of the point of this story (and of the humorous introduction to Pop Magic) is that economics can be seen as a dogmatic world engulfing religion.
quote: Third, it was silly; there's nothing particularly scary about people being brainwashed into staring at an appliance all day, is there? Flesh-eating zombies are marginally eerie; couch potatoes led by man named Mr. Greepy are not.
I guess it all depends on what you think is important. I think the idea of being brainwashed into starting at an appliance is pretty fucking scarey and somewhat plausible. Flesh-eating zombies are not scarey to me. Not only has the idea been used billions of times before (not to say that Morisson is the first to write about corporate brainwashing), but it's an unrealistic idea. If brain eating zombies are your bag, maybe you should be reading Choas! comics or something else.
quote: Fourth, it was redundant. Marvel Boy was already fighting the Midas Corporation, a company that was just as greedy and canny.
This is a super-hero story, and super-heroes fight super-villains. Hexus and Midas are two different villains, and although they're both corporations they provide two very different challenges to Noh-Varr. |
I had the opportunity to chat with Grant a couple of comic conventions ago. The topic of "cool" was discussed. A corporation, trying to find out what is cool, does surveys and market research. Merry pranksters tell the interviewers that this year, clown shoes are the super cool thing. So, the mega-corporation, wishing to be cool, heavily promotes their clown shoes until, lo and behold, they ARE cool. It's a silly story, but I think it says something about his philosophy: You can't beat cool, so why not try to use cool to broadcast a message more meaningful than "get a Nike swoosh tattoo"?