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Monday, July 06, 2009 

"The consensus doesn't explain our lives. But - what does?"



"By the time we're finished you're all going to be practicing magicians."

In which a drunk Grant Morrison (who is going to be coming up on drugs roughly half an hour in) explains himself. I'm pleased to see that (whether Morrison knows it or not), a lot of the more sensible things he says about metaphysics are drawn from Spinoza (similarly, I get the impression he's read R.D. Laing's The Divided Self). And the stuff he says about the individual and duality, about the cops and John Wayne Gacy, about the dark side of human nature is great. Mad, beautiful, dangerous stuff - he might be my favourite writer, really.

This is worth looking at too, particular this bit:

"Putting Batman up against ordinary street criminals or organized gang bosses is fine but it's a bit one-sided in Batman's favour, given his training. I tend to assume that Batman goes out every single night as Gotham's Guardian and stops dozens of robberies, muggings, suicides or whatever all the time. Those 'ordinary', 'mundane' crimes are his bread and butter but they don't really challenge him and they don't necessarily make for compelling stories, so I prefer to focus on the wilder, weirder nights of his career and I like to see him facing devilishly brilliant, flamboyant psychos who can actually put him under pressure and take him to his limits. Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately."

(link shamelessly ganked from Fluxblog)

Thanks for sharing this IAn. We've talked about Morrison quite a bit, but hearing his infectious ranting and watching him was a new treat. I assume you've read Pop Magic, his practicing treatise? If not, I'll send you a copy.

I have not, and I would love to get my hands on a copy. Honestly, until you mentioned it I'd never heard of Pop Magic!

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Ian Mathers is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stylus, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, PopMatters, and elsewhere. He does stuff and it magically appears here.

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