Pseudo-Mature and Infantilizing? Alan Moore Again

Alan Moore's much-publicized recent interview had me thinking again of other critical statements he has made about the legacy of superheroes on popular culture and culture generally, in particular a 2020 interview in Indiewire, where he stressed that they are '30s-era children's entertainment, still "perfectly good" as such, though "if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque."

Ironically I remember that this point, which isn't made all that often (indeed, gets made less often than I think it should be), was made rather memorably in an episode of Teen Titans Go! ("The Return of Slade"). Here Cyborg and Beast Boy, who have happy childhood memories of party clowns, hire a clown for a party the Titans are having--and then when the clown doesn't prove as entertaining as they thought he would be (forgetting that they were children at the time when they enjoyed such performers) they decide to make him "cool" and "edgy," after which things go very badly indeed (just as Raven, in one of her turns as the voice of reason, warned they would).

Of course, it's very clear that the folks at Warner Bros. did not take their own lesson, the dark-and-gritty-loving artistes of our era doing with the "party clowns" of childhood exactly what Cyborg and Beast Boy did--as their claqueurs, ever faithful to their clients, similarly not taking this lesson, or any other, shower them with applause.