So the Lost Girls publicity rush has begun, with both newsarama and Comic Book Resources starting multi-part interviews with its author Alan Moore (the illustrator is his longtime partner, Melinda Gebbie).
In case you don't know, Lost Girls focuses on three heroines of 19th century fantasy literature: Alice of Alice in Wonderland, Wendy of Peter Pan and Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz. Here's how Top Shelf (its publisher) describes the story:
For more than a century, Alice, Wendy and Dorothy have been our guides through the Wonderland, Neverland and Land of Oz of our childhoods. Now like us, these three lost girls have grown up and are ready to guide us again, this time through the realms of our sexual awakening and fulfillment. Through their familiar fairytales they share with us their most intimate revelations of desire in its many forms, revelations that shine out radiantly through the dark clouds of war gathering around a luxury Austrian hotel. Drawing on the rich heritage of erotica, Lost Girls is the rediscovery of the power of ecstatic writing and art in a sublime union that only the medium of comics can achieve. Exquisite, thoughtful, and human, Lost Girls is a work of breathtaking scope that challenges the very notion of art fettered by convention. This is erotic fiction at its finest.
Moore and Gebbie started to serialize Lost Girls about 15 years ago, but only a few chapters were published. This is the complete story, published in three very handsome hardback volumes.
As with just about anything Moore writes, Lost Girls is not without controversy. I've heard three principle objections to the project. The first is that it's porn. The second is that it's porn based on beloved childhood characters. The third is that it's child porn.
The first objection is easily disposed of. Either you like porn (or erotica, if you prefer) or you don't. If you don't like porn, then you probably wouldn't like Lost Girls -- although from all reports, Lost Girls is extremely well done porn, so maybe you would. My moral framework doesn't have any problem with pornography, so for me, this objection is meritless.
The second objection is that it's not just any porn, but it's porn based on Alice, Wendy and Dorothy. Moore, this argument goes, has no right to take beloved childhood characters and use them for tawdry purposes. That depiction of those characters as sexual beings in Lost Girls somehow taints the original works in which they appeared. I don't buy tht argument. Barie's Peter Pan is still Peter Pan regardless of what Moore does in Lost Girls. I can still pull that book -- or either of Caroll's Alice books, or any of Baum's Oz books -- off my shelf and read them whenever I want. Lost Girls doesn't "taint" those books any more than Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz books "taint" Baum's. Or, for that matter, any more than Baum's second Oz book "taints" the original. Just as I still love the Lee/Romita Spider-Man stories not withstanding the absolutely terrible work J. Michael Straczynski has done with that character, so too I can enjoy the original adventures of Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy notwithstanding anything Moore does with the characters.
Which leaves the third objection -- that Lost Girls is child porn. To me, this is the only leigitimate objection that's been raised. While I haven't yet read the books, all accounts suggest that they do depict adolescents (possibly even young adolescents) engaging in sexual activity. Let's take it as a given that this is the case. Is it a bad thing?
I want to make it clear, of course, that I am absolutely opposed to the exploitation of children to create pornography. But there are no actual children involved in Lost Girls -- all children are simply pen and ink drawings created out of whole cloth by Melinda Gebbie. So there's nobody actually being exploited.
But is that enough? Can't an argument be made that Lost Girls encourages attractions that we as a society want to discourage? To be honest, I'm not sure, and this is the issue I've been struggling with in trying to decide if I want to buy Lost Girls.
Here's where I think I come out: The reality is, adolescents are sexual beings. Adolescence is the transition between childhood and adulthood. It's a time of crossing boundaries, and one of the types of boundaries that is crossed during adolescence are sexual boundaries. Children are non-sexual beings and adults are sexual beings; adolescence is the time when most people figure out what kind of sexual beings they will be as adults. Indeed, that appears to be part of what Moore is exploring in Lost Girls -- how these childhood characters transition into adulthood. Even if Lost Girls is child pornography (and I'm not sure it is), it's child pornography for a purpose. Given the fact that we're talking about pen-and-ink drawings, not real children, and given the (presumed)artistic merit, I don't think Lost Girls is morally problematic.
So what does everyone else think? Is anyone else picking up Lost Girls? Considering it? Skipping it for moral reasons?
Posted by Jason Fliegel at May 25, 2006 10:08 PM
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I have a moral problem with photographs or video of underage children engaged in sexual activity with each other or adults, wheter consensually or not, produced for the purpose of sexual titilation only.
Lost Girls goes not fill that critera.
Lost Girls is not obscene, because it quite obviously possesses literary merit.
No children were harmed in the production of the book, so it's not abominable on that basis.
It is argued, although I don't know how credibly, that the simple existence of erotic material involving non-adults encourages and sustains the abominable paraphilia. This is not the book's fault and is not an acceptable basis for banning it.
I would probably say that it counts against the book, however, and requires the book to be sufficiently worthwhile by other criteria, e.g. artistic, to exceed that deficit. Having read the first couple of chapters, I have no doubt that Moore and Gebbie will produce a work that will be a net positive social good.
Unfortunately, retailers may run afoul of state laws that don't make the distinction between drawn porn and photographic. Any depiction of underagers in sexual situations is against these laws, and could get a store shut down.
I'll probably eventually give it a shot, but my impression from the first few chapters as remembered from when they came out was not all that positive. Gebbie's art is certainly excellent, especially on a project to which it's suited like this one, but story-wise...well, crossover slash fanfic is crossover slash fanfic no matter who's behind the pen.
I'm not sure crossover slash fanfic is necessarily crossover slash fanfic no matter who's behind the pen. From all accounts, Moore is using this series as an opportunity to explore the passage from childhood to adulthood, juxtaposing the very juvenile fantasylands of the three heroines with the very adult sexual content. It's not just a case of "wouldn't it be cool to see Alice and Dorothy screwing Wendy," which is all I would expect out of J. Random Slashwriter.
Greg,
I am also unconvinced by the "Perpetuates Child Porn" argument, but *if* the simple existence of the book "sustains paraphilia", how can that not be the book's fault? (Or the publisher's, or the creator's, or someone in the direct chain of responsibility who should not therefore profit.)
If That Yellow Bastard isn't kiddie porn, than Lost Girls sure as hell isn't.
Dan, I don't understand why you would equate Yellow Bastard and Lost Girls as I'm assuming you have not read Lost Girls since it isn't out yet. Therefore, how can you compare? Furthermore, Lost Girls is obviously erotica/pornography; how is That Yellow Bastard?
Well, I was just joking around. I expect Lost Girls to be an extremely effective, entertaining erotica; I consider That Yellow Bastard to be a misanthropic, worthless pean to the "purity" of little girls.
David:
If Lost Girls didn't exist, a paedophile would find something else to stimulate him. "Magical girl" manga, perhaps. It might not be as strong or as pure a stimulus. If you need a particular stimulus, you'll find something that tickles that stimulus.
One of the things the Internet does very well is put paraphiliacs in easy, close contact with very strong paraphiliac stimuli. It's similar, I think, to the "echo chamber" effect, putting yourself in an environment where your opinions are reflected and magnified back to you.
But that's beside the point.
A work of art has limited responsibility for its audience's reaction to it.
In the chapters of Lost Girls already published, all three of the main characters are obviously "of age". It's set immediately before the Great War and the "girls" are all of the ages they would be if they had aged naturally from their first appearances, so the youngest of them--Dorothy Gale--would be at least 20, if she were six years old in The Wizard of Oz. Wendy Darling is married, and Alice is in her fifties. So the "child porn" issue is a non-starter, unless there are flashbacks in later installments to the "girls" as children.
The "good art" part is another issue entirely; I can say safely that there is nothing Moore has done that I have liked less than the portions of Lost Girls that I have read so far, and I'm deeply torn about whether to even buy it. Even the Moore works that I have found least satisfying on first blush have generally rewarded further attention, and it would be the first Moore work I've ever given up upon....
Kevin, it's my understanding that there are flashbacks which reinterpret the respective works of Barrie, Baum, and Carroll as sexual. The pages that have been released bear this out -- see here for an example of how Moore and Gebbie reinterpret Peter Pan (please be aware that the linked image depicts Peter Pan having sex. You've been warned).
