MemeMachineGo!

(I’ve had a draft of this entry lying around for a month; Jym’s entry prompted me to finish it.)

I’ve had an advance order in for Alan Moore’s Lost Girls for a while. Moore states explicitly that it’s pornography; apparently, it’s arguably child pornography. As even illustrated child pornography violates federal law, there’s been concern from comics retailers about stocking and selling it. My own comic book pusher said:

Rory Root, Comic Relief - “Alan sells books. So do we…. the CBLDF would love to try a First Amendment case in Berkeley’s, or for that matter the Bay Area’s, Courts. Burton Joseph, legal counsel for the CBLDF, has said so in the past, though the ADA saw reason long before he had to officially weigh in on that instance. I suspect this book will end up in court. I don’t think it will be here.”

That the Great Ormond Street Hospital is considering legal action on the grounds that the book violates its perpetual copyright on Peter Pan was widely blogged, despite that claiming violation seems spurious.

Neil Gaiman wrote

It is one of the tropes of pure pornography that events are without consequence. No babies, no STDs, no trauma, no memories best left unexamined. Lost Girls, however, is all about consequences. It’s also about more things than sex — war, music, love, lust, repression and time, to pick a handful of subjects (I could pick more). It’s the kind of smut that would have no difficulty in demonstrating to an overzealous prosecutor that it has unquestionable artistic validity beyond its simple first amendment right to exist.

And I really wasn’t thinking about blogging any of this until I found this strange claim.

As Moore points out, there’s sexual subtext buried in the classics that inspired Lost Girls — Wendy has children at the end of Peter Pan, implying she’s had sex sometime during her life, and there’s even a reference to an orgy (last paragraph) in the original tale. OK, so maybe it’s more text than subtext.

It linked to the source, J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy.

In they went; I don’t know how there was room for them, but you can squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the first of the many joyous evenings they had with Wendy. By and by she tucked them up in the great bed in the home under the trees, but she herself slept that night in the little house, and Peter kept watch outside with drawn sword, for the pirates could be heard carousing far away and the wolves were on the prowl. The little house looked so cosy and safe in the darkness, with a bright light showing through its blinds, and the chimney smoking beautifully, and Peter standing on guard. After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy. Any of the other boys obstructing the fairy path at night they would have mischiefed, but they just tweaked Peter’s nose and passed on.

Hunh.