Patrick Meaney > Quotes

“Movies create the parameters against which we measure our lives.  They can either be a force for positive change or reinforce existing structures.  Mason asks, “How do we take control of the hallucination?”  The series itself is a response:  The Invisibles is a fictional work that’s programmed to redefine the way we view reality.  Download this series into your mind, and you’ll come out the other side changed. This also ties into the way that Mason has discussed movies over the course of the series.  By finding the evolutionary message in non-intellectual, popular works like Speed and Independence Day, Mason is trying to take control of the hallucination.  Any work of art does not exist in a vacuum.  We assess it through cultural and social lenses, biased by our own circumstances and background.  Mason seeks out Invisible messages in everything he sees, and because that’s what he’s looking for, he finds them.  His goal is to teach everyone to think like that, to not see the intended pro-America or pro-hetero-normative message of a typical studio film, to instead find something subversive lurking in the most mundane entertainments.  If people build their lives in response to the films they see, then controlling the way they perceive the films means controlling the future direction of their lives. Next,”
― Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

“I think super-heroes and religion are indivisible. I think they’re indivisible from Superman.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews

“Movies have more power than any other medium to define the world we believe we live in.  When I was in high school, my classmates said that we didn’t have a “real” high-school experience because it wasn’t like what we saw on TV.  Ironically, reality was less “real” than fiction.  Motion pictures define our cultural consciousness.  I personally can’t imagine how I would process the world if I hadn’t watched movies.  There are certain experiences, like drugs and crime, that we know mostly from movies.  How we imagine the past and the future is largely determined by the films we’ve seen. And in some cases, the futures we’ve seen on screen influence the development of real technology and architecture, so that our fiction sets the course along which our reality will develop. The”
― Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

“The super-hero is something that I think people struggle to make intensely apolitical. But it cannot help but be political, because the classical role of the super-hero is constantly to return to the status quo. The super-hero cannot help but be a figure for conservatism.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews

“In a funny way, you could say he taught me how to write super-hero comics. He said, “What you do is you take a soap opera, and you take out all the sex scenes and replace them with people punching each other. That’s it. It’s the same structure.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews

“Want to know what The Invisibles is about?  Read the first page of this issue.  It contains an explanation for virtually everything that happens in the series.”
― Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

“Respect wears off, fear doesn’t. Familiarity breeds contempt. Terror is eternal. I don’t believe I just said that. I’ve clearly had too much to drink already.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews

“Harmony House’s goal of a stable, safe society may be understandable, but their means effectively cut out the humanity that makes life worthwhile.  They want to remove the difficult parts of life, but it is that difficulty and that suffering that allows us to grow and eventually move on to a higher stage of consciousness.  Time is soil in which we can grow.”
― Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

“Miles tells King Mob that “we do not merely destroy our enemies.  We change them.”  This is a critical line because it illuminates the true nature of the war.  It is not a war of violence; it is a war of ideas.  The goal of each side is to win over people, to convince them that their side is right and the other’s is wrong.  Chaos and order are in perpetual conflict, and it is the interplay between the two elements that allows society to grow and change.  If one errs too far in one direction, things will fall apart – as we see with the descent into ultra-violence that is literally called “Things Fall Apart” (issue #9).  Generally, Morrison supports the Invisibles’ cause, as does the reader.  But the point of King Mob’s Volume Two arc, as well as the character of Jolly Roger, is to demonstrate that excessive chaos can result in the same kind of oppression as excessive order.  It’s best when the elements are in balance.”
― Patrick Meaney, Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's The Invisibles

“ELLIS: The mad scientist is privy to a certain, very special kind of wisdom, which is their own voice in the back of their heads saying, “Yes, do it! More power! Throw the switch!” THURMAN: Are they more enlightened because of that? ELLIS: God, no! (laughs) God, no, they just have focus. Ambition is a rare thing these days.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews

“MEANEY: Do you ever miss having that being-out-in-the-world job environment? ELLIS: God, no. Have you ever been out in the world? It’s full of fucking people. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people.”
― Patrick Meaney, Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews