Tinta Invisível

O texto que segue abaixo foi copiado da revista em quadrinhos The Invisibles, foi uma resposta dada por Grant Morrison a uma carta na edição 14, com relação a primeira edição da revista, onde um personagem realiza um ritual com LSD e invoca John Lennon. A opinião exposta nela é bem interessante, e acho que vale a pena a leitura, tanto pelo próprio conteúdo dela, como pelo fato de expor que quadrinhos são sim uma forma de arte, que podem gerar discussões produtivas. Sem mais enrolação:


"What I’m most aware of in these anti-drugs letters is a basic lack of understanding about what “drugs” are and what they do. The word “drugs” has been used as a catch-all term for a whole range of psychoactive substances, many of which bear as much relation to one another as do chairs and fish. For instance, LSD and crack cocaine have both been placed in Schedule I of the FDA’s Controlled Substance Act (equivalent to Class A in the UK). The Schedule I classification is reserved for those drugs considered most dangerous and harmful to the individual and society at large. Crack, however, is a stimulant drug that generates a short and powerfully euphoric “rush” effect; it is extremely addictive, produces severe withdrawal symptoms and can cause various physiological problems, including critically high blood pressure and lung and heart damage, LSD, on the other hand, is an hallucinogen, the effects of which normally last for eight to twelve hours and include altered perceptions of time, sensory distortions, increased sensitivity to bodily processes, heightened emotions and suggestibility and a whole range of mood alterations, from euphoric bliss to sheer animal terror, depending on the state of mind of the user. It is non-addictive and cannot be successfully abused – due to a tolerance effect which renders the substance ineffective after three or four days of constant use and produces no adverse physical effects. The worst that can be said of LSD is that some users, taking the drug in threatening surroundings or while depressed, can experience profound panic reactions and feelings of paranoia. Crack and LSD are quite evidently two completely different chemicals with very different effects and consequences, yet both are lumped together under the pejorative heading of “drugs”, in such a way that a great many people who see “drugs” in negative light have simply no idea of the vast gulf of differences that exist between one substance and another.

Now consider the case of refined sugar, which is a stimulant drug with the characteristic “rush”, is highly addictive, produces withdrawal symptoms and has destructive effects on the body. Sugar abuse and addiction is more widespread in the Western world than heroin abuse. Most of us are, in fact, hopeless sugar addicts but sugar is perfectly legal and so widespread that most people find it almost impossible to countenance the notion that their abuse of this substance makes them as much a drug addict as any hollow-eyed junkie in Times Square (who is only hollow-eyed and sick because he/she can’t afford a regular supply of pure heroin). So while I have no desire to lead impressionable readers into a cesspit of moral and physical decay by advocating any kind of drug use, I think it’s important to make oneself aware of what “drugs” are and how society attempts to control our perceptions of what is a “good” drug, what is a “bad” drug, and what is never spoken of as a drug at all. I think it’s important to make oneself aware of the misinformation, evasions, distortions, and downright lies that fuel the so-called “War on Drugs”. (Which is not, as Oliver Steinberg pointed out in Pissing Away the American Dream – edited by David Rees – a war on drugs but a war on people. And if our governments are really as concerned as they claim to be about the human suffering and the miseries engendered by drug abuse, why have they not mounted a similar “War on Cars” offensive? Automobiles kill and injure more people every week than all drugs put together could ever hope to do in a month or even a year. Could it be simply that cars are tolerated because they serve the status quo while many drugs not? Whatever the reason, it clearly has nothing at all to do with concern for human safety and health, in spite of government platitudes.)

Which brief background material brings me tortuously to main thrust of your argument, Pete. You suggest that creative people using drugs and “cheating” and compare them to athletes taking steroids or to cars running on nitrous oxide. I would venture to suggest that an auto that runs on nitrous oxide is still an auto if it gets you to work in the morning and go on to say that an athlete in competition is being tested for his physical accomplishment against other athletes, and if the ground rules of the test prohibit the use of performance-enhancing drugs, then the athlete who uses steroids, for instance, is quite clearly in breach of agreement. A piece of art, however, must stand on its own as either a successful piece of art or an unsuccessful one. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter whether John Lennon was peaking on LSD or completely straight when he conceived, wrote or recorded “Strawberry Fields Forever”. It’s still a great song. In my opinion, Naked Lunch is a great book, and whether it was written on heroin or not doesn’t affect my response to the work. If Da Vinci came up with the idea for the Mona Lisa while he was drunk, it scarcely matters five hundred years later. What remains is the work itself and its ability to elicit a response in the viewer or listener. Which is to say that I believe a piece of art must be judged on its own merits. Am I making sense?”
Grant Morrison