OH, HOW THE GHOST OF YOU CLINGS! Notes on Watchmen<\/em>.<\/strong> So\u2026 a while back, I compared <\/a>Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons\u2019s Watchmen <\/em>to \u201cMeasure for Measure.\u201d Re-reading the book has only strengthened my sense that Moore was using a passel of Shakespearean tics and motives. I doubt that was intentional; they\u2019re the kinds of thing that many writers would try to do, if they were good enough. Both M4M and Watchmen <\/em>take the conventions of an often fluffy-sweet-melodrama genre (Elizabethan comedy and pre-WM<\/em> superheroes respectively) and turn them rancid by refusing to ignore or play along with the hidden assumptions\u2013exaggerating what usually gets intentionally overlooked. (Watchmen<\/em>\u2018s \u201chappy ending,\u201d like M4M\u2019s, is orchestrated by a powerful schemer and leaves a foul taste.) Watchmen <\/em>puns constantly<\/em>, countless pictures and words playing off one another. Sometimes the visual and verbal play just adds a much-needed note of (usually bleak) humor; other times it sets up genuine symmetries and resonances between seemingly disparate characters or situations. And Watchmen <\/em>shares the Shakespearean obsession with, and jaundiced attitude toward, the craft the artist himself practices (comics or theater) and the art of plotting. Watchmen <\/em>even shares a characteristic flaw with midlevel Shakespeare: the rich, compelling, often devastating monologue that serves a thematic purpose but throws off the plot\u2019s center of gravity.<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much to say about this comic. I\u2019m going to offer a very <\/em>disorganized look at some of the book\u2019s themes. I\u2019m making no effort to avoid spoilers\u2013this is a post for people who have already read Watchmen<\/em>. I loved the thrill of not knowing what came next when I read it, so if you haven\u2019t read it already, I strongly suggest you skip this post and go read it!<\/strong><\/em> then come back when you\u2019re done. A couple more caveats: I haven\u2019t read any other long pieces about Watchmen<\/em>, partly because I haven\u2019t found any and partly because I\u2019m lazy. If people have good essays (especially but not exclusively online), let me know. Also, of course, let me know if you think I\u2019m missing or misconstruing something. \u2026And I am doing this all from notes and memory, because I stupidly lent my copy out before writing this post! But my notes are pretty thorough. OK, let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n \u201cWith a Little Kiss, Like a Signature\u201d: <\/strong>One of the most astonishing things about Watchmen <\/em>is that, although it\u2019s usually treated like a philosophical or at least aesthetic tract, each of its characters has full humanity. (Veidt may be the necessary exception.) One of Jon\u2019s first, and most affectionate, memories of Laurie Juspeczyk is of the unique, personalized way she kisses; each of Moore\u2019s prominent characters feel similarly individual. Each is a world entire.<\/p>\n Watchmen <\/em>is Shakespearean yet again, insofar as it does not try to present the author\u2019s One True Vision of the world; it merely presents one world, our world the way it might be, and lets us make up our own minds whether this is our world the way it is<\/em>. Moreover, it presents several equally persuasive interpretations of the world of the book, and again does not try to sway us to one side or the other with special pleading. Characters even present more than one opposing worldview within the book, while remaining believable, consistent characters. Jon\u2019s affirmation of the worth of an individual human life, when he speaks with Laurie on Mars, conflicts with his remote, utilitarian acceptance of Veidt\u2019s scheme at the book\u2019s climax; but both these moments feel like <\/em>they came from the same character, a being shifting between Jon Osterman and Doctor Manhattan. Rorschach\u2019s denial of any intrinsic meaning to the patterns and suffering in life, in his speech to Malcolm, is more obliquely in conflict with his actions at the climax (in which he seeks to uphold an absolute vision of justice that implies conformity to a preexisting, objective pattern), but again both moments feel utterly true to life. If we allow for the necessarily high-contrast, highly distilled nature of art, we can say that people really do behave the way Moore\u2019s people behave, and their questions and the evidence they work with are ours as well.<\/p>\n Shakespeare gives no hint as to whether \u201cLear\u201d or \u201cHamlet\u201d or (the vastly underrated) \u201cLove\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost\u201d presents the world as he thinks it really is; and he has no responsibility to do so. Similarly, Watchmen <\/em>is a realistic picture of the world, and anyone who wants to come up with theories about \u201cwhat is to be done\u201d and what we owe each other and whether there is a God needs to grapple with the fact that the world presented in the comic is utterly believable.<\/p>\n The characters are often played off one another, and there\u2019s a lot of subtlety in the echoes Moore sets up. Take the trio of Rorschach, Comedian, and Veidt. After the Keene Act, neither Rorschach nor the Comedian quit; Rorschach went vigilante and the Comedian signed up with the government. They\u2019re the only two costumed heroes (um, I\u2019m not counting the \u201csuperhero\u201d Dr. Manhattan, because everyone in the book views him as a different breed of cat entirely) in the book who do not at least give the appearance of quitting. Rorschach also refers to the Comedian, early on (but late enough that we the readers know better!), as \u201ca better class of person.\u201d Uh-huh. There\u2019s one important similarity between the two: The Comedian and Rorschach both strongly disapprove of Veidt\u2019s plan. Their bloody-mindedness won\u2019t excuse that level of utilitarian carnage. The Comedian kills for selfish reasons and as an act of nihilism; Rorschach kills out of merciless justice; but neither one of them is a twentieth-century-style blood-soaked utopian. As for Veidt, Rorschach looks down on the advertiser, but when he visits Veidt he comes literally with hat in hand. And notice that Rorschach and Veidt are the only <\/em>characters who never doubt their course.<\/p>\n Fearful Symmetries<\/strong>. Watchmen <\/em>actually performs the \u201cHamlet\u201d transformation<\/a>\u2013using a genre\u2019s tropes to make metaphysical points rather than merely move the plot machinery around\u2013on two genres: superheroes, of course, but also murder mysteries. The superhero stuff has gotten the most attention, but in my opinion the infusion of existential questions into the murder-mystery tropes is more crucial to the book. <\/p>\n On the most basic level, the mystery\u2013who killed the Comedian?\u2013lets the comic hammer its thematic points home pretty hard while keeping us occupied with trying to figure out who\u2019s attacking and killing costumed crimefighters. It takes a long time before we even notice the thematic elements of the mystery.<\/p>\n Probably the biggest theme in Watchmen <\/em>is interpretation of patterns: What do you see? What is the meaning of life? There are patterns\u2013\u201csymmetry\u201d is both symbol and technique, from Rorschach\u2019s face mask to the way each chapter (and the book as a whole) opens and closes with variations of the same image. But the pattern is very hard to see. Rorschach\u2019s name is key, of course. The very fact of a detective named Rorschach ought to clue you in (heh heh) to the centrality of this theme.<\/p>\n Three speeches approach this theme from different angles. I\u2019ll talk more about Rorschach\u2019s speech to Malcolm the egotistic psychiatrist and Jon\u2019s talk with Laurie on Mars later. The third, though, is Veidt\u2019s soliloquy in Antarctica, which is exclusively concerned with the process of teasing order out of chaos. Veidt\u2019s talent is pattern-spotting and pattern-manipulating. Veidt believes that the patterns do <\/em>have meaning\u2013but that meaning imposed by powerful, responsible individuals like himself. Patterns are there to be taken advantage of. <\/p>\n Veidt is the book\u2019s plotter, so he stands parallel to Alan Moore. Within the narrative, Veidt creates many of the symmetries and links Moore put in (Pyramid, Gordian Knot, the Nostalgia motif); it\u2019s not clear whether he creates or merely notices the symmetry between the trackless Antarctic wilderness and the moral wilderness into which he\u2019s thrust Dan, Laurie, and (seemingly) Rorschach. And Veidt\u2019s plot\u2013his scheme\u2013is the skeletal structure of the book<\/em>\u2018s plot, of course. Rorschach\u2019s symmetrical costume makes him another parallel for symmetry-creating Moore. The advertising theme in Watchmen <\/em>is echoed in A Small Killing<\/a> <\/em>(and the Nostalgia and Millennium ads are good!<\/em>\u2013evocative), and here the parallel between Moore and the advertiser is much clearer. I\u2019ll note also that Veidt\u2019s plan brings together (on the island) high art, pulp culture, and advertising, suggesting that there\u2019s not that much distance between the three.<\/p>\n With Great Power\u2026<\/strong> comes the temptation to take responsibility for others. Moore reverses the classic superhero shtik\u2013power is thrust upon you and so you have to save everyone. Instead, he says, power is seized by those whose darker motives push them to save others because they can\u2019t do jack for themselves. The offices of the ex-superheroes are creepy-pathetic\u2013those of both Hollis Mason (\u201cObsolete Models a Specialty\u201d) and Adrian Veidt (surrounded by posters and toy versions of himself). Our first visit to Hollis\u2019s shop is only a couple panels before the first shot of the \u201cNostalgia\u201d ad (although we don\u2019t see the tagline then). In our first sight of the Nite Owl costume, it\u2019s erect and bigger than Dan is. This has been perhaps the most obvious aspect of Watchmen <\/em>and so I\u2019m not entirely sure what more I can say about it. Veidt\u2019s attempt to manipulate the world is wrong; but so too is Dan and Laurie\u2019s abdication of responsibility. They could have told everyone about the plot, and they don\u2019t. It\u2019s understandable, but hardly admirable.<\/p>\n Finally, the straightforward, garish style of the art\u2013such pretty women\u2019s legs!\u2013helps fit the comic into the genre it\u2019s breaking. A darker or more experimental style wouldn\u2019t work, since it would too quickly and easily distance Watchmen <\/em>from primary-colors superhero comics rather than letting that distance emerge through the story.<\/p>\n \u201cWould You Like to Add a Rider?\u201d<\/strong><\/a> The visual\/verbal punning doesn\u2019t just provide a few laughs in the midst of a grim story. It also serves to intertwine past and present (another major subtheme: the past\u2019s echoes\u2013from \u201cNostalgia\u201d to \u201cSpirit of \u201977\u201d to Jon\u2019s trip to the abandoned nuclear base to the entire Silk Spectre subplot). It links and contrasts \u201cfiction\u201d (fictional stuff within the book, like the pirate comic), plots and narratives created by the characters (mostly Veidt and Rorschach), and \u201creality\u201d (the stuff that happens in the book). And the puns often link characters to one another: For example, at one time or another almost every major character is compared to or echoed against the pirate in \u201cTales of the Black Freighter.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the wordplay-with-pictures allows Moore to show that the same statements can have totally different meanings coming from different people in different contexts. Again, the comic is full of Rorschach tests: What do you see?<\/p>\n The pirate comic is the most obvious example of linkage. It doesn\u2019t function in Watchmen<\/em>\u2018s plot as \u201cThe Mousetrap\u201d does in \u201cHamlet,\u201d but it does or should affect readers\u2019 understanding of Veidt\u2019s plan and the role of hope in the book. The pirate comic is a story of despair as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The castaway assumes that the black freighter\u2019s crew has devastated his hometown, and so he himself causes the carnage he feared. Veidt assumes that without his hideously gory intervention, the world will end, and so he himself causes the book\u2019s greatest destruction. I am pretty sure that part of the point of the pirate comic is to suggest that Veidt is wrong, that his deadly plan was not the only way to prevent World War Three. (A few people have suggested that Veidt\u2019s plan is obviously stupid, and so Dan and Laurie look dumb for thinking it could work. I suppose you could point to the notable lack of other countries rallying around the US much after 9\/11; but in Moore\u2019s defense, the US did ally with the USSR to fight Nazis, so there\u2019s precedent for a common enemy overcoming major hostilities. It\u2019s not unthinkable, and worth the suspension of disbelief. Dan and Laurie also see the plan apparently starting to work, as they watch Veidt\u2019s bank of television monitors. So their decision to go along with it, while definitely an exhausted capitulation, is understandable.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s important, too, that the pirate comic is grisly. It\u2019s easy to think of death in superhero comics as either action-movie meaningless cannon fodder, or temporary downtime before the inevitable resurrection. The pirate comic, woven throughout the main narrative, lends a cold sense of impending disaster and visceral destruction that allows Moore to make Veidt\u2019s attack on New York really powerful without having to show a lot of blood and guts. Instead of going for a splatterfest in an attempt to shock us into taking the attack seriously, Moore prepared us throughout the book and let his pirate comic\u2019s gore seep into our response to the \u201creal\u201d attack. The physical horror of the pirate comic would probably seem over the top, gross for its own sake, if it happened in the \u201creal\u201d narrative, but as a sub-narrative it effectively adds to the sense of dread and the smell of blood that hangs over Watchmen<\/em>. (The pirate comic is especially effective at heightening the sense of foreboding when Dr. Manhattan leaves Earth.)<\/p>\n \u201cWhy Does One Death Matter?\u201d<\/strong> That\u2019s maybe the biggest recurring theme or question in the book. Rorschach\u2019s speech to Malcolm argues that there is no meaning to the patterns, that there is only death and horror\u2013the reverse of Laurie and Jon\u2019s interaction on Mars. And both are predicated on female pain (the little girl; Kitty Genovese; and Laurie herself). Including Kitty Genovese isn\u2019t just a cheap use of other people\u2019s pain. It\u2019s an act of force on Moore\u2019s part, allowing no escape for the comfort-seeking reader. It\u2019s the reason Dostoyevsky used real newspaper accounts of tortured children to shape the \u201cRebellion<\/a>\u201d chapter of The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>.<\/p>\n A woman\u2019s pain is crucial to one of the other key moments in the development of this theme: the moment when Doctor Manhattan does not intervene when the Comedian kills the Vietnamese mother of his child. This moment foreshadows his decision not to intervene to stop Veidt. His decision to return to Earth turns out to rest on attachment to Laurie<\/em>, not to individual humans as such. (\u201cLove of one <\/em>is always a barbarism\u2013the love of God, too,\u201d as Nietzsche says<\/a>.) Laurie and Dan expect him to be the deus ex machina<\/em> (more punning\u2013he gets his powers while trapped within a machine), but he refuses. Except this time it\u2019s not just not acting<\/em>\u2013he has to affirmatively side with Veidt by killing Rorschach. As John Jakala <\/a>pointed out somewhere I can\u2019t find on Google, just as Laurie\u2019s pain at learning who her father is prompts Jon to return to Earth, so murdering Rorschach severs his final ties to humanity. One death matters, but it might not matter the way you expected it to\u2026.<\/p>\n Watchmen <\/em>features two unsuccessful replacement gods: Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan. But what is it they were supposed to do<\/em>? Were they supposed to prevent suffering? That\u2019s precisely what they tried <\/em>to do, with the necessarily imperfect knowledge and understanding that even wildly intelligent or semi-transtemporal created beings are heir to. In order to fix everything, to remove conflict and suffering, the replacement gods mistrust and destroy ordinary humans. I don\u2019t think that this can be pushed too hard, but I\u2019ll note here the parallel with a fairly basic Christian response to the problem of evil\u2013to force us to love is to remove our ability to love; to remove our capacity for evil is to make us robots, not humans, and ultimately to destroy us for our own good.<\/p>\n \u201cOrdinary People\u2026\u201d<\/strong> Just as Rorschach\u2019s justice-without-mercy role is taken on due to female pain, so the only instances of mercy <\/em>in the comic are undertaken by women. Sally Jupiter forgives the Comedian; then Laurie Juspeczyk forgives her mother; and Malcolm\u2019s wife forgives him. I\u2019m pretty sure these are the only <\/em>examples of explicit forgiveness shown in the comic. I think that\u2019s why it ends, in a seemingly too-easy way, with the Silk Spectre. Women seem marginal to the world of Watchmen <\/em>(even Laurie), but they\u2019re central to its theme\u2013which is, I hope, an intentional statement about what is overlooked by fantasies of universal justice. Women, who have so often been \u201cwounded in the house of a friend\u201d\u2013suffering intimate violence\u2013might be more able to articulate or represent the terrible price of either justice without mercy or <\/em>mercy without justice than a male character would be.<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much I haven\u2019t touched on here\u2013to take just one example, there\u2019s the theme of joking or laughter. The Comedian; Rorschach\u2019s last words (\u201cJoking, of course\u201d); the man with the fake breasts. Maybe I\u2019ll talk about that stuff later. If you all want to take that up, PLEASE do\u2026. The email link is to your left!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OH, HOW THE GHOST OF YOU CLINGS! Notes on Watchmen. So\u2026 a while back, I compared Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons\u2019s Watchmen to \u201cMeasure for Measure.\u201d Re-reading the book has only strengthened my sense that Moore was using a passel of Shakespearean tics and motives. I doubt that was intentional; they\u2019re the kinds of thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n