The Fredösphere

Somebody's seen significant parts of the Watchmen movie and liked it a lot.

Eve Tushnet's impressionistic take on the book was my first (and, come to think of it, still my only) encounter with serious Watchmen criticism and hints at layers I didn't notice.  Must.  Read.  Watchmen.  Again.

Here are some nibbles:

Characters even present more than one opposing worldview within the book, while remaining believable, consistent characters. Jon's affirmation of the worth of an individual human life, when he speaks with Laurie on Mars, conflicts with his remote, utilitarian acceptance of Veidt's scheme at the book's climax; but both these moments feel like they came from the same character, a being shifting between Jon Osterman and Doctor Manhattan. Rorschach's 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.

[...]

The pirate comic is the most obvious example of linkage. It doesn't function in Watchmen's plot as "The Mousetrap" does in "Hamlet," but it does or should affect readers' understanding of Veidt's 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's 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's greatest destruction.

Tushnet links to a couple of posts at "Unqualified Offerings" whoever that is.  One is interesting in light of the political season we are in (here in the USA).  Alan Moore is strongly anarcho-communist; maybe it would be fair to call him a neo-trotskyite.  That's my understanding, anyway.  A reader writes in:

I found your comment that Watchmen "as with many leftist critiques of the Cold War the Soviet Union is strangely invisible" to be interesting for two reasons. Mostly, I'm a leftist myself (most would say "far leftist") and my initial reaction to Watchmen was that it was a critique of the left from the right. Veidt is clearly one of those on the far left who would be willing to do anything at all to avert war. Rorschach, on the other hand, is clearly of the right wing and is also clearly the story's ultimate hero. I thought that his final words about "one more body in the foundations" was a particularly telling comment about many leftist's view of what it takes to achieve peace. More than that, I saw it as a comment on the Soviet Union's bloody purge policies.

...and the blogger replies:

Me, I think Moore sees both the despicable and admirable aspects of Rorshach and regards him, mostly, with fascinated horror. But respect. (Rorshach is damned clever, and can be droll.) I think it's a deliberate irony that Kovacs turns out to be right about so much that is going on.

Exactly.  Rorschach's conservativism is a highly truncated kind (and maybe more to the point, his humanity is truncated) and Moore knows that.  Rorschach's heroic role in the story is unconventional and equivocal to say the least.

Labels: Culture, GraphicNovel, movie