Bit of the old ultra-violence

This is more than a little delayed since I was on vacation, but if anyone’s still cares about my thoughts on the Watchmen movie, here they are:

In both the book and the film versions of Watchmen, brutal vigilante Rorschach relates a formative experience to a prison psychiatrist: his first kill. In essence, both versions are mostly in sync with each other. After a fairly typical investigation into hunting down a missing girl, Rorschach breaks into the kidnapper’s house. Snooping around, he finds evidence that the kidnapper has killed the girl and disposed of the evidence using his two German Shepherds. Rorschach waits until the killer returns, kills his two dogs, then chains the killer up. In the book, Rorschach lights the house on fire and leaves the killer to burn. That works just fine for the story, but the gesture is exceedingly cold and impersonal. Not exactly an act of passion. In the film, while chained up, the man confesses to the crime. He says he’s sick and that he needs help. Jackie Earle Haley, as Rorschach, does an excellent job even behind a mask conveying the all rage and hate growing at the idea of this murderer being institutionalized. As the man begs for his life, the camera focuses on Rorschach’s mask, breathing heavily, shoulders heaving, as his anger reaches a boiling point. He grabs an oversized meat cleaver and hoists it over his head…

…then the camera cuts to the cleaver digging into the killer’s skull. The audience collectively says “ewww…” and the emotionality of the moment dissipates.

My literal first reading of Watchmen

Ok, so I wanted to write something quick and dirty about Watchmen, the book, before I go out and watch Watchmen, the movie.
I first read this comic as a 21-year-old, after being re-introduced to superhero comics in college. As a kid I read mostly Marvel stuff, so I was anxious to read some of the famous stories that DC had published in the mid-80s, which I knew changed the world of comics but did not read as a 13-year-old.
I was immediately blown away by the quality of the dialogue, characters and artwork.
There were no Chris Claremont-esque exclamations of “By the White Wolf!” or other nonsense, and Dave Gibbon’s art is a darn sight better than John Byrne’s or Jim Lee’s, in my view.
But, I was also intrigued by the idea of a superhero murder mystery. As the plot unfolded, I was engaged by the multiple layers of story, thrilled by the idea of a superheroic political assassination, amused by the references to pop-culture and U.S. history, and appalled at the level of misogyny and violence against women.
But I still loved the book. I read it very quickly, in the manner I was accustomed to reading comics when I was a child. I did not pick up on the politics of the book, although my friend John Cooper maintained that it was an inherently fascist work, and that may have colored my reading somewhat.
I just thought it was a good, realistic (read: depressing) story about superheroes.
If Zack Snyder can capture the dystopian, Republican-dominated, noire-esque feel of the book, without making Rorschach sound like a Frank Miller character, then I’ll be satisfied. Not thrilled, but satisfied.

The politics of Watching…

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be discussing several of my personal readings of Watchmen – perhaps the best (and worst?) quality of the book is multifaceted nature. First things first, I’d like to discuss the meta-politics of Watchmen.

Anyone who has read any bit of biographical material on Alan Moore knows that his politics are “non-traditional”. My take on him – after reading a large bit of the corpus of Moore’s work – is he’s a leftist anarchist. It is, of course, important to remember the context in which Moore wrote Watchmen. It was during the “dark ages” of Thatcher England – a time that has left scars on the work of a lot of British writers (Moore, Ennis, Ellis, Delano). To many leftist Britians the world had pretty much fallen to shit – the right controled both America and Britian, Cold War tensions were hitting a new high, social intolerance was on the rise.  It is important to note that the traditional left and liberalism failed in his period. It helped create the conditions for the rise of Thatcher/Reagan and failed to stop them. For Moore and those like him it was not a heroic time – for the left or the right.

So Moore writes a work where all of the heroes are failures or – worse – sucesses that leave destruction in their wake. If you look at the heroes of  Watchmen from a certain place you can see them as standins for political and social ideologies of the mid-1980s.

Rorschach is the easiest to identify: he’s the right-wing crime obsessed nut who sees things completely in black and white and reviews any social change from the days of Leave it to Beaver as an abomination. And as much as Rorschach is “pure” in his moral vision he’s just a fucked as what he seeks to fight. The Comedian is also easy to pigeon hole as a stand in fascist militarism – violent, nihilistic, and misogynistic. It is interesting that Rorschach’s and the Comedian’s relations with women are a parody of the rights traditional attitudes towards women: for Rorschach women are either whores or Deborah Reed; for the Comedian women are as after thoughts and objects for release of his frustrations.

Good old Ozymandias is a parody of an extreme meritocratic technocrat – who’s so smart that he knows what’s good for everyone. Only someone as smart has he can see the “real” big picture and make the “right” choices for the human race – no matter the cost. Of course, as brilliant as Ozy is, he’s intelligence is still human – and deeply flawed. Doctor Manhattan is science as an ideology – obsessed with the broader scope of the universe and able to see beyond human foibles but at the loss of being able to understand or see the majesties of humanity.

The Nite Owls stand in for liberalism. Nite Owl I is the liberalism of the 1940s and 1950s – well meaning but oblvious. Unable to see beyond itself and its times (racism bad, but homophobia ok!). Nite Owl II is a bit better – less oblvious but more impotent to do anything about the problems he sees. The Silk Spectres stand in for feminism. The elder Spectre attempts to use her sexuality for empowerment but ends up just used and abused. The younger is a sexually liberated woman who still ends up defined by her relationship to men (her father and her lovers).

Viewing things this way shows that Moore is arguing that all ideologies are deeply flawed – even the ones he’s sympathetic to – the liberal and the feminist end up fucking as the world burns. The politics of Watchmen are negative – Moore doesn’t have a positive ideology here beyond a deep humanism. He is warning us that the ideologies embodied by the heroes of Watchmen are useless to humanity – they are either twisted, destructive, or useless.

The fundamental message of the politics of Watchmen is – I think – that if we stopped this ideological struggle and focus on our relationship to our fellow human beings the world would be a much better place.

“Jon can give you cancer, then turn into a car!”

Can’t believe I’m saying this about something on Newgrounds, but this Watchmen Saturday morning cartoon theme song is effin’ hilarious.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797

The gift that keeps on giving…

Before we get serious and shit by totally beginning our discussion seminar on Watchmen, I thought I’d provide us all with some amusement.

I present two reviews. The first is by Debbie Schlussel who has the following credentials:

Schlussel’s unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism and a host of other issues make her a popular speaker and television and radio news talk show guest, both nationally & internationally. (Her online fan club is the Internet’s second largest for a political personality–behind only Ann Coulter.) She is a University of Michigan graduate and holds both Law and MBA degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

…

In 1998, Schlussel went undercover, dressed as a religious Muslim woman, to the Islamic Center of America, North America’s largest mosque, and reported, in The Detroit News on its support for terrorism, and anti-American, anti-Semitic hate. She was interviewed and quoted by Rolling Stone about the mosque and its radical imam, Hassan Qazwini, who is frequently consulted by President Bush and was invited to his Crawford, Texas ranch. Qazwini was embarrassed by the radical speakers and anti-Semitic hate he fostered in his mosque, and refused to address it in newspaper interviews. Schlussel was even attacked for her work on terrorism by movie critic Roger Ebert in a 2005 syndicated movie review.

…

Attacked as “Enemy #1″ by Ms. Magazine (“Women to Watch . . . and Watch Out For,” February/March 2001), Schlussel is a frequent guest on ABC’s “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” CBS’ “Early Show,” FOX News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity & Colmes,” “FOX News Live,” “Beyond the News,” and “Judith Regan Tonight,” Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” “Buchanan & Press,” “The Abrams Report with Dan Abrams,” “Scarborough Country,” and “MSNBC Live,” CNN’s “Crossfire,” “Talk Back Live” and “Weekend Wrap,” C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” FOX Sports Net’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” and the Nationally Syndicated “America’s Black Forum” (hosted by NFL on FOX’s James Brown).

Her review of Watchmen is as follows:

If you take your kids to see “Watchmen,” you’re a moron.

If you see it yourself, you’re also probably a moron and a vapid, indecent human being. The movie arrives in theaters at Midnight, Thursday Night. It’s rated “R”–which should kinda sorta be a hint–but it really deserves an “NC-17,” at the very least. And plenty of clueless parents brought their young kids and kept them there for the entire almost three hour “experience” at the screening I attended.

Yes, I know, it’s being heavily marketed as a superhero movie, with action figures for your kids. But that–and the heroic-looking movie trailer–are a big, fat lie. And that’s where real parenting comes in . . . like actually investigating the movie before you take or send your kids to see this garbage.

In fact, as a movie critic who sees most new releases, I haven’t seen a more violent, depraved movie in years (not to mention a longer, more boring movie with a more preposterous and silly plot). This movie makes the graphic bloodshed of the recently released “Friday the 13th” look like “Cinderella.”

This really isn’t a superhero movie at all. In fact, there was little “superheroing” until after the second hour of this nearly three-hour exercise on defining deviancy down. Some on the right are claiming this is a conservative movie because it’s made by some of the same people as “300” (read my review). But this is no “300.” (And that wasn’t for kids either, but this is far much less so.) A few lines of dialogue by the character “Rorschach” deriding “liberals and intellectuals” doesn’t excuse the nearly three hours of poison here. In fact, the movie kind of has a peacenik-themed ending and “message” regarding nuclear weapons. If this move is “conservative,” who the heck needs liberal?

There were so many disgusting, violent, morbid, grisly scenes and acts of killing, I had to start writing them down, lest I forget. And that’s in addition to the rape scene between superheroes (complete with violent beating of a female superhero) and an explicit sex scene between two other superheroes. Oh, and don’t forget another superhero’s swinging computer-generated penis frequently in your face on-screen.

In just the opening credits of this mindless celluloid claptrap, there’s a lesbian take-off on the famous photo of a woman kissing a sailor in Manhattan who is returning victorious from World War II. The lesbian make-out scene, featuring a “superhero,” is bad enough. But then, we see cops looking over their naked, bloodied, dead bodies on a bed, with the words “LESBIAN WHORES,” written in blood on the wall.

Mommy, mommy, what’s a lesbian? What’s a whore? And remember, this is just the opening credits.

The “plot” of this movie–if you can call it a plot–is that there were costumed superheroes in the ’40s and beyond. They grew old, but some of them didn’t. Then a new crop of costumed superheroes with special powers cropped up, some of whom were related to the older ones and some who still remained from the older group. But they all retired. Now, a superhero known as “The Comedian”–who is also a rapist and shot a Vietnamese woman who was pregnant with his kid (all of which we see depicted on-screen)–is murdered, and some of the superheroes, the “Watchmen,” get back together to find out who did it.

The second “review” (it is less a review and more of a preview/ramble – but I paint with a broad brush) is by famed comics writer Bill Willingham (Fables) over at Big Hollywood:

The character Rorschach will enter the greater public consciousness as an icon of the left’s view of extreme right wingers — which, of course, includes all conservatives.

And from his comments:

screened it last night. If it definitely a super hero movie. The fight scenes are awesome. The special effects are awesome. You can tell when it was written. Gives you that cold war feel that nuclear conflict was inevitable.

I love Rorschach was amazing. There was only one moment (i was counting) that bashed the Right when one of the Watchmen is talking about ‘free energy’ and Lee Iacocca said ‘free . . . sounds like socialism.’ that ticked me off. Plus the concept of renewable energy leading to all the worlds trouble. That was a bit heavy handed.

And at the very very end they bash Bush. I feel they bash the Leftist view that control is the way to peace. That was supposed to be the message in V for Vendetta. I would say the movie is the most politically balanced of any ‘political’ film. The end is actually very open and will leave you thinking about what you would’ve done.

A must see. Aside from everything, it’s an enjoyable, well structured movie. And Rorschach is this Conservatives hero.

And:

there is something new here. for the first time in memory, the cool menacing character that the sullen adolescents will identify with is a right winger. can rorschach imagery possibly cut into che t-shiirt sales?

And:

I agree wit Bill about everything, except the last one. I think Rorschach will do in the general population exactly what he did in the comics community. He’ll seem to be disturbed at first, but actually come away unintentionally by the creators, as the hero of the piece. Seeing how Alan Moore is a self-proclaimed servant of the dark arts I have no doubt that he intended the villain of the piece, Ozymandias, to be the hero. But darn it! things just got out of his control. For some reason, the unwashed masses, still admire people that say “it’s not ok to kill millions of people just cause” And believe me, in our post-9/1 world “just cause” is exactly how Ozymandias’s plot will read. We all know that any peace will be temporary at best. Rorschach will emerge as the hero of the film , as he did the hero of the comic, and will perhaps be embraced by conservatives. Keep in mind that for all his lack of personal hygiene, Rorschach is right about everything. There is a conspiracy, there is a mask killer, and there is something terrible about to happen. The only thing he missed was where to look.

I will add one prediction of my own. One or more idiot 9/11 self-proclaimed “truthers” will take Watchmen as evidence that 9/11 was caused by the Bush administration.

Personally, I am incredibly excited to see the movie tomorrow and begin discussing it and the masterwork that spawned it.

(very much via)

Hurm…

Okay, time to kick off the Watchmen seminar.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen prominently features two newspapers on opposite sides of the political spectrum, conservative The New Frontiersman and liberal Nova Express. Think of these as mid-’80s print versions of the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post, respectively. Even as the end of the world bears down on them, these two publications often seem more interested taking potshots at each other than worrying about the impending nuclear crisis.

Here is where things start to go differently than you might expect, in ways I didn’t really notice (or maybe just didn’t care about) when I read this back in high school. It’s the Nova Express that breaks the sensational (and probably untrue) story that Dr. Manhattan is responsible for the cancer that killed his friend and co-worker, Wally Weaver, and is slowly killing ex-girlfriend Janey Slater and ex-nemesis Moloch. Dr. Manhattan, ashamed, exiles himself. Then the Soviets invade Afghanistan, and the U.S. interprets it as a threat now that it lacks its superman. In a nutshell, the liberal leaning paper is the catalyst for disaster.

The New Frontiersman, meanwhile, lauds the heroes for defending traditional values while blasting the government for tying their hands. Some of Moore’s political thoughts are somewhat dated, but this observation is one of the most timeless. Despite the fact that Moore’s fictional 1985 has unchecked, aggressive conservative leadership in the form of a four-term Nixon, the conservative paper still has the stones to publish stories that make it seem like the liberal government is out to screw the hard-working, freedom-loving Republican. If the last election taught us anything, it’s that this rhetoric refuses to die.

If not handled carefully, this is only going to get worse after this story is filmed. Watchmen’s final scene shows a zit-faced copy editor at The New Frontiersman reaching for Rorshach’s journal, chock-full of dangerous knowledge. I guarantee you this scene will be cited ad nauseam by giddy conservative minds, who will at last have a big budget representation of the conservative renegades taking on the big bad left-wing conspiracy. (It certainly makes a lot more sense than this.)

Over the next few weeks, there will undoubtedly be an inflation of blogs viewing Watchmen, book and film (though unfortunately, I’m sure mostly film) through a politically biased lens. The majority of these exercises, I think, will miss the point. I’m wary of trying to find deliberate political bias for two reasons. First, if the film really is as faithful an adaptation as Zack Snyder claims it is, than any way it deviates from the political conceits of the book are most likely a failure on Snyder’s part. (For the record, I apologize for how snobby that previous sentence sounds.) Let me put it another way. Snyder isn’t Kubrick. His adaptations aren’t going to twist the source material into a completely different animal. My guess going in is that any new themes that might crop up in the movie will be unintended (still haven’t seen the movie, so I might be way off the mark here).

The second reason comes from the content of the book itself. It’s easy to say that the book is conservative, since Adrian Veidt and the Nova Express are liberal, and respectively do so much deliberate and accidental damage. It’s just as easy to argue that the book is liberal, since it’s the warmongering conservative leadership in both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that escalate the war situation. Both points are true, but to accept either conclusion requires the reader to ignore the other one.

Appropriate to the Cold War, Watchmen props up lots of these opposing ideologies: The U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the Nova Express and The New Frontiersman, and personified in Rorschach and Ozymandias (even before the ending, one staying the vigilante and the other becoming the ultimate sell-out). But throwing around terms like “conservative” and “liberal” loses sight of how extreme, fascist even, the perspectives of these characters are. Rorschach conveys complete devotion to the idea of righteousness at the expense of personal humanity. Ozymandias, meanwhile, is complete devotion to the ends, at the expense of personal humanity. It doesn’t stop there. The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan could be seen as two different forms of supreme indifference, amorality/anarachy and a purely scientific/quantitative perspective. In all cases, these characters lose their ability to empathize with the human condition.

So this might be an odd note to start the debate on, but I submit that the only political conceit in Watchmen (the book at least, can’t speak on the film yet) is an intense mistrust of any extreme point of view. Devotion to ideologies, even supreme indifference, destroy humanity.

Who watches etc. etc…

I have been remiss in not posting this.

Next Friday we’ll be starting up our second discussion seminar which I think should run until the ides of March. The seminar will be on Watchmen (both the graphic novel and the movie). There’s a lot to talk about but (as per Tito) I’d like to focus on the politics and political themes of the work. I’m sure – considering 300 – that the Watchmen movie may have a very different political tone than Moore’s graphic novel.

Again, all Blurred Productions contributors are invited to particpate and we’d welcome any other bloggers to as well. Just comment here and we’ll link over to you.

Anyway, getting back to our seminar…

I had what I think to be a pretty good idea for our next discussion seminar.

I was re-reading Watchmen the other day — for the first time since high school, I think — in anticipation of the upcoming I-refuse-to-get-excited-until-I-see-if-its-any-good film. Like any good book, I noticed things that I had never really paid attention to before, specifically the rivalry between The New Frontiersman, to the right, and Nova Express, to the left.

So I suggest a discussion of politics and the press in Watchmen,  which, in Moore’s fictional 1985, hadn’t yet witnessed the serious jump in opinion-entertainment-news we have today with the birth of the 24-hour news network or the blog. Possible sub-questions: Why is it the left-leaning Nova Express that drives Dr. Manhattan into exile? Why set the final scene in the offices of The New Frontiersman? The right-leaning publication tends to support the masked vigilantes more, is Moore saying that is something intrinsically right-wing about the concept of the superhero? Depending on how much mileage we can get out of this, maybe we segue into a discussion about what the film gets right and wrong, since, apprehensions aside, I’m sure we’re all going to see it anyway.

What do you think?

Keeeping of the house…

So. Anybody got any good ideas as to what our next Discussion Seminar should be about?

Snub

I don’t really want to get into a big thing here, because (a) the rest of the Internet is undoubtedly covering this pretty thoroughly;  (b) I haven’t seen Milk, Frost/Nixon, or The Reader, so I can’t comment on their quality; and (c) I don’t want to give too much weight to a meaningless award show. Nevertheless, the Oscars are the only major award event that anyone seems to even notice enough, say, to have an office pool on the winners.

So with that in mind, how does the second-highest grossing film of all time, almost universally praised by critics (82 on Metacritic, 94 on Rotten Tomatoes), get only one mandatory nomination and a handful of technical ones? The Dark Knight wasn’t a great movie because it had fantastic sound editing. And don’t say because it was a summer blockbuster, because Gladiator was one too. It seems to me a pretty blatant bias against comic adaptations.

This is to say nothing of Wall-E and the bias against animation.

But I shouldn’t care. No one should. It’s just in our nature to complain about things, even if it’s only Hollywood’s annual self-congratulatory ball.