Posts tagged as:

Alan Moore

Watchmen: Getting Started

by Dave the Longwinded on February 24, 2009

Preliminaries (Updated)

Update:  Here’s another link that appeared online:  IGN’s “Top Ten Most Memorable Moments from Watchmen“.

First, here are a couple of links to online “annotated” versions of Watchmen (the book):

  • Watching the Detectives:  The site bills itself as “an internet companion” to the book; it’s akin to a Wiki, although the layout is different from anything like Wikipedia.  It’s provenance is excellent.  Maintained through the University of Baltimore’s School of Information Arts and Technologies, one of its founders is Stuart Moulthrop.  He’s a noted and very well respected media artist/theorist, especially in my world of games studies.
  • The Annotated Watchmen:  If Watching the Detectives leans toward the academic side, this site is geared toward the lay-reader (and the parent site suggests exactly this!).  It’s a bit easier to navigate, though perhaps not as detailed.  Pay special attention to the “Characters” and “World of Watchmen” links on the left-hand side — the better parts of the site, in my opinion.  Like any good postmodern fiction, Watchmen plays heavily with historical events, mixing the accepted historical record with alternate histories and plain fiction.  Catching on to the idea that Richard Nixon is still president in 1985 can be a bit disorienting…

Also, the February 27th issue of Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on the film.  It’s not much, really — only a few pages.  But it’s a quick primer to some of the news and details that surround Watchmen and the film adaptation.

And…they did rip my title from my last post for their article!  Or maybe “Who will Watch Watchmen?” is a little too obvious!? [click to continue…]

  • Share/Bookmark

{ 7 comments }

Why Joker Succeeds and Voldemort Fails (Part I)

by Dave the Longwinded on July 17, 2008

by Dave

Since Deathly Hallows release last year, I’ve been perpetually puzzled by Voldemort’s characterization in the last two novels. Half Blood Prince humanizes Voldemort in a way that lends HBP a sophistication most of the earlier novels lack — Voldemort’s backstory both enlightens and befuddles the reader, at once shedding light on his origins and potential reasons for Voldemort’s tenor, yet never oversimplifying and reducing Voldemort to simply a pathology. The book sometimes drifts toward the possibility that Voldemort is unaware of and incapable of changing his decisions. Yet, HBP pulls back from that precipice and instead offers only Voldemort’s refusal to care about such a possibility.

Deathly Hallows, on the other hand, turns Voldemort into a cartoon character — more malevolent due to the incompetence of the supposed authorities (the Ministry of Magic) than any great skill of Voldemort’s or his minions. Within two books, Rowling constructs him as a marriage of complex humanity and psychology, only to immediately open the door to reveal nothing more than a tormented psyche shacking up with a massive egotism.

This all begs a question to me: Is Voldemort a flawed character? I’m not asking if he is a flawed character in the sense that Rowling simply made him a bit inconsistent. Deathly Hallows reconcentrates the reader’s attention on the conflict between Harry and Voldemort, whereas previous books had built Snape as the more compelling of Harry’s antagonists. Yet, in DH Voldemort and Snape essentially switch narrative positions. Snape’s everpresent station in Harry’s life is removed. He fades into the shadowy murk occupied by Voldemort for six books, while Voldemort emerges into the consciousness of both the reader and the characters. Essentially, Rowling had built Voldemort’s great power upon a scaffold of shadows and deception. Once she brings him fully into the light, we’re struck with his arrogance and stupidity — the Death Eaters begin to look more like the Keystone Cops. [click to continue…]

  • Share/Bookmark

{ 41 comments }