Who will watch Watchmen?

I had intentions of posting material on Watchmen in the coming weeks, with the movie’s coming release.  But, Red Rocker brought the subject up in the comments section of a post, so I thought I’d give everyone some material to mull over, now.

Watchmen is a radical departure from much of the material we’ve examined here at The Hog’s Head.  Make no mistake:  in no way does it put forth a heroic tale in which a virtuous protagonist overcomes all odds to defeat evil.  It is dark, and in many ways quite depressing.  But, I’ll try a preemptive strike so that some don’t dismiss it out of hand.

Don’t worry!  I won’t give away spoilers if you haven’t read the book, or know little about it.

The primary story begins in 1985 with murder of one of the main characters, The Comedian (the guy kneeling in the image), and then becomes something of a postmodern murder-mystery.  The book veers through all kinds of typical comic book territory, but only for the purposes of turning every cliched story convention it can think of on its head.  To break out some postmodernist/poststructuralist terminology, the novel is the quintessential example of a “deconstructive text.”

Without boring everyone to death, I’ll give a brief idea of what exactly “deconstruction” means (in general) to me and many of my fellow academians.  I’m working from the premise that most of us have never read Jacques Derrida, and have no real desire to.  I wouldn’t blame you.  But, to the term:  it’s not enough to say that deconstruction is about simply tearing something apart.  That same phrase is used to describe analysis, that you “tear something apart” for the purposes of seeing how the parts work.  Deconstruction certainly has the notion of “coming apart” wrapped into it, but with a different bent and purpose.  Instead, deconstruction is largely about looking for ways in which stories and ideas contradict themselves.  The story “tears itself apart” because it says one thing, but does something else — even if only unintentionally.

The postmodern dismissal of many grand narratives (Travis and John Granger sometimes use the term “metanarrative”) is not (always) a purely ideological one.  Instead, it is often born from the suspicion that such grand narratives report to be complete, when in fact they are not.  From Harry Potter, the perfect example of this is the debate about house elves and their place(s) in the magical world.  I won’t go into detail; Travis has already covered the discussion in fantastic breadth.  But, HP offers up a critique of socio-political hierarchies by exploring the theme through the house-elves (and other magical creatures) along with their relationships to wizarding folk.  Even Fantastic Beasts offers some hints concerning how social divisions are justified in the WW.

One deconstructionist reading of HP would pursue the house-elves and their various instances of fantastic magic as a narrative that runs counter to the accepted wizarding narrative that human wizards are somehow superior (see Travis’s post “The Fountain Told a Lie”).  In other words, HP “deconstructs” the popular wizard belief that they are superior to non-human creatures.  Ron’s language and behavior toward Kreacher and Dobby would be examples of how those beliefs are naturalized in even the most tolerant of wizarding families.  How his language and behavior evolve over time would become a huge concern in this case.

But, a further deconstruction could attack Rowling’s text itself, especially <i>Deathly Hallows</i>.  Indeed, the novel’s own language betrays some of the same naturalized assumptions about elves readers find so loathesome early in Ron’s character.  The final fight when the elves come crashing into The Great Hall is written in language that constantly emphasizes the elves diminutive stature, and portrays them in cartoonish imagery.  It stands in stark contrast to the very serious language used to write Harry’s grief for and burial of Dobby.  Any empathy built at Dobby’s grave for the reader might be torn asunder while they laugh at the hilarity of house-elves scrambling about with kitchen utensils as weapons.  Thus, the books’ devices sometimes work against their themes, prohibiting the reader from understanding the entirety of the texts as one, coherent storyline.

Now, before anyone argues “But I see that imagery a different way…”, keep in mind that a deconstructionist would be perfectly fine with that.  In fact, they would take your reading as a further comment on the inability of narratives, and especially language, to adequately create such a coherence.

To take it a step even further, a deconstructionist would find the idea of a unified story to be somewhat ridiculous with HP, given that the text is no longer only the book, but all these other media enterprises, as well.

What does all this mean for Watchmen?  The book is taken as the most thorough and devastating critique of hero narratives ever devised in comics (and I would argue, it’s one of the more complete critiques of such in all literature, graphic or otherwise).  Each character is an amalgamation of many common character types as they appear in pop culture.  Superman, Batman, Captain America, and many others are clearly sources for the group of vigilantes at the heart of the story, and none of them are safe.  Instead of being uncommonly good and motivated individuals who just happen to have a lot of resources at their disposal, each character ranges from the deeply narcissistic (Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan) to the pathologically violent and anti-social (Rorschach) to the self-pitying (Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl).  It’s as if Alan Moore woke up one day and asked, “What if superheroes really did represent a true crossection of people.  Some of them become sympathetic, but none of them become rallying points for people.

Ultimately, the book’s most famous tagline belies its most famous theme:  “Who watches the Watchmen?” In deconstructionist fashion, Moore is taking on the notion of a superhero and its role in a free, democratic society.  How can free people put so much faith into one personality and their “unfailing goodness”?  How can “independent” people find so appealing the need for one individual to cure all of society’s ills?  Aren’t these examples of free people wanting some kind of fascism?  Moore explores the idea that the superhero is, in fact, a concept deeply antithetical to free societies — a criticism that we’ve heard on this site and others about Harry.  Conversations about the believability of Harry’s character all revolve around this concept, whether or not he’s “too good” to be a legitimate site in which readers should invest their hope and ideals.

Many readers find such criticism dreary, downright negative, or even meaningless.  After all, if the belief is that stories inevitably contradict themselves, what’s the point of any of this?  Why write them?  Why read them?  To risk engendering another grand narrative, our cultures are built upon stories — some true, some false, and the veracity of other stories simply doesn’t matter.  But, societies often grow under the assumption that their stories are complete, or at least that they tell the most important parts of the story.  In its simplest roots, deconstruction (and postmodernism in general) are just skeptical stances that question those assumptions, and they question how/why societies tell themselves these stories to begin with.

In an interesting twist, many opponents criticize postmodernism as a kind of relativism that believes in nothing.  But, the postmodernist assumes, perhaps as much (or more) than nearly anyone else, that all stories mean something to someone.  We’re just generally unsure that the story does (much less, should) mean the same thing to someone else.  We’re also quite weary of the politics in stories that emphasize one person’s or group’s importance, especially if that story doesn’t acknowledge the fact that such is its aim.  And, because of the complexities of communication, especially in a world as networked, yet stratified, as ours, postmodernists believe it’s safe to assume that all stories have a political bent — even if the author didn’t intend that to be the case.

If you haven’t seen Watchmen’s first trailer, check it below.  Also, search “The Keene Act”, “Tales of the Black Freighter”, and “The New Frontiersman” at Youtube for other video related to the story.  They all revolve around subplots from the story, and it seems Watchmen’s producers are taking full advantage of the concept of “transmedia storytelling.”  The Web is now chocked full of nuggets that were probably trimmed from the film, but are finding some other form to become part of the Watchmen experience.

Tagged as: deconstruction, postmodernism, Watchmen