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Inna Final Analysis: Why Watchmen Doesn't Quite Work (and Why It Does)
San Francisco, 10:34 AM
Thu Dec 3
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03/16/09
I would also label him postmodern specifically because of his approach-- it, unlike the philosophical technique of contemporary analytics, relies not on rigorous definition or analysis, but on decentering familiar concepts by looking at them from different perspectives, on rather vague insights, on forcible yoking of heterogenous ideas together to produce interesting, but often poorly defined notions.
So that's my two cents.
03/16/09
He calls television cool (keep in mind that he's talking about television of the '60s, where the picture really was considerably lower-res than it is today; it would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on HDTVs) not just because the picture is fuzzier, but because the viewing process is more involved: You're providing an enormous amount of context, whether you realize it or not, every time you flip the switch on, just knowing what, for example, newscasters are talking about. Moreover, because of what you're providing, it makes for a different experience -- consider that one does not, generally, leave a movie playing in the background while one does other things around the house; but people leave the TV on all the time. It feels like having company, and it's obviously not because the people on TV are any different from the people in a movie; it's because you bring something different, mentally, to the process. You can listen to TV without really watching, or have a conversation while it's on, which are both much harder to do with a movie. And then there's channel-flipping.
You're right about the terms being less than rigorously defined (he copped to as much, frequently). All I can say is that having read him for about a decade now, I feel like the study has paid off -- I get what he's saying, and what he's saying jibes with what I see in the world around me. You're right about the decentering, too, but that's built into his work: He'd say about contemporary analytics, I think, that it's the clear result of a typography-based mind-set -- you want to line everything up precisely, put everything in its right place. (Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the CA, and please correct me.) And while he was a huge fan of that mind-set, he'd note that what seems like clear, linear logic and common sense to you doesn't necessarily obtain in the rest of the world. It's not relativism -- it's just that there are differences we're usually not conscious of in how people in different cultures' brains work. (McLuhan could have told you not just six but ten or twenty years ago that "bringing" democracy to Iraq wouldn't work, for example.) And the only way to make those clear is to shake the brain up a little.
03/16/09
And all that context you say is at play in television viewing was certainly present when you watched the Watchmen movie. You in fact addressed you inability to view the movie without the context of the comic book. There's the context of American history-- the line about how America would have changed if we'd lost Vietnam is dependent on the context that we did lose Vietnam. The soundtrack brings in a lot of context as well, bringing a sense of nostalgia that would be impossible if we weren't already familiar with all the songs Snyder chose to use.
CA is enamored of precision in terms of defining their vocabulary and concepts. But not only are CA very aware that their notion of common sense doesn't line up with the rest of the world, but they're aware that their methods aren't effective outside of math and science. They don't venture into ethics or politics, and they would never have said anything about bringing democracy to Iraq-- Chomsky holds to a lot of CA ideas and methods and he certainly never said so. And his political opinions are in an entirely different space than his scientific investigations into language.
CA philosophers have held entirely opposing views, many of which McLuhan would agree with. Wittgenstein, for instance, came to the conclusion that most philosophical debates have continued without resolution for years because they were basically cognitive misfires. CA philosophers are also hyper-aware of theory-ladenness, which is basically a way of saying that if theory informs your experiments of analysis, your methods of experiments and analysis are probably not going to be as objective as is ideal. For instance, it was Karl Popper who said no scientific theory can ever be regarded as proven, but only as not yet disproven. And it was the Duhem-Quine thesis that said the method of disproving theories relies on a presumption of proven facts, so that theories that have been disproven might yet hold scientific weight if the proven facts underlying their infirmation turn out not to be true.
So, basically, although CA philosophers value rigor and precision in their methods, they are quite aware of the flaws in their thinking. And things are not lined up and in their place-- the end result of the CA mathematical philosophers was that there's an infinity of mathematical systems whose axioms don't rely on tautology-- that is, an infinity of mathematical systems with contradictory truths within themselves. They just haven't given up on the pursuit of a certain kind of truth and a resolution to the great philosophical debates. Unless you're a Wittgensteinian. Which I am. The main thing I see with postmodernists/continentalists/whatever McLuhan is, is they've given up on any sort of consensus or proof or truth, and just play around with the language and destructuring to get meaning, but meaning that isn't pinned down. Which is fun, I guess. But CA meaning is no more pinned down; every term used is also subject to debate, its just a debate where everyone is on the same page and knows how each philosopher has used each term, and are speaking to other people who are also familiar with the history.
Does this exclude a lot of people? Yes. But this kind of philosophy was never regarded as anything other than a study and discourse by particular kinds of experts. On the other hand, the pomo/continental/whatever philosopers don't seem to admit that their discourse excludes as many people as the CA philos do. There's plenty of Americans that couldn't read that stuff, much less a person from a different culture. As much decentering and playing and infirming as goes on their, it's still highly Westernized decentering and playing and infirming.
03/16/09
As far as going to the theater, etc., goes, I'm pretty sure McLuhan would point out that those things are actually part of the medium. The phrase "the medium is the message," after all, refers not just to the fundamental technology itself, but to how that technology's effect on our behavior.
And I guess part of the reason I don't see McLuhan as what comes to mind when I hear "postmodernist" is that he was trying to get at some answers that could be pinned down. His book Laws of Media reflects an attempt to do exactly that, in fact. Too, while he was obviously writing for a Western, English-speaking audience (which I think is fair, since he was an English-speaking Westerner), his material reflects a total awareness of that bias. I mean, you could make a strong case that that's ultimately the theme of Understanding Media.
03/17/09
However, I was thinking about this whole cultural incommensurability thing, and realized: science and math are actually really fantastic at transcending cultural bounds. Anyone, no matter their language or culture or whatever, is capable of being on the same page with math and science-- go to MIT and you'll see an international smorgasbord. And yet the mentality seems to be that typographical mindset of lining things up and having them precisely just so-- practicing scientists and mathemeticians are very resistant to things like Godel's theorem being of any practical importance. Just funny how that works out.
03/15/09
And didn't McLuhan label television cool? By what logic (I know the logic, but I disagree with it)? Fuck that guy and his pomo cohorts. Contemporary Analytics and common sense all the way.
03/15/09
Anyway, I can see how the diary works for other people. As someone mentioned above, it is a noir-film conceit. I guess I just found it jarring used in conjunction with all the other styles going on in the movie, whereas in the comic, it felt seamless blended in.
03/15/09
Dude, it's only a movie. Lighten the F' up.
1973: I am five years old playing "Batman vs Star Trek" with my sister and our friends. I am always Alfred.
1983: My father waxes nostalgic about the comic books he read as a child: Blackhawks, Captain America, The Flash...I roll my eyes and head for my room to finish off a roach and read Anarchy Comix and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Super-heros are sooo lame.
Tuesday: At the theater a fat man has bought the last box of Milk Duds. My friend is hella pissed. I think she's gonna clock him.
Sunday: I should really stop reading posts about this movie as I still haven't seen it. Dang, this Josh guy writes well. Pretty much jibes with my expectations.
September 1986: I am a student at SVA sitting in a dorm studio crowded with fellow Cartooning majors reading the latest issue of Watchmen. We realize the comic book field and the intrinsic nature of the super-hero trope is being changed forever.
This book...the book is taking me to pieces.
Tuesday: I am seeing the Watchmen film for the very first time. Totally psyched but realistic. I want very much for a beautiful woman to hand me a glass of very cold beer.
March 2008: io9 is posting the first photos of characters from the long awaited Watchmen. This is sooo cool looking. What's with the nipples on Ozymandias' suit?
03/15/09
I think the nipples are because it's so cold in Antarctica.
03/15/09
Pardon me, I'm informing your Mom ninety seconds ago that I'll no longer be wearing the whole of my costume.
03/15/09
To all other io9ers, I'm not implying that you are deluded. But I just came here from reading comment streams on wired.com. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.
03/15/09
Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?
03/15/09
I am glad you wrote this to say why it did and didn't work. Most of the time reviewers just go full tilt black and white in these sorts of things, so thanks.
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[mark2000.com]
I think the movie ending is far weaker than the book's, and not just because giant squids are cool.
03/15/09
Nixon even states, and I quote (may not be 100% exact): "We are untied in facing a common enemy". That common enemy being Dr. Manhattan.
The end result was, in all honesty, the same.
Though I would liked to have seen the giant squid...
03/16/09
No, the end result does have a few major differences:
1. Dr. Manhatten is a proven entity. You can't disprove him with all the science in the world, where the giant squid was a complete fabrication and modern science would have a field day with it (particularly genome sequencers).
2. Rorshach didn't need to die. Being that Dr.M is _real_, revealing Ozy's scheme doesn't dispel the potential threat that Dr.M represents. All he'd have to do is agree to pose that threat for real (or at least claim to, even if it was a lie), and you could have the entire group hold a world-wide press conference without screwing up anything. In fact, it would even allow Ozy to be brought to justice while still allowing his plan to succeed. Rorshach only had to die because the squid any power to shape the future the instant it gets revealed as a fraud.
So, one aspect of it works better, but another one kinda falls flat.
03/15/09
is this a pet name for the stuffed turtle you've carried with you everywhere since you were 5?
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Watchmen was so obsessed with "getting it right" it seemed to forget the heart of the story. The fragility of humanity, the weakness of "heroes", the broken nature of the psyche of someone who would put on a mask. It gets lost.
I don't think Zach Snyder is a very good director. Too much noise, not enough signal. And Watchmen is such a blast of pure signal. Pink, info-rich, laser beam signal, that muddling it with his Snyder's "vision" just fails.
It's a curiosity. But Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore are making quite a bit of bank on the book sales, so bully for them.
03/16/09
Are they? I understood that the way the Watchmen contract played out is the specific reason that Moore won't talk to DC anymore, being that they agreed to let the IP fall back to the creators once they let it go a year without being published...and then proceeded to make sure that they kept it in publication every year since then. I don't know the specifics of the contract, obviously, I could see the pre-reversion bit of it being set up as either work-for-hire (where they'd get a one-time paycheck until such time as the IP reverted back to them) or as a royalty-based contract where they'd get paid for every copy that sold.
03/15/09
Aside from some casting missteps (Malin Akerman = CW reject, and Matthew Goode may be an okay actor, but he played Ozymandias wrong), my major complaint with the movie has nothing to do with the adaption debate, nor the "can Moore's comic work as a movie?", which IMHO is a dumb question-- IT DID work as a movie, albeit a different movie than the one we had in our own heads for twenty years.
No, my problem with the movie is that it's a cliche of everything that ripped off Moore's book. In 2009, we're used to complex superhero stories, "dark" stories, etc., etc. What was revolutionary in the 1980s is now routine. After all, anyone who watched the first season of "Heroes", or Nolan's Batman films, or even the X-Men movies has seen "Watchmen"-- they just saw a diluted-down version of it.
Thus, what should have been incredibly original up on the screen felt like a retread, through fault of the source material's own success.
I will say this-- Snyder's choices changed the story, not necessarily in a bad way, but it's a different story now than what Moore was after. I think Snyder made the right choices, for as alphanumeric1971 mentions, the threat of nuclear war and the big bad 1980s isn't quite around anymore (well, not in the Cold War sense anymore, of course).
I think it suffered a bit as a film, but given the stylistic choices by Snyder, it becomes a different story than the book. Not necessarily a bad story-- just different.
Snyder's movie is violent not just because Snyder likes his violence, nor just because violence is cool, but BECAUSE violence is cool. It's exciting, enticing, enrapturing. It's why the Minutemen got together, it's why the Watchmen exist. Violence-- whether in the hands of the State or the fists of masked heroes-- is empowering to those frustrated by the world around them.
Hell, it's Rorscach, in a nutshell. How much more satisfying to be a vigilante and kill the bad guys then deal with a justice system, no?
With the exception of Dr. Manhattan, all of the "heroes" in Snyder's movie are violence addicts. Nothing separates the Comedian and Night Owl/Silk Spectre but degree. The latter two aren't even able to get turned on without beating the crap out of people. They have to put their masks on in order to take their clothes off.
When we get to the end of the film, we're all asked to condemn Ozymandias's mad plan. That's what the gut says to do. But again, it's all a matter of degree-- if a little bloody awful violence is necessary to protect society, what's wrong with a LOT of bloody awful violence?
Yet, Snyder goes a different route than Moore did. Unlike Moore, who showed all the blood and destruction of squid-crushed New York City, Snyder chooses that moment to be THE ONLY moment where we don't see the blood and gore. Why would he do that? Because we all know fistfights and gunshots are bloody and fun-- but yet, when it comes to things like war and destruction, we tend to sanitize it, look away, avoid realizing that it leaves just as much blood and death as Rorschach's cleaver.
In Moore's book, Ozymandias collapses in regret at the end, weighed down by the knowledge that even if he did the right thing, his means were so awful that he has to live with them for the rest of his days. In the movie, that regret is scaled back to the point that if you don't look for it, you'll miss it. Which is perfect-- after all, one death is a tragedy, millions are a statistic.
The only people who grasp the enormity of what's been done are the Watchmen present-- and none of them notice how hypocritical it is to judge Ozymandias for his actions. All he did was scale up what they do every night-- choose who lives and dies according to *his* sense of justice, and not society's.
And good things come from bad things, no? Even Silk Spectre didn't show up until the Comedian raped her mother. What's the difference between that and Ozymandias's plan, other than degree?
As for Dr. Manhattan, well, he's beyond such things. He's beyond EVERYTHING-- issues of morality are kind of irrelevant to him, as irrelevant to him as they are to the rocks on the surface of Mars.
I dunno about the criticism. Snyder was perhaps too faithful in parts, but I think where he diverged from Moore's book, he didn't botch it all up like some folks think-- the story is subtly different now. Less about Moore's conceit about "looking for imperfect heroes to save us," and instead more about how we fetishize violence and vigilantism to begin with. It's less a political commentary now and more of a cultural one-- if you're in the audience cheering on Night Owl & Silk Spectre II for breaking bones, then the movie is laughing at you.
I liked it. Not great, but better (and more interesting) than a lot of folks are giving it credit for.
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Very good point about the hypocrisy. The indignation of Dan, Laurie, and Rorschach and the ultimate compliance of the first two is the final sick joke.
03/16/09
I have to call you out on two errors. One is that SS2 was not the product of rape. The rape scene is, in the legal sense, only an attempted rape. It was probably enough for a conviction, but Hooded Justice showed up before Comedian could get either of their pants off, much less actually go all the way.
The other one is that it was very obvious that Ozy was torn up about his actions. Before the device went off, anytime someone tried to lay a hand on him, he'd dodge every blow and throw them into various bits of his marble decor. Once NYC was hit, he just stood there while Nite-Owl started to beat the snot out of him.
However, I would note that the hypocrisy of that scene is more telling in the movie, where SS2 and NO2 both learly killed some of the thugs who were attacking them in the alley.
03/15/09
Alan Moore's work has always been a bit hyperbolic. The basic underlying premise of Watchmen is that mans nature is to destroy itself.
In "V for Vendetta" Moore saw the election of Margaret Thatcher as a sign of the apocalypse.
(although one could argue that she did lay the foundation for Britans current surveilance mania.)
But here we are. We as a species managed to survive all on our own without the evil machinations of the worlds smartest man.
A truly timeless story must be able to withstand the passage of time. And watchmen doesn't. The ideas in storytelling and the turning upsidedown of the superhero mythos was smartly and intelligently done, But the overall story just doesn't hold up.
03/15/09
I mean, I think Dr. Strangelove still holds up, too.
03/15/09
And I think, like, Dr. Strangelove still holds up pretty well.
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Is 2001: A Space Odyssey made of totel Fale because we still don't have AIs and commercial space flight? Pan Am and Ma Bell? Kubrick, you loser!
I realize that I am extending the esteemed alphanumeric1971's argument to the point of absurdity. Hey, it's what I do.
03/16/09
Eddlestein, I believe, made the point that the ending of Watchmen is both excessively nihilistic and hopelessly naive. Yes, the world on the brink of nuclear war is old hat. We got past that. The end didn't happen.
However, the end presupposes that, under external threat, we could join hands and find unity. 9/11 proves that, in a similar situation, when the world was as close to being unified under a singular purpose as its ever been of recent vintage, petty advantage seeking and limited vision means that nothing really changes.
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