Watchmen is all bound up in the late stages of the Cold War, especially with the looming threat of nuclear war. But a weakness of Watchmen then might have been that it was a unipolar reflection of what was then a bipolar world. That is, the history of the Watchmen universe had made the Soviet Union completely impotent as an economic or ideological threat.
But, strangely enough, the story's power dynamics match the war on terror fairly closely. Not that it's an allegory.
(I'm still afraid the movie will make a mess of things.)
(May I take a moment to recommend Eve Tushnet's 2004 essay on Watchmen to any fans?)
3 comments:
In retrospect, you may have a point about the simplicity of Watchmen's political views of it's contemporary world. However, this was because the story was so complex, and it really would have been a bad idea to make it deeper.
Personally, I still think it's timeless, but there is a young generation right now that doesn't even know what the Cold War is. For that audience, I would think this film is not for them, but if they were to see it, the simplicity gleaned from the book will translate well into the movie.
I think this movie will be good, if for no other reason than Zack Snyder is a fierce Alan Moore loyalist. Now that this movie is a definite for March, I'm stoked.
I guess what I was trying to get at is that I read Watchmen as a meditation on political power that may actually be more apt now than it was back then. It's not that it was simple; it's just that it didn't accurately describe the geopolitical situation of the 80s. But of course, that was never the point. As I said, I don't think it's an allegory, and that's why it's “timeless.”
(My ragging on the movie before its release is probably just a sort of self-protection mechanism. I'm such a fan that I don't want to be disappointed.)
One more try, since I'm not satisfied with what I just wrote:
Watchmen is great because it's about something more than the events of 1985. It ties together political, psychological, and philosophical themes with ease. It takes several genres we think we know and flips them inside out.
And one major theme, perhaps the one that ties them all together, is power. Some of the characters—Dr. Manhattan, most obviously, but Rorschach in a way—are so powerful that they break the boundaries of their humanity. There's really no competition for them. Moloch, the only traditional villain we see, is sad and pathetic.
In the Cold War, the United States was not in this situation. But at various times in the years since the Cold War ended, I think we thought we were. We spent so much on military technology in peacetime, and we've taken it for granted that it's best to be the most powerful in town. And that's why Watchmen may be more relevant today than it was in the 80s.
Post a Comment