Edward
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Tiller said:Since the topic is up I was wondering what character most of your guys identified with in the film? For me it was Rorschach, which makes me wonder if I should be getting psychoanalyzed, but I do love the character, and the fact that he refused to accept the false utopia preferring instead to die then be a part of it. Plus he is the only super hero in a hat so you have to love him for that lol.
Rorschach has long been my favourite in the book, and remains so in the film. For years, there has been a certain school of thought among Watchmen fans that insists that it is "wrong" to like Rorschach, that he represents the antithesis of fair trial, due process, etc, not to mention his own petty nationalism and all his bigotries. To my mind, however, this is the genius of the character, that we can find something admirable in his integrity, something human in him generally. It's not always popular to humanise "bad people" - see, for example, some of the criticisms you'll come across if you portray Hitler or Stalin as anything other than a two-dimensional monster - but the point is that human beings are never quite so straightforward as pure good or pure evil..... would that life were that simple!
Interestingly, I warmed to both Night Owl II and The Comedian in the film in a way I didn't in the book.... NO's ordinariness comes out in the film in a way that draws the viewer in, whereas in the book - like Rorschach - I was more focussed on his lack of integrity in starting thins up with Laurie while she was vulnerable and not quite out of her relationshpi with Manhattan. The Comedian's regrets over his past sins comes out much more strongly in the film, I think, which lends him a humanity and gives him a sort of salvation in the eyes of the viewer. I do wonder whether there is any significance in the line "Mother, forgive me" - said twice (as he is thrown through the window to his death, and in flashback to the conversation with Moloch). I wodnered whether it was simply to be taken at face value, or whether there was a religious connotation there - c/f to "Father, forgive me" .... a seeking of some sort of higher forgiveness for his mistakes in life ("I've done some bad thnigs to women and children")? Or maybe the word "mother" was deliberately used to not raise the religious connotations that "father" would have?
I also think it was an improvement that Night Owl saw Rorshach's demise, and was horrified by it. In the book were he is just lying naked with Silk Specter after his partner in Crime Fighting for years dies outside by his current squeeze ex, well showing no emotion over the murder just bothered me. Night Owl is suppose to be the most normal of the group (both Night Owls actually) and his utter lack of emotion after the murder of his friend (or at least former friend) bothered me almost as much as Ozzy's entire plan.
To be fair, my reading of the book was that he did not know of the murder... Manhattan (the amoral swine!) leads them to believe that Rorschach has stormed off into the night - "I don't think he'll reach civilisation" - which is a very different spin on things than "I killed him because he was an inconvenience".... I have always liked that, in passing his journal to the New Frontiersman, Rorschach's truth has the chance to live on..... even if noone will treat it any more seriously than a grand conspiracy theory, given the organ posed to publish it as the film closes.
Another thing that bothered me about the book though was that in his youth, Rorschach had no problem with the dropping of the atomic bomb, because Truman ordered it, and his father like Truman. Yet when Ozzy basically does the same thing on a larger scale Rorschach is outraged. Is this perhaps a plot hole? Something that Moore didn't really flush out correctly at the time? I've tried finding a place were he may answer that question, but I haven't ever noticed it even being asked before.
Interesting..... I hadn't thought of that. It is possibly that it was a minor inconsistency.... the story was not completed prior to the commencement of the original twelve-installment run of the comic book, so some things were already out there early on before they had written the ending. Moore himself has said that he realised only when they were working on issue 4 that Rorschach would have to die, as his integirty would prevent him from co-operating with the Veidt final solution. It's also true, though, that people are inconsistent - how we think as children may not be how we think as adults. Bear in mind also that at that point in his childhood he was still Walter Kovacs - when Veidt's plan is outlined, only Rorschach is left, so one woul naturally expect him to be rather more uncompromising. Another possibility is simple prejudice: Rorschach is anti-gay, anti-communist, far-right leaning.... about the only bigotries we don't see him express are based on race, gender (although there is his disgust at handling women's garments in his job) and religion. (He has been interpreted as an objectivist; I'm not so sure on that. His stance on religion is certainly ambiguous..... but whether agnostic, existentialist or whatever, I love his little spiel on "God didn't make the world like this - we did."). It would seem to me consistent with his attitudes that bombing the Japanese was acceptable as it helped save American lives.... the deaths in NYC he is outraged by were American lives. and yet here I see, perhaps, a further inconsistency. This is, after all, the city which he so reviles, full of "human cockroaches with their herion and child pornography." Perhaps his rage in the end is not only propelled by his sense of integrity, but by a genuine yet suppressed affection for those degraded souls whom he professes to so despise - underneath it all, is he really trying to save others from them, or them from themselves?