Viewed Watchmen again, on DVD

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 23:06
VIEWED: 3549
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BYTEMITE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 1:25 AM

Frem: yeah, nihilism kinda sets people up for that.

Of course, Comedian couldn't REALLY be a nihilist because he actually seems to end up being bothered by what he's done in the end. Which then implies he's only a poser nihilist.

Although, Dr. Manhattan sees and knows all and never does anything because he's so certain the timeline he experiences is the ONLY one. 9_9 I hate Dr. Manhattan most of all.

STORYMARK

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 4:19 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

But the idea of making Rorschach the villain is just plain wrong.

Where'd you get the idea that he was, or they were trying to present him as such? That totally flies in the face of the film itself. He was the one guy who refused to compromise his ideals.

You're the first person I've ever seen even make such a comment.

As noted, I got it from Byte's remark -

But according to what I read at tvtropes about "Misaimed fandom" and "Ensemble Darkhorse" Alan Moore intended for Rorschach to be unsympathetic, implying that he deserved his death for being so uncompromising (and socially uncomforming).

Sorta sounds like a bad guy to me. Maybe not THE villain, but still.... I wasn't the 1st person to make that comment (yeah, I know you qualified it with " I've ever seen ".)

It's interesting how you changed your tone, after things were cleared up.

I had already said that I hadn't read the graphic novel , and that all I knew of the Watchmen 'verse was from watching the movie itself.

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

And I still contend that saying the intent was to make him the villain - especially when the sole context of the discussion is the film, then you had a very strage reading of the film.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
the Comedian again, and the rape of the first Silk Spectre, which we come to understand she WANTED AND ENJOYED.

That's not entirely accurate. Years after the attempted rape, she came to care for Eddie, and slept with him. As we hear her screaming at her husband, it was one time and it was a mistake, and she feels that because of the attempted rape. She's torn by it, and the situation is ambiguous, as is the entire story. The moral ambiguity of all the characters and the entire story is what makes Watchmen great. And also dark.
I'm not trying to defend Silk Spectre. I think it was stupid of her. I agree with her that it was a mistake. I don't understand what would compel her to become intimate with someone who had so brutally attacked her. Then again, she's not the only woman in the world who's made that particular mistake. That's another potential problem many people have with the story; the characters are realistic. Their motivations are murky. Real people have murky motivations, but characters are supposed to be clear-cut. Clearly good, clearly evil, clearly motivated by being good or evil. Rorschach hates shades of gray, but really that's all there is in the real world. But these murky motivations, the entirely unexpected and unpredictable turns of human life, is what Dr. Manhattan comes to understand and see as miraculous. To me, that was much of the point of the story. The miracle of life is about shades of gray. Rorschach wasn't a villain, he was just someone who couldn't fit into a world of gray. He never compromised, in anything, and it ultimately destroyed him. I don't think it was about not upholding principles at all, but about learning to compromise, to learn and expand and see things from a view other than your own. In stories, that kind of metaphor usually goes big, just as personalities usually go big, so it's filtered through a lens of moral ambiguity.
I kind of got off on a tangent there, so I'll stop now.

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BYTEMITE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 6:01 PM

Her later actions don't reflect on her earlier actions Re: The Comedian? There's nothing implied, nothing that can be construed (or misconstrued)?

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 8:55 PM

I'm not sure I entirely understand your question. Her later action of sleeping with Eddie reflects on her earlier action of refusing him by way of a punch in the mouth? Is that your supposition? Because no, I don't think that her later action reflects on her earlier action. That's... kind of backwards, generally.
For example, I at one point refused to watch Buffy. When it was on the air, I regarded it with actual disdain. I violently rejected any efforts to convince me it might be worth watching. Years later, after falling in love with Firefly and having so much Buffy in the periphery, I watched and grew to love the show. Now, I know I'm talking about a show rather than a person, but does my current love of a show reflect on my past disdain for it? Can it somehow be construed that I always secretly wanted to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and just fought the idea because... what? Because I could? Because I was just in denial? Because I was being perverse? Or is it more likely that I really just had no interest in it, and it grew on me over time?
The past reflects on the future, not the other way around. My past refusal to give something a chance makes my current appreciation just a bit more rich and vivid. Maybe, in a more twisted and complex way, the same could be said of the relationship between Silk Spectre and the Comedian.
Again, I'm not trying to defend her choice. I don't understand what would motivate the turnaround, I only understand that the turnaround happened. Although then, because we're talking about people and emotion, there was a renewed mistrust when Laurie was older and her father wanted to interact with her. There was quite a lot of emotional tug-of-war going on, something that happens a lot in the real world. It's not something we always understand, I certainly don't tend to understand it, but it does exist, and not just in isolated cases. Most people can relate to a toxic relationship, even if most of them don't get quite that toxic. I mean, that was pretty gorramn toxic right there. The exaggerated metaphor of storytelling.

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CHRISISALL

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 8:59 PM

VERY well said, Miss Rose.

The laughing Chrisisall

CHRISISALL

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 9:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

That said, I save most of my bile for the Comedian, who's direct hand in certain actions influenced history in a seriously negative way, a lesson there in that every time you listen to, you obey, do the bidding of, the powers that be without thinking it through, without questioning the impact and purpose, you make the world a worse place by just that much - not them, YOU.

Seems like he saved up a lot of bile for himself too.
*laffs before dying*

The laughing Chrisisall

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 9:36 PM

The reason I asked, is how would you interpret what the COMIC was trying to represent?

There's too many soap operas, too many fictional stories that try to claim the woman loved her rapist all along. Is it nonsensical? Yes! It's also misogynistic and encourages rape because it claims that rape is the woman's fault because she really wanted it, or she wouldn't have acted/dressed so flirty. And myriad other excuses.

But we never see the parts were the Comedian makes up for his bad behaviour, or Silk Spectre forgives him, or even that she's grown to care more about him. It goes from him trying to rape her, to us finding out Laurie is his daughter, and the mother crying over a picture of The Comedian after finding out he was killed. What are we SUPPOSED to think? What is being IMPLIED?

FREMDFIRMA

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 10:02 PM

I'll take that one.

No being is wholly wicked though, and even in his wickedness, he had a certain charm, the allure of not giving a shit what ANYONE thought, there is a certain charm associated with such a free spirited bastard, even if most of em are sociopaths.

But not just that, even the wicked are not wicked ALL the time, they have their moments, we just don't get to see them, but human nature demands it, admittedly within the story he seems to come off as stupid evil, cause they don't really give him any less than dickheaded moments save for his breakdown to Moloch.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidEvil

But humans, they ain't like that - and frankly those people were seriously messed up, we don't know much about her upbringing or backstory, but she did come across to me as the type who like a moth to a flame, winds up in the orbit of a destructive relationship - if anything I was surprised it was "just that once" and remember also this, people LIE - I have my doubts about THAT little tidbit being true, cause I know people, I know how they are, and she was fronting that story to someone calling her on her behavior ?

Hell, how do we know for sure they didn't have a relationship or few encounters of sex or near-sex before that and she cut him off, cut him out, cause he was such an asshole ?

It does fit the dynamic - I ain't excusing nothing, the guy was a punk for sure, but I am not quite sure I would call her an innocent neither.

People are people, and with humans it's never as black and white as they wish it was.

-F
ETA: I do agree that both the comic and the movie do a pretty poor job of it with that particular side story, it does seem shorted and reduced to a single incident, or pair of them, when there is MORE TO IT than that, there always is...

PHOENIXROSE

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 10:11 PM

I'm speaking from the perspective of the comic. In the comic, unlike the movie, there is at least mention of the more gentle encounter they had; Eddie's 'vulnerable' attitude when he came to her, years later, and they talked, and she 'saw another side of him' and ultimately they slept together. That was in there, in the flashbacks and some of the conversations Laurie has with her mother. There were no details, really, which I think is unfortunate. That's why I say the motivations are murky. We don't see every detailed step of any of their lives, and often don't see the total of their motivations for anything. We only see that they're all very screwed up.
Once again, I'm not defending the turnaround. I think it's foolish to forgive such things. I think the woman was clearly a little damaged. As they all were.
I do not excuse anything that implies rape is love, or rape is encouraged by 'flirtation' and a woman is at fault, or that rape is wanted or should ever be tolerated. I think anyone who knows me will back me up on that. That is, in fact, why I am drawing the distinction in this case. She defended herself as violently as she was able from rape. The sex that ultimately conceived her daughter was, by all indications, consenting. She DID NOT encourage the attempted rape. She did her best to beat the shit out of Eddie when he was attempting to rape her. There is a distinction between that encounter and the later, consensual encounter that conceived Laurie. Had the rape not been foiled, and Laurie conceived then, and we saw the old Silk Spectre sobbing and kissing the picture of the late Comedian with no mention of a reconciliation, that would have been a far different scenario. That would have bothered me more. It still bothers me, because I don't think what he did was excusable, but the character seems to know something that I don't, details of which are only hinted at. So, as it is, she fought violently against violence, and the only sex she had with the man was consensual. Should she have ever consented? No, not in my opinion. But she did, and that is the distinction.

edit: Frem beat me to some of that. I never even considered there might have been more than 'just the once' either, that's a good point.

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