A study in how language misdescribes violence, war, and the use of force.
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due to the size of this post, I’ve moved it to a separate page here:
http://www.warhw.com/equality-arts-dojo-complete/
I also wrote a slightly shorter summary version here:
http://www.warhw.com/equality-arts-dojo-summary/
I put it under the CC-BY-SA license as explained in the links.
!!!!SPOILERS!!!!
Just saw the Watchmen movie. This isn’t the official handwavium score for the movie since I’d need a pause button for that. This is just some first impressions of the movie until the DVD comes out.
First of all, if I had to guess, I would guess that Alan Moore is always pissed off at the world because WW3 didn’t turn the surface of the earth into glass back in the 80’s. Moore is a confessed anarchist and his story in Watchmen can be boiled down to a plucky anarchist who saves the world from nuclear annihilation by making the hard choice of murdering several million to save billions, and then lying about what exactly happened. Or something. It’s all still a little confusing.
First things first, though. For those wondering, the movie is a pretty faithful reproduction of the graphic novel. The war handwavium score for the movie won’t be too different from the comic book at least in principle. The difference may be in the body counts getting modified to fit into less than three hours for a movie.
Moore’s world in Watchmen is a world in which torture consistently produces actionable intelligence, where torture is reliably applied only to “guilty” people. Civilians are sheep and Moore’s anarchist author-surrogate Veidt(*) is the shepherd, culling a few to save the herd. The point of view character is Rorschach, who is simultaneously a psychopath and the only man who is uncompromising in his principles. Everyone else, and I mean quite literally, every other character in the story succumbs to moral relativism. Rorshach is also the only one who sees that a conspiracy is going on from the beginning. The most prevalent non-sociopath character would probably be Nite Owl, he apparently represents “standard” morals for some definition of “standard”, and the author-surrogate Veidt insults him in the end for being nothing more than naive and ineffective. The government is represented by three terms of Richard Nixon, and by its inescapable trajectory towards nuclear war. During the mid 80’s, the inevitability of nuclear war may have seemed all too real to some, but now, it’s like listening to The Fixx’s “Red Skies at Night”: it can only possibly work with the nuclear war scare providing the emo for the lyrics. Without it, it just sounds silly. Every single cop in Watchmen is either ineffective in stopping criminals or a barrier for the main characters to overcome. During the prison riot, not a single cop is shown effectively dealing with a single inmate. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre and Rorschach are the only ones shown effectively dealing with the rioting inmates.The number of bad guys beat up as paper targets is quite high, providing qualm-free slow-motion killing sprees for Dan and Laurie when they attract at least a dozen baddies in an alleyway.
Zack Snyder managed to minimize his slow motion pornographic display of blood spurting man killing from “300″. But it does show up from time to time. In the alley, for one. Snyder’s infatuation with war would be of the sort I would normally assign to someone who has had the luxury of never having to fight and kill in a war, and instead is informed by other war porn artists like himself..
As for the story itself, it starts out as a Scooby Doo kind of mystery. The Comedian is murdered. But we are never shown enough information to even remotely guess that it is Veidt doing it. When the reveal occurs in the end, and we are told it is Veidt and Old Man Dithers who runs the amusement park, it occurs as a Deus Ex Machina because it comes out of the blue with no hint that Veidt has been working secretly for a decade or so to murder millions. You’d think that sort of thing might leave a paper trail or thermal bloom or something.
Apparently, the only person who found out after all those years was Comedian, and only because the government asked him to keep an eye on the former masked vigilantes. But this happens in the last three weeks of Veidt’s master plans. Three weeks later, Veidt will murder a bunch of people and scare them into loving each other out of fear, like good little sheep should do. So, years and years of research and work on building multiple massive teleporting bombs, and word never got out. Even the Manhattan Project wasn’t completely secret as it was going on. Physicists and mathematicians were doing something in the desert. But all of these flaws in the plot are hard to spot because the story is told in a non-linear fashion using lots of flashbacks, and because it is told from the point of view of the least-informed least powerful character of the story, Rorshach.
Had Watchmen been told in linear fashion, it would have been a pointless story. Veidt’s actions would have to be revealed in the beginning. The only interesting thing about the non-linear version of the story is the betrayal by Veidt.
Had Watchmen been told from the point of view of Dr Manhattan, I would wager that many people in the audience would have picked up that Dr.Manhattan’s help to Veidt would make Veidt an instant suspect. Had the story been told from the point of view of Nite Owl, many in the audience would be wondering why Nite Owl isn’t doing anything about the “mystery” and instead is focusing on latex fantasies with Laurie. Well, they wouldn’t wonder “why” he was doing that, but many would have noticed that he doesn’t really do anything regarding the “mystery” of who killed Comedian until the very end of the movie/graphic novel.
No, the story only works if it is told from the point of view of the least informed and least powerful character. Rorschach had a view from the street gutter and had no means of getting to the antartic base on his own even if he did figure it out.
The only way the story works is if in the opening scene where Comedian is murdered by Veidt, Comedian never identifies Veidt. Think about that one. You’re the Comedian. You’ve been assigned by the government to keep an eye on Veidt. You discover Veidt is plotting to blow up the world. Veidt shows up in your apartment a week later to murder you. Would you say his name? “Hello Adrian”? Would you say something like “Gotta kill me to keep your plan to blow up the world a secret”? Would you accuse him of being a murdering bastard?
If you recall the scene where Veidt is explaining to the Watchmen that they could save the world “with the right leadership” and Comedian says “as long as that leadership is you” and proceeds to burn Veidt’s map, do you think Comedian might say some smartass remark to Veidt now that Veidt is trying to assert his “leadership” and is in your apartment to murder you to keep you quiet about it?
The opening scene of Watchmen, showing the Comedian murdered by Veidt, is a cheat by Moore. We are shown Comedian’s point of view, but Comedian is mute while Veidt, a man that Comedian knew and loathed, murders him. Had the Comedian said *anything*, it would have revealed Veidt was the murderer. Instead, Moore cheats. He shows us Comedian’s murder while forcing Comedian to remain silent as he is murdered.
As it is shown in the movie, the murder of the Comedian would suggest to the viewer that the assailant is unknown to Comedian.
Also of note from this scene: Comedian fights against Veidt in his apartment, which would mean he isn’t resigned to dying. And if he isn’t resigned to dying, why did he do nothing about Veidt’s plan to blow up the world he had discovered a couple of weeks prior? Of all the things Comedian did, he goes to visit an arch enemy, Molloch, and sobs incoherent babblings to him in the middle of the night.
Obviously, there was a falling out between the Watchmen, but why not visit Nite Owl in the middle of the night, drunk, and sobbing incoherently? Why not make one last-ditch effort to see his daughter before the bombs go off?
The only reason he had discovered Veidt’s plan was because he had been hired by the government to keep an eye on the likes of Veidt. Why not report his findings to the group who paid him to find it?
Instead, Comedian finds out Veidt’s plan, tells absolutely no one about it and does nothing himself to stop it. He would seem resigned to dying, except then he fights Veidt when Veidt shows up to murder him in his apartment.
Or, in a logical progression: Veidt is the smartest man in the world. Veidt somehow knows that Comedian knows about his plans. Veidt would only kill Comedian if leaving Comedian alive would be a greater threat to his plan. Killing Comedian would have the side effect of potentially feeding into an investigation into why Comedian was killed. Therefore, Veidt considered that Comedian could have stopped him or his plan before its fruition. Therefore, Veidt murdered Comedian. Which means the smartest man in the world figured that Comedian could have stopped Veidt. So, why didn’t the Comedian stop Veidt?
The Comedian’s actions don’t make sense, even for a sociopath like Comedian. They only make sense from Moore’s point of view as an author’s tool. Moore uses Comedian’s point of view to show us his own murder, but gags Comedian in that scene to prevent him from revealing what Comedian knows. Moore uses Comedian to forward the plot, by discovering Veidt’s plans, but then Moore again gags Comedian preventing him from revealing what he knows to anyone who would be another POV character.
But really, Watchmen isn’t so much a mystery story of who killed Comedian as it is a “world” story. It’s a “Gulliver’s Travels” story where the investigation of who killed Comedian is simply a vehicle for Moore to introduce us to the world he has imagined, a world that qualifies as an anarchist’s wet dream: The government is useless and even dangerous as it is set on an irreversible path for nuclear war. The only man who can actually stop this is (1) the world’s smartes man (2) who happens to be a sociopath (3) willing to murder a few million to “save” the world from itself and (4) willing to do so secretely. Veidt knows the secret but the world cannot. Veidt can handle the secret. The world cannot. (5) the cops are ineffective and a barrier to the characters getting anything useful done. (6) torture not only produces good intel, it can be implemented so that it is only applied to guilty people.
When I read the graphic novel, the sense of this world getting pushed at me wasn’t quite so intense, probably because I could always put it down when I grew tired of it. But watching the movie, I felt at times like I was Alan Moore’s dog and he was shoving my nose in his world.
If you have an overwhelming urge to see the movie in theaters, go see it in a big, big srreen. the visuals are compelling even if the rest of it lacks in areas. If not a super wide screen, then I’d say wait for teh DVD to come out. It’s a 3 hour movie and you’ll probably want to be able to pause it for a bathroom break.
(*) The author surrogate Veidt was recycled from Moore’s “V” character in “V for Vendetta”. Both V and Veidt are anarchists. V is fighting government portrayed as fascists. Veidt is fighting government portrayed as the source of nuclear war and with no ability to avoid it. Both possess superhuman physical strength and speed. Both are extremely intelligent. Both are sociopaths, V has some form of insanity, and Veidt will murder millions and think himself the hero. Both have access to enough money and resources to complete their plans, which in both cases is a lot. Both are operating on a long, several-year plan to blow up the world in order to save it. Both plans play out for years without detection. Both plans are discovered just before the big finale, which is where the story starts. And then there’s the audible: “V” and “Veidt” sound an awful lot alike.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the designated Israeli prime minister, has struck a coalition deal with the Yisrael Beitenu party, naming Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s new Foreign Minister.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/03/200931644830994751.html
Avigdor Lieberman is a fascist who lives in a Jewish settlement the West Bank. All Jewish settlements on Palestinian land are roadblocks to an eventual two-state solution and eventual peace.
Lieberman has called for Israel to redraw its borders to expand Israel into Arab lands. He has called Arabs living in Israel a “fifth column” of Israel’s enemies and demanded that they should take “loyalty oaths” and those who refuse should be stripped of their citizenship.
Anyone hoping for peace in the middle east should note that Lieberman’s appointment just pushed the peace process back a decade. And this is what Israel’s democracy voted for. Israel does not want peace and has made it clear by voting a fascist into office.
At this point, the only possibility I can see for derailing this nightmare is if Livni’s party can cause the coalition to split somehow and force a new round of elections before the current coalition does too much damage..It would be the best worst case solution in a place where there are no best case solutions.
President Obama has set a firm timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. “Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,”
Now, for some minor details: First of all, this withdrawal will leave 35,000 to 50,000 US troops stationed in Iraq for at least a year and a half after that. That puts the full withdrawal of US troops at the end of 2011. That isn’t a military date, it’s a political date, set by an agreement between Iraq and George W. Bush.
This gives Obama about 18 months to withdraw 100,000 US troops. Except he won’t be withdrawing them over that 18 month period. The timeline essentially has troop levels remain essentially constant for the rest of 2009. This claimed to be so that US troops could provide security for Iraq’s elections in late 2009. The problem is this means this announcement is little more that lip service for the next year. And if 2009 draws to a close and someone decides we need to stay ‘just a little longer’, then nothing actually changes.
I’m fairly certain we will have most troops out by the end of 2011. I don’t think Iraq will change their agreement that we leave by that time, unless we dump a very large bag of money in some people’s laps (which isn’t outside the realm of possibilities).
The one good thing is that August 2010 is just before election time for the US. Which means that if Obama does stretch out the timeline beyond what he promised, it might negatively affect congressional races, and Obama can use every democrat in office that he can get.
And a “contingent” of 50,000 troops is hardly a minor force. It is a major obligation and committment. Obama campaigned on getting the US out of Iraq in 16 months. He’s now committed to getting some troops out withing 19 months, but 50,000 will remain for a total of 34 months.
Whether he intends to exercise this or not, Obama certainly seems to have hedged his bets on Iraq such that extending the US presence well beyond his first term wouldn’t be out of the realm of possiibilities.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090227/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_iraq