War Handwavium

2009 05 11

http://web.archive.org/web/20070305213808/http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/03/a_for_alan_pt_1_the_alan_moore.html

Watchmen (movie) First Impressions

!!!!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.

2009 03 17

Comments (3)

The Dark Knight (movie) observations

SPOILERS!

So, there’s this Joker guy, see? And basically he is the epitome of chaotic evil. And the question at the heart of the movie seems to be “What will people become in the face of chaotic evil?” Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and others think that the answer is that people will rise to the occaission. Joker likes to point out when people sink to new lows. The response when either Batman or Joker is proven wrong is to have the other character point out how alone they are.

There’s an interesting game theory scenario involving two ferries full of people. Joker manages to plant massive explosives on each ferry, and then kill the engines. He then radios both ships and announces over the PA system that each ferry has the detonator for the other ship. And whoever detonates the other person, wins. If by midnight, neither side detonates the other, the Joker says he’ll detonate both.

Evil Chaos ensues on both ships. One ship takes a vote, and the result is 300-100 in favor of blowing the other ship up. Sort of a condemning take on what democracy is capable of when immersed in fear adn removed from the consequences of their actions. But then no one on the ship can actually push the button to blow up the other ship. So, maybe when forced to face the consequences, maybe the idea is that people will step up and do the right thing, even if it means risking their own death, rather than murder someone else in an attempt at survival.

The other ship, well, that has a bunch of convicts on it, being guarded by a few police officers with guns. The guards are outnumbered, but the convicts don’t rush the guards and force them to hand over the detonator. Instead, there’s a shouting match, and the guards have basically frozen in indecision. One of the convicts stands up and goes up to the guards and tells him something to the effect of “you’ve never murdered someone, I have. You can’t push the button, I can. Give me the detonator. You can even tell them that I took it from you”.

So, the guard gives the convict the detonator. The image of men charged with upholding the law handing over their job to a bunch of criminals because the law men are too afraid and don’t know what else to do, I believe is no accident. We’ve seen it over the last few years with Bush and Cheney and company in charge. So the criminal takes the detonator…. and throws it out the window… Which only amplifies the idea that the men in charge were the real criminals and the real cowards.

There’s a piece where Batman creates a weird, universal surveillance post that lets him see everything that is happeing everywhere in Gotham. Unfortunately, rather than show the realities of universal surveillance (i.e. too much information to be useful, wide open potential for abuse), the movie instead invokes some handwavium and shows the technology being used to stop the Joker.

There is some objections from Lucious Fox to Batman for building the machine, and Batman says Lucious is the only person who can run the machine. But this might have been an opportunity to show Batman slip, misuse his power. If not Batman, at least some unintended consequence such as some lower level flunky at Wayne Enterprises finds the machine and uses it for nefarious purposes. It would have been a perfect opportunity to show that there are unintended negative consequences to total power.

In the finale, the police are gun-ho to start shooting up some of the Joker’s bad guys who are holding hostages. Batman asks them to give him a couple minutes. The police, including commissioner Gordon, don’t want to wait. Batman charges in on his own before the police can go in. Turns out that the Joker’s men are actually hostages tied up with Joker masks put on them and guns taped to their hands. Only Batman knows this. At this point, the police barge in and are about to start killing what they think are bad guys but Batman knows the truth and has to stop the police to save the hostages.

The idea that there are issues with targeting and sometimes the wrong person is targeted is clear. It just seemed to be handled in a slightly ham-handed way.

In the end, Batman stops the Joker, and manages to keep his hands clean. There seem to be a number of moral dillemmas presented in the movie regarding the use of violence and unintended consequences, but Batman manages to keep his hands clean. In the end, there is a subplot with Harvey Dent. He was the District Attorney but had turned into Two Face and started killing people (mostly dirty cops, but mobsters too). And Batman and Gordon decide that the people’s faith in Dent’s incorruptability is too important, that if that faith is lost, Gotham is lost. So Batman tells Gordon to blame all the people Dent murdered on Batman, and they’ll keep Dent’s name and legacy clear.

There was something about this that seems… off. And I’ll have to ponder it a bit more, but basically, Batman and Gordon decide that its OK to lie to the public. I think this angle was used so that Batman could become the misunderstood vigilante who is wrongly hunted by the police, setting us up for the next sequel. The last scene in the Dark Knight shows police with dogs chasing Batman, and Gordon (who knows the truth) smashing the bat signal while surrounded by angry cops. But in a movie that made numerous overtures to a number of moral dillemmas around misuse of power, the abuse that comes from lying to the public seems to have been missed.

Rather than have Batman choose to take on accusations against him that aren’t true, rather than Batman take the blame for Dent’s/Two Face’s murders in order to save Dent’s legacy, I think it would have been more realistic and less handwavium if Batman had actually become corrupted in some way, showing the problem inherent in vigilante power. And maybe the next sequel he somehow redeems himself, or at least tries to.

But as much as the movie points to some very real moral issues around violence, of how democracy can vote for evil, of how the state can hand power over to criminals, it is, in the end, a comic book vigilante story, and the one thing it can’t do is condemn the star. There are sequels to be made, you know.

So, I haven’t tabulated the war handwavium score yet. But I can tell it will a low score compared to something like “300″. However, it will still be a positive handwavium score, if for no other reason than the fact that it is a comic book vigilante story, and by the end of the movie, Batman himself has managed to keep his hands completely clean.

(I’ll do the actual score when teh DVD comes out)

2008 07 22

V for Vendetta-movie

This is the War handwavium score card for the movie “V for Vendetta”: +112

NOTE: SPOILERS!!!

All chapters/times listed are from the DVD.

+6 points. Chapter 1, 3:30, V attacks and subdues three paper targets, fingermen who attempt to rape Evey.

+15 points. Chapter 6, 2:00, V kills 5 paper targets, policemen at the TV station.

+10 points. Chapter 6, 2:00, two different policemen shoot the same officer that V is using as a shield. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.

+2 point. Chapter 6, 2:00, Police shoot and wound TV employee, thinking it is V. Nonlethal Rube Goldberg Machine.

+10 points. Chapter 9, 3:30, V refers to what he does as “Justice”. “There’s no court for the men like Prothera”. Violence as superior to social structures.

+5 points. Chapter 15, 1:00, Inspector Finch reads diary. Government conducts medical experiments for no apparent reason. Only after they create a deadly virus and an antidote do they decide to use the virus on their own people to create fear and grab power. Medical experiements are violent demonstration of evilness for no reason. Othering.

+10 points. Chapter 18. V tortures Evey to make her fearless. Misrepresentation of the effects of torture.

+36 points. Chapter 30, in the tunnel, after Creedy kills the Chancellor, V kills 12 cardboard targets, then V kills Creedy.

+10 points. Chapter 31, just before V dies in Evey’s arms, V tells Evey that he loved her. violence as an alternative for social structures.

+12 points. Big finale. As all the people dressed up as V are watching the Parliament building explode, they start to take their masks off. In the crowd, we see four “good guys” who had been killed suddenly appear in the crowd taking off their masks. Gordon Dietrich, Valerie, Valerie’s partner, and the little girl who watches television with her family. Distancing Narration.

+59 paper targets
+11 rube goldberg machines
+30 violence as superior to social structures
+5 othering
+12 distancing narration
———————–
+116 total score

It is a vengeance movie, after all.

After watching the movie several times, I was surprised that the scoring is as low at is is. The movie starts out with some quick violence right off the bat, paper targets via the fingermen. And then the assault on the TV station. And then it’s a long investigation into what’s going on. V kills a number of people at that point, but they’re not nameless, and for the most part, we get quite a bit of their character backgrounds. Then Evey is captured by the government and tortured in an attempt to get her to reveal information about V that would lead to V’s arrest. A rather poignant scene occurs when Evey finds a letter written by a previous inmate named Valerie. Valerie wrote the letter just before she died, and the heart of her message is that she wasn’t going to give up, she wasn’t going to give in. They could kill her, but there was an inch of her that they could never reach. Evey finds courage in this message. Evey is told she is to be executed unless she cooperates. Evey refuses. The guard says she is no longer afraid and that she is free to go. He walks out leaving the door open. Evey walks out to discover that she is at V’s secret lair, and that V has been the one torturing her all this time.

At this point, Evey swings through several emotional levels from horror to revulsion to anger and eventually collapses to the ground. V talks her through it and tells her to find the courage she found in her cell. V tells her that a moment ago, she thought she was going to die and was given a choice to tell the government about V or die, and she said she’d rather die. V tells Evey to try to find that courage again.

They go to the roof, and it’s raining outside. Evey stands up in the rain and says “God is in the rain”, which is something that Valerie wrote in her letter. And apparently Evey finds her fearlessness.

There are numerous problems with this scene. The first being the idea of torturing the fear out of someone. That is not an honest representation of the effects of torture. People who have survived severe torture suffer nightmares and panic attacks for the rest of their lives. And we see nothing about Evey to show us she is any different, to show us that she has what it takes to turn being tortured into some carthartic experience. That it just happened to work out that Evey emerged from her torture without permanent negative effects is using the ends to justify the means. And if Evey DID suffer any sort of permanent negative effects, the narrative made a point to distance us from them, as we never see any in the movie. In fact, when Evey comes back to visit V, she thanks him for it.

The second problem is that after the torture, V tells Evey that he did it because she had told him earlier that she wished she wasn’t afraid all the time. And V says this was his way to make her no longer be afraid. Never mind the simple fact that a passing comment doesn’t qualify as permission to torture a person for months. But we also learn some time after the torture that V loved Evey. V tells this to Evey as he is dying. Which is to say that V tortured Evey because he loved her and he wanted her to not be afraid anymore.

Which is to say, V is a psychopath. However, V is a psychopath of the most convenient kind. V is able to operate outside the grasp of government agents for twenty years. According to the movie, V escaped the medical labs twenty years earlier and has been spending all this time going after all the higher ups who worked at the medical labs, killing them. V has also robbed government censors of countless pieces of art. And he’s robbed the Chancellor’s train of real butter. He spent ten years clearing out a demolished subway tunnel and building new tracks to go under the Parliament building. And he did all of this without getting caught. Which is to say, he’s exceedingly brilliant. And yet, when it comes to Evey, his only way to show his love for her, to teach her how to not be afraid, is to torture her for months and risk her life and sanity.

Which is to say, V is the perfect writer’s tool for war handwavium. He’s smart enough to do all these things, and yet when he does something so fundamentally wrong as torture an innocent woman for months, defenders can say “But he’s crazy!”.

War handwavium is fiction that misdescribes violence, war, and the use of force. War handwavium is a misrepresentation of reality. And anyone who is as smart as V is in one respect, but as crazy as V is in other respects, isn’t a character meant to represent reality. It is a character meant to justify the entertaining use of violence.

The point is that the sanity of V’s character is irrelevant. Crazy doesn’t justify unrealistic portrayals of violence. And his torture of Evey produces the most unrealistic result imaginable.

2008 07 07

300-movie

This is the war handwavium score card for the movie “300“: (total= +602 points).

NOTE: SPOILERS!!!

First, a chronological history lesson of the events that are the context in which the battle of Thermopylae took place:
522 BC: Darius becomes King of the Persian Empire.

511 BC: Sparta is an oligarchy, ruled by a small number of kings. Athens is ruled by a single tyrant, Hippias.

511 BC: with the help of Sparta’s King, Cleomenes, Athens expells its tyrant ruler, Hippias. Hippias flees to Sardis, the Persian Satrap (capital) across the Agean Sea. Hippias promises the Persians control of Athens if they would restore him to power. The Athenians demanded the Persians expell Hippias. The Persians suggested that Athens restore Hippias to power.

507 BC: Two Athenian aristocrats, Isagoras and Cleisthenes, vie for power in the vacuum created by Hippias’s removal. Isagoras asks the Spartan King Cleomenes to expel Cleisthenes. Cleisthenes is expelled. Isagoras begins stripping people of their homes, and the people oppose Isagoras. The Spartan King Cleomenes assembled an army in Sparta and marches to Athens to attempt to install Isagoras as tyrant. Sparta suggests restoring Hippias back to power in Athens. Neither plan gets sufficient support from the Peloponesian league.

The Athenians rise up against Isagoras and he is banished and Cleisthenes is recalled. He starts a government that is based on a system of limited democracy. Only one in ten Athenians will be allowed to vote. Land owning males whose father and grandfather were also Athenian are given the power to vote. About one third of the people in Athens are slaves.

502 BC: The island of Naxos revolts against its Persian masters.

499 BC: Ionia, a city on the coast of the Agean sea and held under the Persian empire, revolted against it’s Persian masters. The cities of Athens and Eretria sent troops to help (20 ships from Athens). The armies marched to the city of Sardis, the Persian capital for the area, and burned the city to the ground. Darius is so infuriated with the Athenians that he has a servant remind him three times a day that he must exact his vengeance on the city.

492 BC: Darius sends his army overland and conquers Thrace, north of the Agean. Darius also sends a fleet of 300 ships and 20,000 men to attack Athens, but the entire fleet is sunk in a storm. His army must retreat from Thrace.

490 BC: Darius sends heralds to various Greek city states asking them to submit to avoid war and asking for “earth and water”. The Athenians responded by throwing the herald into a pit. The Spartans threw them down a well.

490 BC: Darius sends 30,000 troops via 600 triremes across the Agean sea to attack Athens. 9,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans fight the Persians on the plains of Marathon. Athens asks Sparta for help, but Sparta says it can’t send troops until the Carneian festival ended on the full moon. The Spartans would not arrive until two days after the battle was over. 10,000 Athenians and Plataens fight 40,000 Persians. The Greeks inflict 6,000 casualties and only lose 192 men. The Persians retreated to Asia.

After the battle, a number of Greek city states renounce their submission to Persia and joined with the Athenians and Spartans.

The Athenians build the Parthenon

485 BC: Darius dies. His son Xerxes becomes King.

481 BC: Xerxes gathers a massive army to attack the Greek city states. They winter in Sardis.

480 BC: Spring, Xerxes builds a mile long floating bridge across the Hellespont and his army takes three and a half months to march to Therme. There he prepares his army and navy,

480 BC: Xerxes sends heralds around to the various city states asking them to submit to avoid war, asking them for “earth and water”. Because of his father’s experience in 490 BC, Xerxes does not send heralds to Athens or Sparta.

480 BC: Athens has been watching Xerxes’ army approach and asks its neighbors for help. 70 of the 700 Greek city-states form a military and political alliance.

Sparta, being extremely religious, consults the Oracle of Delphi, who tells the Spartans “Either Sparta will be taken by Persia, or Sparta must mourn the loss of a king”. King Leonides takes this to mean he must die if Sparta is to be saved.
480 BC: While Xerxes is in Therme, 10,000 Athenian and Spartan hoplites attempt to engage the Persians. The Persians move before the Greeks arrive. The Greek alliance decides that the next choke point is the pass at Thermopylae.

King Leonides gathers an army from the Greek Alliance and marches to Thermopylae.

August 490 BC: The Greek army at Thermopylae consisted of the following:
300 Spartans
1000 Mantineans
1000 Tegeans
2240 Arcadians
800 Corinthians
400 Phlians
160 Mycenaeans
1400 Thespians
800 Thebans
2000 Phocians

The Greeks on the ground at Thermopylae were supported by 270 Athenian Triremes, led by the Athenian General Themistocles. Themistocles had been a general at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians blocked the Atemesian Strait and prevent 800 Persian Triremes from sailing around Thermopylae and landing troops behind Leonides and his land army.

Xerxes takes 2 weeks to march his army to Thermopylae. Many Greek cities north of Thermopylae defect to the Persians when the realize that help would not arrive in time.

Ephialtes, the man who tells Xerxes of the goat path that goes around the pass at Thermopylae, was a local to Thermopylae and his city had submitted to Leonides. He was not a former Spartan mutant as portrayed in the movie.

1,000 phocians were stationed by Leonidas to guard the path. When the Persians approached, the Persians rained arrows down on them, and the Phocians pulled back to the crest of a mountain to make their stand. However, the Persians did not engage them and instead turned down the trail and headed towards Leonides.

When Leonides learns that the Persians are going around his army, he orders the armies to retreat. Leonides along with 2,000 Thespians and Thebans remain to guard the pass while the rest of the army retreats to the Ismuth of Corinth, another choke point on the other side of Athens.

The Persians wiped out the remaining army. Total causualties were 3,300 Greeks killed, 20,000 Persians killed.

3 Spartans survive. Aristodemus and Eurytus are both striken with eye infections. Eurytus was was rendered blind. Leonides ordered them both to return home. However, Eurytus returned and charged into battle, blind, and was killed. Because Aristodemus was not blind but did not do the same, he was called a coward and suffered disgrace and humiliation from the people of Sparta. The third Spartan survivor of the battle was Pantites, whom Leonides had sent to an an embassy to Thessalia and did not return in time for the battle. On returning to Sparta, he hanged himself.

During the Battle of Atemisium, occuring the same day as the Battle of Thermopylae, the Greek navy lost 90 ships, the persians lost 30 ships. 200 Persian ships had attempted to sail completely around the island, but were lost in a storm. The Greek navy had managed to keep the Persian ships from going around King Leonides, but upon hearing that Themopylae had fallen, the Greek navy retreated to Salimis.

The Persians moved south and burned and sacked the cities which did not surrender, including Plataea, Thespiae, and Athens. Many Greeks had retreated to Salimis. There, they discussed using the Isthmus of Corinth as another choke point and holding off the Persians there.

However, Themistocles argued that the Persian Navy could simply transport the Persian infantry by sea and bypass the wall. Themistocles argued that his navy needed to stop the Persian fleet. Themistocles hides his fleet in the straits near Salamis and lures the Persian fleet in with false intelligence.

370 Greek ships attack 720 Persian ships. The Greeks lose 40 ships. The Persians lose 200 ships. The Persians suffer a massive loss. Without a navy to supply his army, Xerxes cannot maintain his army in Greece. He marches his army around the Agean sea and crosses the bridge at the Hellespont before the Greeks try to destroy it.

Xerxes returns to Persia, leaving his General, Mardonius, in charge of the occupation in Greece. Mardonius offers Athens a truce. Athens refuses. Athens, Megara, and Plataea send emissaries to Sparta asking for troops. Sparta is busy building a wall along the Ismuth of Corinth to defend themselves. Sparta first claims that they cannot send help because of the religious festival of Hyacinthia, but they are eventually swayed to fight.

479 BC: Battle of Plataea. About 40,000 Greeks from various city-states fight the Persian army of 60,000 at Plataea. The Persian army included Greeks from several cities north of Athens, including Thebans and Thessilia. The King of Macedon warned the Greeks the night before the Persians attacked.

The Greeks lost 10,000 men. The persians lost 20,000 men and retreated from Plataea. The Persian force of 43,000 men made their way back to Persia via the land route around the Aegean Sea. As they neared Macedon, the King of Macedon attacked the Persian force and wiped them out.

During the Battle of Plataea, Aristodemus, the Spartan who had survived the Battle of Thermopylae and was called a coward for it, fought with a suicidal recklessness and was killed. The Spartans removed the black mark against his name, but would give him no special honors, saying the considered it more valorous to fight while wanting to live.

This was the last time the Persians invaded Greece with the intention of conquering the nation. Persia interfered with Greek politics until they were conquered by Alexander the Great in 320 BC.

478 BC: THe Delian League (The Athenian Empire) is founded. Members must either supply troops to the empire or pay a tax in compensation for the protection of the military power.

477 BC: The island of Naxos (the island to revolt against Persia in 502 BC) revolts against the Delian League (Athenian empire). Athens enslaves the island, tears down the city walls, takes its fleet, and removes its vote from the league.

476 BC: Themistocles, the Athenian general who fought at the Battle of Marathon and who defeated the Persian fleet at Salimas is ostracized from Athens for allegedly taking bribes. He moves to Argos, but Spartans accuse him of committing treason with Persia. He flees Asia Minor.

465 BC: Thasos revolts against the Delian League (Athenian Empire). After two years it surrenders. Its walls are torn down. Its land and ships are confiscated by Athens. The mines of Thasos are turned over to Athens, and Thasos had to pay yearly tributes and fines.

465 BC: Xerxes dies. Araxerxes replaces him as King.

461 BC: Cimon is ostracized from Athens. Athenian foreign policy drops its alliance with Sparta and allies itself with former enemies, Argos and Thessaly. Megara leaves the Pelopnnesian league with Sparta and allies itself with Athens.

460 BC: King Araxerxes offers Thermistecles asylum. Themistocles dies 549 BC.

458 BC: Athens blockades the island of Aegina and sends an army to defend Megara from the Corinthians.

457 BC: Sparta sends an army to Boeotia, reviving the Thebes, to help hold the Athenians in check.

431-404 BC: Peloponnesian War. The Athenian empire and the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) fight for power. Sparta receives support from Persia, which supports rebellions in states controlled by the Athenian empire along the Aegean Sea and Ionia. Athens sends a massive ground force to attack Sicily and the entire force is wiped out. Athens’s fleet was destroyed at Aegospotami, ending the war with Athens surrendering to Sparta.

Athens became almost completely subjugated. Sparta became the strongest power in area. All of Greece suffered economic costs of the war. All the states in Greece became poor, but Athens was economically devastated. The Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece.

—–

All chapters and times are from the DVD:

+3 points: Chapter 2: Narrator (Dilios) says that Persia is coming and is going to “snuff out the world’s one hope for reason and justice.” (Historically, Sparta was involved only for military/strategic reasons and self-preservation. Sparta had considered returning Hippias to be Tyrant of Athens and had attempted to install an Athenian as Tyrant. Sparta was an Oligarchy ruled by a small number of kings. Sparta was not known for its “reason” or its “justice”. Sparta was known for being a warrior cult.) Whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 2: Narrator says “It was King Leonides himself who provoked it.” (Historically, in 490 BC, Darius had sent heralds to several cities, demanding “Earth and Water” and both Athens and Greece killed the messenger. Also, the reason Persia was attacking, was because Athens had helped Ionia revolt from its Persian masters back in 499 BC. Athens had provoked Persia. Not Sparta. Although Sparta would now likely be attacked if Persia were to conquer Athens.) Whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 2: Leonidas’s wife is shown as a near equal to the King. Historical whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 3: Leonidas refers to Athenians as “Boy lovers”. Historically, Spartan pederasty was practiced at the time of the Battle of Thermopylae. Whitewashing.

+6 points: Chapter 4: Priests for the Oracle of Delphi are shown to be corrupt. Leonidas is said to not believe the oracle. The narrator refers to them as “priests of the old gods. Inbred swine. More creature than man.” Priests are shown to be physically ugly. Historically, Leonidas believed the prophecies of the Oracle and Sparta was very strict in its religious observations. Whitewashing. Othering.

+3 points: Chapter 5: Narrator: (about priests) “Diseased old mystics. Worthless remnants of a time before Spartas asscent from darkness. Remnants of a senseless tradition. Needs of men, and souls as black as hell.” “Pompus, inbred, swine. Worthless. Diseased. Rotten. Corrupt.” (Historically, Sparta respected the Oracle. Observed the religous practices.) Othering. Whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 6: Leonidas refers to Oracle as “drunken, adolecent, girl”. Whitewashing.

+10 points: Chapter 6: Leonidas asks “What must a king do to save his world, when the very laws he is sworn to protect force him to do nothing.”Historically, the Sparta council votes to lead a multi-city army of 7,000 Greek soldiers to Thermopylae. Movie represents law as an encumbrance that needs to be disobeyed with brute force, when in fact, the law was no such encumbrance. A league of several Greek cities had formed and had voted to attack at the choke points at Therme, Themopylae, and the Ismuth of Corinth. Violence over social structure.

+3 points: Chapter 7: Narrator: “Goodbye, my love. He doesn’t say it. There’s no room for softness. Not in Sparta. No place for weakness.” (Then he wouldn’t have thought it, either.) Whitewashing to appeal to modern audience.

+3 points: Chapter 8: Leonidas meets up with Arcadians. They act surprised that there are only 300 Spartans. (War council would have known this already.) Leonides makes fun of Arcadians for being potters, sculpters, and blacksmiths. Says “I brought more soldiers than you did.” (Historically, there were 300 Spartans and 7,000 other Greek soldiers from many different cities. Movie attempts to portray the fight as 300 Spartans and one other group of wimps.) Othering. Whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 11: Older councilman trying to help the Queen. “Many on our concil would vote to give all we have and follow Leonidas, but you must show them favor.” (Historically, Sparta was operating on self preservation. They had sent a group to Therme with some Athenians. The second choke point was Thermopylae. And Sparta was quite ready to fall back to the Ismuth of Corinth, let Persia sack Athens, and try and hold off the Persians at Corinth. The Spartan council had sent everything they wanted to send.) Whitewashing.

+3 points: Chapter 11: Queen says “Freedom isn’t free. It comes with a highest of costs. The cost of blood.” (Historically, Sparta was an oligarchy, a system of rule by kings. The term “freedom” isn’t in their lexicon.) Whitewashing.

+4 points: Chapter 13: Ephialtes, the Spartan traitor, is shown to be hideous. He tries to join Leonidas, but is shown to be too weak. He will later betray Leonidas to King Xerxes. (Historically, Ephialtes was from the city of Trachis, not Sparta. And he looked normal.) Othering.

+186 Points: Chapter 14: First wave of ligth infantry. Paper targets: 47 hand to hand. plus 15 pushed off the cliff. (47+15)*3=186. Paper targets.

+5 points: chapter 14: Persian arrows are shown killing a wounded Persian. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.

42 points: Chapter 15: Second wave, cavalry: 14 paper targets.

48 points: Chapter 17: Spartans are killing wounded Persians. 16 paper targets. Leonidas says “There’s no reason we can’t be civil” Whitewashing.

+4 points. Chapter 17: King Xerxes is introduced as effeminant, alien, bisexual, creepy guy with a weird Darth Vader kind of voice. +4 points. Othering.

+5 points. Chapter 18,19: Attack by Immortals. Narrator calls them “Eyes black as night. Teeth filed to fangs. Soulless.” Othering.

+5 points. Chapter 18, 19: Giant Ogre is held by chains. Othering.

+75 points: Chapter 18,19: Attack by immortals: Paper targets: 31. Paper Spartans: 6. (31-6)*3 = 75 points

+5 points. Chapter 19: 2:56: Dilios knocks mask off Immortal. Looks like a monster underneath. Othering.

+15 points: Chapter 20: Day 2 of Battle: Rhino kills 3 Persians. LRGM

+5 points. Rhino is alien. (Historically didn’t happen.) Othering.

+5 points. Chapter 20: Persian executioner looks like a monster, has swords for arms. Othering.

+5 points. Chapter 20: elephants. (historically didn’t occur.) Othering.

+108 points: Chapter 21: Persian paper targets: 37. Spartan paper targets: 1 total: (37-1) * 3 = 108 points

+5 points: Chapter 21: One minute into chapter. Persian appears to have scissors for hands or something. othering.

+36 points: Chapter 21: after captain sees his son die, he goes on rampage, 12 persian paper targets.

+5 points. Chapter 22: At Xerxes camp, in his ‘harem’ or something, a goat-like thing plays a flute. Othering.

+2 ponts. chapter 22: in Harem: armless person. Othering.

+3 points. Chapter 22: Harem: Woman with half her face scarred or deformed.

+5 points: Chapter 24: Daxos arrives to inform Leonidas that the hunchback has betrayed them, that the 1,000 Phocians who were supposed to guard the trail have disappeared, and that they should retreat. Leonidas says he will never retreat. Daxos says he will. (Historically, Leonidas most likely ordered most of the multi-city armies to retreat while he stayed to delay the Persians. 2,000 Non-spartan Greeks stayed with Leonidas.) Whitewashing.

+3 points. Chapter 26: Queen gives speech to council. “We must send the entire Spartan army for the preservation of liberty, justice, law & order, reason. Send the army for the hope that 300 have not been wasted.” Whitewashing history.

-36 points. Chapter 28: Final stand: Persian Paper Targets: 5. Spartan paper targets: 17. total = (5-17) * 3 = -36 points. othering.

+3 points: Narrator at Battle of Plataea says Leonidas gave his life not just for Sparta, but for all Greece, and the promise this country (Greece) holds. Historically, Leonidas fought for Sparta. Sparta was willing to turn Athens back into a tyranny. Sparta will withdraw from the persian-grecco wars soon after the Battle of Plataea. Athens will begin to form it’s own empire, which will compete directly with Sparta. in 40 years, the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens will erupt and leave all of Greece devastated. whitewashing.

+3 points: Final Narration: “We rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny” Whitewashing to appeal to modern audience.

+10 points: Ommission of fact: The movie never mentions the contribution of the Athenian navy in preventing the Persian navy from bypassing King Leonidas at Thermopylae. Instead portrays the entire battle as being won by the Spartans by themselves. Whitewashing.

===============

+602 points subtotal

The movie “300″ is the epitome of War handwavium.

It portrays the protagonists, the King of Sparta and his 300, as people wearing perfectly white hats, fighting a battle for altruistic reasons, for glory, honor, justice, freedom, liberty, and to fight against mysticism and tyrranny. But the fact of the matter is, historically, Sparta was its own form of tyranny, was willing to install a tyrant in Athens, and was fighting for self preservation. Not that there’s anything wrong with self-preservation, but Sparta was a warrior cult, not a center of idealism and altruistic motives.

The movie also portrays King Leonidas as having to do an end run around Spartan Law to fight the Persians, when in fact the council of Sparta approved the sending of 300 spartans to Thermopylae. Classic war handwavium plot token is to require the hero rise above the stupid restrictions of the law to do what’s right. Except, it didn’t happen that way historically.

Not to mention that historically, Sparta refused to help Athens during the Battle of Marathon, and Athens fought most of that battle alone. Sparta showed up two days after the battle was over, claiming they had to wait till their religious period was over.

The movie also portrays Leonidas and the 300 as the only warriors to the battle. Everyone else is bunch of potters, sculptors, and blacksmiths, who are playing dress up at being a warrior. Except that historically, the Athenians fought the Battel of Marathon without any Spartan help, and won a decisive victory. And the Athenian navy and other greek ships were the only reason that the choke point at Thermopylae wasn’t something that Xerxes could simply sail around with his 1,000 ships. The Battle of Thermopylae was a combined arms exercise. land and sea. And it was a multi-national effort with military contributions from many, many Greek cities.

Last, but not least, the enemy, the persians are portrayed as inhuman, beastly, effeminate, creepy, ugly, alien, and whatever else it would take to make sure the audience knew who they should hate, and to make it that much more easier for Spartans to kill persians without making the audience flinch or squirm at the loss of life. We are told flat out that they have no souls.

Finally, all the frailties of the protagonists are glossed over and rewritten by the movie. The narrator for the movie (Dilios) is based on a real person (Aristodemus), but the facts are all rearranged to hide any ugliness from the audience. Aristodemus was wounded at Thermopylae. He had an eye wound that became infected, and Leonidas sent him home. However, Sparta received him as a coward. For a year, he was subjected to Spartan shame and guilt for having lived when everyone else at that battle died. A year later, at the Battle of Plataea, Aristodemus is suicidal and fights recklessly and gets himself killed. For that, Sparta removes the blackmark from his name, but they refuse to honor him for his action at Plataea because they felt he was too reckless.

The narrator in the movie at the final scene doesn’t reflect any of this reality, the year of shame that Sparta held towards him, or his suicidal tendancies at the Battle of Plataea. And the movie ends and the credits roll before we can see him killed or could see how Sparta would respond to his death.

The movie also ends just in time to avoid showing the rise of the Athenian Empire, the Delian League, which would certainly cast the events into a different light. The first island to revolt against Persia was Naxos, in 502 BC. In 477 BC, after the Greeks defeat the Persians, Naxos rebels against the Athenian Empire, and the Athenians crush them. The Athenians and Spartans begin to maneuvar against one another, and this culminates in the Peloponnesian War 40 years later. The Peloponnesian war is between the Spartan league and the Athenian Empire, it lasts about thirty years, leaves all of Greece in economic ruin, and is considered the end of the Greek Golden Age.

No, the protagonist is dressed up in a pure white hat, the people around him are weak, the laws are stopping from doing what’s right, the bad guys are soulless ghouls, and we get to watch the whole thing, including the deaths of 150 paper targets, with an easy conscience.

Bow-chicka-bow-WOW

2008 07 07

Watchmen-comic books

This is the war handwavium score for “Watchmen”, a 12 issue comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Total: +327 points.

NOTE: SPOILERS!!!

-10 point: Chapter 1, page 16: Rorschach breaks anonymous mans’ fingers trying to get information. Turns out he doesn’t know anything. Showing realistic issues with torture.

-5 points: Chapter 2, page 15: Comedian kills Vietnamese woman, pregnant with his child. Would be -10 points, but she initiates physical violence by slashing open his face with a broken bottle. Protagonist kills innocent civilian.

-2 point: chapter 2, page 18: Comedian shoots rubber bullets at anonymous kid spray painting graffitti. possibly protagonist overusing force. Possibly just a paper target.

10 points: chapter 2, page 21: Rorschach threatens to break Moloch’s arm unless he tells truth. Moloch tells the truth. Fantasy Torture.

12 points: chapter 3, page 13: Nite Owl and Laurie beat up 6 paper targets in alley way.

10 points: chapter 3, page 14: Nite Owl and Laurie beat up 5 paper targets in alley way.

3 points: chapter 4, page 14: Dr. Manhattan vaporizes man with gun. paper target.

6 points: chapter 4, page 20: Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam jungle, kills 2 paper targets.

5 points: chapter 4, page 23: Comedian, operating alone brings back the Americans held hostage in Iran. Apparently, not a single hostage is killed. This, we are told, silences “even his harshest critics”. Unrealistic portrayal of violence.

3 points: chapter 4, page 23: Rorschach leaves dead body on police doorsteps. Paper target.

10 points: chapter 4, page 23: Rorschach kills a multiple rapist that police did nothing about. violence superior to social structures.

10 points: chapter 5, page 5: Rorschach uses torture to get truth out of Moloch. Fantasy Torture.

6 points: chapter 5, page 7: three dead paper targets being investigated by police.

3 points: chapter 5, page 14: Veidt’s unnamed female companion killed by assassin. paper target.

3 points: chapter 5, page 16: Veidt kills unnamed assassin with poison pill. paper target.

5 points: chapter 5, page 27: Rorschach attacks three policeman. paper targets.

Observation: chapter 6, page 4: Rorschach as child is struck by mother and by john/client. Could be pointless demonstration of evil. Could be Mary Sue-ism.

4 points: chapter 6, page 7: Rorschach as child attacks two paper targets.

3 points: chapter 6, page 12: Rorschach kills anonymous prisoner with hot grease. paper target.

10 points: chapter 6, page 14: Rorschach captures two bad guys and leaves them for police. Violence superior to social structures.

2 point: chapter 6, page 15: Rorschach beats up anonymous bad guy. Paper target.

10 points: chapter 6, page 18: Rorschach uses torture to find kidnapped girl.

6 points: chapter 6, page 23: Rorschach kills two dogs. paper targets.

10 points: chapter 6, page 25: man makes repeated mentions that there’s no evidence and Rorschach can’t “prove” he did anything, implying “prove” in a court of law. Rorschach handcuffs man to pipe, gives him a hacksaw, tells him he’ll have to saw through his arm to get out, then lights the building on fire. Man is killed. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine. Violence superior to Social structures.

10 points: chapter 6, page 28: Dr. Malcolm starts story as a “positive” person. Always looking on the bright side of life. Rorschach tells him how the world is Nasty, Brutish, and Short, how there is no one but us, that there is no God (p. 26), and that hell is other people. By page 28, Dr. Malcolm takes on Rorschach’s view that it’s a dark world, we’re all alone, the horror of empty and meaningless. Violence over social structures. Bad philosophy from sociopaths winning over positive philosophy from well adjusted people.

5 points: chapter 7, page 12: Police shown beating passive women peace protestors with baton. Police and the “masked adventurers” are basically on opposite teams. Government is shown as ineffective. This is a pointless display of evilness.

5 points: chapter 8, page 6: inmate talks cop into abandoning post and giving inmate some private time with Rorschach. Violence superior to social structures.

5 points: chapter 8, page 15: Rorschach breaks paper target’s arms (Larry), then inmates kill Larry to get to Rorscharch. Paper Target. Lethal Rube Goldberg Machine.

3 points: Chapter 8, page 17: Rorschach kills paper target with arc welder. (Michael?)

+8 points: Chapter 8, page 27: anonymous gang breaks into wrong superhero’s apartment, thinking he had something to do with Rorscharch breaking out of prison. 4 nonlethal hits against the mob of paper targets.

-5 points: Chapter 8, page 27: anonymous gang breaks into wrong superhero’s apartment, thinking he had something to do with Rorscharch breaking out of prison. Vigilanteism misidentifies innocent target. Half points because its an anonymous group, rather than one of the main characters.

10 points: chapter 9, page 24: Laurie’s mom, Sally, was nearly raped by Eddie (the Comedian) chapter 2, page 6. During the attempted rape, Eddie says standard rape justification of “I know what you need. you gotta have some reason for wearing an outfit like that.” We now find out that the attempted rapist Eddie was right. He did know what Sally wanted. Sally wanted to have sex with Eddie, and Sally ended up getting pregnant with Eddie’s child, and that child was Laurie. Misrepresentation of Rape.

-5 points: Comedian attempts to rape Laurie.

Observation: Chapter 10, page 6: While Rorschach has been continuously identified as the craziest of the masked vigilantes, he actually shows the decency to keep the fact that the landlady is a prostitute a secret from her kids.

10 points: Chapter 10, page 14: Rorschach successsfully tortures useful information out of the correct person and gets the clue he needs.

10 points: Chapter 10, page 16: Nite Owl successfully tortures useful information out of the correct person and gets the clues he needs.

6 points: Chapter 10, page 18: shown two paper targets killed in ship explosion.

Observation: Chapter 10, page 8: Veidt reveals his hero worship of Alexander the Great.

15 points: chapter 10, page 11: Veidt kills his three assistants for no functional reason whatsoever. Pure demonstration of his insanity.

Observation: chapter 10, page 28: 11 paper targets shown killed as a result of Veidt’s plan. Civilians. Note that civilians killed in the crossfire of a battle would normally reflect negative points, but in this case, civilians are intended targets. Since all the main characters alive at the end (Veidt, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, Laurie) all agree that the ends justify the means, then these civilians are paper targets that they must kill to get to their goal (world peace).

Observation: Chapter 12, page 1: 50 dead paper targets.

Observation: Chapter 12, page 2: Another 50 or so dead paper targets.

Observation: Chapter 12, page 3: 10 dead paper targets.

Observation: Chapter 12, page 4: 4 dead paper targets.

Observation: Chapter 12, page 5: 7 dead paper targets.

Observation: Chapter 12, page 7: 7 dead paper targets.

10 points: Chapter 12, pages 2 through 7 seem to exist mostly to show a lot of dead bodies and blood and gore and veins in teeth. There are approximately 150 dead civilian bodies shown on those mostly static pages. Normally, if a story had a war going on and showed civilians getting caught and killed in the crossfire, that would subtract points from the war handwavium score. But this isn’t that. This is something different. This is intentional targeting of civilians. And it produces a positive effect, world peace. There is also the issue of whether to count every single body represented on the page, all the way to the tiny stick figures in the far background. If I were scoring a movie, I’d count only the people you see actually killed on screen. But this is a different media. So I don’t know what to do with this scene. I won’t score it as paper targets, but I’ll give it 10 points for showing violence as superior to social structures.

10 points: Chapter 12, page 19: Veidt’s plan to unite the world against a common, alien entity works. Peace breaks out world wide. Hobbes’ Leviathan fantasy come true. Violence over social structures.

30 points: Chapter 12, page 20: Dr. Manhattan, Laurie, and Nite Owl, all agree to keep the truth a secret. They become complicit in Veidt’s plan. Violence over social structures.

10 points: Chapter 12, page 24: Dr. Manhattan, who couldn’t care less about the human race just a couple hours ago, who had to have Laurie convince him that Earth was worth saving, who has shown a penchant for determinism and argued for the non-existence of free will, and who is demonstrably as smart as a God, goes beyond complicity with Veidt’s plan and actually actively engages in killing Rorschach (who is the only one in the group to hold truth more important than anything else) to keep the secret.

summary:

“Watchmen” is a twelve issue comic book series that was first published in 1986. It is set in an alternate history of 1986 where super heroes exist and masked heroes without super powers are running around as well. The point of view character for the story is mainly a masked vigilante named Rorschach. Rorschach is described as mentally unstable. He is shown to use torture and vigilanteism to effective ends. We are never shown Rorschach kill an innocent man he thought was a criminal. We are shown Rorschach torture a man by breaking his fingers who we find out doesn’t actually know anything, but Rorschach continues to use torture until he gets the informaiton he needs. His torture never produces false leads. His history is that of a boy with no father, born of a prostitute mother, abused by his mother, abused by her johns, abused by the kids around the neighborhood, taken from his mother and placed into a foster home. His psych evaluation says he’s crazy. People call him crazy.

But it turns out that Rorschach is not only the only person who figured out that something bad was going down long before anyone else did (He realizes that the Comedian’s death wasn’t a robbery gone wrong), he is also shown to be the only one who manages to maintain the integrity to not go along with mass murder to achieve world peace (He refuses to be complicit in covering up the truth about Veidt’s actions at the end of the story).

For this, he is killed by Dr. Manhattan, a god-like character, whose lack of people skills make him more of a sociopath than Rorschach. The only thing Manhattan has going for him is that he is all powerful. He doesn’t even have a weakness like Kryptonite. He can do anything, and yet, he decides to go along with the idea of wiping out half of New York city to maintain the international solidarity against what everyone else thinks is an alien attack from another dimension.

He can do anything, but he decides to kill Rorschach to reinforce a lie, rather than, say, undo the catastrophe, and use his infinite powers and infinite wisdom to lead the world to a lasting peace. Instead, the best he can come up with is to go along the a madman’s plan to scare the world into uniting against what they think is an alien threat.

That’s the problem with introducing a character with god like powers into a story. The author really needs to have god like intelligence to make the character believable, otherwise, the character just comes off as a wish fullfillment fantasy of what a finite mortal would THINK they would do if they HAD god like powers.

Along the way, a lot of violence is shown to the reader, which racks up the war handwavium score.

The death of civilians might usually count as negative points (bringing the war handwavium score down), showing the ugly cost of war, however, since all the main characters alive at the end (Veidt, Manhattan, Nite Owl, Laurie) agree that the death of those civilians are worth the world peace induced by fear of death and world annihilation. So, they don’t get counted. The first time I scored “Watchmen” I counted them as paper targets, which increased the score by 300 points, but there are issues with how many bodies do you count, you don’t actually see their deaths, and I haven’t come up with a good way to score something like that, so I withdrew those points in favor of 10 points for showing violence being superior to social structures.

The story tells us that all the social structures in the world were driving headlong into WW3, and the only way to avert it was to cause the innocent deaths of half the people of New York City. Not only does this avert WW3, it transforms the world into a bunch of peace-loving peace-niks. Everyone agrees to help everyone else. Group hug.

The world’s smartest man, Veidt, wants to bring peace to the world. His plan? Kill half the people in New York City. But that’s not the main problem, the problem is it fricken *worked*.

The God character, Dr. Manhattan, is even smarter than Veidt, and also able to alter anything and everything literally. His response to Veidt’s plan? Yeah, now that you’ve killed all these people, we should just go with it. Not only am I willing to let you live after killing millions of people. I’m going to kill Rorschach because he won’t lie. That’s “God”s response.

This is, ultimately, the fantasy of war handwavium, that war, and violence, and the use of force, can achieve good ends, better ends than social structures can achieve. The world is shown tearing itself apart, the social structures, the UN, national governmetns, international relations, all are failing to achieve any sort of peace, and all are marching inescapably towards war. And Veidt fulfills the war handwavium fantasy of bypassing all these failing social structures and imposing a world peace by killing half the people in New York City.

In Watchmen, we are shown on screen 5 scenes where a main character tortures some anonymous character and gets useful information. We are shown on screen 1 scene where a main character tortures an anonymous character who doesn’t know anything. We are told after the fact that a main character had to go through 14 people before he was able to get useful information.

Folks can argue that Moore did that simply because he didn’t have time to show all fourteen that failed. But he didnt have to show all five that worked, either. WHether he made these choices consciously to make some point about war, I don’t know. But his choices in narration, standing by itself, without people trying to post-insert explanations into the narrative that aren’t actually shown in the narrative, tells a story that torture is an effective method for producing information.

Folks can argue that Moore was trying to show these heroes were really anti-heroes, that they’re not good people, whatever, but Moore does this inside a narative that shows us that torture works.

If Moore wanted to show me that these folks were anti-heroes, fine. Then to keep the war handwavium score down, he would have to do it in a way that showed torture being ineffective, producing many more false leads than positive ones, showing us more of those innocent people beign tortured on screen.

Same thing goes for vigilantiesm. While folks argue that Moore wanted to show these guys as anti-heroes, what Moore shows us in the narrative is that vigilantism works. We are never shown or even told about a scene where Rorschach killed an innocent person that he thought was guilty. We are shown Rorschach committing lethal vigilantism against a number of people, and they’re all guilty. We are never shown cases of misidentification.

With Comedian, we are shown two instances where he commits violence against an innocent individual, but in both cases he is “off duty”. Neither are vigilantisms gone wrong. Both are his own amoral behaviour coming out. But we are also shown that the backstory of the Comedian is that he alone went in and ended the Iranian hostage crisis, apparently without the death of a single hostage, since it was enough to silence all of his critics at the time. So while Comedian is shown to be an amoral anti-hero capable of being violent against innocent people, the one act we are shown on screen of his vigilantism is super successful.

So, the score with Comedian gets +5 points for the Iranian Hostage bit and -5 for the two violent acts we see him commit against innocent people. With the Comedian, the score goes to zero. Probably the number you want for an “amoral superhero” story.

Rorschach, though, gets numerous points for his vigilantism against guilty parties. And there are no negative points because he never misidentifies and kills an innocent person. We are shown one instance of him torturing an innocent persion, and that subtracts some points.

But we are shown far more instances of violence being more effective than social structures than we are shown violence being inferior to social structurs, that the final score ends up being a large positive number.

Whatever Moore intended to tell us with his story, I don’t know. But what he shows us is a world where torture works, where vigilantism works, where governments can’t stop the rush to WW3, but an act of mass genocide will cause an outbreak of world peace.

2008 07 07

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