THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

The Watchmen: a film about castration, a film in which each super-hero is made into a superb failure. Written during a time of success (Reagan’s era, we didn’t even know how much money we would make) it can only be fit for the general public at a time when the failure is right in our faces, like a CEO in a $10,000 suit complemented by handcuffs, as the cock of Dr. Manhattan faces us flacidly the whole movie through. As Seinfeld says, “That’s just not something you want to see.” We don’t want to see this failure hanging off the body of the most powerful super-hero of them all. Several times during the film the director has the audacity to show us the erect (Twin!) Towers glooming on the Manhattan Skyline. Luckily, he has the original comic script to blame it on. Those erect towers are now simply wrecked. They have failed, just like the ability of Dr. Manhattan to please a woman, even when he has more than one body. More than one body, more than one tower; it doesn’t matter, the terror and the truth will take them all down. Dan (Nite Owl) also has a moment of failure (with the same woman), which he fixes by trying to save the world. It is only when that fails irrevocably is he able to perform again, on his comfortable, small scale. Bourgeois, attractive. It is a failure which keeps desire alive, and mankind is no happier than when the ultimate goal (peace on earth) is both an utter success (in that Russia and U.S.A become common enemies of the imp Manhattan) and complete fiasco (in that Manhattan is innocent).

So here is how I hash out the failures: Ozymandias, which is pretty obvious, in that he sacrifices the city of New York, and its anonymous millions, for a supposedly secure peace on earth. It is peace based on a lie, but it is the best we can hope for: the logic of sacrifice. It is realistic. This is the failure of ratiocination.

Manhattan, even though he can meld and mold matter at will, ultimately agrees with the unconscionable act of Ozymandias, and departs, a lame duck of a super-hero to “create other galaxies” or some bullshit like that. He condones the murder of millions and departs never having known love. His departure seals the peace. His truth seals the lie. This is the failure of scientia.

The Silk Spectre, the only prominent woman, fails in a fit of sentimentality, for she actually weeps when Dr. Manhattan tells her he is going on his venture of creation without love. She is turned on by the idea of it, and this way, as she’s making love to Dan in their suburban hovel, she might think of these creations millions of light years away and work herself up to an orgasm. This is the failure of concupiscence.

Dan, Nite Owl, he is the big nerd who actually has big muscles, kind of like a boy ugly duckling. He has a fit of conscience when he sees what Ozymandias is doing, but he only gets angry for a little bit, and then realizes that what is realistic for him is just to settle down, fight crime on the weekends, and bone his wife in the ship on the way home. This is the failure of common sense.

Rohrshach. O, how close we came to a hero here. For he was the one who tracked down Ozymandias, he was the one who would never back down to a suburban existence, who would never let the truth be trampled by such a thing as peace. But in the end he is only seeking suicide. He is only seeking death as an escape from a world of people whom he hates. He holds onto the truth, but he has no love for it -  just as Dr. Manhattan has knowledge to create without love, so Rohrschach has truth but without compassion for his fellows.

There is no super-hero here, but its funny that we’re left with a pretty super movie. It was noted a couple nights ago that the best candidate for hero in this story is actually Rohrschach’s journal, which, because of the intractable rapacity of the media will have a chance to see the light of day, to open up the possibility of Ozymandias’ guilty, to re-introduce the threat of nuclear war between earthly enemies – but it is possible that Rohrschach loved his journal, and if he did, the truth there will most suredly see its day.