More Watchmen Ramblings

What'd we talk about last time?

Icons. Rorshach's mask. Identification. Hero. Idealism.

That sounds right.

Well, ol' Scotty McCloud says that the icon/abstract street runs both ways! And by that I mean that if more cartoonish means more iconic and identifiable then realism and gritty detail mean things are more literal, more objectifiable, removed from the realm of our awareness and a part of the outside world. If I show the little smiley button from the cover of the Watchmen book you'll think, "Oh, it's my buddy." But if I show a hyper-detailed drawing of a guy smiling you'll think, "Who is that guy?" It's separated from you because it looks like the things that you actually look at and not the way you imagine things that are part of you.

So how does that relate to Watchmen? Specifically Rorshach. Well, and I'm just going to take a stab at it here, when Rorshach looks at the inkblot that the psychiatrist presents to him, before he answers there is an immediate sudden transition to a glory, bloody close-up panel of a dog with its head cut open. I felt rude just typing that.

But I think the message is that this is the gruesome way that Rorshach views the world. The brutality makes us recoil and fear the violence that Rorshach dwells in. It's foreign to us and the psychiatrist who naively believes he can make an optimist out of Rorshach. Rorshach is a traumatized, abused, sociopath and there's a very scary way to be. All though Rorshach holds himself to high standards and ideals, the world as he sees it as a barren, awful, disgusting place. There is no innate human good or benevolent force that would shape Rorshach's view. He sees only a dog with its head split open and he must act against that horror. With equally brutal acts. But, for Rorshach, with the way he views the world, there is no other way for him to act. There is no good that he could harness. He only stands for inflicting the pain back on itself. To be 'good', for Rorshach, is to either do nothing and believe that the world will work itself out or to lie to yourself about what you are actually doing.

And that's all shown by the realism in the dog head that Rorshach sees. And all the other gore and violence that tends to follow Rorshach around. But I like the dog head.

I mean, I don't like it. I just like using it as an example.

...think about bunnies now.