Something Larger Than Life. (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency)

 “This isn’t me, this is some weird after image.
My signature, on everything I made.
My thumbprint deep in the cosmic clay."
-Grant Morrison, 2014

As an aside, fuck you Max Landis.

In the past, I’ve described this project as a psychocronography, and I feel now is a good time to explore what that means. The genre of literary criticism was created by Dr. Philip Sandifer in 2009 for his blog “The Nintendo Project,” a look at every single game released on the NES in alphabetical order. As of this writing, the project has stalled after the second author, going under the pseudonym FreezingInferno, quit shortly after the GamerGate debacle made them not want to write about video games anymore. To be fair, said debacle also made me give up on video games entirely (I should also note that Frezno was also stuck on an entry for Ninja Gaiden that involved Twine). Yours truly has optioned to finish the project should my Patreon reach $500 (Hint, Hint). Regardless, in the wake of Sandifer’s far more successful follow up, “TARDIS Eruditorum,” other projects within the style of psychocronography began to spring up, including but not limited to “Vaka Rangi,” “My Little Po-Mo,” “Pushing Ahead of the Dame,” and “Xenomorph’s Paradox.”

In retrospect however, it was discovered that the true origin of Psychocronography was in fact the Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell comic “From Hell,” beating the Star Wars character Thrawn by two years. The comic details a series of murders in Whitechapel attributed to the serial killer dubbed Jack the Ripper (pictured after quote). In an interview with BBC Films in “anticipation” for the god-awful film adaptation, Moore explained the methodology of his analysis thusly:

The idea was to do a documentary comic about a murder. I concluded that there was a way of approaching the [Ripper] murders in a completely different way. I changed the emphasis from 'whodunit' to 'what happened'. I'd seen advertisements for Douglas Adams' book "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". A holistic detective? You wouldn't just have to solve the crime, you'd have to solve the entire world that that crime happened in. That was the twist that I needed.

Given this revelation about the nature of Psychocronography, we should perhaps look at the genre of criticism from the angle of “From Hell.”

Gull at work.

The first thing of note given the comic is its genre. Though it is extremely indebted to thehistorical fiction genre given that it has an entire appendix devoted to detailing every single historical link the comic makes (ranging from the connectivity of the conception of Adolf Hitler and the first Whitechapel Killing to when Alistair Crowley was alive), its true genre is in fact fantasy. This isn’t to deride the work’s quality as many who use the term often do (in many ways “From Hell” is the second best thing Moore has written [behind The Mirror of Love]). Rather, this is to point out that a narrative wherein Jack the Ripper performs a magical ritual to give birth to the 20^th century (specifically one that transports him into said century) fits very nicely into that genre of fiction. And indeed elements of the fantasy genre have been known to bleed into psychocronographic works, most notably in Sandifer’s “The Last War in Albion,” wherein Sandifer performs a séance to summon a spirit of a notable artist for an interview.

There is of course another aspect of the comic that simultaneously pushes it within the genre of Fantasy, and it is perhaps the second most psychocronographic moment in the whole comic: the chapter dubbed “Gull, ascending.” (The most psychocronographic moment in the whole comic is the aforementioned Hitler/first killing moment, which also loops in an inexplicable wash of blood, which occurred in one of the world’s most populous Jewish quarters, a massive fire down Ratcliffe Highway, and John Merrick.) The chapter details Jack the Ripper’s apotheosis, swinging back and forth through time via a structure the comic calls The Fourth Dimension. As the comic explains:

Fourth dimensional patterns within Eternity’s monolith would, he suggests, seem merely random events to third-dimensional percipients… events rising towards inevitable convergence like an archway’s lines. Let us say something peculiar happens in 1788… a century later related events take place. Then again, 50 years later. Then 25 years. Then 12 ½. An invisible curve, rising through the centuries…

There are numerous moments within this structure of note, including Robert Lewis Stevenson coming up with the idea to write Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Peter Sutcliffe, and an 1888 case of blood raining down upon the Mediterranean. But for our purposes the moment of note is that of Jack the Ripper’s encounter with William Blake, a moment that would define the entirety of psychocronography. Much like this blog, Blake is a specter within the book being invoked and referenced, though never once appearing until this chapter.

As mentioned in a previous post, Blake was known to have seen things. It’s ambiguous even today as to the source of these visions (be they psychological or mystical), but as this is a fantasy novel, Moore goes with the latter and has the ghost of Jack the Ripper visit Blake one night. Naturally, Blake is terrified by the vision, not the least of which due to Jack the Ripper taking on a scalier, more terrifying form than he had on the mortal coil. Later, when discussing his vision with his friend and fellow artist John Varley, Jack the Ripper reappears to Blake. Naturally, being of the artistic Blake begins to draw this monstrous being.

And he would dub the painting he would create out of his initial sketches The Ghost of a Flea. By defining Jack the Ripper as a ghost, we find the purpose of Psychocronography: to find the ghosts lurking within a work: the untold connections, the odd coincidences, the monstrous implications that are at once wondrous and terrifying. The ghosts that haunt the architecture we call history.

Of course, the act of being haunted is, much like the magical ritual, one of unintentionallity. What separates the two pieces of mystic thematics is that to be haunted does not require one creating the other whereas the magical ritual does. One need only look at Jed Blue’s exploration of the episode of Batman the Animated Series Harlequinade in “Near Apocalypse of ’09” for an additional example of a work of fiction creating a magical ritual (and all the flaws of that approach). But for an exploration of hauntings, let’s look at a show that’s been rather inexplicably skirting the edges of this project: Steven Universe.

Steven Universe reading a book.

Steven Universe follows the adventures of its titular character (pictured left) on many a magical adventure fighting off monsters in both the physical sense of Giant Worm Monsters as well as the metaphorical sense of Capitalism is Killing my Friends. Core to the show’s ethos is that of empathy towards others and the pains of repression. The former theme is perhaps the more obvious of the two, as Steven attempts to understand and help those around him (with varying degrees of success). Most notable are his interactions with the gem dubbed Centipeetle, a corrupted gem (corruption in this context refers to the fact that the gems are a species of hard light holograms and some of the gems are incapable of showing non corrupted forms and lash out because of this) who was once an enemy of Steven’s. As the series goes on, Steven attempts to heal Centipeetle’s corruption via care, understanding, and liquid medicine called Spit. At one point, Centipeetle gets to a point where she can communicate with Steven, and he tries to understand what happened to her. In the end, Steven reunites Centipeetle with her crew, which is all he can do.

Concurrently, recent episodes have explored the theme of repression through the show’s main antagonists: The Diamonds, the rulers of the Gem Homeworld that wish to destroy the Earth, as it reminds them of the death of their sister, Pink Diamond. At one point, Yellow Diamond has a villain song (because what musical wouldn’t let Patti LuPone sing?) about the benefits of repression “What’s the use of feeling, Blue?” Now repression isn’t what defines their villainy (that would be imperialism), but it does highlight an aspect of it and codes the act of repressing ones feelings as wrong within the scheme of the show.

Of course, this theme goes further back than simply the recent episodes. It can be found within Steven’s wrongheaded decision to repress his humanity in Full Disclosure, Pearl’s complex feelings towards Greg, Steven’s father, in Mr. Greg, and the entire character of Kevin, most notably in the latest episode Kevin’s Party wherein he literally tells Steven not to be emotionally honest with Connie. (As an aside, related to this is Pearl’s inability to tell Steven what happened during the War the precedes and defines a smaller part of the series than fans would like it to. Most have read this as being a sign of Gem mind control from Pearl’s time as a slave. The likelier and more thematically apt explanation for this would be that Pearl is repressing her guilt for what she did during said war [incidentally, I’m on team “Pearl Killed Pink Diamond”].)

 

Steven Moffat with Lion.

Now that we’ve done a brief thematic exploration of Steven Universe, let’s look at one of the show’s ghosts: Steven Moffat (pictured right). Moffat is a Scottish playwright, notable for working on such shows as Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Jekyll. Thematically speaking, he explores the rubbish nature of masculinity, the impact of faulty technology, and dangers of repression. Going from the top down, his look at masculinity has its genesis from his sitcom series Joking Apart, an exploration of why his marriage failed utterly and how it was all his fault. Over the course of that series, and its spiritual successor Coupling, the lead would grow into a better person via his various failures forcing him to change. The lead of that show would in turn inform his later works (for better and worse) be they the rejection of Grimdark stories in A Good Man Goes to War or Jekyll’s attempts to make a monster of a man less cruel.

While the theme of glitchy technology does start out in his sitcom work, it becomes more pronounced when he starts writing Doctor Who. For example, there’s Silence in the Library/Forests of the Dead, wherein the life preserving machines trap those who try to escape the library in a pleasant version of the past, and living generally good lives but not the ones they’re supposed to be living. Then there’s The Bells of Saint John, which has the main baddies use the internet to suck out the souls of people to fund their capitalistic agenda.

A third example of glitchy technology also provides us with a look at the theme of repression within Moffat’s work. It comes from the episode The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, wherein a medical pod crash lands in London near the body of the soon to be dead little boy. The technology within the pod tries to revive the child, but inadvertently looks at humanity as being akin to the child and tries to heal everyone else as well. Given these examples, it’s not so much that the technology is broken, but that it’s working wrongly in a way that can’t be fixed. Corrupted, if you will.

The way in which the episode is resolved is by Nancy, the child’s mother, accepting him as her child. She was a young mother in a time that didn’t accept young mothers, and presented herself as the child’s sister. By revealing herself as the boy’s mother, the medical tech is able to realize that not all humans are gas mask wearing creatures crying out for their mothers and acts accordingly. There are other examples of repression within the episode from Nancy being able to steal food for her homeless friends because the person she stole it from represses his sexuality to the utopian future being presented as one without repression. Other examples in Moffat’s work include the Doctor’s inability to express his mental state after Heaven Sent in a healthy way to Sherlock’s repeated claims that he’s an emotionless being who is pure logic, typically done while shouting emotionally.

Now to make explicit what I’ve only implied, there is some connective tissue between the show Steven Universe and the creator Steven Moffat. Obviously there’s an intense distain for repression, but they also share an exploration of glitchy technology in the form of the Gems themselves (though one should avoid viewing them as mere objects as the term technology would imply). Both shows created by Steven Moffat and the series Steven Universe are rather infamous for their interminable and inexplicable hiatuses. And they both share a critical relationship with the concept of masculinity.

There are other connections (both are teetering on the edge of full on angry leftist without ever jumping off the boat of populism [though moments like the extremely blatant speeches about the horrors of capitalism and advocating the extrajudicial assassination of Rupert Murdoch do get close] thus causing some problematic moments [The Problem of Bismuth and the inability to actually cast a woman as the Doctor throughout his entire time as showrunner]), most interestingly in the character of Rose Quartz, Steven’s mother, whose character arc appears to have been akin to a gender swapped version the typical Moffat plot of a clever, witty, bumbling jerk learning to be less of a jerk through their relationships with other people (note how being with Greg gives Rose an actual connection with humanity as opposed to her previous views on the species, which were more akin to treating us like a fetish object).

Now, were the connections intentional? No, Steven Universe’s influences are more within the realm of anime and children’s cartoons from the 80’s than sitcoms and kids shows from the 90’s. You can’t intend to be haunted. Hauntings come from the inexplicable connections that only come about through accident and happenstance. And through these connections, these specters haunting the texts we explore in our psychocronographies, we can learn more about the world around us.

Jack The Ripper hovering above

the streets of Whitechapel

5/29/2016

(Next Time: October 10, 2017)

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[Photos: Shada Directed by Pennant Roberts Written by Douglas Adams, From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, Steven Moffat (age 8) Taken by Bill Moffat, Steven’s Lion Directed by Ian Jones-Quartey Written by Lamar Abrams and Aleth Romanillos]

You’re Dead. (Mort)

“You may be a barroom gambler
And cheat your way through life,
But you can’t cheat that little black train
Or beat this final ride.”
-Woody Guthrie, 2014

Just this once, EVERYBODY DIES!

Of all the Terry Pratchett novels, it is perhaps fitting that this is the one that gets tangled up in his project like a poor, unsuspecting piece of bread daintily swimming in a duck pond. Though it is not my favorite novel set within the Discworld₁, it is nonetheless the better suited given the thematic interests of this blog. As with many of the early Discworld novels, the novel’s core is taking a rather silly fantasy convention₂ extremely seriously.

Given this, several possibilities could arise. What if, for example, Death took a holiday?₃ Who works at Death’s house?₄ And, of course, does Death have any relatives?₅ But the question at the heart of the book is “Given that Death is a physical being and thus something someone does, what would happen if the Grim Reaper took on an apprentice?” Not a lot of good, as it turns out, though it would be wrong to say this had a completely negative effect. For starters the apprentice decides to make the rather dumbfounded decision to not let the princess die when she’s supposed to₆. This, in turn, led History to get a bit vexed over the whole affair₇ and forcing its vision upon the world, whether the Disc likes it or not₈.

This of course leads us to the question: how do you get out of dying? Not in the sense of a near death experience like almost tripping into the path of a moving train or watching Jack and Jill. Nor do I mean having a dream where you die, only to wake up. No, what I’m talking about is the experience of dying and inexplicably not being dead a few weeks later. The book posits this is done by having some allies on working within the system of sending souls to the next life, but that tends to be difficult for systems like the one the Discworld runs on₉. One could try to make friends with the person typically running the whole shebang, but that tends to be difficult as they’re₁₀ a bit of a shut in who, like many self employed people, only goes out for work and family₁₁.

But there are other ways out of dying. Let’s look at the driving vision history wishes to impose upon the world. In the original scheme of events, Princess Kelirehenna was supposed to have been assassinated by her uncle, the Duke of Sto Helit, via the subtle methodology of a crossbow accidentally being aimed in her direction and fired. It was written that this action would in fact be the greater good₁₂. While the history of Queen Kelirehenna I would be one typical of a monarch, the reign of King Duke of Sto Helit₁₃ would unify the lands into a glorious future.

Some of you may be thinking that if such a future is in the cards History wishes to deal the Disc, then we must accept them and let Kelirehenna die for the greater good₁₄. But if one has any knowledge of history and History, you would of course know that unifications of such a magnitude at the speed of a single generation hinging upon which member of a royal family is sitting on the throne is typically resolved by a series of bloody massive bloody wars, and those that are “prosperous” tend to be the ones with the same skin color, language, and slightly less money in possession than the ruling class while everyone else dies horribly painful deaths.

Suffice it to say, the Great Man Vision History wishes to impose on the world is rather shit for most people. The alternative the book provides is… another fucking monarch. Discussing Pratchett’s infatuation with the monarchy in general and “the right kind of leader” specifically is for another project₁₅, but what’s equally interesting is how those Death tasks to fill the role of the Great Man who will unify the lands and bring prosperity for a hundred centuries aren’t in the mold of Great Mans.

Consider: firstly you have a commoner so unimportant that nary a person bothers to say his name, calling him “lad” or “boy” or something along those lines. Next you have Igneous Cutwell, perhaps the closest thing the group has to a Great Man in that he works in profession of Wizardry₁₆. However, Cutwell is simply a first level wizard and not a very good one at that₁₇. And of course there’s Ysabell and Kelirehenna, both of whom are quite explicitly not Great Mans. Sure, they both come from a royal bloodline and they have both been touched by forces outside what most would call the natural world₁₈, but the fact remains that they are both clearly not Great Mans because they aren’t men₁₉.

If one were to be generous, one could argue that these people who have no idea how to be the Great Man of History, will in turn try to unify the world through means other than the ones done by the Great Mans before them. Perhaps they’ll take a more diplomatic approach and try to unify the peoples₂₀ of other cultures via trade and communication. Perhaps weddings will occur and their children will reign peacefully. Or perhaps they’ll just say screw it and invade all the other countries for the greater good₂₁.

But the thing is, we don’t know what will happen next. Sure, we could make educated guesses as to what will happen next, but those aren’t necessarily what will happen in the end. If one is a student of history, as opposed to History, one begins to notice that the various branches of is and will be tend to happen due to the most inexplicable of circumstances₂₂. There is no vision of History that can account for the adlibbing nature of life, for all things are happening at once. The story of the Princess who didn’t happens at the same time as the tale of Death the Fry Cook and that of a litter of kittens who drowned in a barrel. Life is full of inexplicable, contradictory events, not all of which are covered in History.

And life is better for it. For if life could be simplified to a mere formula of “And then the rotten king slaughtered the foreign barbarians, bringing about an age of enlightenment and peace to the lands for many centuries to come”, then it would be very dull indeed. The Life Blood of Life₂₃ is these contradictions to the grand scheme of things. These out of context moments that invade what should be a straightforward narrative of the rise of Kings and Great Mans, but instead turn the story into something completely different.

Agents of History will try to repress alternative views of history that go against History, refocusing the facts to fit their views. But history has a way of being more convoluted, contradictory, and interesting than that. So maybe that’s how you get out of dying: you have to be more interesting alive than dead. And history is known for finding even the most mundane of things extremely interesting. After all, you’re still here, aren’t you? Our very existence shapes the history of all things, despite what History has to say. It can be as large as burning a house down or as small as opening the door for someone with too much in their hands. By existing, we shape the narrative of life. The most unimportant of things have an impact, even an ok book like Mort.

(Next Time: The Interconnectedness of All Things)

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[Photo: Hide and Q Directed by Cliff Bole Script by C.J. Hollad and Gene Roddenberry]

Endnotes:
1) Reaper Man
2) Hold on, the Grim Reaper₁ actually exists?

1.     “Grim” is a slight misnomer. Far more accurately would be to refer to him as “The Melancholic Reaper” or “The Reaper Who Feels Ennui” or “Bill Door.” Regardless, these are all shorter names compared to his official title: “The Stealer of Souls, Defeater of Empires, Swallower of Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind” and so on.

3) While the novel does briefly get into the implications of this question, it is handled more in-depth in Reaper Man
4) A rather rubbish₁ wizard called Albert.

1.     This refers more to his character rather than the quality of his magic.

5) No, but he has an adoptive daughter by the name of Ysabell.
6) Though the rational is quite understandable: she was kind of hot.₁

1.     It should be noted that the lad isn’t as rubbish as this implies. Immediately after noticing this aspect of his attempt to save the Princess’s life, he decided to not treat Princess Kelirehenna like some prize to be won but rather as a person.

7) Contrary to what one might assume given History is a sentient force within the universe, humanity does indeed have free will. It’s just that History would’ve preferred it if they didn’t, much like how many a director don’t care for any and all adlibbing. Like said directors, History tends to respond by beating everyone else into submission, only to be circumvented at the last moment by the editor.

8) Though in truth, the Disc was mostly indifferent to the affair.
9) The system works thusly: a single anthropomorphic personification takes on the shape of Death and sends the souls of the dead off to the next life. The exception to this is for rats, wherein the anthropomorphic personification takes on the shape of Death of Rats.
10) Pronouns for Death have always been difficult. Sometimes Death takes on the usual form of a skeleton in a black robe, other times they’re a Goth girl with an umbrella, and, on occasion, they’re some weirdo in a pair of skis working for the God of Evil despite being more of a neutral force within the universe. For the purposes of this blog, we shall refer to Death with the gender-neutral pronoun of They/Them/Their.
11) Even then, you might be out of luck as Death spends the majority of the story easing their way into being human via attaining the dream job of many an English Major: Fry Cook.

12) The Greater Good.
13) They really didn’t give him a name, did they?
14) The Greater Good.
15) Such a project would most likely written by a better writer than I, like Jed Blue.
16) Indeed, wizardry is notable for birthing many a Great Man such as Alberto Malich and Rincewind the Not-Dying.
17) This is more of a problem of “I’m perfectly fine where I am, no need to go any further” than “I think we can all agree we’d all be better off if I wasn’t a wizard.”
18) The latter via having her death being prevented, thus causing History to work extremely hard to rewrite things to fit its vision, whereas the former is the adoptive daughter of Death.
19) History tends to be very specific in terms of what it wants and has been known to rant about the evils of SJWs when that doesn’t happen.
20) As an aside, there’s a bit in the book that’s terribly racist wherein a clearly Asian culture has their Grand Visser die and the leads are extremely impatient with all of their “O holy emperor” and “Most gracious ally” and so forth. It’s just a black spot on what’s an overall quite good book and makes one suspect that my optimistic reading won’t happen due to an imperialist’s impatience.
21) The Greater Good.₁

1.     Shut it!

22) One need only look at the Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which began as a series of failed assassinations including one humorous bit wherein the assassin who was the closest to killing Ferdinand tried to escape via jumping off of a bridge. Sadly, he didn’t account for the shallowness of the water and broke his leg. As the police were circling in on him, the assassin tried to take a cyanide tablet, but it was expired so he just puked a lot. The only reason Ferdinand was assassinated in the first place was because one of the assassins who did escape tried to cheer himself up for the utter failure of the day with a sandwich at a shop nearby where Ferdinand’s car would break down. Life is strange, as they say.
23) This is not to be confused with the Life Blood of Rassilon, which kills those who drink it. As Rassilon himself put it when questioned about it “Why of course you call it “Life Blood.” If you go around calling it “Poison” or “Death Blood,” no one would be fool enough to drink it. Now have this healthy beverage, I call it…” and the rest is lost to history, but no doubt would’ve been called the Healthy Beverage of Rassilon.

Peace, Calm, Happiness. An Ending. (A Stronger Loving World)

TW: Discussions of Rape.

A STRONGER LOVING WORLD: The closing words of John Cales’ spoken word piece “Santies”. The full quote as cited in Watchmen is “It would be a/stronger world,/a stronger loving/world, to die in.” Given the piece is about the tragic and abusive relationship between a woman and her mother ending in the woman’s suicide, this was most likely chosen because it was a good quote to end on rather than its lyrical implications (though said implications do help Moore’s reading that Watchmen came about during a bad mood called the 80’s).

Perhaps one of the most famous structural tricks of the entire comic, a series of six pages consisting of solely one panel each depicting the wreckage of New York, with the slightly bleak detail of all the lovers (be they familial or sexual) coming together in their deaths. And yet, it is perhaps the easiest sequence to adapt into a feature film, should one be dumb enough to do so: a 35 minute Tarkovsky shot starting from the squid and ending with the cover. Less talked about is the transition back into the 9-panel grid, which starts out with a set of three widescreen panels before returning to the grid proper.

A rather unsubtle bit of foreshadowing, albeit one that’s easy to miss after six pages of overwhelming horror.

DAN DREIBERG: Adrian, your assassination attempt: you couldn’t have planned it! What if he’d shot you first instead of your secretary?
VEIDT: I suppose I’d have had to catch the bullet, wouldn’t I?

For all his proclamations that he isn’t a “Republic Serial Villain,” Veidt is very much Adam West Batman.

VEIDT: No one will doubt this Earth has met a force so dreadful it must be repelled, all former enmities aside.

As with many a utopian (especially those with an eye for empire building), Veidt’s solution is to use (or in this case invent) a race of barbarians who plot to tear down the walls of society and conquer us the way we conquered others.

In perhaps one of the more humorous implications of Watchmen (which one imagines won’t be picked up on in Doomsday Clock), the possibility arises for a future story wherein Bubastis reconfigures herself into a blue lynx unstuck in time, pondering the pointlessness of existence.

Many people claim that Dr. Manhattan is the sole superhero with superhuman abilities. And yet, here it is shown that Veidt can catch bullets, with an emphasis placed on the seemingly slow motion of his body, the only moment in the comic that highlights a character’s movement in this way with the rest of the comic opting for a more static, almost photographic, style of action (one of the many reasons why a film adaptation of Watchmen would never work).

VEIDT: …And yet that failure overshadows every past success! By default, you usher in an age of illumination so dazzling that humanity will reject the darkness in its heart…

As with many a utopian, at his heart Veidt is an optimist about human nature, believing that when given the opportunity, humanity will join their gods in the sun. This may to contradict his plan that seems to hinge on the belief that humanity’s base nature prevents this enlightenment, but more likely it’s an attempt to push humanity out of its anthropocene phase towards the jetpacks promised by the dreams of Heinlein.

An argument in a more general overview of Watchmen could be made that, out of all the characters, Laurie is the one who is the most visually astute, being the one who finds a gun in a relatively hard place to find as well as being the first person to notice Dr. Manhattan looming outside waiting for the dramatically perfect moment to strike. Why else would he opt to punch his hand through the window as opposed to simply tapping Veidt’s shoulder?

DR. MANHATTAN: What’s that in your hand, Veidt? Another ultimate weapon?
VEIDT: Yes. Yes, you could say that.

One of the more talked about aspects of the comic is the relationship between reality and fiction; the ways in which ideas should be used as inspiration to be a better person rather than to go out at night and punch people in the face. This scene is one of the more subtle invocations of this theme, highlighting the ultimate power of watching television.

For all that analysis of this sequence rightfully focuses on Rorschach, it should be noted that for the sequence to work, Laurie would have had to jump behind Dr. Manhattan for no discernable reason. And while such unreality wouldn’t work in a film (even though the sequence is essentially a zoom in to Rorschach), you can get away with it in a comic due to its ability to jump from image to image.

DR. MANHATTAN: Logically, I’m afraid he’s right. Exposing this plot, we destroy any chance of peace, dooming earth to worse destruction. On Mars, you demonstrated life’s value. If we would preserve life here, we must remain silent.

Let’s look at these arguments in regards to keeping Veidt’s plan a secret one at a time. Dr. Manhattan essentially argues a consequentialist position, highlighting how if the truth were revealed, life would be destroyed. And if we hold life to be valuable, then we must prevent it from dying out completely. Of course, his assessment of life on earth is the potential miracle within every form of life to create life via procreation, effectively making his viewpoint one akin to reproductive futurism. Problematic to say the least, especially given two of the victims of the Squid were queer women.

LAURIE JUSPECZYK: Never tell anyone? W-We really have to buy this? Jesus, he was right. All we did was fail to stop him from saving the Earth. Jesus.

Laurie’s argument effectively hinges on the failure state of the protector fantasy. For those unaware, the protector fantasy refers to a vision of superheroes that isn’t so much a power fantasy, but rather one that wishes to protect those around them from harm, due primarily to a trauma that pushed them into being a superhero. Much like Superman, Laurie’s trauma is more of a subconscious one than a conscious one, that being her mother’s rape at the hands of her father. One such harm would be that of change, which, as playwright Tony Kushner notes in his play Angels in America, is extremely painful. Thus a failed protector fantasy would be that of someone who allowed change to occur (given this blog, I should note that Spider-Man is essentially a history filled to the brim with stories about him being a failed protector fantasy, including the comic this blog is ostensibly about). I should point out however that just because there’s change doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. To invoke Octavia Butler, the goal of change isn’t to let it happen but rather to shape it. And given that the architect of this change is one who compares himself to Alexander the Great, Rameses, and Ozimandias, I wouldn’t say the world has been saved.

DAN DREIBERG: How… how can humans make decisions like this? We’re damned if we stay quiet, Earth’s damned if we don’t. We… okay. Okay, count me in. We say nothing.

As a later part of the scene will highlight, Dan’s logic is akin to that espoused by Jim Gordon and Ellen Yindel in The Dark Knight Returns, wherein things like Batman, Pearl Harbor, and a Giant Squid teleporting into New York City, killing millions are too big of ideas to be comprehended by people who aren’t great men of history, thus they must toe the party line or doom the world. Moore would most likely be aware of this aspect of the work as the final issue of that series came out two months before the first issue of Watchmen was released. Like many people of the time, he probably wasn’t aware of Miller’s more fascist leanings, but the implication of that line of thinking is clearly a large part of the concept of the superhero.

Which brings us to Rorschach’s response. This is one of two mask designs to appear in the comic and each have their own meanings. For all his protests to the contrary, when all the streets are filled with death, all the dead and the abused look up and shout “Save us” he responded with a hand to help. Because as the panel where this mask design appeared previously states, “There is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished.” Rorschach’s objectivist viewpoint pushes an extremely black and white worldview such that he could never compromise, save in death. Rorschach, who perhaps best represents the protector fantasy archetype, actively tries to undo this change (thereby changing the world again) and bring about the apocalypse (for more on the relationship between superheroes and the apocalypse, read Jed Blue’s The Near Apocalypse of ‘09). Essentially while the other mask represents moments in the comic where Rorschach makes a shocking discovery, this mask design represents a rejection of a viewpoint where cruelty is deemed to be the correct choice and it’s trolley problems all the way down. In other words, “Fuck you, I’m Superman!”

VEIDT: Hmm. Now what would you call that, I wonder? “Blotting out reality” perhaps? Ah well… in all likelihood it’s of no consequence. As a reliable witness, Rorschach is hardly… how shall we put it… “Without stain”?

More evidence that Veidt is extremely Adam West Batman.

LAURIE JUSPECZYK: No. I mean I need you. Need you now. Dan, all those people, they’re dead. They can’t disagree or eat Indian food, or love each other… Oh, it’s sweet. Being alive is so damn sweet.
DAN DREIBERG: Laurie? Wh-what do you want me to do?
LAURIE JUSPECZYK: I want you to love me. I want you to love me because we’re not dead.

Given the entirety of Alan Moore’s career, this is perhaps the most crucial conversation to understanding his positionality. In V for Vendetta, Moore talks about the one inch you must never give up, the thing that you must keep close to yourself. He calls the inch “integrity,” but there is more to it than just that. When citing it, it was in the context of a queer woman coming out to her parents by introducing them to the woman she loved. Love then is key to that one inch, and what Laurie values in this moment. Love can be seen echoing throughout the work of Alan Moore from the beautiful Mirror of Love to the wondrous polyamory of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 3: Century to the mystical implications within Promethea. Indeed, it can also be found in Watchmen, from Dr. Manhattan’s revelation of the nature of humanity to the bleak joke of the lovers reuniting in their deaths at the tendrils of the squid to something we’ll get to in a later bit.

RORSCHACH: Of course. Must protect Veidt’s new utopia. One more body amongst the foundations makes little difference.

I have grown to the understanding that the difference between a utopia and a dystopia is whether or not you’re the Child of Omelas. To be a good Utopian then is to try to find the children and make it so they’re no longer in their cages. There is little proof that Veidt cares to do this (especially given the advertisements for his utopia focus on an Aryan ideal), making his world inherently dystopic for a large majority of people.

This is probably my favorite moment in all of Watchmen. Something that’s so small and seemingly insignificant, yet implying so much. (Since I have no where else to put it, I might as well give my thoughts on Watchmen: it’s very much a middling work of Alan Moore’s, which speaks more to the quality of Moore than of Watchmen. Equally, I’m always going to have a slight remove from the comic, as it was one of the comics I read when I was first getting into comics [ironically, because of the movie, which I liked at the time, but have since grown distant from] but it wasn’t the one that exploded my brain into loving the genre [that would be Transmetropolitan]. And the person I was back then had… mostly dull tastes that genuinely liked how Geoff Johns ripped people’s arms off and couldn’t see why Alan was so PO’ed at Before Watchmen. So I’m not sure if my mixed feelings towards the book are due to the book itself or who I was back then.)

DR. MANHATTAN: …But yes, I understand, without condoning or condemning. Human affairs cannot be my concern. I’m leaving this galaxy for one less complicated.
VEIDT: But you’d regained interest in human life…
DR. MANHATTAN: Yes, I have. I think perhaps I’ll create some.

As Phil Sandifer (the writer this post is most indebted to) noted on Tumblr a while back, Swamp Thing #56 explores the possibility of a god like being creating human life, and the comic found the results to be less than promising.

VEIDT: Jon, wait, before you leave… I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.
DR. MANHATTAN: “In the end”? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

In perhaps the second cruelest irony of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan’s response invokes, of all things, the opening lines of Spider-Man and Zoids #18: Grant Morrison’s first issue on the comic: “Yeah. I guess the fighting never ends, does it? It never ends.” The character who says this is named Phil, which might make this even crueler. (Though one could argue that line is prefigured by Simon Furman in The Transformers (UK) #99, where Optimus Prime says "But it's not the end is it? It's never the end. It just goes on and on- one battle blurring into the next," making the implications less stinging.)

DAN DREIBERG: “Nite Owl and Silk Spectre”. Sounds neat.
LAURIE JUSPECZYK: “Silk Spectre’s” too girly, y’know? Plus, I want a better costume, that protects me: maybe something leather, with a mask over my face… Also, maybe I oughtta carry a gun.

The cruelest irony is that here, Alan Moore accurately predicts the aesthetic of Rob Leifeld.

This is a bit of a hornets’ nest. On the one hand the storyline of “rape survivor falls in love with her rapist” is a toxic one to say the least. On the other hand, there’s an equally toxic view of perfect survivors and Sally Jupiter cannot be said to be the moral center of Watchmen. Indeed, Jupiter herself is a somewhat problematic figure within the comic, so for her to fall in love with someone as terrible as Blake could work within the structure of Watchmen. But while I think it works on its own, in the end I don’t think this fully works in the context of the story. It feels a bit like redemption of the character, not the least of which due to this being the final word on Blake within Watchmen (save for the recurring image of the bloody smiley face, but that’s more Rorschach’s moment than Blake’s). Though I think my main contention with this moment is that the scene is juxtaposed with the previous note, which has Laurie blatantly try to emulate her father’s costume and style of crime fighting, making it pretty easy to read this moment as Blake being redeemed by the love of two women he hurt. But love isn’t enough. You have to actually change yourself.

(Next Time: How the Hell Did Peter Parker Survive a Bullet to the Head?)

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[Photo: Supergod #1 by Warren Ellis and Garrie Gastonny]