(urth) OT - Watchmen on trial

[James Wynn]

>Blattid said
>No. [The Watchmen is] not a "profoundly fascist" work. It is a profound
>work_about_fascism. Gaaaaah.

I'd be interested in your explanation of how it was "about" fascism rather
than founded on it. I'm not sure how you can say Alan Moore did not 
**embrace** the most fascistic elements of the comic book superhero genre in 
"The Watchmen". Are you suggesting Ozy is presented as anything but a hero?

I'd say it is perfectly fair to view Alan Moore's "The Watchmen" as a suite 
with Frank Miller's "The
Dark Knight Returns" (also knee deep in the most sinister regions of 
Nietzsche).

In TDKR, Commissioner Gordon defends Batman by comparing him to the myth 
that
FDR knew the Japanese were invading Pearl Harbor and chose to do nothing in
order to get the US into WWII. His argument is that Batman is somehow "too
big" to be assigned normal human morality (just like FDR in his
responsibilities as the fuehrer -oops! I mean "leader" - of the US).
Furthermore, Frank Miller makes a rather obvious play off of term "Superman" 
as in Ubermensche (which unrelatedly is the meaning of Overcyn). Batman says 
to Superman "We must not let [ordinary people] know there are giants among 
them".

In a shameless rip-off of this theme, Moore has Mr. Manhattan justify 
Ozymandias' actions for exactly the same reasons that Com. Gordon justified 
Batman's ("it's too big"). Then M.M. turns the only true common-man hero in 
the story (Rorschach) to a pile of dust to stop him from undermining O's 
scheme.

>Tony Ellis says:
>True. Ozymandias chose to sacrifice the few to save the many. Severian
>does it the other way around. :-)

When one considers the generations unborn on Urth if the New Sun does not 
come, then the opposite is true. (I was also unconvinced that Ozy's act 
saved anything...but then I did not live in fear of nuclear obliteration 
during the 80s and found it difficult to take seriously that fear in other 
people during that time.)

~ Crush

P.S. I own all 12 comic books from "The Watchmen" series. I appreciate the 
landmarks that that series and TDKR represents in graphic arts fiction. But 
I could say the same for "The Birth of a Nation" for cinema arts.