ALL THINGS SOCIAL AND SEXUAL
The Watchmen - a non-spoilerish review
Having not read the graphic novel, I have no idea as to whether the film remains true to it though I have it on good authority that it does. I think that the the strange parallel earth we find ourselves thrust into in the Watchmen is rendered well by the director and art staff of the film, but frankly as a child of the 60's the Cold War/Vietnam era rhetoric left me (for lack of a better term) cold.
The unsympathetic main characters, The Watchmen born from Alan Moore's fragmented and sociopathic psyche were brought to the big screen by men who obviously had the misfortune of reading the graphic novel while they were under the unfluence resulting in this mediocre work sadly making an indelible mark on their own not yet fully formed psyches.
In a world where the Soviets are still in Afghanistan and Nixon is a five-term president whose chief acoimplishment is the deployment of gods and monsters to obliterate the Viet-cong one would surmise that in allowing these incidents to come to pass, we-the -people pretty much deserve what we get. With the issue of the propriety of vigilanteeism and masked crusaders again rearing its head, the Watchmen steps out onto ground that has been well-trod in recent years with the Spiderman and Batman films and doesn't add much to the dialog.
Topically relevant only in the sense that it raises the spectre of the nuclear threat, the material is dated, and the chaaracters are uninteresting and morally bamkrupt. Further Alan Moore's interaction with persons of varying ethnicities was clearly limited to what he was able to glean from stereotypical characterizations in 1970's and 80's television. And his ham-handed attempt at rationale for his characters' psychoses are frankly absurd. In one case the abduction and murder of a little girl as justification for someone careening over the edge of sanity, is simply emotional porn...what next? The villians all sit down to enjoy a banquet of live kittens? The fiends!
The Watchmen in the aggregate rises from the proposition that mankind is irretrievably savage, self-interested and violent. However to proceed from such a perversion of human nature instantly sets up the paradox. In reading the novel or viewing the film the viewer (reader) does not see himself/herself as the savage humans that are the sometime focus of the disgruntled, self-centered or misanthropic "heroes" instead we see oueselves with the same detachment as the character Dr. Manhattan, who fancies himself so far above it all, so marginally conscious or caring that the outcome of the ultimate plot is contrived and rendered completely irrelevant.
The unsympathetic main characters, The Watchmen born from Alan Moore's fragmented and sociopathic psyche were brought to the big screen by men who obviously had the misfortune of reading the graphic novel while they were under the unfluence resulting in this mediocre work sadly making an indelible mark on their own not yet fully formed psyches.
In a world where the Soviets are still in Afghanistan and Nixon is a five-term president whose chief acoimplishment is the deployment of gods and monsters to obliterate the Viet-cong one would surmise that in allowing these incidents to come to pass, we-the -people pretty much deserve what we get. With the issue of the propriety of vigilanteeism and masked crusaders again rearing its head, the Watchmen steps out onto ground that has been well-trod in recent years with the Spiderman and Batman films and doesn't add much to the dialog.
Topically relevant only in the sense that it raises the spectre of the nuclear threat, the material is dated, and the chaaracters are uninteresting and morally bamkrupt. Further Alan Moore's interaction with persons of varying ethnicities was clearly limited to what he was able to glean from stereotypical characterizations in 1970's and 80's television. And his ham-handed attempt at rationale for his characters' psychoses are frankly absurd. In one case the abduction and murder of a little girl as justification for someone careening over the edge of sanity, is simply emotional porn...what next? The villians all sit down to enjoy a banquet of live kittens? The fiends!
The Watchmen in the aggregate rises from the proposition that mankind is irretrievably savage, self-interested and violent. However to proceed from such a perversion of human nature instantly sets up the paradox. In reading the novel or viewing the film the viewer (reader) does not see himself/herself as the savage humans that are the sometime focus of the disgruntled, self-centered or misanthropic "heroes" instead we see oueselves with the same detachment as the character Dr. Manhattan, who fancies himself so far above it all, so marginally conscious or caring that the outcome of the ultimate plot is contrived and rendered completely irrelevant.
About
Videos
-
Herbie Hancock
Added by Valjeanne Jeffers
-
-
GROOVE LINE `Heatwave 1978
Added by Penelope
Badge
© 2009 Created by Penelope on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
