Nixon and Watchmen
Jordan asks: Have you also noticed how it is in at least one piece of fiction (Alan Moore’s Watchmen) assumed merely as part of the background that Nixon would have made himself an authoritarian dictator, murdering his political opponents, if he had the power? And few fans objected to this, despite the fact that Nixon did in fact have the power to murder political opponents, but appears not to have used it, in real life?
SPOILER WARNING: My response written below gives away the ending of WATCHMAN, so if you haven’t read it—heck, if you haven’t read it, what in the world is wrong with you? Go out and buy a copy right now. No, don’t go out. Do it online.
For example, Moore admitted in an interview (I don’t have the link handy, sorry) that Rorschach was his portrayal of The Question, a Steve Ditko hero based on Ditko’s Ayn Rand philosophy. Moore thought The Question (and maybe Ditko) a nutcase, so he portrayed Rorschach as a nutcase, whose over-riding flaw, the heresy for which he is killed in the end, is his Manichaeism: that is, as a man who believes in right-and-wrong. Rorschach’s sin is that he lacks Kerry style “nuance” and Clinton style “depends on the definition of is” and ergo is too black and white. His name and his mask hint at his insanity and his “simplisme.”
Now, here is where the writing is better than the writer: the last frame of the last page of WATCHMAN is ambiguous. Rorschach may have won after all. If the truth comes out, then the manipulation and lies of Ozymandias, the smartest man on the planet, will turn out to be simply a crime, not a salvation from Nuclear War. Moore is good enough a writer to pose the question, “How does ‘the good ends justify the bad means’ work when the ends don’t actually turn out?” if you “do evil in order to achieve good” what happens when no good comes of it, and you are left having done evil in order to achieve …. nothing.
Killing a million people in New York to stop a Nuclear War? Ozymandias, who lacks human sympathy, might see the logic behind this horrible triage. But killing a millin people for nothing….? Ozymandias has drifted away from humanity like a sailor who lost his bearings, as the clever subnarrative of the narrative implies.
What I am driving at with that Moore’s own opinion of Rorschach does not affect his portrayal of him. That sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it? But Rorschach is still the favorite character of more than one person I know, people who like him for exactly the reasons Moore dislikes him.
In some other interview Moore expressed dismay that the Comedian, whom he meant to be a villain of the first water, a four-color G. Gordon Liddy, the arch-bugbear of the Left, was the favorite character of some of his readers. Moore did not know what he had done. He didn’t know why the character was appealing.
Moore’s portrayal of Nixon was sort of a Leftwing shorthand for “evil”—he used it much the same way a Jew is used as a stock character in novels of two centuries ago, a shorthand for greedy, or Negroes as a shorthand for lazy. (snarky comment) The difference is, I suppose, that the Jews and Blacks have a right to be angry for being called greedy and lazy, whereas we Vast Rightwing Conspirators must actually know we are Evil Incarnate, and are reluctantly filled with admiration for the Flower Children who are finally telling the world the truth about us. (/snarky comment)
But it did not bug me at the time, nor did sticking in Evil Cartoon Nixon break the suspension of disbelief for me—because anyone, Right or Left, can be corrupted by power, and if any administration, Donkey or Elephant, had a Doctor Manhattan in their arsenal, the temptations for abuse would be disturbing. Indeed, even a non-super superhero, like the Comedian, Rorschach and certainly by the end, Ozymandias, are shown to be corrupted by the power that heroes have over ordinary mortals. Even the Nite-Owl is not utterly immune: note the scene where he mentions (threatens) a barroom full of lowlifes that his flying ship is equipped with missiles.
Moore is trying to preach a bit of old-fashioned English anarchism to the Superhero fan, warning that it is dangerous to trust anyone with power. His message is subtle, and merely part of the background, and one need not agree or disagree to enjoy the tale, revolutionary for, of all things, its realism, smack in the middle of a genre famed for its unrealism.
This is what we call objectivity in art. If I paint an imaginary beautiful redhead, but I don’t like redheads, she won’t seem that beautiful to me: but a man whose tastes run to auburn curls, to him, she might be the next Ann-Margaret. It merely means I have painted accurately—which is a strange word to use for imaginary creations, but no word is really better. Moore in Watchman portrayed Comedian and Rorschach accurately.
I am also reminded of reading WAR AND PEACE—and I think I am justified in calling Moore the Tolstoy of comicbookdom, as the man is inspired by genius—where Tolstoy ends his most brilliant novel of all time with a foolish and boring lecture on determinism in history, which has nothing to do with, or is contradicted in places, by the behavior of his characters. Tolstoy created better than he knew. So with Moore.
Don’t get me started on his American Gothic run of SWAMP THING. Brilliant, despite a really weak ending.
These days he writes porn. Alas, if only he would use his great powers for good, rather than for evil!
In all honesty, knowing now what creepy things Mr. Moore preaches in real life, I am not sure if I could reread his magnus opis with any great enjoyment. Knowing more about Nixon now than I did in my youth might make the casual character assassination harder to stomach.
The loss is mine, a self-inflicted wound: I know a friend who won’t listen to Wagner because Wagner was an anti-Semite, so the most beautiful music in the world is silent to him.
Would that I were more forgiving, so that my joy in even childish pleasures (comic books, for one) might be more.
(Certainly I would have not a single reader in the world, if I had to wait to find only patrons who agreed with me on all points. Heck, I barely even agree with myself on all points, and then only by the slimmest of margins: what an opinionated boor I am! I shall boycott my own writings immediately, in protest! Then I will buy a Dixie Chicks album just so that I can immediately thereafter stop buying them! THAT will show them!)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
