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RACIST_RORSCHACH

                                             June 12, 2020

I expressed skepticism that it makes
sense to call the character Rorschach
in "The Watchman" racist...

          WHO_WILL_CRITICIZE

I had the feeling that opinion is a little knee-jerk.
There's this common presumption of a bipolar world
where everyone is a member of one of two teams, and if
you're one of *those* then you must be exactly like the
rest of those guys.

I think Alan Moore could've easily made it *clear* that
Rorschach was racist if that's what he had wanted to do,
but the character works better if these things are,
shall we say, ambiguous.

Rorschach is not an embodiment of all that's evil, he's
crazy in a particular way that makes him feel sympathy for
the far-right (e.g. "The New Frontiersman") without
haven't thought about it very deeply in any obvious way.

But I am willing to stand corrected, so I looked
for some correction:

  https://www.reddit.com/r/Watchmen/comments/doey0w/we_need_to_acknowledge_that_rorschach_is_racist/

The "evidence" here is pretty
much on the level I expected.
The best point the author has is   The other points he has are
that he shows that "The New        much weaker, on the level of
Frontiersman" was racist enough    "Roarshack says things just
that Rorschach would've noticed    like Reagan would say!"; and
and rejected them unless he        Moore meant him to be a
himself was racist.  It's hard     take-off of Ditko's randroid
for the author to imagine          work, and Moore associates
someone stupid enough to           with Rand with white           Heh: Rorschach
casually associate with racists    supremacists; and you know,    had red hair
and racist opinion without         Rand said some stupid shit     like Roark.
having thought about it.           about Arabs and Indians in
                                   some of her minor writings.
Myself, I think it's easy to
imagine a Rorschach skimming
through "The New Frontiersman"
and picking out the bits that
he's in sympathy with to focus
on, and ignoring any jarring
elements as side-issues that
aren't really part of the main         THAT_OLD_FRONTIERSMAN
concerns.

People involved with a movement
invariably get to "you're either
with us or against us", but there
really and truly are all sorts of
gradations.  Trying to distinguish
between them isn't *necessarily*
just about making excuses...
                                                       https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/did-rorschach-agree-with-white-supremacists-or-just-inspire-them/
   Just from what we *see* of Rorschach, his
   racism is on the level of turning a blind
   eye toward other peoples racism, perhaps a
   down-playing of the importance of the issue.

   Rorschach's misogyny is more blatant, though even
   there, the worst thing about it is that he still
   regards "The Comedian" as one of the gang, a hero
   despite that funny "moral lapse" of being a rapist.

      It's not so much about what Rorschach does,
      but about what he's willing to accept.




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