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WHO_WILL_CRITICIZE
June 11, 2020
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/04/09/watchmen-time-of-monsters/
In the April 9, 2020 "New York Review of Books",
there's a piece about a new HBO series based on
the "Watchman" that leads off with a discussion TOKEN_REMARKS
of the original Alan Moore comic (one of the few
that might deserve the name "graphic novel").
This is by Namwali Serpeli, an
associate prof at Berkeley, and I'm
afraid that her commentary strikes
me as intellectually sloppy-- it's In the field of pop culture commentary
certainly not completely wrong, but you get the enthusiastic fans who are
if you read it closely a lot of the happy to, say, geek out on the history
details of what she's saying seem of the variations of the Iron Man
strange, possibly an attempt at armor, but never seem to think very
impressing with erudition. deeply about why they care about it.
Then you get the elite intellectuals
She quotes a phrase from the who are determined to convince you
opening of the Watchmen, which that they're smarter than the average
includes the line: "The streets fan-boy...
are extended gutters and the
gutters are full of blood and
when the drains finally scab
over, all the vermin will drown."
Serpeli goes on:
"These lines come from the journal of a superhero named
Rorschach, who is a violent racist and misogynist. They
introduce the metacomic self-awareness characteristic of
_The Watchmen_: 'gutters' is industry jargon for the thin
gaps between the frames of a comic book page. Readers hop
across them, filling them in with missing scenes and
implications, which in genre comics are more often than
not literally full of blood. This is the most basic form
of juxtaposition in a comic book: _Watchmen_ immediately
calls attention to it."
Let me go back through this.
To start with: I found myself wondering if
Rorschach really was "racist and misogynist".
Evidence of this didn't leap to my mind,
though he's certainly a right-wing crank case
of some variety, and racist and/or misogynist RACIST_RORSCHACH
remarks would certainly seem right at home
in his patter...
There is strong streak of
puritanical prudishness in his
character, and so he's inclined to
call women who dress sexy as I theorize: I think it's supposed to
"whores", and worse he shrugs off be obvious that Rorschach is crazy
that The Comedian was a rapist (I'd certainly, and perhaps stupid, but
forgotten that he definitely knew *perhaps* not evil. Making him
this, I had to check). blatantly racist would've made it a
little too clear we're supposed to
The point that I really want to think he's evil. Not quite going
"call attention" to though is there makes his character a little
that bit about "gutters". The more, you might say, ambiguous.
thing is it really *is* "industry
jargon", it's *not* a commonly It is interesting that at the
understood meaning, and even close of the story--
someone like myself who's
certainly heard the term used SPOILERS
that way doesn't keep it in
mind-- indeed, this is why --Rorschach is the only one
Serpeli has to explain it to us. who's unwilling to go along
with covering up Ozymandias'
What that means is that this is scheme (world peace via a
an "in-joke": it's a mass murder).
double-meaning that Moore was
probably aware of, and it's one He's a weird fanatic, but
he probably assumed some of his people like that aren't
industy cohorts would get, but *always* useless...
he would also understand that a
typical reader would not.
What this means is that it's a pretty weak point to
regard as the introduction of the general theme.
Though Serpeli is certainly right that something
like "metacomic self-awareness" is at the core This is a "comic" book that
of the Watchmen, which plays a game of asking begins with the death of
what superheroes would *really* be like and what comedy, in the form of The
a world with them in in it would really look Comedian.
like. This would be a thoroughly inane thing to
speculate about, *except* that the fictional Later we're shown the
construct of the superhero is clearly something kind of comics that
that rules our collective consciousness, so this are popular in this
provides a way to probe what that is about... world: a bloody, grim
"pirate" genre.
Then there's a third element there, The fantasy image of
the discussion of the *role* of gutters the superhero having
in the mind of a comic-book reader, been contaminated by
where it seems to suggest they're the reality.
used to elide bloody scenes that
wouldn't pass the censors.... By the way: I had the
sense that "blood flowing
Really the transition between in the gutters" comes out
panels is *typically* just used of *this* world: carnage
to adjust the flow of time. on deck leading to blood
in the gutters
Any blood, it it's in the story at all, (scuppers?) of sailing
is likely to be on stage-- though it's vessels-- but right now
often written out of the story entirely, I'm not sure that's the
e.g. in a "code" comicbook someone source of the phrase.
brandishing a sword may never actually
be allowed to stab anyone.
So, then this remark:
"This is the most basic form of
juxtaposition in a comic book"
This is at least mildly baffling:
what could it mean? Panels are
indeed placed next to each other,
but it would usually be a stretch
to say that they're necessarily
"juxtaposed". Either they're two
views excerpted from the same
scene, or the following panel is
understood to be part of a new
different scene. The sense of However the Watchmen itself is
contrast you expect in a all about a juxtaposition of
"juxtaposition" isn't often there. panel images-- it rigorously
uses "match cuts" for every
And as to why the panel borders scene transition. When we jump
(gutters) are typically designed to a new setting, we see
the way they are-- margins of something that looks similar to
empty space of a certain width-- what we left in the last one.
that could be an interesting There's an implication that
question with various answers, but *everything is connected*-- and
it seems unrelated to whether a perhaps that would be obvious
panel transition is between two if you could see the world
similar or contrasting scenes... through Dr. Manhattan's eyes.
Could it be that Serpeli is
assuming Scott McCloud knows Serpeli leads her review
what he's talking about? with a nice discussion of
match cuts, one of the
SENSE_OF_CLOSURE many things she gets right.
The distinction she makes
between the good and the
fun-- "Good is an egg"/"Fun
is a gun" is indeed fun,
"What's the difference between where the possibly trivial
good and fun when it comes to rhyme echoes the point she's
art? Good is an egg-- a trying to raise about match
slippery, laden, fragile word. cuts-- a cheap trick or hint
Good works of art aren't of deep hidden meaning?
necessarily about good people--
in fact, they're usually not-- Later in the review whe
nor are they necessarily finds an excuse to pull
created by them. Fun is a in a Thomas Pynchon quote
gun-- a shiny, blunt, punchy about "the high magic of
little word-- easy to pull, low puns"...
hard to look away from."
There's another oddity in Serpeli's review,
where she traces the phrase "who will watch the
watchman" back to it's source in Juvenal, but
for some reason seems to make the presumption Doubly peculiar:
that Alan Moore must've picked up on it from the Watchmen
the Iran-Contra report of 1987. She then calls started publication
this an "allusion within an allusion". in 1986, the year
before.
Isn't it just a single allusion to a familiar
phrase, something everyone hears every now
and then, even if you don't know the original
source?
It's a small thing, but the fact that it's
such an unnecessary glitch is what makes it
stand-out. Is she trying to say
something, or just trying to sound good?
(Is this any good, or is she just having fun?)
And... am *I* any good? What was
the *point* of carefully pointing
out all these minor gaffs of
pretentious over-reach?
For me, this piece was a side issue of a
side-issue, a distraction from something
else I *wanted* to do, but also didn't
The driving force for me particularly need to do. (A distraction
is the general sense that within a distraction...) It was
things like comic-books supposed to be something so easy to
deserve better than this. knock-out fast there wasn't any reason
not to slip it in betwwen other things,
Those who can't do, in fact it was positively painful to
teach, those who can't write. I ended up continually checking
teach, criticize, those quotes, verifying sources, toning down
who can't criticize rhetorical flourishes all the while
something more wondering why I bothered with them in
respectable devolve into the first place and why I bothered to
criticizing the "low" mute them later...
arts, putting on airs
all-the-while. It also generates it's own
side-issues, things I hadn't
planned to write-up just now,
but are sort-of connected...
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