In defense of Rorschach. by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

In defense of Rorschach.

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 12:17
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VIEWED: 1499
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Sunday, April 19, 2009 10:17 PM

WARNING: Potential Watchmen Spoilers.

Select to view spoiler:

You know, thinkin on it, even though he did it for all the wrong reasons at first - Rorschach was the only one of the Watchmen to make the right choice in the end.

The impending armageddon was caused by external forces (Governments) manipulating people via manufactured crisis into a head on collision with each other, despite human nature being firmly against such activity as in the absence of Governments it doesn't happen.

So what was their answer to this ?

Manufacture their own, even BIGGER crisis , complete with catastrophic damage and loss of life, to further manipulate the population!

Apparently it never even occured to them that removing or exposing the original source of the manipulation and freeing people to make their own choices would bring the impending armageddon to a screeching halt even faster, or that people should be capable of making their own choices and the securing for them the freedom to do so is what real heroism truly is.

I think in his last moments, this was the epiphany going through Rorschachs mind, and because of THAT, and his intent to act on it, Rorschach was a dead man walking anyway, since if he didn't die then - BOTH Governments would spare no effort to have him killed.

While his actions up till that point were debateable, and his moral philosophy unsustainable due to its extremity - at the very end of it all, in those last few minutes, Rorschach was far more a hero than he ever was, than any of them ever were.

He meant well, but he simply lacked the foresight and compassion to strike at the beginning of the chain, where monsters are created, instead of the end, where they prey on the society which created them.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 5:33 AM

HKCAVALIER

Heya Frem,

I find Alan Moore making a similar mistake to that made by Orwell in 1984. They're both far too misanthropic to be trusted when it comes making any sort of final statement about human nature. Of course, Rorschach is the only character in Moore's novel that has a clue, but I find it more simply bizarre than insightful. As a satire of the veal pen dwellers of society, the socalled sheeple, Moore's work is slightly more intelligible. Nite Owl and Manhattan, after all, are buffoons with no redeeming feature. What if the deluded jerk in the office got super powers?

This is odd to me.

That Manhattan's astonishing experiences and abilities would not give him ANY lick of insight into human nature is simply nihilistic. Compare Manhattan to his most obvious literary precursor, Valentine Michael Smith, and you see just how mean spirited Moore is. Moore inhabits a universe where emotion and empathy have no place, really, understanding time and space to the point of being able to manipulate both at will, does not lead to any personal growth whatsoever. Having that level of insight only confuses Manhattan, weakens his link with humanity, as if humans only care for other human beings out of ignorance!

But it certainly doesn't take super powers to know that Ozymandias' scheme is b.s. social engineering as old and as ineffective as the Bible. People love believing that they can be frightened into right action, abused and bamboozled into goodness, but violence and domination simply don't work that way. Sorry, folks. Moore's greatest accomplishment in Watchmen is to distill the poisonous pedagogy of our culture into the ultimate fantasy of fusion with the abuser. Giving Ozymandias a pass, "because we have no choice," is the delusion of all abused children and spouses who never get out, a misplaced loyalty to a system DESIGNED to grind their faces into the mud forever.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 5:37 AM

THATWEIRDGIRL

My biggest problem in viewing Watchmen was comparing them to their counterparts. Each time Rorschach did something I though of Question. Same thing with Owl/Blue Beetle. I wish I didn't know who inspired the characters.

Select to view spoiler:

As for the end and his death, I thought that was reasonable. Maybe Owl could have tried a little harder to save him and stand up for himself, but then Manhattan wouldn't have felt something. So, eh, I don't know. Rorschach was a little deadlier than necessary, but understandable. His last actions prove he was the wisest and most human of them all.

---
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown
www.thatcostumegirl.com
www.thatweirdgirl.com

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Monday, April 20, 2009 7:18 AM

BYTEMITE

Fortunately, I don't think Moore's point was to justify what Ozymandrius did.

After all, the plot is most definitely a tragic arc. At the beginning, they literally kill comedy! There's no way Moore intended the ending to be considered a positive outcome (a comedy in the classical sense).

And the title/recurring theme, coming from the famous phrase "who watches the watchmen"? I think the point being made is the ultimate downfall of having no oversight over the powers that be.

Rorschach is far from a perfect role model (all of them are, actually, and I really can't condone theiractions, attitudes, or behaviours), but yes, I agree he's the only one who was about to actually do the right thing. The guy who thinks just about everything and everyone is evil actually found some real evil. The guy who seemed to hate humanity the most was the one most likely to save humanity.

Select to view spoiler:

And then the others killed him.

:/

Yup, uplifting. For sure.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 7:28 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Thanks, both of you - especially given that it was indeed both of ya I had in mind when I wrote that cause it cause we three in particular, despite my vague misanthropy otherwise, firmly and truly believe that human nature is NOT as foul and malicious as the powers that be would have us believe, and we do NOT need to be leashed to protect us from ourselves.

Watchmen in particular really brings home in sharp focus the disturbing similarity between the dynamic of abusive parent and victim child, and the dynamic of government and governed, because the latter is in truth, merely the former writ large.

As HKC put it, poisonous pedagogy indeed - on a national, rather than personal, scale.

And the key to breaking those chains lies not in a top-down, headfirst brawl against fully formed and completely calcified sociopaths who are doing naught more than following the model they've been "taught" at the expense of their humanity, it lies in preventing that from happening.

Rorschach never did understand that, because his own internal "issues" blinded him to it, right up to the very end, when the chain of logic that would have lead him there came into sharp focus and he made the only decision he could, the only one he was capable of making because to do anything else would invalidate all that he believed.

Hands down, he was the best of em.

It was Rue, in fact, who best summarised here the philosophy I've spent twenty some years applying to the matter...

Quote:
originally posted by Rue:

One summer in the village, the women in the town gathered at the river to do laundry. As they worked, one noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown!

One woman rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the women were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, one of the women started to run away along the shore of the river.

"Where are you going?" shouted one of the rescuers. "We need you here to help us save these babies!"

"I'm going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!"

Which is, in essence, EXACTLY what Rorschach intended to do, isn't it ?

As for his actions, which even I would deem somewhat excessive, they were based in one overriding concept held to by myself and Andrew Vachss, among others.

(Cribbed from an Q&A session via Barnes&Noble)
Hannah from San Fran, CA: What is the "choice of evil" in this novel?

Andrew Vachss: The point of the novel is that evil is a choice, not a biogenetic mutation. Not some bad DNA, not some defense attorney's psychobabble, but deliberate, voluntary conduct. You make a choice to be evil.

Despite his need to find an external source of blame due to his own internal issues blinding him, Rorschach makes this EXACT SAME ASSESSMENT himself.

"They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or President Truman. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice."

No matter what someones issues are, the moment it transforms from illness to evil, is the moment that they voluntarily choose to act on them in a fashion that harms others - THAT, is a choice.

And it works just the other way too.
http://www.vachss.com/mission/behavior.html
Children know the truth
Love is not an emotion
Love is behavior

In his own twisted way, it was love that drove Rorschach, his love for those who did NOT choose evil, forced to live in a world where so many do and are rewarded for it, and those who don't are penalised.

And it's love that drives me too, as I creep around with a set of psychological bolt cutters, trying to break these chains before they strangle us all.

He might have been batshit psycho, but that comes with the job, I'm afraid.

-Frem

Quote:
None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 7:45 AM

BYTEMITE

Most people just want to be, I think. They have their homes, their livelyhood, mates/friends/family, and whatever worldly goods that might belong to them.

Barring sadists and sociopaths, the only times I can imagine a person being motivated to hurt other people, fight, or kill are when those essential aspects of their lives could be taken away, are threatened...

Or when machination convinces them that those essential aspects MIGHT be threatened.

War is not an invention of the common man. It's an invention of our illustrious leaders. Our god-kings, moral authorities, conquerers, emperors, and politicians. Their motivation isn't our well-being. Their motivation is GREED.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 11:24 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The problem with Rorshach as a hero (although I also consider him the most heroic of the lot) is that he did not make his decisions after well-thought out consideration. He was driven by a compulsion to do the things he did. Almost like a robot following its programming. There were no long angst-driven contemplation sessions for him where he puzzled out right versus wrong.

And so, when he did the right thing despite the costs, one could not say it was really heroic. Merely inevitable. He was powerless to choose otherwise thanks to the scars on his soul.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Monday, April 20, 2009 12:22 PM

RIGHTEOUS9

Yeah, I certainly didn't take the novel, or the movie as giving Ozymandius a pass. He's a tortured, and "well intentioned," villain, but he is still the villain in the story.

And Rorchreks actions if not motivations are the hero in the end. It is his bible of events that turn up at the newspaper in the end, after all, and truth may endure. Whether that results in quicker armageddon, I'm not sure, but nothing about Ozymandius plan stopped a possible human extinction, it merely stalled one, and I might add, by making a whole city of people extinct. It was far from any kind of cure, and it was deranged.

Does it shock people into reconsidering? Yeah, maybe. It does seem that humanity needs to be shocked into better behavior sometimes. Look at how we've been behaving for the last 16 years...and we're finally in a pickle deep enough taht we all have to pay attention again.

I'm not sure how nihilistic you have to be to have a certain opinion about human nature. I'm still a pretty big fan of Maslow's studies. His premise was that people inherently wanted to be "good." But lets take what that really means in a world where there is no such thing as a concrete "good" or "evil."

In such a world, what is good and what is bad is culturally driven. In such a world decadent behavior is "good" if you are allowed to continue to delude yourself, that you are a pillar of the community, that you are doing well not because of chance and circumstance, but because you worked harder, and because you have personalized the best of values.

If you are not challenged in your beliefs before they truly cement, then they become a dogma that is nearly impossible to dismantle, because it often means tearing down your opinion of yourself, and your own goodness. So yes, I think people want to be good, but I think that doesn't really change a society's role in defining what "good" is.

I think that 1984 set up a scenario that made it harder to keep a different set of "truth" values than those of the state. It became impossible to teach one's children one's own values if they diverged. Whatever critical point of no return there might have been, humanity ended up on the wrong side of it.

It's not like we have no examples of this in our history. The things Germans were able to do and think was "good." Sure, alot of them did it for the sakes of their own necks, but consider a couple of generations like that, and concider the ability of modern technology on top of it to ferret out budding dissent...

and it wont take too long before there's a more uniform sense of what is good and what is bad.

...............

I'm somewhat convinced that human conciousness is directly related to our ability to feel pain, and pleasure. It is directly related to our sense of good or bad, because we literally get physical reward or punishment for our actions and our thoughts. This is kind of the root of how we apply meaning. I don't think its too hard to believe that an entity beyond such sensations could become more detatched from the human struggle.

After all, I can start getting pretty analytical about humanity's role in the universe myself----it's usually just my own pannicked sensations that bring me back to the terror of it all. I'm clinging to a certain imperminence that has no "true" meaning in the universe and has no "true" significance in the long run. Stars last longer than any speck of evidence that we may ever try to leave behind of our existence.

Dr. Manhattan was human though, yes, and there is a certain ammount of humanity in him, and he can on occasion still "feel." It seems to take more though...he's often unwilling or uninterested in tapping into that...it has lost meaning to him over time. Seems possible, I don't know.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 12:30 PM

BYTEMITE

Culture plays a role in some things, like whether you're grown up practicising ritualized cannibalism of your family members when they die as a form of respect, or whether you find that abhorrent yet metaphorically eat the flesh of your own God every week.

I hold that some aspects of good and evil are human nature, however. For example, universally, so long as someone is enough like you, you generally find the idea of killing them or watching them die deeply disturbing. In most people, it's an inhibition that has to be overcome (again, I don't categorize sadists and psychopaths with most people).

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Monday, April 20, 2009 12:43 PM

RIGHTEOUS9

if so, probably some instinctive trait neccesary for the survival of human's usually? Doesn't change the fact though, that culture can alter even that barrier of species behavior. We are good at creating categories of "us" and "them"...the right kind of separation to allow us to do monstrous things. Above all, we are adaptable.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 1:09 PM

PIRATECAT

Rorschach, He is the real hero. He knew there are wolves and sheepdogs. He chose to be the sheepdog. Use violence for good. He knows human nature goes hand and hand with violence. Real evil is apathy, do gooders grabbing your elbow when you defend yourself against a bully (anti-second amendment types), or Ozzy deforming humanity for selfish feel good reasons. Rorschach got it. Reminds me of Hoffa battling that creep RFK.

"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

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Monday, April 20, 2009 1:48 PM

BYTEMITE

Most likely true, but I see that as layered on top of an disinclination to kill or be evil.

I'll give you that most "good" or "evil" labels are defined by culture and society. But the universal death response at least speaks of some sort of sympathy and empathy in human nature, and few people can comfortably call pure survival actions evil because they also inspire sympathy.

So, underneath the society and culture, I'm inclined to argue that human nature is to care about other people, often altruistically or at least not always with some derived benefit. Caring about other people is universally considered good, as even individualistic cultures praise family values.

People who don't, well, there's either something wrong with them (which the people who know them will often wonder what it is), or they've been trained not to by societally produced motivations. Any society that does NOT encourage families to take care of their own, that tells parents to neglect their children or the people around them, that society isn't going to last long.

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Monday, April 20, 2009 1:54 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
He was driven by a compulsion to do the things he did.

Some folk might use another word for that compulsion...

Paradiso Sheriff - "A man finds out all the details of a job like this, well then, he's got a choice."

Malcom Reynolds - "I don't believe he does."

Rorshachs primary problem was being a person who had a conscience in a world where most folk didn't.

Quote:
And so, when he did the right thing despite the costs, one could not say it was really heroic. Merely inevitable. He was powerless to choose otherwise thanks to the scars on his soul.

And there you have in a nutshell why my understanding of him runs so deep.

Very few characters in fiction have as their primary motive the avenging of themselves in a way intended to prevent the very circumstances which made them what they are - about the only other one I can think of is Milliardo Peacecraft/Zech Merquis from Gundam Wing, who unlike Rorschach expressed it at least once in no uncertain terms.
(EDIT: Have included the quote as signature)

What Rorschach truly desired, right at the core of him, was a world that had no need or use of someone like him, and most of his struggle comes from him having no real clue how to accomplish that in part due to being blind to his own prejudices, which let's face it, most people are.

And yes, human empathy and how culture affects it are a vital and essential part of this topic, since our current culture, the one we live in, by it's choice of which values to uphold and which to scorn, does indeed have a lasting impact...

And when you consider that our current culture lauds sociopathic behavior as a noble and desired thing, required for acceptance and success, while scorning human empathy as weakness and hogwash...

The dystopia and catastrophy of that world looms closer to THIS one every day - the understated but implicit warning within most of Moores works all but lost on folks who don't understand just how little it'd take to bring THIS world, into one of THOSE.

So do we heed the warning ?

Do we take a stand here and turn it around ?

Just remember, any time you hear "someone should do something!"

YOU are someone, and if not you, then who ?

Let's BE the world Rorschach wished there could have been, instead of the one that produces him, yes ?

-Frem

"But if I don't stand up fight, no one will! And they'll end up giving birth to a SECOND Millardo Peacecraft!!"

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Monday, April 20, 2009 4:00 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Let us not forget that Rorshach was a puritan who condemned homosexuals and prostitutes right up there with pedophiles.

I don't believe Rorshach was doing what he was doing via a carefully considered morality. I think he was just damaged goods that was reacting to stimulus.

Malcolm Reynolds might have SAID he didn't have a choice, but we all watched him think about it.

That's the difference between a compulsive and a hero. Sometimes the road you take is as important as the destination.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Monday, April 20, 2009 8:26 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Indeed.

Which was in fact exactly what was wrong with him, he *needed* an external source to blame so that he never had to face the ugliness within.

There's a lesson in that too, for those who think inflicting their morality on others by force is something noble.

Some part of that compulsive conscience exists in all of us, that nagging little voice we're so well trained by our society and culture to ignore - but in Rorschachs case it was hooked up to the amps from a metallica concert, so loud it drowned out all coherent thought and reason, and all but a tiny fraction of his own compassion.

Seriously, that had to majorly suck, small wonder he was so miserable most of the time.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 5:53 AM

HKCAVALIER

Hey all,

The "pass" I mentioned Ozymandias getting was from Nite Owl and Manhattan, not from the reader or even from Moore (though I don't see Moore offering any positive alternative). We were talking about the characters in the novel and only Rorschach has even enough moral clarity not to cave to Ozymandias' scheme.

It strikes me as a grave weakness in the novel that there is no one within the story who is up to debating with the people in power. In a novel of ideas, that's a total cop out. No one can tell Ozymandias why he is effed in the head. No one ever gets the better of the Comedian--he's like a dystopic Cassandra, everything he says is born out in the novel. When Silk Spectre II goes to mars to plead with Manhattan to return to earth, her arguments are simply pathetic--ultimately Manhattan is moved not by her words, but by her genealogy. It's cheap and misanthropic to give the bad guys all the best lines. You ever notice that in Moore's works, only psychopaths have a sense of humor?

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Most people just want to be, I think. They have their homes, their livelyhood, mates/friends/family, and whatever worldly goods that might belong to them.

This is a common belief, but I'm not sure it adequately describes the situation. If this were really true of the majority of Americans I think we'd be a lot better off right now. What we have been seeing more and more is that people are willing to give up freedom for comfort; give up reality, for the illusion of luxury. People have become addicted to their "worldly goods," and will compromise anything to get their fix.

The right can sputter and hiss about the "nanny state," but we live in a nanny culture. Just look how terrified people have become with the Bank crisis. People were utterly content to live beyond their means as long as "everyone was doing it" and the system promised that there was no end in sight, even though any child could see that we were building an economy on the same principles as fantasy football. And now that we're all forced to deal with reality, the country has all but shut down.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:17 AM

BYTEMITE

Actually I don't think we disagree that much, it's just that what you suggest is the flip-side of the equation.

Just as the public can be easily manipulated into fear and hate with war mongering, the public can ALSO be easily manipulated into complacent consumerism. The most powerful governments seem to know how to balance the two sides so people are both terrified enough to keep sending their children off to war, and complacent enough that they keep spending beyond their means.

Silk Spectre II is underwhelming in general.

Whatever decisions and statements she is able to make are highly dependent upon the men in her life, and most of them are made for her. An outstanding example of feminism and free will, she ain't. Heck, for the entire climatic scene in the graphic novel, she's pretty much relegated to Nite Owl's worried/concerned/dismayed arm candy.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 12:01 PM

FREMDFIRMA

HKC, one of the things upon further examination of the story and it's various branches is how Nationalism blinded them all - a little too much my-county-right-or-wrong among them for any real honest introspection.

The Comedian was the worst of the lot, and although not alone is his guilt, his actions helped set the stage for the tragedy at hand, he pretty much admits to capping Woodward and Bernstein, it's alluded to that he did for Kennedy, and heaven knows what else, and yet even Rorschach gives him a pass despite the fact that the guy was your classic amoral sociopath.

Nowhere in there does any one of them truly question the motives or benevolence of their own government, despite it's own role in causing the crisis, even though the actions of HUAC should have caused them to.

I only recently got a chance to read up on it, but had I already done so in the aftermath of 9-11 I prolly woulda been even more creeped out than I was!

That kinda arrogant nationalism is seriously idiotic in the fact of the simple fact that at least for the present time, we only got ONE planet, and we all live on it - the artificial divisions of race, ethnicity and even country, are on a grand scale useless and pathetic excuses to keep us at each others throats rather than in the face of the powers that be, the very same dynamic of a prison warden playing factions off against each other to keep control, which plays out in a minor form in our public school system, and on a planetary scale with world leaders.

And in the end, it's suicidal, isn't it ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 12:17 PM

BYTEMITE

I've always thought that scene with Dr. Manhattan in his black man panties walking through Vietnam and single-handedly winning the war was kind of chilling.

I mean, from what I gather, there were atrocities enough on both sides of that conflict as it is.

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