mustinvestigate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mustinvestigate) wrote2009-10-17 01:06 pm
mustinvestigate) wrote2009-10-17 01:06 pm
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pretty as a picture an' still keepin' her figure
So, Chapter 2, in which Watchmen sorta passes the Bechdel Test.
Two-thirds of this chapter is present-day characters reminiscing on the former lives/careers (pretty much the same thing, yes?) of the Comedian and Silk Spectre. The Comedian’s spans several decades and identity-shifts, whereas Silk Spectre’s is summed up by an attempted rape, and some dialogue indicating she’s come to accept and see it differently. Eesh.
(This is clearly blanket permission to produce naughty fanarts *nodnodnod*)
There’s two named female characters, who talk to each other, and not about a man…mostly. They talk around their shared life problem, that of beingexposition pack mules defined by their sexuality, and by that sexuality being something utilitarian that pays the bills. I give this only a ‘sorta’ as it’s quite interesting stuff, but the novel itself doesn’t really go in depth with it. In a ‘medium is the message’ sense, the rest of the novel uses Laurie as a sex symbol who looks nice in a skimpy costume, and her purpose in the plot is to move between men and use her relationships with them to motivate them to make plot happen. I love digging into this myself, how the novel demonstrates that female characters’ personal motivations are sidelined in the genre – we get later on, what, one throwaway line that Laurie would have preferred to work with animals, balanced against several alternative-less statements that she didn’t want to be a vigilante – but it’s fanwanking. Male characters' development is shown or outright stated; Laurie’s and Sally’s must be inferred.
Still, there’s actual active emotion, rather than tears and suppression – look at the trembling fist. Imma pop you, old woman…
And, while I know it’s Dave Gibbon’s style to draw every character from the epic-tall-broad-square-chinned template, I love love love that the glamour model / vigilante is not only thickly muscular but seems to have all her internal organs intact. This could be any of the women in my family, before the invention of high-fructose corn syrup, anyway.
In four days, Rorschach’s writing style has both improved and taken off the tinfoil hat, providing a clear-eyed assessment of the vigilante lifestyle that’s both eloquent and concise. Either:
1. Dan spiked his sugar cubes with clozapine.
2. Alan Moore didn’t want to muddy up his author tract on the foolishness of comic tropes with comical right-wing nutjoberry.
3. Or, he’d fallen a little in love with the character and couldn’t be so harsh with the deconstructing of his tiny, broken brain any more.
I’d lean toward a combination of 2 and 3…aside from the unironic ‘Rorschach is a HERO’ crowd, no one can seriously espouse Walter Kovacs’ ideals, especially after the psychotic break, but he’s a surprisingly easy audience identification figure. Who doesn’t feel, at least a little, like they’ve often gotten a raw deal in life but have chosen to do good anyway? Or suspect that our bedrock beliefs, subjected to objective poking, would prove to be both childish and poorly constructed? Here’s where he begins to become more of a tragic antihero than a Miller pastiche.
Y’know, right after he brutalises an old, fatally ill man.
Two-thirds of this chapter is present-day characters reminiscing on the former lives/careers (pretty much the same thing, yes?) of the Comedian and Silk Spectre. The Comedian’s spans several decades and identity-shifts, whereas Silk Spectre’s is summed up by an attempted rape, and some dialogue indicating she’s come to accept and see it differently. Eesh.
(This is clearly blanket permission to produce naughty fanarts *nodnodnod*)
There’s two named female characters, who talk to each other, and not about a man…mostly. They talk around their shared life problem, that of being
Still, there’s actual active emotion, rather than tears and suppression – look at the trembling fist. Imma pop you, old woman…
And, while I know it’s Dave Gibbon’s style to draw every character from the epic-tall-broad-square-chinned template, I love love love that the glamour model / vigilante is not only thickly muscular but seems to have all her internal organs intact. This could be any of the women in my family, before the invention of high-fructose corn syrup, anyway.
In four days, Rorschach’s writing style has both improved and taken off the tinfoil hat, providing a clear-eyed assessment of the vigilante lifestyle that’s both eloquent and concise. Either:
1. Dan spiked his sugar cubes with clozapine.
2. Alan Moore didn’t want to muddy up his author tract on the foolishness of comic tropes with comical right-wing nutjoberry.
3. Or, he’d fallen a little in love with the character and couldn’t be so harsh with the deconstructing of his tiny, broken brain any more.
I’d lean toward a combination of 2 and 3…aside from the unironic ‘Rorschach is a HERO’ crowd, no one can seriously espouse Walter Kovacs’ ideals, especially after the psychotic break, but he’s a surprisingly easy audience identification figure. Who doesn’t feel, at least a little, like they’ve often gotten a raw deal in life but have chosen to do good anyway? Or suspect that our bedrock beliefs, subjected to objective poking, would prove to be both childish and poorly constructed? Here’s where he begins to become more of a tragic antihero than a Miller pastiche.
Y’know, right after he brutalises an old, fatally ill man.
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And yeah, I too wish I could be generous enough to believe that the "medium as message" reading was intentional, but I don't think Moore/Gibbon put that much thought into Laurie or the position of women in superhero comics. "Her purpose is to move between men and stir up the plot" is pretty much exactly what they wrote on her character sheet.
Male characters' development is shown or outright stated; Laurie’s and Sally’s must be inferred.
HOWEVER! I disagree here. I think Laurie's development is made explicit, at the end: she's taken ownership of crimefighting on her own terms, or perhaps something closer to her father's terms (face mask, gun). I could go on about how Laurie becomes a whole person when she is able to incorporate her own masculinity and paternal heritage into her persona; blah blah gender theory, animus, anima, hasenpfeffer incorporated. She's grievously misused throughout the story, made to spend a decade in a bunker with Jon learning ping pong, but she comes out a whole person, which is more than you can say for almost anyone else.
As for Rorschach, just want to point out that Miller wasn't Miller when they wrote this - Dark Knight Returns came out the same year, and even then he was decades from the excesses of Sin City and DK2. /comic geek
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You are right about the ending with Laurie grabbing life by the bollocks - I think Hutch-Dan icks me so much there I tend to block it out :) Which is a shame, as the image of Laurie in a proper uniform doing damange to the criminal world is fantastic. I'd love to read that 12-issue comic.
I'm leaning on other people's knowlege of mid-80s Millerosity - in 1985 I was occasionally reading my brother's X-Men castoffs, and that was the extent of my comics education for another 15 years :)
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I dunno, wasn't he being all GRIMDARQUE with Daredevil during the early 80s?
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Good luck getting set up again!