I love Watchmen, it is up there as one of my favourite books. Not one of my favourite graphic novels, but this re-imagined past populated by retired costumed heroes is one of my favourite stories ever. I think it comes down to not only the quality of the storytelling, the philosophical implications of the story, and the artwork, but also the time of my life that I discovered it. I’ll save divulging that sad sorry story for another time, but of all the titles in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, Watchmen seems the most deserving of in-depth philosophical enquiry.
Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test collects a number of different essays exploring the Watchmen universe and how it relates to different philosophical theories and concepts, from the problem Dr. Manhattan’s morality, to the feminism of the Silk Spectres, to the Kierkegaardian humour in Rorschach and The Comedian. It seems a little ironic that a graphic novel that is so intent on questioning all forms of authority and power has been given a treatment which relies solely on “legitimate” ways of analysis. The problem here being that all of the discussions, all of the issues raised in these essays seem implicit in Watchmen itself, so eloquently explored through the graphic medium, character and themes that these essays seem, well, a little extraneous.
Familiarity with the Watchmen universe will help the uninitiated wrangle with the philosophical jargon and get to what the writers are trying to get across, but other than a few moments of “hey, I never thought of it that way!”, there’s not much that isn’t, in some way, already evident within Watchmen. There are some interesting discussions about the morality of different characters and the virtues of different philosophical ethical motivations, but the most engaging essays are those which operate on more of a cultural level. Only one of the essays seemed utterly pointless, an attempt at an ironic (I think?) exploration of homosexuality within Watchmen which reiterated all the usual hateful arguments and came across as immature and repulsive. The argument may have been well intentioned, but the approach was completely off.
There is a tendency in the essays to rely on the more philosophically and ethically complex characters of Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias, but other characters do get a minor look in. Watchmen offers an obviously hyper-real version of our own reality, giving a heightened story through which to ask questions about identity, change, time and space. However, most of these essays use Watchmen to highlight and elaborate particular concepts rather than using the concepts to illuminate Watchmen. Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test is one for die-hard Watchmen fans only.
2009, August 2010, book review, Mark D. White, non-fiction, Watchmen, Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test