Rorschach was also clearly the only character with an unfailing sense of justice lol and was willing to die because he refused to compromise with evil.
Exactly. Dr. Manhattan's entire philosophy of "the global good" and the ends justifying the means is explicitly rejected in the foundational principles of American government.
I always saw him as the villain. A creature whose transcendence to godhood deprived him of the fundamental understanding of the human experience that should have made this obvious to him.
I know Moore intended Watchmen to be a critique of the US/Russian arms race and threat of nuclear war, but I'm free to take the lessons and meaning I want from his work.
I don't necessarily agree with the thesis of "The Death of the Author" but I don't know anything about Alan Moore--and while the critique of cold-war ideology is fairly clear, there was a second theme in there that maybe he didn't mean about the dehumanizing element of power and how the more powerful an individual becomes, the more calculating and ammoral as well. Dr Manhattan is definitely not a heroic character. His declaration of godhood is, in the end, impotent.
There's nothing wrong with imagining the themes of a work to be whatever you choose... so long as you're not given the great responsibility to adapt that work to a new audience.
Rorschach was also clearly the only character with an unfailing sense of justice lol and was willing to die because he refused to compromise with evil.
Exactly. Dr. Manhattan's entire philosophy of "the global good" and the ends justifying the means is explicitly rejected in the foundational principles of American government.
I always saw him as the villain. A creature whose transcendence to godhood deprived him of the fundamental understanding of the human experience that should have made this obvious to him.
I know Moore intended Watchmen to be a critique of the US/Russian arms race and threat of nuclear war, but I'm free to take the lessons and meaning I want from his work.
I don't necessarily agree with the thesis of "The Death of the Author" but I don't know anything about Alan Moore--and while the critique of cold-war ideology is fairly clear, there was a second theme in there that maybe he didn't mean about the dehumanizing element of power and how the more powerful an individual becomes, the more calculating and ammoral as well. Dr Manhattan is definitely not a heroic character. His declaration of godhood is, in the end, impotent.
"Death of the author" is code for "I don't care what the author meant--it offends ME, therefore it is evil."
It is death to creativity.
There's nothing wrong with imagining the themes of a work to be whatever you choose... so long as you're not given the great responsibility to adapt that work to a new audience.
Manhattan is basically a cautionary tale about mankind losing its collective humanity due to technology