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Man Made Ethics

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Written by Andrew Lam on Aug 26, 2011 in Philosophy

Man Made Ethics

When Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watch­men was first released in 1986, it altered the man­ner in which the nation viewed the comic book genre and rep­re­sented the mod­ern age of comics in Amer­ica. The pub­li­ca­tion caused read­ers, “to won­der what their beloved comic books would be like if pop­u­lated by char­ac­ters that were as com­plex and flawed as real peo­ple” (Ross). Watch­men trans­forms the super­hero and employs sym­bol­ism to illus­trate the dan­gers of man’s abil­ity to con­struct pri­va­tized moral stan­dards in the absence of a uni­ver­sally accepted view.

Unlike con­ven­tional comic book super­heroes, none of the char­ac­ters in Watch­men pos­sess any actual super­hu­man abil­i­ties, with the excep­tion of Dr. Man­hat­tan. Fur­ther­more, many of these char­ac­ters strug­gle with per­sonal issues that shape their cur­rent ide­ol­ogy. Like­wise, the ulti­mate goal of the antag­o­nist, iron­i­cally, is to bring about world peace. Although the plot takes place in a fic­tional Cold War era Amer­ica, the authen­tic lives of the indi­vid­u­als paint a strik­ingly real­is­tic world. At the time it was released, such pro­pos­als were rev­o­lu­tion­ary in the comic book medium.

The con­clu­sion of the lay­ered plot is the clear­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of moral­ity and human deci­sion mak­ing. Adrian Viedt cre­ates an alien man­i­fes­ta­tion to attack New York which suc­cess­fully mur­ders mil­lions of inno­cent peo­ple, forc­ing the world nations to unite together and drop the ongo­ing arms race. Viedt holds a util­i­tar­ian and con­se­quen­tial­ist per­spec­tive in which he believes that the ends jus­tify the means (Kay). In his view, the death of mil­lions of inno­cent peo­ple is a nec­es­sary sac­ri­fice in order to save bil­lions. Yet it is evi­dent that he is per­son­ally inse­cure with his deci­sion. Viedt asks Dr. Man­hat­tan, “I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end” (27). In mod­ern soci­ety, util­i­tar­i­an­ism is an unpop­u­lar view as it con­dones actions that have no obvi­ous pos­i­tive mer­its. The few oth­ers who wit­ness Viedt’s act agree that it is bet­ter for human­ity to not to know the truth, with the excep­tion of Rorschach who is fun­da­men­tally opposed to the mass deception.

Unlike Viedt, Rorschach believes enthu­si­as­ti­cally in moral oblig­a­tion and the west­ern under­stand­ing of karma. As a vig­i­lante, Rorschach boldly sets a man on fire upon dis­cov­er­ing that he had vio­lently killed a child. Such vivid acts of ret­ri­bu­tion reveal that Rorschach lives by his own moral direc­tive. Influ­en­tial Eng­lish philoso­pher John Locke pro­posed that peo­ple are born with a “blank slate” at birth. In his work, Essay Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing, Locke states, “I see no rea­son, there­fore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have fur­nished it with ideas to think on”. Con­trary to this propo­si­tion, Rorschach gives the anal­ogy that, “the accu­mu­lated filth of all their sex and mur­der will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politi­cians will look up and shout ‘save us!’… and I’ll look down and whis­per ‘no’” (1). This is Rorschach’s dec­la­ra­tion that peo­ple are innately evil, reject­ing the “blank slate” belief.

Sym­bol­ism is used to clar­ify Rorschach’s counter intu­itive views. He breaks new locks installed by the lock­smith “Gor­dian Knot Lock Co”. The name of the fic­tional com­pany is an allu­sion to the Greek leg­end of the Gor­dian Knot in which who­ever untied it would become the king. In the leg­end, Alexan­der the Great boldly cuts it with his sword instead of using wis­dom to unlock it (Gor­dian). When search­ing for infor­ma­tion, Nite Owl sug­gests slowly inves­ti­gat­ing the under­world for pos­si­ble clues, but Rorschach decides to enter a bar and break people’s fin­gers until they sur­ren­der the infor­ma­tion he demands. Rorschach rep­re­sents Alexander’s role in the leg­end as he uses bold uncon­ven­tional means to cre­ate quick solu­tions. Tor­ture and extrem­ism is not beyond his bounds if it results in pro­found efficiency.

As one of the few peo­ple to know the truth of the arti­fi­cially con­structed peace, Rorschach’s moral duty is will­ing to put the frag­ile peace at risk. This is expressed as he says, “not even in the face of Armaged­don. Never com­pro­mise… evil must be pun­ished”. Rorschach loosely fits the philo­soph­i­cal model of an objec­tivist as out­lined by the polit­i­cal writer Ayn Rand because he, “stands up for everyone’s right to be judged indi­vid­u­ally on the basis of their char­ac­ter and actions, their right not to be a means to some­one else’s higher end, no mat­ter what one might think of that end” (Doherty). This form of abso­lutism clas­si­fies Viedt’s oper­a­tion as evil no mat­ter what the con­text or out­come. Although the logic behind this expla­na­tion appears to con­tra­dict Rorschach’s own vengeance toward crim­i­nals, Rorschach him­self acknowl­edges that he is not morally upright in society’s eyes.

Rorschach’s for­mer col­league, Nite Owl, believes in old fash­ioned ide­al­is­tic jus­tice. When dis­cussing music with Hol­lis Mason, he shows inter­est in the jazz of the 1930’s instead of embrac­ing mod­ern pop. This is fig­u­ra­tive of his desire for sim­pler times of the past. In his eyes, peace can be achieved through integrity and mutual under­stand­ing. Nite Owl has to face the grim real­ity of the chang­ing social and polit­i­cal cli­mate. He asks dur­ing a riot, “the country’s dis­in­te­grat­ing. What’s hap­pened to Amer­ica? What’s hap­pened to the Amer­i­can dream?”  (18). Nite Owl’s moral­ity directly cor­re­lates with the pro­duc­tion of Viedt’s line of fra­grance. Adver­tise­ments for the cologne, “Nos­tal­gia” are seen in com­mer­cials and adver­tise­ments through­out most of the story. It reflects a long­ing for a time before the Cold War era of global uncer­tainty and unrest. As Viedt changes the prod­uct to a line called “Mil­len­nium”, it reflects the change to society’s opti­mism and hope. Nite Owl’s ethics coin­cide with this change as his val­ues are chal­lenged by the shift­ing world culture.

Even the minor char­ac­ters have notable eth­i­cal stan­dards. Mal­colm Long holds an elit­ist view, as he is con­fi­dent in his abil­ity to solve Rorschach’s inher­ent psy­cho­log­i­cal “prob­lems”. Big Fig­ure on the other hand, lives by exploit­ing oth­ers towards one’s own ben­e­fit. Although the top in the crim­i­nal hier­ar­chy, with­out the pro­tec­tion of his ring of asso­ciates, Big Fig­ure is help­less due to his iron­i­cally small size. In com­par­i­son, Moloch under­went a per­sonal trans­for­ma­tion from crim­i­nal to busi­ness­man. The source of his moral­ity is faith based with his accep­tance of Christianity’s teach­ings. Sym­bol­ism is again used to char­ac­ter­ize the trans­for­ma­tion of his char­ac­ter. The restau­rant he uses for com­mu­ni­ca­tion is named Gunga Diner is a ref­er­ence to the poem Gunga Din. In this poem, an enemy sol­dier dies sav­ing the life of a British sol­dier (Kedziora). This sub­tle ref­er­ence also fore­shad­ows Viedt’s sac­ri­fice and agrees with Nite Owl’s opti­mistic view of man.

In con­trast, The Come­dian believes that humans are morally cor­rupt bar­bar­ians and have been try­ing to kill each other since the begin­ning of his­tory. Due to the loom­ing threat of the Cold War, The Come­dian rec­og­nizes Cyre­naic hedo­nism in that oppor­tu­ni­ties should be indulged imme­di­ately since the future is uncer­tain (Williams). Although The Come­dian is mur­dered at the begin­ning of the sto­ry­telling, the non-linear nar­ra­tive uses flash­backs to exem­plify his ide­ol­ogy. His attempted rape and mur­der tes­tify to this. The Come­dian wears the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol in Watch­men, a smi­ley face badge with a blood stain across the eye, appear­ing in a vari­ety of cre­ative forms through­out the novel. The sense of humor jux­ta­posed with the seri­ous­ness of vio­lence rep­re­sents the dual­ity of man, as coex­is­tence and destruc­tion are both achiev­able through mankind’s choices. To fur­ther expose the com­plex moral­ity of the char­ac­ters, The Come­dian accuses Dr. Man­hat­tan of an equal amount of wrong­do­ing as he may him­self have inflicted.

The eth­i­cal dilemma that Dr. Man­hat­tan faces is that he is omnipo­tent, while no other per­son has any spe­cial pow­ers. Time travel, immor­tal­ity, and cloning are just a few of the con­ceiv­able abil­i­ties he can per­form at will (18). By hold­ing infi­nite power, sim­ply not inter­ven­ing in the hor­rific injus­tices that occur through­out the world is equiv­a­lent to pas­sively com­mit­ting them him­self. Dr. Manhattan’s belief is the oppo­site of anthro­pocen­trism (Wol­loch). Instead of see­ing humans of fun­da­men­tal impor­tance, he sees plan­ets like Mars as per­fect due to the absence of human life. Man­hat­tan believes that hav­ing no stake in human affairs allows him to remove any per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity or guilt. The pres­ence of Dr. Man­hat­tan as a “walk­ing nuclear deter­rent” sid­ing with the Amer­i­cans is the only addi­tion to an oth­er­wise real­is­tic Cold War sce­nario. Despite being essen­tially equiv­a­lent to God, his exis­tence is unable to pre­vent the inevitable mutu­ally assured destruc­tion of man.

Dr. Manhattan’s name was orig­i­nally intended to bring fear­ful con­no­ta­tion with the Man­hat­tan project, the research that devel­oped the atomic bomb.  In con­trast to the use of the atomic bomb dur­ing WWII, the ratio­nale that dead­lier weapons can achieve peace is rejected and hos­til­ity esca­lates as a result of human stub­born­ness and abuse of power. The sil­hou­ette of a dis­in­te­grat­ing man and woman known as the Hiroshima lovers is seen graf­fi­tied onto walls and men­tioned in Rorschach’s jour­nal. This famous image rep­re­sents of the sig­nif­i­cance of soci­ety choos­ing love as opposed to war. Sim­i­larly, the promi­nent dis­play of the Dooms­day Clock get­ting closer and closer to mid­night, sym­bolic of cat­a­strophic destruc­tion, fore­shad­ows the effects of human deci­sion mak­ing (Doomsday).

In the Watch­men sto­ry­line, indi­vid­u­als choose to rise up fight society’s prob­lems on their own. Although some­what effec­tive in pre­vent­ing crime, the pub­lic calls for their out­law­ing. The rea­son­ing is likely caused by the public’s dis­trust of unsanc­tioned fig­ures of author­ity; despite their ser­vice being nearly indis­tin­guish­able from the accepted law enforce­ment. The debate of pri­vate author­ity is alive today as “crit­ics raise issues of account­abil­ity, and the pri­vate usurpa­tion of a gov­ern­ment func­tion. Advo­cates cite the ben­e­fits of cheaper, more respon­sive alter­na­tives to the pub­lic police” (Joh). Peo­ple are gen­er­ally will­ing to exchange addi­tional safety for a fab­ri­cated sense of peace of mind.

Fol­low­ing the leg­is­lated out­law, the US gov­ern­ment grants amnesty to Man­hat­tan and The Come­dian due to their skills being used in the Viet­nam War (23). This crim­i­nal­iza­tion yet simul­ta­ne­ous sup­port when it serves the government’s self-interests rein­forces the imper­fec­tion of those in power and James Madison’s famed idea that, “if men were angels, no gov­ern­ment would be nec­es­sary”. The phrase, “Who Watches the Watch­men?” appears par­tially spray painted on walls through­out the entirety of the novel but is never fully addressed by any of the char­ac­ters. This slo­gan explains the cir­cu­lar logic of indi­vid­u­als in power gov­ern­ing. It con­veys the warn­ing that peo­ple should not put uncon­di­tional trust on other peers, as man is innately imper­fect and moti­vated by greed.

Alan Moore’s con­tri­bu­tion to the graphic novel medium exposes deeper themes than most of the super­fi­cial action depen­dent comic books of the time. Sym­bols embed­ded through­out the chap­ters allow for com­plex ideas to be expressed through sub­tle images, rather than using the lim­ited space avail­able for text. By elect­ing to use flawed and instinc­tively human char­ac­ters as opposed to unques­tion­ably vir­tu­ous super­heroes, Moore shows the indi­vid­u­ally con­structed moral under­stand­ings result­ing from a lack of con­sen­sus within soci­ety and the dan­gers it poses to mankind.

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