Rorschach

Rorschach test: Tell me what you see above...I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality
Cult of Personality, Living Colour

In class on Wednesday, when we discussed the end of Watchmen, a lot of discussion centered on the character Rorschach. His personality, how he thinks, how he dies, so on and so forth. As I pondered the character it began to dawn on me just how much Rorschach had been glamorized and how undeserving of it he was. The movie stands as a grand testament to this glamarization. The character Rorschach dominates the film, which by one measure is a testament to the brilliant job Jackie Earle Haley did with the character. However, the script itself slanted towards the character. The ending, in particular, skews heavily towards Rorschach. Everyone talks about the change from squid monster to framing Dr Manhattan, but there was more changed than that. The lack of emotion shown by Veidt, Nite Owl witnessing Rorschach's death, and his reaction (complete with the most unnecessarily dramatic "NOOO!" moment since Revenge of the Sith) all sacrifice the sense of moral ambiguity of the graphic novel creates in favor of making Rorschach seem like the good guy.

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Tell me what you see above...

Rorschach's black and white maskWe touched on Rorschach's death in class, but I wanted to go into it more. I think that at the end of the book he had to die, because Rorschach could not live with moral ambiguity. For Rorschach, morality is very black and white, even if his standards change over time. There is never a point in the book where he doesn't have an opinion about people's actions. In Rorschach's mind they are truly either good or evil, and those that are evil need to be brought to justice. In this sense, Rorschach is the most absurd caricature of a super hero, or at least of the super hero genre, in which good and evil are clearly defined. They are not clearly defined in the world in which the Watchmen live, but good and evil are very clearly defined in Rorschach's mind. While he may have been faced with morally ambiguous situations in the past, we are not presented with any (e.g. the man who kidnapped and butchered the girl, killing prisoners who mean to do him harm, etc). Rorschach's methods are morally ambiguous, but not the crimes which he encounters. It is only at the end that he is faced with a crime that does not fit into either the good or evil category and it is at that point when he is taken out of the novel through his death.

Bannon: looks kind of like Walter Kovacs, do you think so?Kovacs: no mask
Well, not really. Converge is one of my favorite bands, and Rorschach is one of my favorite comic heroes, so it is natural that I will see connections between the two. Converge's most recent album is perfectly named. "No Heroes". The description from their website might be something out of Rorschach's journal:

"These days, cowards outnumber the heroes, and the begging souls outweigh the calloused hands of the hardest of workers. Both in life and in art, the lack of passion is sickening, and the lust for complacency is poisonous. This album is the artistic antithesis of that sinking world; a thorn in the side of their beast. It's for those who move mountains one day at a time. It's for those who truly understand sacrifice. In our world of enemies, we will walk alone..."

And especially the lyrics song "No Heroes" itself. Rorschach isn't really the singing type, but if he were, his lyrics might look something like this.

'in vein and valor
be what they fear
their days are over
our nights are here
with hate and heartache
i'll strike you down
with rage and rapture
i crush your crown
no more gods
no more graves
no more love

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no mask

looks kind of like Walter Kovacs, do you think so?

A lot of people have been talking about Rorschach, both here and elsewhere, and I've heard a lot of people drawing parallels between him and Batman. Now, I'm not going to say they aren't correct about that. There's the whole obsessive, borderline-criminal quality, which I kind of hope to talk about elsewhere. There's . . . Well, there's a lot of things. I once read somewhere that Rorschach is what Batman would be if he didn't have Bruce Wayne's money at his disposal, and I figure that's pretty accurate from what I've read of Watchman so far. But.

But there's someone Rorschach reminds me even more of. Secret identity? Vic Sage. Acquired by DC Comics from Charlton Comics, first appearing in DC in Blue Beetle #1 in 1967. Sometime Objectivist, chronic conspiracy theorist, partly inspired by Dick Tracy, partly by The Spirit, he dons his trench coat and fedora to become . . .

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Our beloved Right-wing protaganist, Rorschach, is more than just a really badass anti-hero. He is Nietzsche's Übermensch, which is kind of like an anti-hero among anti-heroes. While it's exact meaning isnt really clear from what Nietzsche described, I envision it as an extremely willfull person who is not bound by the morality of the comfort-seeking masses, and creates his own morality.

nietzschelol

This is Rorschach. He doesn't mention even think about the police. As the Übermensch, he is not on the same plane of existence as such things. While the egalitarian modern world is saturated with capitulation, Rorschach is the opposite. Rorschach is completely uncompromising, unflinching and unstoppable in his will.

The Übermensch is real, and he is American.