Watchmen, Chapter 12: A stronger loving world, Page 19, Panel 7
I know I’ve used the terms “good guys” and “bad guys” on this blog. The truth is that those terms are cop outs. The world isn’t full of opposing forces colliding with each other, just individual elements that combine to make a whole. That whole is both–no, is neither beautiful or ugly. It’s hard to break these dichotomies. We are raised to see the world in pairs, and it’s a hard habit to break. This is a thing that even Veidt doesn’t see. He thinks that he has his victory, that the world has been saved by his actions. As readers, we have the ability to see outside of the narrative world. In our world, an action like Veidt’s wasn’t necessary to stop the Cold War. There was the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the financial collapse of the USSR. The threat of an immediate nuclear war has receded. Although these events occurred after Watchmen’s publication, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to believe that Moore and Gibbons thought there was another way for the world in Watchmen to unfold. It didn’t unfold in a different way, of course, because they were presenting a particular message. Even with the end of the Cold War, have we not seen our share of conflicts? Genocide? Inhumane captivity?
Let me pose some questions, then: Do you think that Veidt’s world would be any safer than ours? Would you trust a man who stood stunned when a peer told him “Nothing ever ends?” (Watchmen, Chapter 12: A stronger loving world, Page 27, Panel 5) I have trouble considering Veidt the smartest man on Watchmen’s Earth, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be the wisest.
Watchmen, Chapter 12: A stronger loving world, Page 27
If nothing truly ends, there is no ultimate good and no ultimate evil. The choices that we make may be solutions to particular problems but they cause their own issues to arise afterward. We as individuals are not wise enough, nor strong enough, to make the world a “better” place. All we can do is to make it a different place. We don’t even have to kill half of New York to do it, either. Just living, just having lived, a person accomplishes change. All we have are our wishes to help those close to us, perhaps the world-at-large, get along. For a man like Veidt, that may mean sacrificing thousands of lives or more. I couldn’t do that and I would try to stop him given the chance. No matter whether I despise people like Veidt, no matter how I may call him a villain, a “bad guy,” all I can do is follow my convictions as he follows his.
Adrian dreams of swimming towards a hideous something (Watchmen, Chapter 12: A stronger loving world, Page 27, Panel 1) and we as readers are aware of what that something is–the Black Freighter. We are lead to make this parallel and it’s a fair one to make. We can all imagine being so convinced of the truth of something that we are blind to its consequences, that we accept them as inevitable. It’s easy to see our paths leading to the edge of a precipice, and it’s easy to understand that any time we walk towards the edge, blindness is a danger. This blindness, however, does not necessarily lead to apocalypse. It may lead to tragedy, to people dying, but as long as there are people who survive, time marches on and memory tells our tales. None of us are above this, regardless of how special we may be.
If nothing truly ends, then there are no true dichotomies. There are no absolutes. Believing in absolutes usually only leads to tragedy and death. No amount of tragedy and death can make the world any better than it is. There is no solution to make a stronger loving world. If that is the case, do we have any need for superheroes? Aren’t superheroes and supervillains just synonyms for ultimate good and ultimate evil? If so, then there are no superheroes or supervillains. There are just people who do what they believe in, seperated only by perception.
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