The relevance of Watchmen for the 2017’s American 
Our country has been rocked to its core, to its bare bones. Bare, like our country’s values, which we hold near and dear, being laid out for the whole world to see. Bare, like the bleak winter months, when we are left in the cold without a dock to moor upon or a shelter against the snow. Rain might not be so bad – washing away all the dirt that gathered on the politicians during the recent presidential campaign and cleansing our streets from all the muck thrown at each other by both sides – but we have snow coming and see a Doomsday Clock looming in the distance.
So did the Watchmen in DC Comics’ 1986 earth-shattering graphic novel featuring a cast of characters who were caught in their own hopelessness, not sure how to go on, how to move forward or beyond. What did their pasts mean anymore? Were any of them still relevant? And what about the future? Was there any worth fighting for? Thirty years later we’re asking the same questions. And as we slowly recover from the stupor brought upon us by winter, and election results, during the first months of the new year, what lessons can Watchmen teach us that can help us in the uncertain coming years?
Will the new president be the promised saviour of the nation, or just yet another self-serving Joker?
The presidential election has been surprising, at the least. Just like the vendor on the corner of the street in the Watchmen saying: “the more disasters happen, the more papers get sold”, the leaders of the campaigns have painted America as a failed state, yelling: “make America great again” as if we were living in some sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland. We’re left to feel like Niteowl, asking Rorschach whatever happened to the good old days. His response? “You quit”.
Ignore the seeming abandonment, as did the survivor of the shipwreck in the Watchmen’s sub-story ‘Black Freighter’, and remember Rorschach’s call to his former team-mates: “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” Ignore the calls to exclude, reject or eliminate, and eschew them in favor of a greater union, a true “We the people.” With environmentally conscious companies like Patagonia ushering in better business practices with focus on protecting our shared land, and the much covered Stand with Standing Rock movement doing likewise, we see how Americans, in spite of the divisive rhetoric of unscrupulous politicians, are still able to stand together. Don’t quit now just because scaremongers try to instil fear in you.
Doctor Manhattan, with his infamous line “the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon”, spends the majority of the story as an impartial, impassionate bystander observing the atrocities transpiring around him from the Vietnam War and other transgressions caused by ever-erring human beings. We do not have this privilege, and must be more like calculating, yet pragmatic Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias (if we disregard his mass genocide and focus instead on his humanitarianism, that is – he is a comic book character after all, right?). Take his ‘Veidt Method’, which he writes for potential superheroes. In it, Ozymandias outlines how, in order to achieve our best selves, we must first understand ourselves, respect our health and bodies and create “a new us”. He describes the need to be a part of the world: “just as you are a whole organic being, complete unto yourself, so are you also part of a larger social organism consisting of the people around you, the people you work with, and ultimately the whole world … you will want to react in a healthy and positive way to the world around you, changing it for the better if you are able.”. This is not dissimilar from the teaching of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who encourages that we must shake off Samyojana, or our “mental chains”, in order that we can move forward towards actualizing our true potential. So, when you are dissatisfied with the state of affairs, don’t just complain, but do something about it. As the old adage proclaims: “you be the change you wish to see in the world”.
If you are unhappy with the state of affairs, you be the change you wish to see in the world.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created characters who are reflecting equally our worst qualities and our best. Like the Comedian, many of us choose to say “it takes a moron to think [America’s] problems are small enough for clowns like you guys to handle”, whether those clowns be ourselves, our senators, or even the president himself. But we can choose to be the redemptive qualities of these broken superheroes, like the redeemed Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias. The often-quoted I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text, tells us to continue what we are doing, and to spread joy and revolution – that is, less blowing up the world to smithereens, more making a post-election pie for your neighbor, or handing a buck to the homeless man sleeping at the corner of your street.
So, as snow piles on our window sills, and we fear the holiday conversations with the family members we’re quite sure we would happily see lured into a particle trap and disintegrated (just like Ozymandias disposed of Doctor Manhattan), let’s take heed from the Watchmen and use them as our guide to know better. Rather than the omen of impending doom, the Doomsday Clock mentality can be our 10-minutes-to-midnight wake-up call. So, breathe in, breathe out, relax a bit, then, when you are ready, stand up, and, just like Doctor Manhattan, say: “I am ready to begin…”.
01/01/2017 | Paolo Bicchieri