The Duck of Minerva

Interstellar Relations: notes for Watchmen (book) and Akira (film)

by Dan Nexon

17 January 2011, 1534 EST

Of possible interest to some Duck readers, I reproduce notes that I posted on my class blog in preparation for our next section. Comments and suggestions welcome.

  1. The narrative of Watchmen enjoys, at best, a quasi-linear relationship to time. Events in the past and present intermingle. At the same time, Moore gives significant space to Dr. Manhattan’s relationship to space-time. It might be interesting, in this context, to skim the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entries on God and Time and Time.
  2. Themes common to Watchmen and Akira include (but are far from limited to): nuclear and non-nuclear apocalypse, urban decay, and the implications of transcending human-ness.
  3. We are again the realm of the nuclear and post-nuclear imaginary. If you cannot place yourself in the mindset of the Cold War nuclear standoff–let alone the 1980s–you may find it difficult to make sense of the settings and motivations. Some helpful context might include: the Doomsday Clock (and also here), the decline of New York City, and Kitty Genovese.
  4. Some read Watchmen as not “merely” a rumination on the superhero genre, but on readers’ relationship to (and complicity in) comic-book conventions. Watchmen itself contains multiple examples of text-within-text, e.g., Tales of the Black Freighter and numerous inserts on the history of superheroes.
  5. Watchmen plays with our expectations about ethics and morality, particularly with respect to consequentialist, deontological, and “virtue” ethics (see also, and). Some of the characters make what (at first glance) might seem surprising choices (given what we “know” about them) when confronted with moral dilemmas. Consider also how their actions and choices align with concerns about ethics, values, rights, and duties in foreign policy.
  6. Keep in mind that elements of Watchmen‘s narrative are conveyed by a character (Rorschach) who is sociopathic.
  7. Scott Eirk Kauffman has written some very smart things (be sure to scroll down to get to the relevant stuff) about Watchmen over the years; his posts are particularly interesting because they call attention to what he calls “visual rhetoric,” and should lead you to think about issues of composition and perspective not just in Watchmen, but also in Akira. (nb: A word of warning, SEK is even more foul-mouthed than I am, and quite left wing, so caveat emptor).
  8. Viewers of Akira often find one of its most disturbing (or silly) elements to be its violations, mutilations, and deformations of the human body. Is there a common thread here, or interesting points of comparison with not only Watchmen, but A Canticle for Leibowitz?
  9. In Watchmen‘s alternate universe, Richard Nixon is President of the United States. What other counterfactual conditions obtain in its political order? And can we get any mileage out of a comparison of the political systems represented in Watchmen and Akira?
  10. When in doubt, fall back on depictions of human nature (or its varieties).
  11. As always, we will return to these works in future classes.

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

1 Comment

  1. kasper
    kasper on 18 January 2011 at 01.36 EST

    Re: Watchmen –
    – How history molds people into stereo/archetypes (sometimes chosen willingly)
    – Leo Strauss' idea of the 'noble lie' and it's influence on postmodern/instrumentalist political thought (Ozymandias' plot and 9/11 have uneasy parallels, especially in its imagery)
    – The conspiracy theory of history and determinism. Also the relationship between conspiracies, games and practical jokes.
    – M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction) vs. quantuum mechanics and chaos theory.
    – How fiction (no matter how fantastical) can develop into ideology/belief and therefore reality (a recurring theme for Moore). Many of the key events in the story occur because of rumours, long-term deceptions, media influence etc. Dr Manhattan becomes a superhero because the press say he is, Kitty Genovese story was notoriously inaccurate, Night Owl is murdered over a misheard news report etc.
    – The 'covert spectacle'. Politics and war as performance.
    – Organised violence as 'aestheticized' sexual frustration (many of the characters have their most intimate or revealing moments during confrontation or violence, including the 'civilians'. Note also how the Black Frieghter story ends with the protagonist brutally attacking the wife he was determined to protect – and the weird symbolism of his battle with the shark).
    – Our need to view life as a coherent story, often according to genre 'rules' (also, how the main characters pastiche certain artists'/companies' styles, also paralleled the timescales of their lives).
    – The very subtle homage to the Wizard of Oz that runs through the story.