Participants
The Ideology of Control in Watchmen
James Royal
University of Florida
jroyal@english.ufl.edu
Through its various displays of power, the Watchmen graphic novel exhibits the ideology of control, which can be understood by Nietzsche's idea of the will to power. Throughout the work the ideology of control is visible in the paradoxes that control and power must create to participate in the text, but especially in the character of Jonathan Osterman, reborn Dr. Manhattan. In a work that displays such a powerful character, the ideology of control allows an illusion of meaning in a text where the overabundance of control in the form of Osterman should have entirely eliminated it. Thus the ideology of control masquerades.
While Dr. Manhattan is essential to the graphic novel as a genre, at the same time his portrayal subverts the plot. The appearance of such a powerful individual presents the authors with several dilemmas that they must overcome both ingeniously and surreptitiously. In its mere presentation of a character as paradoxical as Dr. Manhattan, the medium of presentation must be lithe enough to accommodate the paradox. Dr. Manhattan has the power of temporal simultaneity - he exists everywhere that he has ever existed or will ever live at the same time. The novel attempts to illustrate such a situation, but words become the primary way of displaying temporal simultaneity within the panel. Temporal simultaneity becomes a series of panels that must follow each other chronologically and yet those panels exist on the face of the graphic page simultaneously. The attempt to represent Dr. Manhattan's special ability belies the idea that the reader can escape psychological or perceptive constraints.
