Continued from part
4, book 9...
Book Ten
We begin book ten with President Nixon being whisked off to a secure underground
government bunker as the fear of the possible war with Russia deepens.
Rather amusingly, Nixon has a metal object, shaped like a football, handcuffed
to his wrist in these scenes. Obviously this is to represent the "nuclear
football" which in real life is simply a briefcase with the codes and
transmission equipment in it that the President would use to authorize a nuclear
strike. A bit clumsy as imagery goes, but it gets the point across I suppose.
As Rorschach and Owl renew their old teamwork, for they once fought crime side-by-side, they make to continue the investigation
into the mask killer theory. Ozymandias begins making preparations in his
North Pole getaway for the end of the world and what he imagines is the emergence of a new one
after what is to come.
A small oddity with Ozymandias' preparations: He sits in front of a bank
of TV screens covering stations all across the world. This is a fascinatingly
ill thought out idea. The character claims, by watching TV, he can see
underlying moods, "subtext," and trends all across the world.
But, doesn't this assume that most or even a large portion of what happens
on TV reflects accurately the current undercurrents of a particular society? This hardly
seems likely. It takes months, sometimes years to create TV shows, even
ads take time. So, TV can but lag behind much of the current cultural undercurrents
occurring at any given moment at the best of times. Then, pile on top of that the fact that TV in many countries is entirely controlled by government and may not reflect the cultural crosscurrents of the society that views it at all. So, this TV monitoring
idea is simplistic and is quite suspect as one that would give a feeling
of cultural undercurrents.
I guess the whole TV concept, though rather simplistic, probably reflects writer
Moore's feeling that TV is overarching in its influence. Since Newton
Minnow's famous "vast wasteland" theory of TV 14,
the medium has been given far more power in the minds of cultural commentators
than I think it ever had on those of the public at large. I don't think
too many of the World's real movers and shakers in the 1980s were basing
all their reactions on TV, neither do they do so now. It was an especially
inapt convention since the day of the 24-hour TV news cycle that has developed
in the 2000s was not yet in motion in the 1980s.
On a side note, one wonders if the authors wish in retrospect that the
Internet had been around in 1985 for Ozymandias' "subtext" search
in Watchmen? At least the Internet comes closer to being able to detect that "subtext"
than does TV.
A few other developments occur in book ten. We see another newspaper headline
that touts a build up of the military in Europe waiting on the coming Russian
forces and Rorschach gets violent once again in his favorite underworld
bar looking for info.
There is also a short segment where the missing artist, and other "missing"
scientists and intellectuals, is seen celebrating their finished work
after which they board a ship to leave the deserted island upon which
their work was carried out. In one panel a schematic of the human brain
is briefly seen with no further elaboration. It is a clue to their work
the substance of which we will find out in the last issue. The ship sets
on its course and immediately blows up due to a bomb hidden deep in its hold, killing all aboard.
Rorschach and Owl discover that Ozymandias is far more involved in the
whole plot than they had at first thought. The pair break into Ozymandias' computer
system in his Manhattan offices and find a link between Ozymandias, the
delivery company that helped frame Rorschach, and the company that several
people who got cancer worked for that also employed Dr. Manhattan. It
seems that Ozymandias was involved in the plot all the way up to his little golden headband.
Owl and Rorschach board the Owl airship and head to the North Pole to find Ozymandias
for answers, but not before Rorschach sends to a newspaper his journal
explaining about all the clues of Ozymandias' hand in the plot.
Click
to continue to book 11...
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