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.

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