I was reading up on Objectivism recently in reference to Steve Ditko’s characters, Mr.A and the Question, and more specifically Alan Moore’s Rorshach from the recent Watchmen movie.
This article here (http://www.reason.com/news/show/132100.html) is what prompted me to look it up and have a think. There’s an idea in the article that I’ve come across before; that Rorschach sacrifices himself. That he is the true hero of the tale. But I’m no so sure.
I never thought this was the case. Rorschach uncompromising objectivism: being his cold dispassionate view and the moral absolutes that he himself creates and writes upon the world. These are just revealed to be fake constructs in the end. His philosophy hits the villain’s complete compromise like a wave crashing against a cliff. Because the world isn’t so black and white. Because the final ultimate sinful compromise to evil is what will save the world.
I think the clue is in the voice. In the end Rorschach fails and the human stil trapped inside begs to be put down. I also believe that’s the biggest mistake the film made. It fails to distinguish between Kovacs and Rorschach.
He investigates a particularly vile case. A young girl has been kidnapped and Kovacs discovering that her body has been fed to the kidnappers dogs is the final push toward psychosis. His creating the persona of Rorshach is the only reasonable response in the face of such absolute evil. The most apparent clue is the voice; the monotone wheeze that narrates much of the book. It is not the voice of a human; it is the cold dispassionate voice of a natural law. Just as there is gravity; just as the sun rises, so is there Rorshach’s morality. There is absolute Good and absolute Evil. Objectivism. Rorshach is a persona created by Walter Kovacs but, Kovacs himself puts it, “It was Kovacs who close his eyes. It was Rorshach who opened them again”.
It is only when his mask (or his “face”) is torn away that his Kovacs’ human voice returns. At the book’s climax when the heroes are faced with a moral compromise so vast, so impossible to conceive, that they are forced one-by-one to admit defeat. Rorshach alone stands against this: “Never compromise. Not even in the face of armageddon”. Knowing full well that to follow his course of action means triggering World War Three is of less relevance to him than his coherence to his moral code.
When confronted with Dr.Manhattan who refuses to allow him to continue; he tears away his mask and demands his own murder. Rorshach’s simplistic view of the world has failed. His moraltiy shattered. His ‘face’ is torn away and Kovacs, still alive under there, pleads for his end.
The movie fails here; his voice has its rises and falls throughout. There has been no contrast between Kovac’s human frailty and Rorshachs’s cold certainty. In the book however, his sudden scream, his very human demand for his end is emotionally jarring.
I don’t think this is a brave sacrifice. I think this is a study of a man who has hung his entire life upon a philosophy of absolutes. A philosophy that has no place in the real world and that it has been challenged, found wanting and that he pleads for his end.
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