The Rub at Magic Futurebox
This last weekend I traveled into the depths of Brooklyn to witness The Rub, a re-envisioning of Shakespeare’s Hamlet done by a small troupe, the Tremor Theatre Collective, which includes my wife and fellow Hooded Utilitarian Marguerite Van Cook in the role of the young prince’s mother, Queen Gertrude. After Marguerite’s many late rehearsals, she’d tell me of the unusual methods of director Nessa Norich, an innovative theatrical force emerging from France’s Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre. Norich’s actors formed the production from improvisation, from physically interacting with each other and with the deep columned space of the host theatre Magic Futurebox. From weeks of coaxing and collating the freely invented dynamic interpersonal movement and gestural variations of her cast and imposing a anachronistic montage of verbal and visual references, Norich finally introduced a script in the last week of rehearsals. As I was trying to help Marguerite run her lines, they seemed almost peripheral to the source text with only scattered bursts of Shakespearian diction, but Norich’s presskit describes a “surreal and playful investigation of the frustration, anxiety, passion, complacency, selfdoubt, delusion, isolation and desire that come with being heirs to a state rotting from the inside out.” That’s basically what our Will was on about, as well as where we Americans seem to be at. When I actually saw the results of Norich’s intriguing construct, I found that Shakepeare’s narrative is well represented even as it is made part of something contemporaneous and electrifyingly involving.
The Rub: Gerson, Van Cook and Stinson. Photo by Nessa Norich
The character of Hamlet is effectively played by several actors: one (Micah Stinson) sulks and simmers while another (David Gerson) adopts a keenly fearsome, sinuous aspect of outrage held barely in check. Three more Hamlet alters argue by turns and interweave at breakneck speed through the cavernous room (Colin Summers, Daniel Wilcox and Steven Hershey, who also flow seamlessly into a mellow-voiced Laertes, a loquacious Polonius and an opportunistic King Claudius, respectively). Queen Gertrude’s role is here expanded to be a fiercely comedic whirlwind of Freudian complication. I can’t claim objectivity, but it’s awesome to see Marguerite use some of her many performative skills. As Gertrude she works the stage like a vaudevillian; she stalks with limber, cartoony malevolence, she flummoxes a game reporter (Chas Carey) like a Danish Ghaddafy, she purrs, cajoles and overtly schemes with her new husband against Caitlin Harrity’s earnestly vulnerable Ophelia. Site-specifically mapped projections cunningly use the architecture of the theatre to add ominous, surreal narrative elements. The audience is brought out of their seats to follow the scenes into the depths of the room, making them complicit in the action as it boils to its inevitable final conflagration. While it certainly adheres to the spirit of Shakespeare’s intent, The Rub also shows a freedom of conception that to me is the essence of Art. I love it and so does Magic Futurebox, who have extended the production through next Friday and Saturday.
The Rub @ Magic Futurebox: 55 33rd Street, 4th Floor, Brooklyn, NY (D, N, R trains to 36th St) on Friday Feb. 17th at 8pm and Saturday Feb. 18th at 8pm
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Before Watchmen: Too Sullied Flesh
Shakespeare’s plays are in the public domain; he left no heirs but he is always credited as the source of any use of his works because his efforts are of undisputed quality and value. I suppose it is possible that the more extreme liberties taken by the Tremor Collective might put some Shakespeare purists’ noses out of joint, but theatre is by its nature an act of interpretation. It is a given that a source play is subject to adaptation. Plays are meant to be reimagined through the efforts of the director, actors, set designers and other members of the ensemble putting up the production. This is not the case with the current news cycle bummer about DC Comics’ reworking of co-authors Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, a book that was not conceived with the intent that it should be re-interpreted by other creative talents, on the contrary: Watchmen could not be a more deliberately complete work than it is.
As it has stood for 26 years, Watchmen has gone through many editions and enriched DC Comics financially and in terms of credibility. In fact, this multifaceted work is virtually the jewel of their crown. It is one of the key books that began to give comics a degree of critical acceptance, and it is one that deserved such attention—it gave the company a cache to build on, which they have sometimes tried to do with their more ambitious efforts such as the Vertigo line and their similarly convoluted graphic novels, story arcs and miniseries. They could have continued to profit from Moore and Gibbons’ book and striven to emulate their example of excellence, without violating the bounds of decency. But that was not to be. First, Moore disowned the adaptation of Watchmen to a film by Zack Snyder and for a good reason: the comic stands as a finished and hermetic work of Art in the form of a comic. I doubt that he could anticipate how bad the movie would be, though; it reglamorized the violence which Moore and Gibbons had taken pains to deglamorize, changed the ending entirely and amplified what I see as the flaw of the book.
Watchmen: Sally Jupiter is sodomized offpanel; and the “cover-up.”
Make no mistake, what Edward Blake does to Sally Jupiter is not attempted rape, it is rape. He assaults and beats her, then sodomizes her. This is a DC comic and so we are not shown explicit penetration. Instead, the rape happens in a space of indeterminate timing between the first two panels shown above and outside the cropped image of the second panel, where the two characters’ relative positions, Sally’s choked scream of pain and the symbolic bestiality represented by the ape’s head in the case make abundantly clear what is happening. In panel 3, Blake isn’t removing his pants, he’s pulling them up. The colorist has obscured where Gibbons drew Sally’s shorts and stockings pulled down in panel 4, which represents a typical male reaction to rape, at the time and often still. Hooded Justice’s harsh direction to Jupiter to cover herself can be seen as an indicator of why both her daughter Laurie and Hollis Mason (in his book excerpt within the book) are unaware that the rape was actually perpetrated in full: the truth had been suppressed.
Laurie is given clue #1 that Blake is her father.
Jupiter’s previous flirtations with Blake are used as justifications for her contemporaries to think that she had somehow “brought it on herself” and Jupiter’s own feelings of shame and what can be seen as typical victim psychology cause her to diminish the crime, to the extreme that a decade later she has an affair with Blake, which produces a child: Laurie.
In Laurie’s childhood memory, Sally tries to explain to her husband why she has a tryst with Blake, the rapist; confronted by Sally, Blake gives out with clue #2; and their daughter’s epiphany on the moon.
Hammering the offensive flaw: Sally loves her rapist.
Sally kissing the photo of the late Blake amplifies the flat note in what is otherwise one of the most carefully and sensitively composed comics ever done. In a medium predominantly directed to males, an often overtly misogynistic form oblivious to the consequences of sexual violence, this rare realistic depiction of rape in comics comes to represent a offense a woman could forgive, that she even might even come to love her rapist. Even more offensively, Snyder in his film made the fact of Laurie’s very existence through Sally’s forgiveness be the salvation of the world. This concept unfortunately lurks in the book, but shorn of the larger rationale of Moore and Gibbon’s ending which involves the human race uniting in the face of a manufactured outside threat, in the film the forgiveness of the unforgivable, the purpose of conception superceding a woman’s rational sensibilities, the “miracle” of the existence of even the product of a rape, all become the primary lynchpins of a narrative seemingly altered to pander to Christian Americans.
For his part, Moore removed his name and refused to profit from this adulterated mess, while he ensured that his collaborator and co-author Gibbons was the sole beneficiary of any royalties. Moore and Gibbons always steadfastly declined to do any more comics with the characters of the book and for 26 years DC respected their contribution to DC’s standing enough to let it go. It should be noted that a production of new comics like Before Watchmen did not happen under the watches of the more sensitive Jenette Kahn or Paul Levitz. No, it takes a corporate pitbull like Dan Didio to make such a decision. With the recent announcement, Moore immediately registered his protest and Dave Gibbons—well, unlike Moore, he still works for DC on occasion, so I’d guess that he couldn’t risk anything but a vague “good luck with that” statement. DC’s behavior, along with Marvel’s recent anti-creative legal victories, should send a cold chill through comics professionals.
And that brings one to question the involvement of all participants. Now, I shudder to imagine that I was more of a “team player,” that I hadn’t bitterly complained about such things as inequities of cover credit, that I drew in a still gritty but somewhat prettier style and had somehow “moved up the foodchain” of artists who draw for DC, or that Brian Azzarello in a generous mood had decided to throw me a bone for drawing his very first professional script, the results of which pleased Axel Alonso so much that he made his new writer a star, and Azzarello had actually recommended me for a gig. Okay, that’s a little poke at Brian, but let’s pretend that for any of these reasons I had been actually offered the Rorschach title. Then I would have been faced with the painful prospect of turning down such a very high-paying, high profile job for reasons of ethics. It’s hard to come down on people who need work. “Tough economic times” can be a powerful incentive to ethical compromise. But one wonders whether people as successful as Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke and J. Michael Straczynski need the work. Rather, they seem to all believe that they are entitled to presume on Moore and Gibbon’s masterpiece, because they are bursting with their own “stories to tell” about the characters. One wonders how they would feel if the shoe is on the other foot and it was their brainchildren at stake. Regardless, their presumption shows a disregard for comics as an art form of any significance and disrespect for the accomplishments of their contemporaries.
It gets worse: given that the actuality of the rape has been debated, one wonders how the re-interpreters will further mangle Moore and Gibbons’ intent. One might dread Cooke’s version of the adolescent Laurie in Silk Spectre, even if it will be drawn by Amanda Conner, because Cooke, known mainly for his reinterpretions of others’ creations, in his first adaptation of the appallingly misogynistic Parker books invalidated any claims of sensitivity or irony in his approach by having the lack of taste to render all the female characters with his typical cute Batman Beyond template. What one gets is interchangeable, expendable girls dying cutely for no reason at all, while the main character could care less. It doesn’t bode well and the covers of the new comics released so far carry out a theme of disempowerment, some directed deliberately at women, as Noah showed in his HU post yesterday. A general theme of uncaring seems to blanket Before Watchmen; as Azzarello stated in The New York Times what seems to represent mainstream comics’ overall regard for their audience’s intelligence: “a lot of comic readers don’t like new things.” Jack Kirby must surely be spinning in his grave. Perhaps Azzarello in his case was being ironic, but he couldn’t be more clear that one won’t be seeing anything new in Before Watchmen.
I think you’re likely to be depressingly accurate in your suggestion that Before Watchmen will feature dunderheaded and offensive sexual violence. It’s almost inevitable.
In terms of your discussion of the rape in Watchmen; I’d always thought that it was an attempt which was interrupted. You make a strong case, though. I suspect that it’s deliberately ambiguous, perhaps in part as you suggest because of censorship issues, and perhaps in part because Moore and Gibbons felt some things shouldn’t or didn’t need to be shown.
I think you’re wrong though when you suggest that it’s of such vital importance that Sally was raped. The fact that Moore and Gibbons left it ambiguous suggests that they don’t think it’s that vital a distinction, and I agree with them. Whether it’s an attempt or not, the Comedian is equally morally culpable. And whether it’s an attempt or not, it’s an extremely brutal and terrifying experience, and presented as such. Making it an attempt doesn’t reduce Sally’s experience of trauma. Or at least, I’m not willing to start grading the trauma of women who have experienced violent sexual assault on some sort of scale depending on exactly what acts did and did not occur.
I’ve got a bit more of a response, which I may have in a post later today (we’ll see if I get to it!)
I do not believe the rape IS ambiguous, though someone other than Moore and Gibbons has made it so…at least in the collected edition, I don’t have the original comics on hand to compare. In the GN, the colorist has obscured that Sally Jupiter’s lower clothing has been pulled down, so Hooded Justice’s comment to “cover up” no longer makes any sense.
“Cover up” makes sense still in that she’s down to her skivvies (admittedly not that different from her superhero uniform, but still. There’s ambiguity about how much time passes between panels 1 and 2 and between 3 and 4. Does HJ walk in immediately after the act begins…or does more time pass. I don’t think we can tell. Like Noah, I don’t think it matters that much…It’s a traumatic violation either way. The idea that making it just an “attempt” is a kind of cover up is an interesting and provocative reading though…
I’m curious to look again at the original comics…which I don’t own. Noah does though. Can we make that his homework?
That’s right, I do! I’ll try to dig them out and check that….
I don’t think it’s a “coverup” by the readers, they are simply misreading it. It’s a “coverup” enacted for years by the characters; Sally certainly doesn’t want her daughter to know the truth about the rape or her later lapse with Blake; and especially in the times depicted, these kind of violations were diminished or obscured for lots of reasons and Moore and Gibbons worked with that in mind, I am sure. I’m not sure what to think about the miscoloring, was it deliberate or just negligent?…please do check that panel in the originals, Noah, asap.
Really interesting analysis. My stance on Before Watchmen is, I guess, agnostic…I’m not going to “defend” the project, and certainly not with attacks on Moore like many of the defenders have done, but I’m also curious to see what these creators do with the characters, and I resent the idea that I should somehow feel guilty about that. I also enjoyed Snyder’s movie on its own terms, so I guess take that how you will?
I also have to admit, I’m a little troubled by the idea that the aftermath of Sally Jupiter’s rape (specifically her eventual love for Blake) is somehow a glaring “flaw” in Watchmen. I think it’s an extremely troubling moment that is tough to square with any progressive ideology, but I also think that’s part of the point. Some things are inexplicable, human psychology does not always behave in “progressive” ways, and those of us on the left are not and should not be exempt from being shocked. I think my problem is that you’re suggesting that by presenting this contradictory moment, Snyder and to a lesser degree Moore are somehow endorsing rape (both in the fictional universe and, if I’m following your argument correctly, in the real world). That’s a pretty big leap to make, and I find it disturbing that we’re deciding what artists should and should not depict. And yes, I think even Snyder should be given the benefit of the doubt here…how do we know what his, or the screenwriters’ or the studio’s intentions were? I don’t find “Hollywood/the comics industry is inherently conservative/misogynistic” to be a convincing enough basis for this kind of argument…it may be true in the big picture, but it really destroys any sense of nuance in interpreting individual texts.
I wouldn’t consider it a flaw so much if comics had a stronger history of addressing these issues. But no, comics have a history of repression and misogyny, they are largely directed to a male homosocial audience and “bondage” covers are highly valued by collectors. So, that one of the only serious representations of rape is presented as a forgivable offense seems problematic to say the least in that context.
That’s certainly fair. I think we can chalk up our differences in opinion to just a difference in interest; I’m not especially concerned with the context of the comics industry, though I do certainly agree that any medium needs more serious representations of serious issues.
I’m not calling for censorship. That was done by the colorist, which makes it so that the rape is even debated…as I say, DC would not show actual penetration and in rapes in reality, who is in the room with the parties concerned to see what happens? It would be interesting for a lawyer to weigh in to establish if the law makes such distinctions…IMO Blake should have been prosecuted for assault and rape, period.
Obviously, DC would never show penetration, etc. as James says…which is why, to some degree, it can’t help but be ambiguous, unless Sally and etc. were sure to call it a rape directly. As James points out, there are lots of psychological and social reasons for Sally to avoid doing that. So…if I understand correctly, James’ argument hinges on the notion that the original panels are clear enough that it eventually becomes clear that everybody’s covering it up later on. Ambiguity at the original moment makes it ambiguous as to whether or not, later, Sally, et. al. are merely telling the truth (about the attempted rape), or covering up something that’s even more traumatic.
I actually like the “cover up” as a metaphor for how the industry deals with these issues. That makes more sense to me than the claim that it is clear that this is what’s going on in the text.
Also…I wonder about Absolute Watchmen, which recolored everything from the ground up. How is the scene portrayed there?
In the film version, the rape is clearly stopped before penetration, but the icky part about it is that Snyder eroticizes the scene, has the camera leer at her body, and Sally, in close-up, looks as if she’s somewhat disappointed that the rape doesn’t occur. The violence and sexuality are mixed in both versions (Nigh Owl 2 can’t get up unless he’s in costume, for example). Snyder attempts to drive make that message as explicit as possible.
I’ll have to check the originals, but even if no tampering went on (and I’ll be surprised if I just missed the fact that Sally was nearly naked in that panel), James could still make an argument like Robert Coover’s version of Casablanca where Bogart and Bergman do actually have sex despite the implausibility of only a minute passing according to the big penis clock tower outside their window or their still having clothes on.
As with the last time we had a go at this issue, I don’t think it matters that much if penetration occurred, except if it didn’t, Sally isn’t physically hurt as much, so she might be able to suppress or forgive the act a little more easily (since the bean-counting approach to trauma that underlies the importance of penetration in such cases effectively lets attempted rapists off the hook to some degree — i.e., the implication is that it’s not quite as immoral if the intent isn’t successfully rendered).
Well, my main point was to provide a corrective to a misapprehension of Moore and Gibbons’ intent, an intent twisted by Snyder and now to be further mutilated to make more crap that a good amount of the public is, sadly, happy to buy.
I have no recollection of that scene in the movie…which means I’ve repressed that portion of it adequately, at least. I still have stomach-turning visions of Rorschach’s Matrix-like ninja moves and the owl-ship sex scenes, though. Looking forward to the time when the whole thing has been repressed completely.
I think it remains to be seen if a “good amount” of the public will buy this crap. I hope not…since comics in general don’t really sell much.
Okay; my hopes of having my thoughts on this up today were obviously overly optimistic. Probably next week. (Not that anyone is waiting with baited breath or anything!)
I think James makes a very strong case indeed that there’s penetration, but I can’t for the life of me see the nakedness in paenl four, color or not. Sally’s fishnets are cover her thighs and her body suit her bottom. What are you seeing there, James?
Panel three, on the other hand, shows the fishnets pulled down, which is entirely to the credit of John Higgins’ coloring…
Pulled down in the third panel, in the fourth the fishnets look to be folded down, their lines change direction and their seams are halfway down her legs, so what is being taken as shorts because of the coloring is actually flesh…otherwise, what could she “cover up”? On reflection, I admit I can’t actually be sure whether it is anal or vaginal penetration from behind. But it is penetration…there is absolutely no reason for the crop in the second panel unless what is depicted is something that cannot be shown in full; it is a standard device in film and comics to cut away or show an isolated portion of a scene too explicit for the given medium.
The cut away could be because of exposure rather than penetration.
I don’t think you’re wrong, necessarily but I think there’s still (possibly intentional) ambiguity there.
I agree that HJ’s dialogue indicates that she is “indecent”, but panel 4 doesn’t show it as far as I can tell — the lines around her thighs are the garters she’s been shown wearing in earlier panels, and the fishnet pattern runs all the way up. If anybody’s covering anything up here, and they might very well be, it’s Gibbons.
Re: Watchmen, I can’t share the conclusions, because I reject some of your premises — premises principally at work in this paragraph:
“Sally kissing the photo of the late Blake amplifies the flat note in what is otherwise one of the most carefully and sensitively composed comics ever done. In a medium predominantly directed to males, an often overtly misogynistic form oblivious to the consequences of sexual violence, this rare realistic depiction of rape in comics comes to represent a offense a woman could forgive, that she even might even come to love her rapist. Even more offensively, Snyder in his film made the fact of Laurie’s very existence through Sally’s forgiveness be the salvation of the world. This concept unfortunately lurks in the book, but shorn of the larger rationale of Moore and Gibbon’s ending which involves the human race uniting in the face of a manufactured outside threat, in the film the forgiveness of the unforgivable, the purpose of conception superceding a woman’s rational sensibilities, the ”miracle” of the existence of even the product of a rape, all become the primary lynchpins of a narrative seemingly altered to pander to Christian Americans.”
My issues with this are, in no particular order…
1) You seem to reject out of hand the notion that a woman could in fact forgive a rapist. Let me assure you this has happened more time through human history than you can imagine. If that messy truth about human nature discomfits you ideologically, that is surely not Alan Moore’s fault.
I agree with you, of course, that if DC softened Moore’s intent by adding ambiguity for prudish or cowardly reasons, shame on them. I think you’ve made an excellent case that that happened. But I don’t see how it’s an “offensive flaw” unless we’re applying some ideological, rather than human, test to Moore’s work.
2) You seem to think that Alan Moore has a duty, if he depicts rape, to depict Rape in some kind of platonic form so that he can make some kind of definitive statement toward it within the canon of comics. I see no reason why this is the case — Moore’s duty, again, is to his story, not to programmatic declarations.
3) You seem to imply that the original narrative does not turn upon miracle of forgiveness leading to new life — but of course it does. That is precisely what leads Jon, on Mars, to reconsider his stance toward human life.
Again, if there are pseudo-Christian elements to this — and I think there likely are — they are put there by Moore. Amped up by the movie adaptation? I dunno, I was too busy hating the movie to notice if it was pandering to Christians — but the elements are there in the first place.
It’s anyone’s guess why Moore inserted them, but he did. The text is the text is the text.
I agree with your general point that DC cannot be trusted to handle this work with any degree of sensitivity or quality. But I cannot share your particular objections.
James, you write:
“Even more offensively, Snyder in his film made the fact of Laurie’s very existence through Sally’s forgiveness be the salvation of the world. This concept unfortunately lurks in the book, but shorn of the larger rationale of Moore and Gibbon’s ending which involves the human race uniting in the face of a manufactured outside threat, in the film the forgiveness of the unforgivable, the purpose of conception superceding a woman’s rational sensibilities, the ”miracle” of the existence of even the product of a rape, all become the primary lynchpins of a narrative seemingly altered to pander to Christian Americans.”
I don’t see as much distance between the comic’s handling of Sally’s complicated relationship with the Comedian and the movie’s as you do (although I agree with the general point that the movie does everything more clumsily than the book, when it isn’t just doing something entirely different badly). That is, I don’t see it as a concept that “lurks” in the book and is then amplified in the movie. The comic is pretty explicit that Dr. Manhattan only comes to believe the world is worth saving because of what that complicated relationship proves. And am I reading you correctly that you see something genuinely hopeful in “the human race uniting in the face of a manufactured outside threat” at the story’s conclusion? I’d argue the book is deeply skeptical of any such optimism, and goes out of its way to point out that Ozymandias is kind of a lousy mastermind with no imagination whose projects never quite work out like he thinks they will.
I felt the need to clarify what I believe happened in that scene precisely because in previous discussions here and elsewhere, the actuality of the rape was denied by some observers, as if any degrees of sexual violence are more or less acceptable.
Laurie’s conception (and Sally’s return to her rapist) doesn’t “save the world” or provide salvation…because Dr. Manhattan doesn’t return to Earth and “save” it from nuclear disaster OR from Veidt’s plan. He’s too late to do anything, except kill Rorschach…and R’s journal suggests that even this was a, more or less, useless “cover up.” So…yes, Manhattan says that the miracle of Laurie’s birth (and of Sally’s love for her rapist–or attempted rapist) is a reason to “save” the world….but the book doesn’t exactly tie the rape and reconciliation to “salvation”–since there is no salvation here, or none connected to Manhattan’s assessment of the situation, anyway.
I agree that when Dr. M. makes these comments about the “beauty of human life as a kind of miracle of chance” if “feels” like it comes from the creators of Watchmen (or Moore, if you prefer)…but the story itself doesn’t really or fully countenance Manhattan’s speech in this way. (I do think the book does suggest that every human life is a ‘miracle’ of sorts….but not, perhaps, that this is likely to ‘save’ us in the long run). Of course, this is why the book is so good…because it complicates all of these issues.
I also don’t think Sally kissing the photo is a statement of “forgiveness” in any kind of complete sense. She loves Eddie…and always did…before the (attempted) rape and after…before the reconciliation and after. She also hates him because of what he did. I don’t think the love she silently expresses at the end of the book means that she’s put the rape behind her (as if that were even possible)…or that she doesn’t still hate him for what he did (even in death). As somebody above said…the whole point of their relationship is how complicated and f’ed up human emotions can be. I think that comes across in the book more than James admits… As such, I’m not sure it fits comfortably into the common discourse of “woman forgives her rapist”–which is offensive since it propagates the idea that rape is ok and a forgivable offense. I don’t think Watchmen really suggests that is the case…
I also think that if this were the only instance of a rape playing a central role in Moore’s career as a writer, people would be more willing to see it as a valid, affecting, and subtle exploration of the issue. The fact that rape (and sexual violence of various kinds) seems to be a consistent preoccupation of Moore’s puts his motivations into question at times…Still, I’m not sure it makes sense to apply those critiques to Watchmen…which, to my mind, anyway, handles the issue fairly sensitively.
I feel like we’ve had these conversations before somewhere, though…so I’m going to try to shut up.
James, saying it’s attempted rape rather than completed rape doesn’t mean that one thinks any degree of sexual violence is acceptable. Like I said, I still kind of think it’s attempted rape, but I don’t think it makes much difference in terms of the characters or story precisely because Eddie’s actions are equally unacceptable and equally traumatic either way.
I agree with Eric that the forgiveness does not in fact lead to any kind of metaphoric apocatastasis in the confines of Watchmen. The possibility of the miraculous nature of human life is examined as a Big Idea on Mars but it does not, ultimately, drive the plot.
Watchmen is often more interested in engaging Big Ideas than proclaiming them — my point is that this pseudo-Christian notion of miraculous forgiveness redeeming and giving transcendent meaning to human life is present in the text.
I also think that conflating what is “forgivable” and what is “acceptable” is unwarranted. Some people may mean the same thing when they say these words, but others clearly don’t (or at least think they don’t, as G.K. Chesterton highlights in one of the better Father Brown stories).
What Eddie Blake does to Sally Jupiter, whether it’s a rape or not, is abominable — and it’s one of many such abominable acts that mark his pretty evil life. Watchmen says nothing to challenge or minimize that.
What Watchmen says is that human beings can forgive — or at least overlook — the evil actions of other human beings even when they’re victims, and that even a person as wretched as Eddie Blake might be loveable on some level. It carefully does not say that Sally Jupiter is RIGHT to forgive him or that he DESERVED to be forgiven.
Whatever the convolutions of these arguments, the nuance of Moore and Gibbons’ intent (and I name them both because they are co-authors of the work in question) certainly were altered for the film to a nauseating level, as Charles points out above, and I have every reason to believe that the people doing Before Watchmen will make it all much much worse.
On this we agree.
“and it’s one of many such abominable acts that mark his pretty evil life”
Right; that scene where he shoots his Vietnamese lover and his unborn child I think qualifies as thoroughly heinous, I think.
My impression of Watchmen is bound up in the context of the time it first came out, when I first read it and was, let’s say, profoundly disappointed that such a rare thoughtful handling of these sensitive issues in comics came to the resolution that it did. And, I should point out that I have worked for DC, so I know exactly how hard it is to get significant content through their editorial process and how much courage they do or do not have; incidently, that’s also how I know precisely how much influence an artist can have on a script, under their system.
I have to say that, while it certainly looks like the colorist did cover up an intended bit of nudity, I never noticed it before, and always took Hooded Justice’s insistence that Sally cover herself to be a prudish judgment on the way she dresses. It’s a very true to life entwining of the views of the rapist and of the fantasy-savior-from rape, in that they both think Sally was asking for it with her slut clothes. Even with the nudity restored, I think that holds as a valid double reading of the line.
The Rub just got a great review in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annie-fabricant/the-rub-review_b_1280163.html
I’ve scanned in the original panel in question to compare coloring. It’s here.
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Charles Reece says:
…the bean-counting approach to trauma that underlies the importance of penetration in such cases effectively lets attempted rapists off the hook to some degree — i.e., the implication is that it’s not quite as immoral if the intent isn’t successfully rendered…
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How about, even if still traumatic, less injurious to the victim? In the fashion that attempted murder is not punished as heavily as an action where the victim actually dies?
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James says:
…I felt the need to clarify what I believe happened in that scene precisely because in previous discussions here and elsewhere, the actuality of the rape was denied by some observers, as if any degrees of sexual violence are more or less acceptable.
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In what possible way does casting doubt as to whether the Comedian got to finalize that brutal assault = saying that certain “degrees of sexual violence are more or less acceptable”?
If you’re not sure whether the evidence is clear that a murdered woman was actually slain by her abusive husband, does that indicate acceptance of wife-beating?
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Make no mistake, what Edward Blake does to Sally Jupiter is not attempted rape, it is rape. He assaults and beats her, then sodomizes her.
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So now (this debate has been going on quite a while) it’s not just rape, but sodomy?
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This is a DC comic and so we are not shown explicit penetration.
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Which is just as well, ere more naive readers might get the idea that women’s anuses are located between their shoulder blades.
Check out the scenes in question; the Comedian straddles Sally’s upper body, pinning her down. As I’d noted in an August 2011 HU thread, where the same ol’ music was playing, “a closer look at the panels in question show the Comedian, after kicking Sally in the stomach, startling to unbuckle his belt, then interrupted with his left hand still holding the belt, in the same position.” Note how, when Hooded Justice says “The others are all waiting to…” and then looms over the Comedian, the latter is still straddling her upper body, still grasping his belt below the smiling belt-buckle.
Now, possibly in the interval between the “Oh, no” and the “The others are all waiting to…” panels, a reshuffling of positions, a rape, and the re-assuming of the original positions, might have occurred.
But these are not amateurs working here; if Moore and Gibbons had intended to indicate that a lengthier span of time and a sequence of actions would’ve occurred between those panels, they’d not have erred by showing the characters in the same positions, which gives the impression all has happened in a matter of moments.
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…Sally’s choked scream of pain and the symbolic bestiality represented by the ape’s head in the case make abundantly clear what is happening.
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You’ll be getting some complainin’ letters from the North American Man-Animal Love Association! From what I hear, bestiality does not equal sodomy…
Instead it’s more a suggestion of savagery and criminality. While Rorschach reminisces over how his fellow “heroes” have “violent lives, ending violently” at the Comedian’s grave, in a flashback of that King Mob’s Ape Mask panel we get his “voice-over”: “something in our personalities, perhaps? some animal urge to fight and struggle, making us what we are?”
“Unimportant. We do what we have to do.”
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In panel 3, Blake isn’t removing his pants, he’s pulling them up.
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How nice to be so sure! What the comic actually shows is him frozen as HJ interrupts; holding his unbuckled belt, the rear of his trousers drooping.
In that August 2011 HU thread I wrote:
…In pg. 21 of the first “Watchmen” section, Laurie tells Rorschach, “Blake was a bastard. He was a monster. Y’know he tried to rape my mother when they were both Minutemen?”
Moreover, in one of the prose excerpts from “Under the Hood,” Hollis Mason recalls, “in 1940 [the comedian] attempted to sexually assault Sally Jupiter…”
Some more stuff: visiting her mom (Sally Jupiter), Laurie says, “Poor Eddie? Mom, how can you say that? After he almost…”
The only actual, substantial indication that a rape might indeed have occurred is in this segment, helpfully posted earlier:
https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Watchmen-2.jpg
Laurie switches from accusing the Comedian of having “tried to rape” her mother, to having “to force [a woman] into having sex against her will,” to which he responds, “Only once.”
Everywhere else she calls it an attempted rape; are Laurie and the Comedian just being verbally imprecise* here? (Lest we forget, these days politicos divergent as Clinton and Gingrich can maintain receiving a blow job is not “having sex.”) Or, is she unintentionally hitting on the truth, and the Comedian admitting that more than a brutal beating and attempted rape occurred?
Unless a printing of “Alan Moore’s Complete Watchmen Script” becomes available someday, the issue will never be clearly resolved…
==================================
* Looking up “rape legal definition”:
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Rape is the commission of unlawful sexual intercourse or unlawful sexual intrusion…
Historically, rape was defined as unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman against her will. The essential elements of the crime were sexual penetration, force, and lack of consent…
Rape or sexual assault statutes carefully define the type of contact that constitutes rape. In Hawaii, for example, the term sexual penetration is defined as “vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus, deviate sexual intercourse, or any intrusion of any part of a person’s body or of any object into the genital or anal opening of another person’s body … however slight.”
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http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/rape
“In what possible way does casting doubt as to whether the Comedian got to finalize that brutal assault = saying that certain “degrees of sexual violence are more or less acceptable”?”
It means what it means…as you say, murder is punished more harshly than attempted murder. From the victim’s point of view, attempted murder is the only offense one COULD forgive, in the other case one would be dead. But if someone tried to kill me, I wouldn’t want to hang out with them later. Attempted or completed rape likewise. I’m not claiming Watchmen sucks in its entirety, it has a lot to reccommend it, but I registered extreme distaste that one of the only serious representations of sexual violence in comics (at least up to the time it came out first, unsure where it has been handled better since, other than Jaime Hernandez’s Browntown) is climaxed by the victim kissing a picture of her assailant. Yes, anything is possible, but in the context of comics of the time and unfortunately still, it buttresses the old “no no means yes yes” …no?
” (this debate has been going on quite a while) it’s not just rape, but sodomy?”
Perhaps so, perhaps not, I can’t claim absolute certainty—-but I can see no reason to discount that it could be. Why so incredulous? Rape is about power, about control and humiliation. He beats her first! And whoever decided that past discussions are gospel set in stone?
“Comedian straddles Sally’s upper body, pinning her down….the latter is still straddling her upper body…they’d not have erred by showing the characters in the same positions, which gives the impression all has happened in a matter of moments”
I don’t see thier relative positions the same as you do at all. He is entering or trying to enter her from behind either way. And the panel that shows only their hands and the ape case is not there for no reason, the figures are deliberately cropped because what was happening was unprintable. The time between panels is flexible, not set, and things can happen quite fast, especially in an adrenalized state.
I addressed why the characters are unaware of the truth or are diminishing it for various reasons above.
There is some tension between:
“Make no mistake, what Edward Blake does to Sally Jupiter is not attempted rape, it is rape. He assaults and beats her, then sodomizes her”
and
“Perhaps so, perhaps not, I can’t claim absolute certainty—-but I can see no reason to discount that it could be.”
If you say that “Make no mistake” was not meant to be a declaration of “absolute certainty,” I’ll take your word for it. But you can hardly blame people for reading it that way.
You’ve got me there, John. I have to admit to some squiffinesss in my certainties. The closer you look, the more is revealed. While I still think the attack is rape, and that the pink kissing of the photo is the worst thing in Watchmen, through this discussion I have come to feel that Moore and Gibbons’ handling of the misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the incident by the characters is one of the best things about the book.
And if I’m right about the incident, that it shouldn’t be assumed that the miscoloring was initiated by the colorist, because that sort of decision to suppress by obfuscation smacks of DC editorial all over.
I have to say, I’m not entirely on board with the kissing of the photo. It seems like a pulpy, crass way to handle the very complicated emotions and issues involved.
More like, psychologically complex in a way seldom seen in comics or the pulps.
Isn’t that kissing of the photo perfectly, utterly in character with Sally’s personality?
– First, she called herself Sally Jupiter instead of Juspeczyk, because as her daughter Laurie — polar opposite of the mother — put it, “she didn’t want anyone to know she was Polish.” Living in denial!
– Next, she sentimentalizes the past; is delighted by the Tijuana Bible that reminds her “people used to slobber over” her; says “…I’m 65. Every day the future looks a little bit darker, but the past, even the grimy parts of it…well, it just keeps getting brighter all the time.”
– It may outrage feminist sensibilities, but it’s an unfortunate reality that there are women who somehow repeatedly end up with abusive men, and are bored stiff with nice ones. Whom they don’t consider “real men.” Where there is a pattern of violent beatings followed by torrid making-up sessions.
Check out the evidence that Sally J. is in this group:
1. Right after the panel where a battered, bloodied Sally is coldly told by Hooded Justice, “For God’s sake, cover yourself,” we see a closeup of that Tijuana Bible; a panel where a brush salesman is going at it hot and heavy, with the cartoon Sally saying, “Oh! Treat me rough, sugar.” (Emphasis added. This being an Alan Moore script, no way that wording wasn’t meaningful and thought-out.) Sally in a reverie looking at it; not even hearing Laurie saying to her, “…I just don’t know how you can stand being degraded like this…” (Well, as another prose excerpt informs, she was formerly a burlesque dancer, hardly work for uptight ladies…)
2. Sally’s first husband, as noted in the first Under the Hood excerpt, was first her agent (a sleazy-looking individual), who “persuaded Sally not to press charges against the comedian for the good of the group’s image…”
3. Another prose piece; in the “Probe Profile: Sally Jupiter,” she says “…rape is rape and there’s no excuse for it….but for me…I felt like I’d contributed in some way.”
As for the kissing of the photo, she’s just said goodbye (perhaps the last time she’ll see them) to her daughter and Dan, her soulmate; a devoted and loving relationship unlike anything she’d ever had. No wonder she tearfully, pathetically kisses that old photo of the devilishly handsome young Comedian: a bottle of Nostalgia to be seen in three of the four panels in that sequence.
No, Alan Moore isn’t defending or agreeing with Sally’s dysfunctional attitude (ere why portray Laurie, her opposite, as such an admirable person?) merely accurately delineating a particular attitude held by many unfortunate women.
Like I said, in a medium mostly slobbered over by male homosocial types, this is what we’re given, a rape where the woman “asked for it”, even enjoyed it: “no no means yes yes.”
Is that really all you see when you read these scenes in Watchmen?
I mean, seriously, you read the Sally Jupiter scenes in Watchmen and think “Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are telling me that no means yes and women can ask for rape by the way they dress.”
No I’m being ironic when I get people telling me I don’t see what I see and arguing that my interpretation is impossible and doing their usual listing of whatever as if I hadn’t noticed their so-pertinent points. I try to incorporate that they cannot see what I am seeing as in “whether it is rape or not, still…” but then am accused of waffling….so what can I say? I see what I see. I see a rape which is suppressed by the victim and her society. I think it sucks that Moore thought comics were further along than they are and so he put out a representation that buttresses wankers’ views of women. Some of the responses here make me want to wash my hands.
I don’t think anyone here has argued that rape is justifiable or not a terrible, terrible thing. I think some people have argued that you’re being a little binary, and that you haven’t justified your binary approach.
Apparently Watchmen did not live up to your demands of what a Serious Treatment of Rape must look like, ergo you can conflate it with a caricature (“She was asking for it”/”sometimes no means yes.”)
Maybe it’s true that there’s just no room for middle ground — that all portrayals of rape must be portrayals either of Exactly How Rape Is Totally Unforgivable or be nudge-nudge, wink-wink acceptances of rape — but if it is true, you haven’t argued it, you’ve only stated it.
And maybe it is true that, even if there is plausibly a more complex way to treat rape, it should be totally forbidden in the context of comics — you’ve at least indicated that that’s your real point.
But if that is your real point, I think you should refrain from saying that Watchmen, as a text, is okay with rape or really espouses the views it puts into the mouth of a mass murdering racist who is implied to be responsible for the Kennedy assassination.
(By the way, it’s sort of a compliment to Watchmen that we’re even discussing the plausibility of forgiveness in this context. How often do we discuss how readily the X-Men forgive crimes?)
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James says:
Like I said, in a medium mostly slobbered over by male homosocial types, this is what we’re given, a rape where the woman “asked for it”, even enjoyed it: “no no means yes yes.”
————————
Uh, didn’t you read what I said?
Does showing a character — Sally Jupiter — who has a dysfunctional attitude (as do the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of women who, when their creep boyfriend/husband beats them, excuses, even defends their vile behavior), as a stark contrast to her daughter, thereby constitute an argument that women “ask” to get raped?
And Robin Norwood, in her Women Who Love Too Much ( http://www.amazon.com/Women-Who-Love-Too-Much/dp/1416550216 ), by analyzing and describing case histories of women with similarly messed-up attitudes, must then be arguing that women deserve to be in abusive relationships.
Therefore also, any writer who shows an amoral sociopath stealing, conniving, murdering with no remorse is endorsing that behavior?
And where in the comic does Sally herself enjoy the attempted rape, say that “no no means yes yes”? Probably in the same section where it’s clearly, definitely revealed that she was not only raped, but sodomized.
Indeed, prior to the attack, we get this exchange:
Comedian: C’mon, baby. I know what you need. You gotta have some reason for wearin’ an outfit like this, uh?
Sally: E-eddie, no…
Comedian: Sure. No. Spelled Y, E…
Sally (bloodily clawing both his cheeks): Spelled ENN OH!
But, don’t let what Watchmen actually shows get in the way…
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…I think it sucks that Moore thought comics were further along than they are and so he put out a representation that buttresses wankers’ views of women.
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For “a representation that buttresses wankers’ views of women,” I’d suggest the truly noxious rape scenes from Milo Manara: prettified, sexualized; where the woman really is enjoying it, ineffectually struggling while going Ooh! and Aah!
Do you really think most comic book fans thought Sally getting punched and kicked in the stomach, blood pouring from her mouth, was a turn-on? Sorry, I’m afraid that their tastes — though unfortunately fixated on pneumatic types in revealing outfits — is more “vanilla” than that.
It seems like some “All men are rapists, and that’s all they are” feminists are constantly striving to outdo each other in their condemnation of the utter loathsomeness of 99% of the male gender. (Imagine their utter shock and horror if some white guy were to utter far milder criticisms of African-Americans; but that’s a different thing entirely, of course…)
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Some of the responses here make me want to wash my hands.
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Yeah, through the magic of feministo-vision, it’s revealed that everyone who disagrees with you is actually saying, “Rape is great! Give it to that bitch, Comedian!”
Yeah, I have to respectfully disagree that artists in any medium should “write down” to their audience, particularly the kind of caricatured lowest-common denominator audience you’re imagining, James. You seem to be arguing that comics need to be on training wheels until the most regressive of its readers can handle complex representations…I can’t quite decide if that’s an overly pessimistic view (not every reader of comic books is as backwards as you describe) or an overly optimistic one (there will always be idiots, and the thought of our entire culture being geared toward somehow “educating” said idiots is, for me at least, a depressing one…like a world where all ideas have to be easily grasped by children). I have a feeling that Mike bringing feminism into the conversation in a derogatory sense will cause everyone to raise their hackles, so let me just say that I consider myself a feminist and I still think he has a point. I found that scene in Watchmen – both the book AND the movie, sorry guys, I just don’t buy that Sally “looked like she was disappointed” when the rape was interrupted in Snyder’s version – incredibly disturbing, not titillating or in any way appealing. If some imagined sicko read the same scene as an endorsement of rape – not only fictional, but real – then I’m not sure what else Moore and Gibbons could have done to “prevent” that interpretation.
All of this is not to say that the whole thing is handled “perfectly” (whatever that means). Yeah, maybe kissing the photo is hackneyed and pulpy…I don’t know, I read it as a visual shorthand that leaves plenty of room for interpretation as to motive; probably there would be “better” ways to do it, I guess I don’t really care. I think what makes me want to engage in this conversation has less to do with the inviolable status of the book itself and more to do with these views of audience that are being bandied about (not just by James). A lot of people here seem predisposed to believe that comics readers are INEVITABLY slobbering “homosocial types,” that the Before Watchmen books will be INEVITABLY misogynistic, etc. All this determinism makes my cultural-studies senses go through the roof.
I have a problem with the generalization just made about feminists and with the word “feminism” being used as some sort of insult, as in “those uppity feminists”, when even in America a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women cannot be passed.
I have a problem when a scene that may be presented as ambiguous, in that given the position of the characters either vaginal or anal rape is possible, and the cropping indicates an unprintable explicity, still some greet those possibilities with incredulity. Some men that is. I note that no women have entered the viper’s nest of comments here, they are apparently letting the men hang themselves.
Context is not irrelevant…before Watchmen came out, comics had had few if any treatments of these issues…so the resolution here was was appalling. Even if I conceed that some women are so badly programmed by a sexist society that they might be reflected in Sally Jupiter, it certainly does not represent the majority and so in the context of the overwhelmingly sexist medium of comics it is a sorry representation.
And, I do not admire Milo Manara’s work.
Without commenting on Mike’s use of the term feminist, I agree with Zach that’s he’s got a point about your reading.
I think you’re partially to blame for the “incredulity,” because you put these possibilities forward as cast-iron certainties. If you’d been a little less aggressive, you might have found a more receptive audience (something also true of Eddie Blake, look at that!)
What our disagreement comes down to is that you think Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had a (moral?) duty to consider “the context of the overwhelmingly sexist medium of comics” and to use their work to combat that context. And, apparently, you also believe that by not doing so, they somehow endorsed or affirmed the context. I don’t agree with the first and I can’t agree with the second.
I also don’t agree with using “feminist” as an insult. With all due respect, I think Mike is raging against the wrong target.
That said, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that my issue is not that your argument *couldn’t* be true – it clearly *could* be. My issue is that you’re saying this is the ONLY way it could have happened, all the evidence is there (except what has been deliberately censored), and any “misinterpretation” is probably the result of latent (or overt!) misogyny in the reader. I don’t think we can confidently make those kinds of declarations about ANY art/fiction, let alone a piece of Watchmen’s complexity (although I’ll admit that Noah’s James Bond example in the other article is pretty cut-and-dry). I’m not going to argue with you about this all day since it’s clear we have very different ideas about interpretation. I just want to clarify my position before I bow out, and you all can take it as you will; if not immediately jumping on a bandwagon that is politically correct but intellectually suspect makes a couple of dudes on the Internet think I’m sexist…well, I guess I’ll still be able sleep OK tonight.
I conceed my initial arrogance in saying “make no mistake”, a Bush-ism if ever there was. I have felt and still feel discomfort with this particular handling of rape, especially at the time it was done in the context of comics. I am not an expert on anything. I am simply endeavoring to look deeper, to try to figure out what the authors’ intent is. I add to that what I know from experience about the editorial policies of DC and so the bottom line is that IN MY OPINION, in the case of Watchmen, the authors’ intents have been unfortunately confounded by a miscoloring that further muddies the scene in question, leading to misapprehension on the parts of some readers and god help us, most likely the people attempting to extend the narrative against at least one of the authors’ wishes. The discussion here has solidified some of my views and made me rethink others, at any rate I don’t feel that everything I write is set in stone.
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James says:
I have a problem with the generalization just made about feminists and with the word “feminism” being used as some sort of insult, as in “those uppity feminists”, when even in America a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women cannot be passed.
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“Generalization”? What I said was (emphasis added for those who miss those pesky qualifiers, the better to get all irate): “It seems like SOME ‘All men are rapists, and that’s all they are’ feminists…”
Much as I hate to agree with the loathsome Fox News-Rush Limbaugh crowd, there are indeed many feminists who are “man-haters.”
I’m old enough to have supported the ERA when it was first proposed; only to see boobus americanus recoil in horror over what the Right said it would do, such as mandate unisex public restrooms! (Swear I’m not making his up…)
And I have frequently referred to myself, indeed I very much am a feminist (for over 40 years!), even if — as with liberals — I frequently shake my head in dismay over the idiocies of some members of those groups. Sorry, I’m not into “party-line thinking.”
Yes, you can overwhelmingly agree with the basic premises of a group and still find some stuff about the group infuriatingly asinine, worth criticizing. From Tim Kreider: http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo68/microbedump/LiberalsvsTheEmpire.jpg .
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I have a problem when a scene that may be presented as ambiguous…
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“May be presented as ambiguous”? In other words, it might then NOT be ambiguous?
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…in that given the position of the characters either vaginal or anal rape is possible,
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As long as those erogenous zones are, as earlier noted, between the victim’s shoulder blades…
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…and the cropping indicates an unprintable explicity…
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And “there are pictures within pictures for boys who know where to look,” as Dr. Wertham put it. Since you can’t see what’s going on, therefore it HAS to be the worst possible thing?
I’ve said it could be such; but other factors — that the Comedian is shown in the same pose before and after that panel — casts some doubt about penetration getting to occur.
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…still some greet those possibilities with incredulity. Some men that is. I note that no women have entered the viper’s nest of comments here, they are apparently letting the men hang themselves.
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Yes, “hang themselves” by daring to suggest that it’s not at all clear that a “finalized” rape did occur; by saying that Moore’s showing Sally Jupiter as dysfunctional in her romantic preferences hardly constitutes an endorsement of rape, or indicating that women are “asking for it.”
The outrage!
Oh fer crying out loud. I have admitted that I shouldn’t indulge in absolutism. I don’t see the “shoulder blades” business at all, and I could continue to argue your points but I’ll go back to the drawing board on this rather than contributing to more swordfighting, dickswinging as it were.
I think as James says we’re probably at the point where agreeing to disagree is the way to go. I do want to add that though I don’t necessarily agree with his interpretation, I think it raises important issues and I enjoyed thinking about it and engaging with it. Comics does have a crappy history with this stuff, and I think challenging it on those grounds is definitely worthwhile and necessary, and will be for the forseeable future, alas.