Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The paradox of Dr. Manhattan

I have, of late, been wading in the pools of the Watchmen. First, the film, then the book, and lately, I've been reading a book on the philosophy of the story and it's characters. I find it remarkable that a comic can contain such a variety of subtexts. Every character is seriously flawed, and either suffers from doubt, or is certain of their convictions; oblivious to moral hazard. To say the book flays the comic book super hero is an understatement; the book obliterates the genre. Altruism has no hold on these vigilantes, from the sociopath Comedian to the surety of Ozymandias. All act beyond the bounds of society, bent to their own profundities, all the while hiding behind the facade of protecting the common good.



The oddball of the group is Dr. Manhattan. He being the only one of them who actually possesses powers beyond any ordinary human. He is by definition the only one who can profoundly alter the world around him. Yet, he is captive to his human limitations. He seems trapped by these limitations that having once been human place upon him. Maybe these are inherent flaws in the story, but they bring up interesting aspects to the idea of a human coming into possession of power to which he must then acclimate. How do these human limitations conflict with his apparently infinite physical power?



These problems manifest themselves as he is being manipulated by Viegt ( Ozymandias ); driving him into self exile on Mars. Finding himself having to defend the ( mistaken ) belief that he was causing those close to him to contract cancer, he becomes defensive and literally takes off. Evidently cosmic power does not necessarily imply cosmic understanding. He also seems smitten with what he can do without actually facing up to what these actions mean to the people around him; or to the human race as a whole. If, in fact, he can manipulate matter on a subatomic level, then realistically there's no reason he couldn't then dictate to the world how it would behave. The point of nuclear weapons, on the face of it, would be of little use, other than to guarantee annihilation for the usurper. That Dr. Manhattan is an American seems to count only for a little while. The US houses him and his girlfriend, the Silk Spectre, and provide him with a place to carry out whatever it is he's into; other than his own disassociation, there's not much in the book about what he's up to. The film purports that he working with Viegt on the, unbeknownst to him, weapon with which Viegt carries out his plan to save humanity. Both in the book and the film, the main thrust of Dr. Manhattan's evolution is his disassociation from humanity. That this would happen seems self evident. Once released from the constraints of physical being; having to never worry about eating, sleeping, aging, dying; when you begin to see time as spatial and inter-dimensional; this is explained by his seeing the events of his life concurrently rather than sequentially, and seeing events to come, the idea that he would begin to move to a different kind of consciousness would be expected.



With this, naturally, would be movement away from the perceived present of those around him. They're still trapped in their time slot; he is not. They're doomed to die; he is not. He can move throughout the universe, free to discover it's mysteries; they are not. That he would begin to see them as merely points in a line rather than beings to relate to, is a forgone expectation. Freed from their immediacy, he can look at humanity as a history, as a fluid movement,and not be constricted by time and place.

Philosophically, Dr. Manhattan is seeking peace, or perhaps more prosaically, happiness. Having been freed of his human bonds, he finds respite in the universe; in it's timelessness; it's function, and it's order. The exact opposite of the meandering chaos of human endeavor. That he acquiesces to the twisted logic and aftermath of Viegt's murder seems more a point of departure for him; a means to an end, allowing him to free himself of any earthly responsibility and finally move on to his cosmic bliss.

The final irony is his contemplation of creating life.