Who Watches the Creative Styles?

            One of my favorite monologues of all time is the one spoken by the character Dr. Manhattan on Mars with Silk Spectre in 2009’s Watchmen, which was based off the Alan Moore graphic novel with the same name. It shows a return to humanity to a very inhuman character. It is not only shown visually as this was a graphic novel before it was turned into the more popular film, but the return can also be found in the strategies used in the monologue. It isn’t obvious but through the right analysis, it can easily be seen.

The story takes place in an alternative timeline in 20^th century with the presence of non-powered superheroes (with Dr. Manhattan being the only exception), America winning the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon serving as his third term as president in the 1980s, which is when the main story is taking place. The story is famous for its portrayal of the ongoing ideological debate between deontology versus consequentialism through nihilistic and existentialist lenses. A story as complex as this is not often portrayed through the genre of superhero comics which is what gave this story such a large audience. It should also be noted that the 1980s, when the graphic novel was published, was an interesting time for these schools of thought as many feared that the world was going to end by nuclear war.

The topic of the monologue was miracles. The way I would describe it is that it’s a unique take on personification. To understand the scene we must look at the entirety of the movie. Even before the movie begins, Dr. Manhattan is losing his connection to humanity. The superpowers he gained after his lab accident gave him the ability to be omniscient to his own perspective in time and be able to go anywhere at any time in the universe. He doesn’t even perceive time normally. He is mentally in every moment in time. On top of that, he is also immortal unlike how the TV show, Watchmen displayed. Other characters will often refer to him as a god. His character in the story is the embodiment of nihilism. Dr. Manhattan even said “Life is an overrated phenomena”.

With the world nearing Armageddon, Silk Spectre tries to convince him that humanity is worth saving. Dr. Manhattan, to restress his lack of humanity, compares the landscape as Mars as being perfect without humans present. The conversation leads to both Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre discovering that she is the biological daughter of the Comedian who is a much despised person. Silk Spectre breaks down and declares her life is a joke. Dr. Manhattan reacts to that revelation in completely different way.

Dr. Manhattan asks if she will stop crying if he admits to being wrong about the idea of miracles. He begins “Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring. Like oxygen turning into gold. I’ve longed to witness such an event and yet I neglect that in human coupling. Millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until your mother loves a man. Edward Blake, the Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate. And out of that contradiction against unfathomable odds. It’s you, only you that emerge. To distill so specific a form from all that chaos is like turning air into gold. A miracle. And so I was wrong. Now dry your eyes, and let’s go home.”

When reading the passage, you noticed that he speaking in cumulative sentences as he did with the sentences that started with “Edward Blake”. This is something he never does in the rest of the story. It should be noted that within the comic book genre, proper sentences are rarely used in dialogue as its expressed in text bubbles so however you read it in your head may determine where sentences begin and end, I am using how it is expressed in the Zack Snyder film. This shows that the cold blue character who sees no difference in life or death finally appreciating life as something miraculous.

That scene was powerful in so many other ways. His parallelism between them allowed him to be more open or human to her which is what she really needed. One could argue that he was being hyperbolic and that would relate to an earlier scene where a Night Owl tells Silk Spectre “If he pretends that that means he cares.” Night Owl is an existentialist, so that could mean that in Dr. Manhattan’s nihilism, he was able to create meaning through Silk Spectre. 

In his own lenses, he personified human coupling to events he still never witnessed in his life. He expressed his love for her through his normal language which lacks humanity and without even saying the word.  He used the idea of “oxygen turning into gold” as an analogy. You can also see some humanity return because instead saying oxygen like a doctor would, he says “air” when paraphrasing. Let’s not forget, the definition of personification is the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. He uses personal attribution but then again, it’s really hard to single out another fictional character like Dr. Manhattan.

Just from looking at what happens without looking into the text, Dr. Manhattan attempts to care about humanity once more. What he says to Silk Spectre also reveals that he cares about humanity again as well. As I have shown, if you look at the strategies used in that monologue, you can see that the writer for the film was trying to show that Dr. Manhattan’s humanity has returned.
Abdulla (Mustafa) A. Gaafarelkhalifa