Americans and their Overly active Victorian Values
So. Watchmen. I've already given a review. This post is about the issues that I've heard constantly brought up in the film. The two critiques that I've heard the most about are sexual in nature. Namely Dr. Manhattan's nudity and the sex scene onboard Archimedes.
I'll start with the sex scene, since that (hopefully) will require a shorter explanation.
Dan, the character who masquerades as the 2nd incarnation of the Night Owl is a weak, petulant, impotent fellow. As the Brits might say: a wanker. He's been decomissioned and fighting crime, the one thing that made him feel in charge, the one thing that empowered him, he can't do. He sits in his basement weeping about his missed exploits, bemoaning the chaos the world is devolving into. He laments the olden days with the previous Night Owl. Someone he worked closely with is murdered and he resigns himself to inaction. Then the Silk Spectre falls in his lap (quite literally) and he's not even man enough to "give her what she needs". This same Sil Spectre has him constantly compared to Dr. Manhattan, the (g)od-man that makes all of us humans look frail and inconsequential. The first *attempt* at a sex between him and Silk Spectre brings back the patheticness of American Pie when the main character loses his chance to sleep with the European girl (mmm Shannon Elizabeth aka Nadia). Yet he finds the impetus to go out crime fighting (encouraged by Spectre) and saves people. His ship, his suit, all of it makes him feel alive again and the culmination is that sex scene because it's nto just him getting his rocks off. Night Owl is once again becoming a Man. The director (and writer as the scene was in the graphic novel) is showing us through the most simplest of terms, that Dan is no longer a weak child. Verility is human society's greatest example of power. How many women a man sleeps with, or has slept with, demonstrates how cool and awesome he is. His "taking" of the Silk Spectre is the utmost demonstration of this concept.
So, Dr. Manhattan. Understand something. He is a (g)od. He is beyond everything that is human. The guy reassembled himself after being disintergrated. He lives quantamly seeing the past and future as if it is occuring right now in the present. He can disassemble a tank with a thought or teleport you with a word. There's a saying that goes (I believe) "Where does a 600 lb. gorilla sit? Anywhere he wants". What does a guy who can create a building out of glass (by raising his hand a few inches) wear? Whatever the hell he wants. When the very concept of life or for that matter human existance is as inconsequential as the collision of electrons or interaction of gluons, if the body he inhabits is merely a means through which to interact with others for their benefit, why the hell should he care about clothes?
What these two characters really demonstrate is our discomfort with the idea and concepts themselves. I noticed few individuals talked about the violence, that though stylized, was gratuitously brutal. The only thing that made it palatable was the fact that Snyder was able to film it in the same glorious style as 300; i.e. an artistic dance of death. Yet even in the theatre individuals squirmed at the slightest of sexuality. This is something I have long sense seen as a problem. The American glorification of violence and totalitarian censorship of sexuality.
Why is sex such a private thing? Why is nakedness so taboo? In one breath we will acclaim a woman in a bathing suit that is covering little of her skin, and the next villanize a system that calls for a woman to be completely covered. Yet with the next thought the mere mention of sex, especially it's education (the most fundamental part of existance for animals) is something that we must shiled from our young people? Scene for scene we censor more for sexuality in a movie than we do for violence. A movie with copious amounts of dark and violent imagery can easily get a lower rating (i.e. Pg-13) than a movie as cavalier about sex or nudity.
I have a kid at work who's been coming in with his mom due to being on Spring Break. I don't want him to be bored and want to give him some comics or something to read. Yet do you know what stops me? They're too violent. I hope we relax our mores against sexuality and realize that the greatest danger is when we're too carefree about hurting each other.