Name our Manx, Watchmen, Economics, Stuff

[tcpip]

caseopaya and I would like to welcome the newest member of our household. An, as yet, unnamed Manx kitten. He's integrating well with the rabbits, but hasn't met the rats yet. Help us el-jay! Help us name our cat.



Went to see Watchmen last night. It has some changes from Allan Moore's classic comic series of superheroes and the very real fear in the early 1980s of nuclear war, but the changes don't alter the storyline or theme and indeed the one big change at the end actually makes much more sense (big credits here to the screenwriters, who must had balls of steel to try this). It is that the core content was included in the 170 minutes and the charactre portrayals as pretty good well, especially Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. I suspect that history will largely absolve Zack Snyder's pretty average effort with 300 with this film. A genuine pity that Pop Will Eat Itself's Def Con One wasn't included in the soundtrack.

An inordinate amount of time was spent this week writing Normative and Postive Economics: An Isocratic Sketch, an attempts to reconcile, or at least find appropriate types of economic activity for socialist and capitalist means of ownership and planned or market means of distribution and exchange, and at the same time recommending the socialisation of income from natural resources. Comments invited. This week I also joined Amnesty International Australia. This is an organisation I joined and let my membership lapse several times over the past twenty-five years or so. This time, I've checked the box for 'renew every year'; the wonders of modern technology!

Recently lokicarbis had a good idea for extending the functionality libraries; I have been playing with since Koha since then, which is great one you get the right version of Perl installed (*mutter*, *mutter*). In more Loki-related news, I'm looking after several crates of RPGs for him; at the same time, I've finally gotten around to cataloguing many extras that I have and am putting these up for sale on RPG Review. I also have a big collection of stuff that I just want to give away; including an Encore W255 Acoustic Guitar, a whole bunch of VHS videos (including series one and two of Friends.. uh, yeah), a lot of IT books including Microsoft MSCE NT books, Visual Basic books, MCDBA SQL server 7 and Oracle 8 books, a collection of 3D Studio Max guides etc. etc.

Comments

Watchmen? Really?!?!

[nvcarnie.livejournal.com]

I think I need to write my own post on Watchmen about how terrible it was. I very nearly walked out of it. Twice. And had I not been sitting in the middle of sold out theatre in the middle of a row, I probably would have.

Women being raped on screen. Shooting and killing a pregnant woman. Two dogs wrestling over a child's foot. Is that what we've become? That's entertainment? If the graphic novel was that graphic, it's a crying shame it was every allowed to go to the box office. I was disgusted. Thoroughly disgusted by it. I don't think the American "R" rating was even remotely strong enough.

Re: Watchmen? Really?!?!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, all those scenes are in the comic series as well.

It's not supposed to be "entertainment"; a lot of the thematic content was around the depths of moral behaviour and those scenes are meant to induce disgust.

In the graphic novel, for example, Rorschach justifies his activities in contrast to the murder of Kitty Genovese. That's not entertainment either.

Which is also meant to be contrasted by the character who kills millions but claims the ethical high ground of doing it to save billions.

Re: Watchmen? Really?!?!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

A lot of people have responded to the various violent elements of the Watchmen story. I think something to bear in mind is that the super heroes of the Watchmen universe are NOT facing comic book cliched villainy. They are facing real-world horrors. Soldiers in Vietnam did many of the atrocities condensed into the person of the Comedian. Many of the other horrors of graphic novel and film are similarly real-world as opposed to comic-world, which is where I think people find objection.

We see superheroes and expect 2 dimensional entertainment. Few are realistically prepared for their shiny superheroes to be mired in moral ambiguity, even depravity. Some characters regularly decry the worst excesses as well. The original Nite Owl decries the Comedian as a thug and a rapist. The second Nite Owl is about the only one to tentatively defend Rorschach, and only because they were once friends, but even he acknowledges that Rorschach goes too far.

Yes there are horrible elements to the story. But this isn't the Fantastic Four, or even Batman. This is something much closer to home, and thus scarier.

Re: Watchmen? Really?!?!

[nvcarnie.livejournal.com]

If it's not meant to be entertainment, why in the world was it marketed so aggressively as a major motion picture? I was in no way prepared to witness the violence that was so prominent in the movie. I don't find a single redeemable feature in the film - and I certainly don't condone the on-screen violence that was witnessed by at least several hundred teenagers in the theatre I was in as a way to combat or comment about our real life violence. There certainly must be other ways.

Re: Watchmen? Really?!?!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Something can be a major motion film without being entertainment ("an agreeable and amusing diversion") - Watchmen certainly isn't meant to be agreeable or amusing. Likewise, I do not think you can blame the film for you not being prepared for it; it's not as if you didn't have the opportunity beforehand to discover "what is this about?".

As for teens witnessing violence, that depends on the portrayal; I watched plenty of violent films in my teenaged years (and obviously I still do). Because the violence was graphic and because the people who carried it out with relish were not morally heroic acts as a means to psychically structure a person to be against violence, not for it.