Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T19:23:06.287Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Men of Steel? Rorschach, Theweleit, and Watchmen's Deconstructed Masculinity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2013

Mervi Miettinen
Mervi Miettinen*
Affiliation:
University of Tampere
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Watchmen (1987), written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is a 12-part graphic novel that portrays real-life superheroes in a fictional United States of the 1980s. An alternate universe where ordinary people without superpowers were inspired by superhero comics and took on the crime-fighting in tights in the 1940s, the comic portrays an America vastly different from our reality. Since its publication more than two decades ago, the comic has been the subject of extensive study due to its breathtaking narrative structure as well as its acute deconstruction of the superhero genre itself. Indeed, one of the text's most brutal deconstructions comes from the way it addresses superheroic masculinity, from the misogynistic vigilante Rorschach to the emasculated ex-hero Nite Owl. Through its cast of male heroes, Watchmen deconstructs the superhero genre by rewriting masculine tropes such as vigilantism and patriotism and by exposing the inherent contradictions within these gender-bound tropes from the fascist undercurrents of violent patriotism to the often-hinted sexual dysfunction of the costume-fetish variety.

Type
Symposium: The Politics of the Superhero
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 104 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Benjamin, Jessica, and Rabinbach, Anson. 1989. “Foreword.” In Theweleit, Klaus, Male Fantasies II: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror, ix–xxv. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Boon, Kevin Alexander. 2005. “Heroes, Metanarratives, and the Paradox of Masculinity in Contemporary Western Culture.” The Journal of Men's Studies 13 (3): 301–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Jack. 1941. “The Origin of Plastic Man.” Police Comics #1 (August). New York: Quality Comics. Google Scholar
Connell, R.W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Costello, Matthew J. 2009. Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America. New York and London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Dalby, Simon, and Ó Tuathail, Gearóid. 1998. “Introduction: Rethinking Geopolitics: Towards a Critical Geopolitics.” In Rethinking Geopolitics, eds. Dalby, Simon and Tuathail, Gearóid Ó, 1–15. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dijkink, Gertjan. 1996. National Identity and Geopolitical Visions: Maps of Pride and Pain. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dittmer, Jason. 2010. Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Dittmer, Jason. 2005. “Captain America's Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (3): 626–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodds, Klaus. 2000. Geopolitics in a Changing World. Edinburgh: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Duncan, Randy, and Smith, Matthew J.. 2009. The Power of Comics: History, Form, Culture. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Edwardson, Ryan. 2003. “The Many Lives of Captain Canuck: Nationalism, Culture, and the Creation of a Canadian Comic Book Superhero.” The Journal of Popular Culture 37 (2): 184–201.Google Scholar
Emad, Mitra C. 2006. “Reading Wonder Woman's Body: Mythologies of Gender and Nation.” The Journal of Popular Culture 39 (6): 954–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faludi, Susan. 1999. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Gates, Philippa. 2006. Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film. Albany: State University of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeping, J. 2009. “Superheroes and Supermen: Finding Nietzsche's Übermensch in Watchmen .” In Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test, ed. White, Mark D., 47–60. Hoboken,NJ: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Lawrence, John Shelton, and Jewett, Robert. 2002. The Myth of the American Superhero. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Loftis, J. Robert. 2009. “Means, Ends, and Critique of Pure Superheroes.” In Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test, ed. White, Mark D., 63–77. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Madrid, Mike. 2009. The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. Minneapolis, MN: Exterminating Angel Press.Google Scholar
Miettinen, Mervi. 2012. “Truth, Justice, and the American Way? The Popular Geopolitics of American Identity in Contemporary Superhero Comics.” PhD diss., University of Tampere (Acta Universitatis Tamperensis, 1790). Google Scholar
Moore, Alan (w), and Gibbons, Dave (a). 1987. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics.Google Scholar
Mosse, George L. 1996. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, Chris. 2011. Champions of the Oppressed? Superhero Comics, Popular Culture, and Propaganda in America During World War II. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Google Scholar
Nyman, Jopi. 1997. Men Alone: Masculinity, Individualism, and Hard-boiled Fiction. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Michael J. 2011. “Alan Moore's America: The Liberal Individual and American Identities in Watchmen .” The Journal of Popular Culture 44 (4): 815–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Richard. 1992. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Stuller, Jennifer K. 2012. “Second-wave Feminism in the Pages of Lois Lane .” In Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, eds. Smith, Matthew J. and Duncan, Randy, 235–51. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Theweleit, Klaus. 1977/1987. Male Fantasies I: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Theweleit, Klaus. 1978/1989. Male Fantasies II: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Foreword by Jessica Benjamin and Anson Rabinbach. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, Iain. 2005. “Deconstructing the Hero.” In Comics as Philosophy, ed. McLaughlin, Jeff, 100–129. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Wolf-Meyer, Matthew. 2003. “The World Ozymandias Made: Utopias in the Superhero Comic, Subculture, and the Conservation of Difference.” The Journal of Popular Culture 36 (3): 497–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar