The Burr in the Burbs

The first meeting of the new Deffner Society will occur shortly after Easter break.  Right now, I’m thinking Thursday, April 23rd.  What time would you prefer?  I’m inclined to do it over the lunch hour, but if enough people would rather it be late afternoon or evening, I will take that into consideration.

I will present a brief lecture and lead discussion on the highly popular graphic novel, Watchmen, which was ranked by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest American novels. The book has been recently turned into a blockbuster film.

Why This Is Significant
Watchmen takes place in an alternate American past. It’s 1985. The U.S. had a definitive victory in Vietnam. And Nixon is still in the White House. The Cold War has escalated to near boiling point. Everyone is on edge fearing a global nuclear holocaust. In this alternate America, there are masked superheroes, vigilantes for the most part. The costumed squads of crime fighters had been popular in the first half of the 20th century. But significantly, by 1985, a jaded populace had rejected them, mostly because it dawned on them that the heroes were nothing special but merely anti-social misfits with a strong fetish for justice.

Though by the beginning of the book, most of the superheroes are retired relics offering a disappointing nostalgic reminder of a more innocent time, there are two of the former crime-busters who do begin to achieve true greatness and expand their physical strength, mental powers, etc. One believes he is advancing due to physical, mental and spiritual exercises (i.e. yoga, etc.). He is the ultimate self-help guru. The other character becomes more than human after a bizarre laboratory accident.

We shall discuss several important philosophical themes as they are embedded in this popular narrative art form, The Watchmen. This will include the Nietzchean concept of the Ubermensch, the idea that man can and will transcend himself. Central also is the rejection of a need for God or any outside source of rescue (the superheroes) and that human beings who pursue self actualization will save themselves and dominate the others.

The novel’s great ethical question revolves around the value of human life. If a man can become an all-powerful god, won’t he lose all compassion for the weak? Won’t he look upon us with as much empathy as we look at termites?

I think it is interesting that the idea of a highly developed man, a super-man, was a prominent subject for many pulp science fiction books of the 1930s. Perhaps this helps, in a small way, to understand the cultural landscape behind the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.”