Watchmen

[itsnotmymind]

Opinion on rape in Watchmen:


I have never been raped - nor, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone close to me. So I am probably not the best person to judge this, but: Sally Jupiter choosing to have consensual sex with the man who tried to rape her did not bother me in the slightest. Some years after realizing this, I came to the uncomfortable realization that I have a general fascination with fictional stories where survivors of rape or attempted rape end up establishing some kind of bond with the person who assaulted them. But for me: I believed Sally's decisions, I believed her reasons for choosing to have sex with the Comedian. It worked for me in the story. It was not portrayed as her forgiving the Comedian (she still didn't want him taking to Laurie), nor was it in any way a reward for him - or, really, much important to his story. That plot decision in and of itself didn't bother me personally.

What did bother me was the part where both the would-be rapist, the victim, and the rescuer put some level on of blame on the victim - and the only one who offers in countering point of view is Sally's briefly mentioned therapist.

The Comedian, when assaulting Silk Specter, claims that it’s because she flirts with him and wears revealing clothes. After rescuing her, the Hooded Justice orders her to put some clothes on. Bear in mind that she’s on the ground and bleeding at this particular point in time. Later, we see an interview where Sally says that she feels bears some responsibility for almost being raped. Because she flirted with the perpetrator. Sally says in passing that her therapist would probably disagree with this - but no one, NO ONE mentions that actually a woman can flirt with whoever she wants, and to say that this encourages men to force her to have sex or break her bones is rape culture.

And I find it weird that for all the intense discussion, criticism about Sally choosing to have sex with the Comedian, the message given by the story that she shares some responsibility for the rape is rarely commented on.

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I see your point.

I think with Sally later having consensual sex with the Comedian, and having feelings for him, the point in the narrative is very much, "People are complicated; it is horrific what he did, but feelings are more complex than is easy to deal with." In fact, because this aspect of the story is mostly told from Laurie's point of view, the real message is to Laurie, which is to face the truth about humans even if it's painful, and that truth sometimes means that rigid moral categories aren't always helpful. Or, I suppose, it is a good general rule that people shouldn't ever love, bond with, or even forgive their abusers, and it maybe is even *always* true that people *shouldn't*, but it is also true that people do. Laurie has a choice of whether to forgive her mother for having a bond with her (Sally's) attempted rapist, and she chooses to accept her mother for who she really is, rather than strongly insist that her mother has an *obligation* to never care about/have sex with/whatever her victimizer. In that sense I think that complaints are sometimes overblown about this particular plot element -- I mean, it is true that things like the dynamic between the Comedian and Sally sometimes happen, and the lesson is not really even that Sally was *right*. It may be that Sally never should have had any contact with the Comedian, at all -- and even there, not just because of the assault and attempted rape, but because he's a nihilistic killer, though it's hard to say whether she knows what, say, Jon knows about the Comedian's 'Nam period. But the point of the story as I see it is more about it being good for Laurie to be able to understand and empathize with her mother for it. And ultimately, how could anyone argue with that? Laurie doesn't have to forgive her dead murderous rapist biological father, but I think it's good for her to be able to forgive her mother for caring about him. Is it better for Laurie to be ignorant, or to reject her mother for having reacted inappropriately, or "sending the wrong message" or some such by her secret, illicit affair?* I guess the book does give a shot to Sally kissing the Comedian's picture, at the end of the final scene with Laurie and her, which argues that maybe she's right or enlightened, but I think that it's more just about allowing her her feelings.

I think you are maybe right about it being problematic that no one counters that the attempted rape isn't her fault. I hadn't thought about it. And I think that's because I read the Comedian's comments as being somewhat in line with his nihilistic Vietnam-era killing and so didn't think we could be expected to take him seriously, saw Sally's blaming herself as typical victim guilt, and Hooded Justice as an authoritarian jerk tied hardcore into the social-conservative values of his day. So I tend to think that this is not the message that the story wants to present. However, given the care and attention to detail put into Watchmen generally, it might be an oversight that the contrary position is not more strongly emphasized. (In general, Watchmen suffers from being so male-centric, with the Jupiters being the only major female characters, though part of that is part and parcel of the critique of male-dominated superhero narratives and the dominance of men in positions of political, military, and scientific power and authority.)

*Well, I guess a case could be made that it's very bad *to Laurie* for Sally to have had sex, and thus risked conceiving a child, with the Comedian, given that he is such a dangerous, though not without good qualities, person. I think Laurie could well have anger about that. But even there her mother did succeed in "protecting" Laurie from the Comedian and keeping him away from her, and it's clear that Sally did the best she could. I think that Laurie understanding her mother and not simply condemning her is the right choice.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I agree about Sally, and her feelings towards the comedians. I was a little hesitant to say it because she's a fictional woman written by men, but the reality is that people in real life often do have complicated feelings about their abusers. People who have been victims of abuse should not be shamed for having positive feelings towards their abusers - in fact, lately I've even disliked the way people talk about Stockholm Syndrome. It's not a twisted and incomprehensible psychological flaw to feel empathy towards someone who has hurt you. People should protect themselves, should be encouraged to see that they don't deserve bad treatment and have every right to do what they need to avoid it, but they also shouldn't feel bad for seeing the goodness and humanity in someone who is hurt them.

And I mean - the reverse is also true. No one should feel obligated to forgive or empathize with someone who has hurt them, or done something horrible.

Yeah, each of the characters individually have their reasons for putting the blame on Sally. But it's a fictional story, and we don't get any real counter-perspective. Maybe you could argue that the narrative itself stands against it? The Comedian is SO awful that it's hard to put much weight to the idea that his assault of Sally was about Sally's actions. Hooded Justice telling Sally to put something else on when she's on the floor bleeding is a pretty horrifying image. I think Hooded Justice is supposed to seem cold in that scene. But the thing is...When situations like that happen in real life, even when people have full knowledge about what happened, you do still get people arguing that the victim is to blame. As the Comedian, Hooded Justice, and Sally all in fact do. And you're right: Watchmen is highly detailed. I never have doubts that Ozymandias blowing up half of NYC was intended to be a terrible decision, even though most of the characters decide to back him up. It's made very clear that this was a terrible idea. I don't know what Alan Moore intended, but from reading the book it's hard not to take away the message that while the Comedian was a terrible person, Sally shouldn't have flirted with him if she didn't want to sleep with him.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I agree about people both forgiving and not forgiving their abusers. I think that Stockholm Syndrome is a real thing, for what it's worth, but that people too readily deploy it as a kind of weapon to try to insist that empathy toward the "wrong" people is a disease.

I don't have my copy of Watchmen on me, so I can only go off memory and various wikis. That said, I dunno. I do think that the novel could/should have been clearer on this point, and so will agree that it's a flaw in the narrative. However, I still don't think that the intention is to suggest Sally was partly responsible for the assault. The Comedian is a pretty vile character. And then Hooded Justice yells at Sally to put her clothes back on after the Comedian says to HJ, "This is what you like, huh?", taunting him with the accusation that Hooded Justice gets sexually aroused by beating people, which I think other parts of the book imply are true. His turning on Sally seems to be a natural way of showing his deflecting guilt onto her because he can no longer physically or even verbally attack the Comedian without feeling his own shame that he was getting so into beating this guy senseless. It's a horrifying image and Hooded Justice's reasons for turning on Sally the way he does seem to be pretty carefully set up as having little/nothing to do with Sally. In addition, there is the fact that Sally and HJ are "supposed" to be in a relationship, publicly, and so it also seems to be HJ protecting his image/masculinity by verbally attacking her, which again is not something I think we're supposed to think is appropriate, but to understand as part of HJ's toxic masculinity pathology.

I also think that, as important as the Comedian's assault on Sally is to the book, it's still less important than Veidt's attack on New York. Which makes sense, of course -- the latter is the climax of the book, is in the present time, and also is destruction on a much larger scale. I know that for many, the presentation of an attempted rape should always be treated with more seriousness than large-scale destruction because attempted rape is more common for most readers, but wars *really do happen* and places really have been bombed for The Greater Good, and individuals like the newspaper vendor and reader do get killed as a result of the decisions of powerful people like Veidt. So I don't really agree that it is less "real" a problem. Anyway, Moore could hardly have a book's climactic event happen without a huge amount of supporting material to comment on it, but I do think it's possible for an important but nonetheless less central event to happen without him including enough detail to "prove" how we are supposed to respond to it. So I am not so sure that Moore wants us to believe that Sally partly brought the assault on herself.

However, I really can't remember enough about Sally's interview and her reference to her therapist to comment on that. Next time I go to my mom's house (where my copy of Watchmen is) I will take a look (provided I remember). I have a hard time believing that we are supposed to take the Comedian or Hooded Justice as being reliable on this issue. But it is possible that we are meant to view Sally's years-later analysis of the event as containing some truth and insight. I *suspect* that Sally here is trying to mitigate the damage to Blake's reputation because she cares about him, and blames herself for the assault because she does mostly believe she led him on, which is not true but is an understandable reaction for her to have. I still am not, let's say, convinced that Sally is meant to be *right*, so much as that this is in the story to help lay the groundwork for the later revelation that Sally did have positive feelings for Blake and that he was Laurie's father, without being too explicit and giving the surprise away too early. I don't think that we are meant to view Sally as correct. However, yeah. I'm not sure. I'd say my judgment is that it's more likely a flaw in the narrative that there aren't stronger counterarguments rather than that it is a narrative that is *intended* to promote the idea that Sally had some responsibility for what happened to her. But I don't know.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

It is hard to say with certainty whether Alan Moore was trying to engage in victim blaming, or if he was just trying to portray a culture that was rife with victim blaming. It's just...to have all three character who were present during the attempted rape put some blame on the victim and have no one really present an alternative view bothers me. I mean, if it was just the Comedian I would dismiss it out of hand - I don't even think I consciously registered the first time I read that he was blaming her. Of course he was blaming her. But it's just...no one is really giving an alternative point of.

In extreme situations that I don't have enough knowledge of to comment on, "Stockholm syndrome" is probably a genuine psychological phenomenon. One of the things I dislike about its colloquial usage is that it's used as an explanation. Why does a victim have positive feelings towards their abuser? Stockholm Syndrome.

But psychological disorders are labels, not explanations. Even people who express genuine Stockholm Syndrome aren't expressing Stockholm Syndrome because they have Stockholm Syndrome. People have reasons. They may be good or bad or sane or irrational, but there are always reasons. You can't slap a psychological label on something and call it explained. Obviously, the victim is just twisted. It happens. Next topic.

That is a good point about Ozymandias' attack being a more important part of the narrative. And I agree that blowing up cities is far more important on a real world level than attempted rape. I've been trying to think of what Alan Moore could have done to mitigate the opinions of those three characters, and I haven't thought of anything yet. But then, I'm not a published and respected writer of comics.