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Despite traditional portrayals of deviance and violence as unacceptable, modern media does much to glorify these behaviors. Often times this deviant behavior is portrayed as being a ‘necessary evil’ to overcome deviance of a greater and more pressing type, as is the case in portrayals of vigilante justice. The 2009 film Watchmen is an excellent example of this, depicting the struggles of a group of vigilante masked heroes who take it upon themselves to accomplish what traditional justice cannot. Despite the fact that the film – and the graphic novel upon which it is based – challenge the traditional view of superhero fantasy with a more cold and nihilistic outlook, it also glorifies the deviant vigilante modus operandi to a certain degree.
Deviance, from a sociological perspective, is defined as any behavior that violates cultural norms and evokes a negative reaction from others, regardless of whether said behavior is illegal or not. As such, there is a considerable amount of variance in the severity of any deviance as seen by society. The deviance portrayed in Watchmen is most often of the illegal variety, encompassing violence and murder, various types of property crime, rape, etc. As such it was often quite easy to determine when an act was deviant and an extremely selective definition of deviance was not necessary.
As previously mentioned, the types of deviance featured in Watchmen varied widely, though most fell under the umbrella of criminal deviance. Easily the most recognizable and prominent type of deviance is violence: in order to combat the rampant crime in New York, the titular Watchmen resort to extralegal vigilantism, whose modus operandi is violence. The most extreme of the Watchmen, Rorschach, clearly subscribes to a radically conservative view of crime: he mocks a psychologist for having “what you call compassion… wanting to protect and understand the guilty, this rotting society, what it calls rehabilitation… nothing short of compromise”. Hence he believes that criminals are inherently evil people and the only way to deal with them is to punish them. This belief is taken to a deviant level by the means through which he punishes crime: In one particular scene he chooses to brutally kill a kidnapper turned murderer, declaring that “Men get arrested. Dogs get put down”. Though the other vigilantes do not express as radical a belief as Rorschach, they all believe to one degree or another that the only appropriate treatment for criminals is punishment. Rorschach’s deviance is further compounded by the fact that, in the film’s alternate United States, masked vigilantes have been declared illegal by the so-called Keene Act. He alone refuses to reveal his identity and retire.
Rape is also portrayed in Watchmen when one member of the Watchmen, the Comedian, attempts to rape another, the Silk Spectre. The Comedian appears to have an extremely nihilistic perspective on life, choosing (as Rorschach puts it) to become “a parody” of what the world truly is. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has no qualms about attempting to rape one of his colleagues or any of the other extreme deviance which he engages in, such as beating civilians to ‘maintain order’ and gunning down a pregnant woman in Vietnam.
Easily the most extreme case of deviance, however, occurs at the film’s climax, when Ozymandias – a previous member of the Watchmen and, arguably, the film’s antagonist – launches attacks on major population centers, under the guise of the godlike Dr. Manhattan. By doing so, he distracts humanity’s attention from warring with itself, making mutual protection against an alien force the priority. Ozymandias takes a radical functionalist approach, stating that he has killed millions “to save billions”. Though his dream of a utopia appears to be realized, the means by which he reaches his ends are indisputably deviant, a severe case of a consensus crime (i.e., directly killing millions of people would be widely recognized as unacceptable).
One of the central tenets of vigilantism is that in order to truly battle evil, it is necessary to do evil – most often in the form of extralegal violence against criminals. As such, the depictions of deviance in Watchmen depend greatly upon who it is that is engaging in the deviant behavior. The Watchmen, unsurprisingly, respond quite negatively – that is to say, violently – to the deviance of their traditional ‘enemies’: criminals, supervillains, etc. Said reaction is also evoked in the audience, with emotional and jarring scenes such as the death of the first and now elderly Nite Owl, beaten to death with a trophy celebrating his work as a superhero. On the other hand, the deviant behavior of the Watchmen is, for the most part, portrayed as heroic and ‘necessary’. Although vigilantism is frowned upon by the fictional American government, it is made easy to sympathize even with Rorschach, who resorts to murder multiple times throughout the course of the film. Other members of the Watchmen seem to celebrate his hard-line approach as well, even being amused at a story where he dropped an otherwise innocent civilian posing as a supervillain in order to get attention (and, possibly, satisfy masochistic desires) down an elevator shaft. The vigilante modus operandi is celebrated as a ‘necessary evil’, and, to a degree, romanticized. To male members of the audience, it is also a chest-pounding celebration of that which is considered masculine: physical strength, justice, extreme rationality, and refusal to back down in the face of adversity.
The line between criminal and vigilante deviance is blurred when the plans of Ozymandias are discovered – although the initial reaction is negative and violent, second thoughts are had when he reveals that the plans worked. With the United States and Soviet Union pledging to work together to move forward, united, the Watchmen realize that in order to preserve the peace, they must remain silent about the true nature of the attacks. The lone exception to this is Rorschach, who declares that he will “never surrender. Not even in the face of Armageddon”. This confusion about the nature and acceptability of the deviance may be due to the changing depiction of Ozymandias: although his actions are unquestionably criminal, the ends to which he aspires are laudable. Hence he is portrayed as an extreme functionalist, willing to sacrifice the lives of millions in order to save the human race as a whole. Although the audience may understand Ozymandias’ plans from a logical perspective, they are still depicted as cold and calculating, and it is difficult to sympathize with his deviance as with the other Watchmen.
This confusion over “killing millions to save billions” serves to challenge the traditional depiction of superheroes and vigilantism. The viewer is initially led to sympathize with and trust the judgment of the Watchmen: although their actions are deviant and, in many cases, illegal, they are portrayed as accomplishing that which traditional justice and norms cannot. This trust is then brought into question when Ozymandias executes his plans. The viewer is left to ponder the unquestioning trust placed in the Watchmen and, ultimately, in almost any authority figure.
Hence the changing depiction of deviance in Watchmen leads viewers to question the norm of placing almost blind trust in authority figures and public heroes. Viewers are led to respect and trust the vigilantes’ role of extralegal justice, but this trust is overturned and replaced with doubt as Ozymandias demonstrates the extreme measures that a trusted individual might take in order to make “progress”. As graffiti throughout the film demands to know, “Who watches the watchmen?”
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