So here’s a question/ observation - Ozymandias is based on David Bowie, right?
Maybe slight explanation – after going on a Bob Dylan binge at the end of 2008, and it really threw Watchmen into a new light for me. Watchmen is two creators in dialog with Dylan’s work – it’s as much an element of the piece as the Charlton characters. Aside from being littered with references to Highway 61 Revisited and Bring It All Back Home, the tone of the book owes almost everything to “Desolation Row”, all sickly mocking the apocalypse as it breathes down your neck and nervously cackling as the fires start across the street. Watchmen’s treatment of Dylan’s influence is a lot like the relationship between the Velvet Underground and The Sprawl Trilogy, less an influence but a dialog. So why wouldn’t the villain of the piece be David Bowie? The personality-construct supervillain variation on Dylan’s mercurial weirdness – where Dylan was constantly stalking after not only his personal artistic self but dodging the public perception of him Bowie seemed to be changing himself out of boredom or psychosis – and The Thin White Duke has actually been described as Bowie as a coke-snorting fascist voice in his head he couldn’t shake for years. So the public persona of Bowie in 1985 would be seem very similar to Ozymandias – former outcast who’d sold out, but likely faking both positions. Famous billionaire industrialist with a smile just as much a lie as flatly covering “China Girl”, both just another chess move by someone who saw everything at a remove, because his personality was fundamentally broken. The detachment, the intelligence, the using of close friends as nothing more than tools, expendable ones at that, the innate fascism, the obsession with talismanic iconography of dead cultures, even his deflective and cordial interview style. The Thin White Duke as the ultimate accidental fascist, who saves us all by force, and who’s haunted by his conscience but only after the fact. Mass murder is at least a little worse than that Tin Machine album, but then again that’s a judgement call on my part.
Hell yes. I think I get you on this one, totally. Cannot make any further valuable comment as I think I’m too pissed and may need to sober up for that. Bizarrely, know a couple of straight-to-film-version friends who asked “is he based on 80′s Bowie?” purely on style, dress and movement.
YEAH. Totally agree, and don’t know why I didn’t catch it — and in this light, it’s interesting to read Veidt’s Nova Express interview in conjunction with that Rolling Stone Bowie/Burroughs interview, eh?
Nice one!
More than nice, actually. God, I’m blind.
Here’s a funny thing: when Dave Gibbons started designing the characters he made up lists of free association for each of them, based on his conversations with Moore. Gibbons’ original word list for Ozymandias went “10x human intelligence, young 37 will live to 150, Redford, Kennedy, popular celebrity, rich, perfect, loner, prescient through intelligence, sees the world as organism with him at the center.” By contrast, Dr. Manhattan is “Bowie, Elric, alienated, isolated, mystical hermit, permanent 25 going on 44, sees the world as subatomic system.”
Now, anyone would have to concede there’s nothing of Bowie or Elric in Jon Osterman…just as anyone must concede the obvious correctness of your observation here. The idea of Bowie as a character archetype was clearly in Dave’s mind from the start, and it’s easy to imagine that as he and Moore developed the characters, it became clear this concept wasn’t working for Dr. Manhattan and got shifted to a character it suited better. So the hard evidence written in Dave’s own hand still backs you up.
(I do think, though, that the “Redford” side of Adrian has been overlooked due to American prejudice that “brainy intellectual thinker” always equals “shifty untrustworthy Eurotrash with a suspicious accent.”)
Shit, man… yeah… YEAH… Interesting thought that I really think has merit. I’m tempted to crack open Watchmen and read it specifically with these insights in mind.
The Redford stuff is interesting, because the whole who would-play-him-in-the-movie conversation always ended with American mainstream hearthrob guys like Richard Gere and Tom Cruise, who both have that pre-All The Kings Men Redford thing going on but still that detatchment is there. Also interesting that Gere played Dylan too, huh.
*THIS* is why I read your stuff. Can’t believe I never saw the connection before…
Hmmm, I think you give these celebrities too much intelligence and too much influence. When you reach a certain age, these people look more like clueless puppets manufactured by the corporation/industry instead of some artistic intelligence.
And you see people like you as children who actually think their bullshit means something.
Go fuck yourself.
Sean, don’t dignify this fucking drive-by cunt bullshit with so much as a word. Delete it. Fucking silly child is cluttering up my fucking AIR.
“Nono”. If you come back, I’ll invite you to fill your hands, you son of a bitch.
Fucking stupid internet douchebags with the mentality of a pile of broken bricks, and FUCK-ALL to do on a Saturday night. Go to hell, piece of shit.
You guys! Nono’s right!!
You see in the late 60′s/early 70′s, the corporations in conjunction with the bilderberg group & the illuminati desperately searched out someone to fill that oh so important androgynous space rocker niche to move through with their evil, evil plans! it totally explains man who fell to earth & why bowie was sent in to ‘deal’ with iggy & the stooges’ raw power. Oh my god, you guys!
And at a certain age, you’ll all see it too, after you quit your job, move out to the woods & off the grid, sustain yourself purely on peanut butter & feces sandwiches, & spend the entirety of your days trying to convince the rest of the world of the mass conspiracy right under their noses!! on blog posts. about the allegorical similarities of a comic.
hippie felchbucket.
Ach, made me spit out my last sip of beer with “androgynous space-rocker niche”. When you grow up, you’ll see that hyphens are jejeune. And dangerous.
Ha ha ha, Christ. Damn it Sean, quit giving these celebrities so much intellligence and influence! Just cut them off already!
It’s true. I prefer my clueless puppets to be manufactured by an artistic intelligence. Luckily, I have reached an age where it only looks more like the other case.
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Holy shit, this is good. This is so good it even explains the idiotic casting and hairstyling in the movie.
And that, my friend, is called “squaring the circle.”
It also explains that shot in the opening titles putting the 1972 Ziggy Stardust in front of the 1977 Studio 54 and the 1977 Village People.
And here I thought that was all about telling us Veidt was the villain because he caught a bad case of The Gays.
Christ I haven’t seen the movie yet, that actually happens? Thats amazing shorthand for “bad guys is gay”.
No, the shorthand comes when Dan is looking through Veidt’s secret files and one of them is labeled “Boys.”
Bowie and the Village People (and Jagger!) are more of a leisurely cursive.
Zack Snyder one day had to sit down and go, “well, this guy kills millions of people, how do we tell the audience he’s evil? I KNOW we’ll say he’s a pedophile!”
Just to piss you off even more, I was watching the first chapter of the Watchmen “motion comic” last night (don’t ask) and I noticed they carefully removed/blocked out any sign that the two guys in the restaurant with Dan and Laurie are gay.
So really, fuck you Warner Brothers.