Erik Marshall

I watched the Watchmen again last night, and I can now make a correction and an observation. First the correction. The shot I mention a couple posts earlier with the blimp moving towards the WTC is in the background of Ozymandias’s office. He is giving a speech that starts: “The conflict with the Soviets is not about ideology. It is about fear.” The second time is also in his office when he is chastising Lee Iacocca and company for contributing to the world’s problems by pushing fossil fuels. He says something like “Fossil fuels are the world’s drugs, and you and foreign entities are the pushers.” Taken together, one might draw some conclusions about an underlying meaning in the film.

The observation is not about the movie, but the audience. Both times I saw this movie, first at about 1pm on weekday and next on Sunday night at 8pm, there were small children present. This film is extremely violent and has some explicit sexual imagery. Now, I’m not telling anybody how to raise their children, but last night I was watching the small girl, maybe 7 years old, down the row. During the sex scene, her mom was covering her eyes, but not during the violent scenes, like when Rorschach repeatedly drives a butcher knife into someone’s head. What message does this send about sex and violence? Violence = no problem, but sex, the thing that 99% of the world’s population will engage in and what many consider to be a natural, beautiful thing? Unfit for small children. I do realize that I sound like someone with no kids, and maybe I’m missing something, but that’s my unsolicited two cents.