Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

[exte]

I find most people with no understanding of the climate of Renaissance England are able to understand the "key elements" of Shakespeare without problem, and that Shakespeare transcends any context (good examples: Ran and Throne of Blood, in which Shakespeare survives the complete loss of his context not only intact, but brilliantly). The point being this: if Watchmen cannot survive a certain loss of context, could it ever be anything more than a product of, and monument to, its own time?

Great post. Sometimes this forum really does shine.

[moviscop]

Just because his name is mr sausage doesn't mean....
well exte, you get the idea.

I think my main point in arguing the film is that many amazing directors categorized it as being "unfilmable". I don't take that lightly and the fact that Snyder jumped into the project. That tells you something.
The man has no consideration or respect for adapting such an important work it seems.
I mean, I know this is a small detail, but My Chemical Romance is covering Bob Dylan. BOB FUCKING DYLAN!

[Mr Sausage]

I think my main point in arguing the film is that many amazing directors categorized it as being "unfilmable". I don't take that lightly and the fact that Snyder jumped into the project. That tells you something.

That he'd rather just get in there and try it than sit around and aimlessly discuss how difficult it'll be?

[moviscop]

I think my main point in arguing the film is that many amazing directors categorized it as being "unfilmable". I don't take that lightly and the fact that Snyder jumped into the project. That tells you something.

That he'd rather just get in there and try it than sit around and aimlessly discuss how difficult it'll be?

He was swift about production.

[J Wilson]

An LA federal judge has granted Fox the rights to Watchmen. There was talk that Fox would use this case to pry the rights to the 60s Batman TV series out of Warners' hands, but presumably they could get much more than that now?

[Antoine Doinel]

I don't think Fox is going to stop the film from being released, but I would guess they are going to push for a substantial share of any profits.

[moviscop]

Archaeologizing Watchmen: An Interview With Dave Gibbons

[Antoine Doinel]

Fox will continue to seek a delay in releasing the film.

[mfunk9786]

Fingers crossed that everyone just forgets about it altogether.

[Antoine Doinel]

Not likely, Warner Brothers is going to go ahead and release the film as scheduled. This is going to get ugly.

[Jeff]

Not likely, Warner Brothers is going to go ahead and release the film as scheduled. This is going to get ugly.

I would imagine that a court-ordered injunction lies in W.B.'s future.

I couldn't care less if Watchmen ever sees the light of day, but if this gets Lorenzo Semple's Batman TV series released...Holy Nostaliga, Batfans!, I'll be one happy camper. POW!

[Schkura]

Fingers crossed that everyone just forgets about it altogether.

Seconded.

[Antoine Doinel]

New EPK hosted on the Fox owned MySpace of all places. Zack Snyder nearly chokes on his own self-importance.

[Svevan]

I find most people with no understanding of the climate of Renaissance England are able to understand the "key elements" of Shakespeare without problem, and that Shakespeare transcends any context (good examples: Ran and Throne of Blood, in which Shakespeare survives the complete loss of his context not only intact, but brilliantly). The point being this: if Watchmen cannot survive a certain loss of context, could it ever be anything more than a product of, and monument to, its own time?

Wow I missed this little ditty. I'm curious, Sausage: are you intending to disparage work that lacks "universality?" I know you wouldn't claim that a work of art entirely consumed of its time period can't be "great," but would you measure its greatness to be lesser than that of a work that has no entanglements with an era? I believe the 80s are pretty essential to Watchmen, but the fact that they're an "alternate" 80s allows the novel to explore themes (totalitarianism, materialism, etc) that were a part of the 80s but also transportable to other time periods. Yet if you put the work in a different context, like the Irish Potato Famine, or more generally, any period of want (instead of excess) I'm going to have trouble believing that Watchmen would still "work." Shakespeare is portable, malleable, but you can't take him just anywhere - there are more connections between Feudal Japan and Elizabethan England (or just British Royalty and Japanese Royalty) than presumed by your statement (highly mannered society, large divide between upper and lower class, caste/class system, indulgent royalty, etc). When we boil Romeo and Juliet down to just a doomed love story, it loses important elements (arguably not everything though). Hamlet 2000 and Lurhmann's Romeo+Juliet both require the viewer to gloss over the fact that the events in the play just wouldn't happen in their new contexts, and both are highly edited versions of their original texts. The idea of re-contextualization in Shakespeare is a way of exploring where the text can go, not where it already was, and if we emphasize one over the other we're missing half the story.

In short, I don't think "portability" is always a sign of great art.

[Mr Sausage]

My apologies for the length, Svevan, but there were a number of things that I thought deserved answers and didn't want to overlook too much.

there are more connections between Feudal Japan and Elizabethan England (or just British Royalty and Japanese Royalty) than presumed by your statement (highly mannered society, large divide between upper and lower class, caste/class system, indulgent royalty, etc)

But those connections are true of most any historical situation involving some kind of centralized authoritarian rule, because they are general enough to fit most anywhere and do not reflect the actual idiosyncracy of either Feudal Japan or Elizabethan England (which were significantly different not only politically, being that Renaissance England was monarchichal and not Feudal, but culturally, being that they had different systems of value). So it is still Shakespeare's achievement in posing his drama in terms that make Elizabethan England and Feudal Japan seem less distant than they actually are.

I'm curious, Sausage: are you intending to disparage work that lacks "universality?" I know you wouldn't claim that a work of art entirely consumed of its time period can't be "great," but would you measure its greatness to be lesser than that of a work that has no entanglements with an era?

You're rather pasting these concerns on to a post that does not pose them. You put universality in quotes, yet my post never uses the word, and is not in fact addressing universality as an idea. The Shakespeare example was simply a refutation of an earlier claim by moviscop that Shakespeare cannot be understood correctly without knowledge of his context, which is simply untrue, and I give the Kurosawa examples in order to demonstrate the extent to which Shakespeare transcends his context--an extent that is unique to him. I then go on to ask a rhetorical question about whether or not Watchmen can survive a "certain loss of context" (not, you will note, the entire loss of it), and if it cannot, does that not limit it to being simply a time-capsule? I do think it's worth asking the question: if one cannot understand a work of art without sublimating the specific cultural and political values, and the cant and the general opinion, of the historical setting,--that is, if one cannot understand it except in the specific and limited terms of its time period, of what use is it beyond a kind of archaeology? But I did not actually set about asking this in my post; simply enough, moviscop said: Shakespeare can't, so Watchmen can't; to which I said, Shakespeare can, and what would it say about Watchmen if it can't?

believe the 80s are pretty essential to Watchmen, but the fact that they're an "alternate" 80s allows the novel to explore themes (totalitarianism, materialism, etc) that were a part of the 80s but also transportable to other time periods. Yet if you put the work in a different context, like the Irish Potato Famine, or more generally, any period of want (instead of excess) I'm going to have trouble believing that Watchmen would still "work."

Except I never claimed a Shakespearean universality for Watchmen. My question, as I've said, was whether it could survive a "certain loss" of context, implied in the twenty-year jump between when the comic and the movie are set. The point being not to set up some genreal theory of cultural transferance but simply to ask whether or not a complete, indivisible dependance on a (not very distant) historical context means Watchmen has little relevance or interest outside of its time period.

In short, I don't think "portability" is always a sign of great art.

On what terms do you mean portability? Do you mean culturally? Temporally? Do you mean across languages? Do you think all are unnecessary, none, one or two? Does this work both ways: is there a lack of greatness in certain works that have been "ported," and a greatness in works that haven't?

And why raise the question when the idea of greatness never entered into my post? As I've said, Shakespeare and Watchmen are the examples I was given to work with; their greatness was never in question.

When we boil Romeo and Juliet down to just a doomed love story, it loses important elements (arguably not everything though).

You're boiling out more than just context here.

Hamlet 2000 and Lurhmann's Romeo+Juliet both require the viewer to gloss over the fact that the events in the play just wouldn't happen in their new contexts, and both are highly edited versions of their original texts.

Can't talk about Hamlet 2000, but Lurhmann's film is set in an anachronistic fantasy land, so it's not the best example. Nevertheless, the failure of a certain adaptation to make the new context work falls fairly heavily on how well the actors, director, ect. sell the transplantation, not of any failure of Shakespeare's play to translate into different settings.

The idea of re-contextualization in Shakespeare is a way of exploring where the text can go, not where it already was, and if we emphasize one over the other we're missing half the story.

You've run into a terrible problem using Shakespeare for this. The problem is that Shakespeare's plays were never set in Renaissance England in the first place. Not one. So what do you really think is the applicable context. How would one apply, say, the Elizabethan context to this or that play? And whose context, that of someone in the Pit at the Globe, some noble in the stands; some middling person reading the play, some royality reading it? Is this the context of performance or print culture; is it the context of language as it may have been understood, or language as it reflected other writings of the time, or things we know Shakespeare read? What about "where it already was" are we emphasizing?

I'll leave you to untangle the web; I prefer to read Shakespeare without all that.

[Antoine Doinel]

Japanese trailer with more new footage.

[Nothing]

But I believe, sausage, that you have made an error by taking this too far in the other direction. It is an equally flawed premise to suggest that, because Shakespeare's plays can still be enjoyed by audiences outside of their original socio-political context, that all other fiction be capable of operating in a similar manner to Shakespeare (Before you claim I am para-phrasing incorrectly how else would you explain: "If one cannot understand it except in the specific and limited terms of its time period, of what use is it beyond a kind of archaeology?")

Firstly, and most obviously, it is not necessary for every work of fiction to resemble Shakespeare, who is (depending on what you read) but one author with a particularly populist style and approach.

Secondly, It is quite likely that Shakespeare (or the Shakespeares) would be horrified by the so-called modern re-interpretations of the plays and would feel that a lot of important context had been lost.

Thirdly, the written play and the cinema are two completely different mediums. Cinema is so much more concrete, there is so much more information, visual, aural, etc, that it should be much easier for future audiences to engage with the original, as opposed to requiring this kind of re-interpretation. Does not early Renoir feel a world away, and yet we are able to immerse ourselves within and better understand that world through his cinema, in addition to whatever 'universal' themes one might claim are underlying the work?

Fourthly, is it not also false to state that all art should function for an audience without prior knowledge/study? eg. Godard is still very much alive, but an uninformed, unstudied audience would be likely to get more out of Henry V than out of Histoire(s) du Cinema even today.

[Mr Sausage]

It is an equally flawed premise to suggest that, because Shakespeare's plays can still be enjoyed by audiences outside of their original socio-political context, that all other fiction be capable of operating in a similar manner to Shakespeare

If there is a suggestion of a causal link between the two, blame moviscop. Otherwise, the idea that a work of art should speak beyond the temporary values and ideas of its time is an old one that stands well enough by itself. As for "operating in a similar manner to Shakespeare," I went out of my way in my reply to Sveven to point out Shakespeare is a unique case and that I am not asking Watchmen to have anything like his universality. Shakespeare is simply the most capacious example of a general aesthetic idea.

(Before you claim I am para-phrasing incorrectly how else would you explain: "If one cannot understand it except in the specific and limited terms of its time period, of what use is it beyond a kind of archaeology?")

Would you like to explain how from that you got "all other fiction be capable of operating in a similar manner to Shakespeare"? Because my sentence definitely does not say that

Firstly, and most obviously, it is not necessary for every work of fiction to resemble Shakespeare, who is (depending on what you read) but one author with a particularly populist style and approach.

In your haste to raise this point you've overlooked the crucial fact that I have never said anything of the sort about the so-called necessity of artists resembling Shakespeare.

Secondly, It is quite likely that Shakespeare (or the Shakespeares) would be horrified by the so-called modern re-interpretations of the plays and would feel that a lot of important context had been lost.

This is a kind of unimaginativeness that believes other people, no matter how distant, must think like oneself. And since Shakespeare is an author about whom we famously know very little, please don't make such presumptions and ask others to accept them.

Thirdly, the written play and the cinema are two completely different mediums. Cinema is so much more concrete, there is so much more information, visual, aural, etc, that it should be much easier for future audiences to engage with the original, as opposed to requiring this kind of re-interpretation. Does not early Renoir feel a world away, and yet we are able to immerse ourselves within and better understand that world through his cinema, in addition to whatever 'universal' themes one might claim are underlying the work?

Aside from the rather head-scratching assertions here, I should point out that Watchmen is not remaking an earlier movie, it's adapting a comic-book, so I don't get your point. I'll just mention that this concrete-quality of film, far from making it "much easier for future audiences to engage with," only makes film more susceptible to becoming dated since that mass of information you point out is fixed and cannot alter, even in one's imagination, with the rapidly changing styles of subsequent decades.

Fourthly, is it not also false to state that all art should function for an audience without prior knowledge/study? eg. Godard is still very much alive, but an uninformed, unstudied audience would be likely to get more out of Henry V than out of Histoire(s) du Cinema even today.

Yes, yes it is. So it's a good thing I never said that. You know you're extrapolating rather hugely from my post. You're assuming I've said things that could be said in such a discussion as this, but haven't been.

[Antoine Doinel]

A federal judge is going to decide if Watchmen will make it a screen near you anytime soon.

[Grand Illusion]

A federal judge is going to decide if Watchmen will make it a screen near you anytime soon.

Activist judges!

[Svevan]

Thanks for the reply, Sausage. My response might also be a bit long.

moviscop said: Shakespeare can't, so Watchmen can't; to which I said, Shakespeare can, and what would it say about Watchmen if it can't?

I think you're selling your own comments short. I, with some justification, assumed that this was an attempt at applying the standard of Shakespeare's [portability, universality, whatever] to another work of art. Indeed your original question was rhetorical, I get it now, but it raised some questions.

I think you picked a lot of nits in my post; for all its faults, I don't think I was that far off the mark. For instance, though you said nothing of greatness, I believe greatness is inferred by the idea of survival (you may disagree); as for "universality," I was merely trying to put a word to your description of context neutrality. But whatever: I trudged us deeper into a topic that I thought was quite the point of your post, and though your new post refutes my assumption by saying

[my post] is not in fact addressing universality as an idea.

it nonetheless makes claims about what I would call universality:

I do think it's worth asking the question: if one cannot understand a work of art without sublimating the specific cultural and political values, and the cant and the general opinion, of the historical setting,--that is, if one cannot understand it except in the specific and limited terms of its time period, of what use is it beyond a kind of archaeology?

Sorry for attempting to read your actual opinion into your previous post, but according to your above words I think I got pretty close.

If you don't want to address this idea of "what use is it beyond a kind of archaeology?" that's fine. But that's what I was at least attempting to question (whether you said it out loud or not). A 20 year jump surely isn't as big of a deal, you're right, and you were correct in undoing moviscop's metaphor, and I am guilty of responding to your words and not your intentions. That being said...

The problem is that Shakespeare's plays were never set in Renaissance England in the first place. Not one. So what do you really think is the applicable context.

Although you claim "not one" play is set in Renaissance England, many are set in either timeless fantasy locations or foreign and/or imaginary places in what the audience assumed was the modern era and would have brought their own understanding to. Shakespeare's histories notoriously read into the past the scruples, humor, and dress of Shakespeare's day. I want to broaden my use of the word context. You're correct in that what I'm really attempting to address here is historical context to the actual writing of the play, which in my mind puts some value in the setting and time period given by the author, as well as everything else.

Shakespeare's plays use genre conventions, language, and structure of the period they were written in. Isn't it worth knowing that stuff? As to "where" or "when" a Shakespeare play should be set, I'm with you: I think it's fantastic that Shakespeare can go (almost) anywhere. But I don't believe that fact altogether dismisses the attempt at understanding his own historical perspective, his audience, his purposes in writing, his techniques, etc. Therefore, I don't think it's wrong to attempt to recreate the Shakespeare experience by simply sticking with the setting and time period given as well as viewing the play through the eyes of the average playgoers (each kind) in Elizabethan England (admittedly this is very rare); another more common option is creating "classical" productions that do not refer to a time period but seem to our eyes simply "timeless" or "old" (but one example from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a production I saw of The Winter's Tale where neither 1600s Italy nor modern America intruded). By that standard I agree: a modern audience can understand Shakespeare today, but I've found my romps through Elizabethan history to only enlighten me (as far as I can be enlightened; I'm not claiming to be a scholar, only an enthusiast, so please correct me if I misspeak).

I find plenty of joy in knowing how the original Elizabethan audience likely responded to the first scene in Othello, where genre convention demanded that the black character be evil and the white character be virtuous (as it was in Shakespeare's own Titus Andronicus). That convention is inverted by (I believe) the very next scene where Othello is vindicated as an upright war hero. It seems to me that this major part of Othello's greatness is lost on modern eyes if we don't attempt to see the play through the racism of the era it was written in.

I don't believe Shakespeare survives the "complete loss" of his context, as you said he does in your first post; we've been so influenced by that era (and him in particular) that there could never be a "complete loss." Plenty of the words and arguably some plot details that Shakespeare used have become archaic, and as such both need to either be changed for a modern audience or understood as ancient. But perhaps that's nitpicking.

Nevertheless, the failure of a certain adaptation to make the new context work falls fairly heavily on how well the actors, director, ect. sell the transplantation, not of any failure of Shakespeare's play to translate into different settings.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, and maybe this example isn't fair, but tell me what you think: when watching an updated Two Gentleman of Verona at OSF, using Amish manhood and the modern secular world as its context, the ending where Valentine gives Silvia to Proteus was acted and staged in such a way that the action seemed outlandish, out of character, and particularly offensive to the women (and some of the men) in the play. This was their way of softening what is treated pretty casually in the text. I don't think they changed any words, but I don't bring my folio with me to plays.

I'll leave you to untangle the web; I prefer to read Shakespeare without all that.

That's fine. We might just disagree on a small point. Nonetheless, I absolutely love to (at least try to) "untangle the web." And you're right, this has nothing to do with Watchmen (which I believe ought to stay in the 80s, just cause).

[Mr Sausage]

Shakespeare's plays use genre conventions, language, and structure of the period they were written in. Isn't it worth knowing that stuff? As to "where" or "when" a Shakespeare play should be set, I'm with you: I think it's fantastic that Shakespeare can go (almost) anywhere. But I don't believe that fact altogether dismisses the attempt at understanding his own historical perspective, his audience, his purposes in writing, his techniques, etc. Therefore, I don't think it's wrong to attempt to recreate the Shakespeare experience by simply sticking with the setting and time period given as well as viewing the play through the eyes of the average playgoers (each kind) in Elizabethan England (admittedly this is very rare); another more common option is creating "classical" productions that do not refer to a time period but seem to our eyes simply "timeless" or "old" (but one example from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a production I saw of The Winter's Tale where neither 1600s Italy nor modern America intruded). By that standard I agree: a modern audience can understand Shakespeare today, but I've found my romps through Elizabethan history to only enlighten me (as far as I can be enlightened; I'm not claiming to be a scholar, only an enthusiast, so please correct me if I misspeak).

Please, please don't think I'm declaring, or would ever declare, that any kind of learning or acquired knowledge about a book is irrelevant. Not at all, and I'm horrified to think that's how I came across. What I simply wanted to do was save Shakespeare from elitest ideas by emphasizing how available he is to the popular imagination. You don't necessarily need to know this stuff to understand Shakespeare, or to understand this or that play intelligently. I say this as someone who devotes time to acquiring this kind of additional knowledge about Renaissance literature; but I don't think this information necessarily makes me better equipped to understand what is essential or most important about Shakespeare than someone who hasn't devoted any time to it. I simply want to emphasize Shakespeare's ability to speak directly to an (unlearned) audience several centuries after his death.

I, with some justification, assumed that this was an attempt at applying the standard of Shakespeare's [portability, universality, whatever] to another work of art.

Well as I said I was trying to refute moviscop on his own terms; didn't mean to imply I'm judging everything on a Shakespearean scale of value. Many of my favourite writers work in a totally different mode than Shakespeare.

I am guilty of responding to your words and not your intentions.

There's no guilt in that, it's what you should be doing (I don't ask anyone to divine my intentions--the onus is on me to express them well). But I was trying to keep my initial post speculative and prodding, raising necessary rhetorical questions without affirming much myself, simply because I didn't feel like arguing over this complex idea. So I'm rather chagrined I got caught up in it anyway.

many are set in either timeless fantasy locations or foreign and/or imaginary places in what the audience assumed was the modern era and would have brought their own understanding to

Indeed, but then we have to ask whether this or that play only works, and is only intelligible, if a current audience brings the understanding of Shakespeare's contemporaries instead of "their own understanding." If the issues of the play are relevant only to a person living in that specific time period, is that not a major flaw?

When you really get down to it, Hamlet, for instance, is as much about Renaissance England as it is Renaissance Denmark. The concerns of the play are rather beyond both, and do not simply speak to the cultural contexts of either place.

Shakespeare's plays use genre conventions, language, and structure of the period they were written in.

Conventions reflect certain origins, but they are apprehended aesthetically first, and historically only second. Identifying a convention involves only reading/seeing enough Shakespeare plays to recognize the recurring pattern. More often than not these conventions are comprehensible because they are still present today: art, despite what the eighteenth century would have you believe, does not come out of life but out of other art. Convention is inherited across ages and cultures. The sassy sidekick is as old as Cervantes (and even then was a known convention). A specific knowledge of Renaissance England is not necessary to grasping genre convention.

Shakespearean language follows conventions, but expresses sentiments true to humanity in general, not just to the people of the Renaissance specifically. It's easy to speak simply to your mileau, but if that's all you do your works will have trouble surviving. That and Renaissance English was new enough and its rules and its accepted mannerisms/conventions loose enough to allow Shakespeare to invent freely (Latin was still the language of education). Many things we now think of as standard are Shakespeare's inventions, which makes him the only context necessary.

By that standard I agree: a modern audience can understand Shakespeare today, but I've found my romps through Elizabethan history to only enlighten me (as far as I can be enlightened; I'm not claiming to be a scholar, only an enthusiast, so please correct me if I misspeak).

There is a whole modern critical movement (that seems especially attracted to Shakespeare and the English Renaissance) called New-Historicism that, in fact, only seeks to understand Shakespeare as a product of a specific cultural and historical period. It's a viable critical method, but I have no sympathy with it at all. Anyway, I agree a bit of learning can enrich his plays, but I balk at the idea that only the select few who undertake it can truly understand Shakespeare.

It seems to me that this major part of Othello's greatness is lost on modern eyes if we don't attempt to see the play through the racism of the era it was written in.

Maybe. That's certainly worth a good discussion. I'm not against finding these kind of amplifications in the play, but I would add that if Othello's greatness could only be understood through the racist terms of the time, would that not lessen the play? You don't actually need said information to feel powerfully the destructive sexual jealousy of Othello and the nihilism of Iago, both of which transcend a Renaissance context. The racist ideas of the time enrich what was already intelligible to your modern sensibility.

What do you think of O, where they make Othello a black (and maybe poor, I can't remember) student in a preppy, all-white school? The play did not seem out of place in this modern setting, and worked rather well.

I don't believe Shakespeare survives the "complete loss" of his context, as you said he does in your first post; we've been so influenced by that era (and him in particular) that there could never be a "complete loss." Plenty of the words and arguably some plot details that Shakespeare used have become archaic, and as such both need to either be changed for a modern audience or understood as ancient. But perhaps that's nitpicking.

Yeah, that is kind of quibbling over tiny amounts. But even you will agree both Ran and Throne of Blood are missing a considerable and eye-opening amount of context (I would say all), not the least of which being that familiar Shakespearean language, which is missing entirely and yet we never miss it. The essential concerns of the story flourish in a context you may not think congenial to a Renaissance tragedy, let alone in what many, Shakespeare scholars included, believe the best adaptations of the man.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, and maybe this example isn't fair, but tell me what you think: when watching an updated Two Gentleman of Verona at OSF, using Amish manhood and the modern secular world as its context, the ending where Valentine gives Silvia to Proteus was acted and staged in such a way that the action seemed outlandish, out of character, and particularly offensive to the women (and some of the men) in the play. This was their way of softening what is treated pretty casually in the text. I don't think they changed any words, but I don't bring my folio with me to plays.

Well, what do you do with Shylock? Or with The Taming of the Shrew? These are problems, and no one is claiming all of Shakespeare's plays are perfect (or even that all of them are good--some definitely aren't).

[geoffcowgill]

Well, if Alan Moore is the Shakespeare of comic book writers, surely Zack Snyder is the Zack Snyder of movie directors.

[domino harvey]

Zack Snyder is the Zack Snyder of movie directors.

Brilliant =D>

[Antoine Doinel]

While WB asks for a quick judgment on distribution rights, producer Lloyd Levin issues an embarrassing open letter, in which, among other things, he celebrates the fact that WB signed Zack Snyder onto the film before the success of 300. Dave Poland deconstructs it here.