“Watchmen” Characters Are A Psychological Seesaw
Owls are symbolic of knowledge and wisdom. They are associated with guiding people through the unknown because of their nocturnal eyesight and vigilance.
On one end sits The Comedian and Rorschach. Their emotions control their lives. They act chiefly on the impulse to destroy. The Comedian seems to find pleasure in the pain he inflicts. Rorschach operates with righteous anger seeded in wounds that were inflicted on him a long time ago. (It’s a nice touch that Rorschach has red hair to symbolize his fiery, emotional nature.) Both men are out of control because they can’t get their emotions under control. Acting on whatever impulse is welling up in them at the moment is all they know and they make no attempt to put an end to their pain by finding another way.
At the opposite place on the seesaw sits Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias. The two men represent cerebralism taken to the extreme of nearly complete emotional detachment. Thanks to suffering the consequences of being accidentally locked in an ”intrinsic field chamber,” Doctor Manhattan can travel through time and space and see into the future. These distancing abilities have allowed him to detach from the regular treadmill of human existence. Dr. Manhattan’s altered state also means he could change the course of human events. He chooses not to because, as he explains, it wouldn’t change human nature. So he watches. Appropriately, he radiates blue, the color of spiritual and intellectual life, detachment, eternity.
Ozymandias is called the smartest man on earth. Like Dr. Manhattan, he lives a cerebral existence tending to his multi-billion dollar corporation and studying the great leaders of ancient Egypt. His office is hundreds of feet in the sky, eye-level with the blimps and the birds. Unlike Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias believes his intelligence and objectivity give him the unique right to intervene in human affairs on a massive scale — sacrificing millions of human lives in order to save the human race.
I think there is one character who acts as the balance, the midpoint in this seesaw of extremes. Nite Owl II personifies the melding of relatedness and reason. Jungians call this the uniting of Eros and Logos. He feels without letting his emotions run his life. When innocent people are hurt, it affects him in a way that broadens his humanity and propels him to swallow his fear and fire up Archie, his crime-fighting flying machine. Nite Owl is the only character who attempts to have a positive love relationship. Making love to Laurie Jupiter is a physical manifestation of Nite Owl’s attempt to unite the Eros-Logos energies within him.
I’ve read some criticism that Watchmen doesn’t have enough action, but for me the great thing about the movie was that it took the time to show heroes who were multidimensional and flawed, victims of their own demons and free will. And there’s plenty of symbolism, so if there’s some particular imagery that you enjoyed in Watchmen, please let us know.
– Writeye
Posted on March 8th, 2009 under Jungian Psychology, Movies • Tags: blue symbolism, Eros meaning, Logos meaning, Owl symbolism, red symbolism, Watchmen movie characters. • 
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April 3rd, 2009 at 1:50 am
I don’t think the Comedian’s value to the story was in the pleasure he received from other’s pain, but rather a specific portrayal of a reaction a man can have in the face of an existence lacking meaning. as the only hero that remained active across the generation gap from the minutemen to the watchmen. because of this instead of retiring to the next stage of life and facing preparation for death he remains active through the vietnam war and witnesses a world that only gets worse. mind you i agree his ego is one that thrives on the pain of others, but that trait isn’t what he brings to the table that makes him valuable to the story. Rorschach does a better job in embodying that trait since without it he’d be less fascinating as its much more meaningful that his ego won’t consciously admit his deeper motivations (instead going so far as to see himself as just, and he even compensates in an internal dialogue by propping himself up as the only [hero] left without mental illness). A comedian in practice is someone who gets to observe and criticise as much as he wants, and never need contribute to a cause yet still be a part of society. The Comedian gets to be the guy who watches a world wrap itself up in a war, learn nothing from it, and do it all over again. He rides the rollercoaster since he gets his jollies off it. At the end of the day I base my assumptions on some degree of empathy mixed with personal projection so I think in his position I could only see that life valuable if I didn’t want to find meaning/purpose in my life anymore, and so I assume based on what we do see of his character that he’d be acting from that perspective as well.
Also I wonder if you’ve explored the notion of the Puer Aeternus and compared it to the Nite Owl II? In this case the type that would compensate by giving up his dreams after being jaded by ‘growing up’ but never capable of actually living on the ground and engaging life.
April 5th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Teikari:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment. I see what you are saying about the Comedian existing without meaning or purpose in his life as an explanation for his lack of empathetic human interaction (and for his name – the Comedian). Although a comedian’s job is to observe and comment on human folly, I think they do contribute to society by making us aware of our ridiculous behavior and teaching us to laugh at ourselves; they help us take our individual and collective egos down a notch. Unfortunately, the Comedian’s barbaric proclivity for wanton violence rendered him ineffective as a messenger of the humourous side of human frailty.
I did not think about Nite Owl II suffering from the puer aeternus neurotic character type until you brought it up. In the first half of the movie, we can certainly see that he is stuck in (or regressed to) the “eternal boy” psychology (puella aeternus is the “eternal girl”). He lives a narrow life of once-a-week meetings with Night Owl and eating Chinese take out alone in his dark and empty house. Of course, the opposite of the eternal boy is the hero — a person who faces the challenges and complexities of life head on.
Nite Owl II wore the hero’s mantle briefly, but backed away from it when he saw the full, dark complexities of the outside world. He even admits to Laurie Jupiter that he became afraid. But I think by the end of the movie he has grown beyond his puer aeternus complex. He met the dangers presented by Ozymandias’ destructive plan and began a fully adult relationship with Laurie Jupiter. As the movie ended, I was left with the impression that Nite Owl II was committed to remaining on his adult path and wasn’t going to shy away this time.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Agreed, it would be hard to argue the role of comedian is not of our value in society, but i’m not sure of your interpretation of the puer aeternus and what you mean by the ‘hero’ being the opposite of the eternal child?
Puer aeternus, as i understand it, describes an archetypal personality, while the notion of the hero describes an archetypal journey. I can conceive of relationships between the terms, but I don’t think theres a way to equate the two as the negatives of each other. I know you mention this in only one line but I think it characterises your later words, and together they give in my mind merit to trying to define the puer relative to heroism.
From what I can understand, the symbol that is the puer aeternus only takes the form of the child (and retrospectively named ‘puer’ by Jung) because it embodies whats symbolically equated with the state of consciousness that is in a child, or really a lack-of consciousness. The puer aeternus is a form not differentiated from the unconscious. Energy in this form is highly potent, but lacks its own will to direct itself. Hence why puer aeternus figures, like Peter Pan, are characterised by constant forgetfulness, sometimes a lack of seriousness, and other qualities of life that are much more use to an ego thats driven on some path towards self-awareness. Thats not to say that a puer aeternus symbol can’t be part of the journey towards self-awareness, just an attempt at indicating that the puer can contain the connection to the unconscious energy, but not the will to wield the energy.
Obviously the child/child-god is often a positive dream symbol; the negative aspect of the puer as i see it, is when the ego does not seek or know how to unite its child-like power, with the drive towards greater self-awareness that gives meaning to life. In the face of this ignorance the negative result can vary depending on how the ego compensates. The pattern of compensation though that gave Jung justification for labeling the puer aeternus as a neurotic disorder is the obsession with ‘being free’.
The freedom spoken of, is suggested by Jung, a compensation when the demands of engaging life put the highly potent connection to the unconscious at risk of repression. The puer is unaware of how to maintain the unconscious connection and engage the demands of life, so instead he rides out his already present connection to the unconscious that doesn’t make demands of him. Its wonderful when its positive, but horribly draining when its negative, because the ego’s constitution is lacking in perspective/will/capacity or some kind of attribute that provides a healthy presence with negative energies presented by such a connection to the unconscious.
So an understanding along these lines is why I think Jung can describe many different resulting ego’s+persona’s of those suffering the puer type. Those still maintaining their deep connection to the unconscious project their emotional concerns throughout their surroundings and often in irresponsible ways that are obviously burdening to both themselves and others around them. But so long as they continue with this they are maintaining their ‘freedom’ to exercise their unconscious energy and hence aren’t exactly obsessed with freedom, they just act out their freedom as if it were their birth-right. The reason why the ‘reserved’ character of the Nite Owl though might be linkable to the puer though is for the same reason, but its as if the ego compensated in another way.
If the Nite Owl were a puer, his type of compensation would be in the form of repressing the outward expression of the child-like connection to the unconscious for the sake of functional living. Instead of going on the ‘hero’s journey’ that results in the transmutation of this energy into something that can be lived in the world, his experience of life would react by repressing its outward presentation and finding a way to live it internally. The obsession to be ‘free’ or free this energy would still be there, but instead of being acted out in a world thats taught he can’t expel this energy freely (i.e. Society said you can’t go around expelling your unconscious energy through the projections as the masked Flying Bird of Justice), he would build his own external world that felt safe enough to not put that energy at risk anymore. Such a life in this case involves no external force demanding of him, giving free reign to nurse his unconscious connection. The penalty, as i understand though, is that this connection to the unconscious, unexpressed, eventually dissipates and the ego having found no other source of energy, and losing its one connection is left with no experience of life. As opposed to the irresponsibly projecting puer (who at least constantly expresses his unconscious energy), this type of puer becomes lifeless, what i poorly tried to imply by the term of ‘jaded’, and finds justification for acts such as narcotics consumption in a desperate attempt to engage the unconscious or pursues suicide for the sake of escaping a life without any experience of life.
Making another attempt at trying to understand this archetype has been rewarding to me (Also, suffering from food poisoning, this has taken my mind off my waterlogged digestive tract). I don’t think though I can say anymore without writing something that might cap your sites monthly bandwidth, and im pretty sure some of what I wrote wasn’t even useful for supporting my initial question. I think it is fair to say though the puer aeternus is an archetypal personality, and I don’t think ‘heroism’ can be in any way the opposite of the puer. As for a symbolic personality to be the opposite of the puer, it would too have to be a symbolic personality. The ‘Hero’ in my mind seems something impossible to define as a personality. What is defined by mythology, literature, folk-lore, etc. is the “Hero’s Journey” and thats a template for conflict resolution between an individual and a force.
April 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Teikari,
First, I hope you’re feeling much better after your bout with food poisoning. I think you’re right that my statement of a hero being the opposite of the eternal boy is inaccurate. I think it is safe to say that the hero is certainly a more conscious and therefore a more psychologically developed state of being than the eternal boy. With this in mind, an apples-to-apples comparison can be — and is often made — between the two.
Jungian analyst Ester Harding talks in her book ‘The I And The Not I’ about the hero archetype dividing into two streams, one being the “innocent hero.” “This is the theme of the dying and resurrecting gods, a further development of the ‘puer aeternus’ theme, that has its expression in the lives of many historical figures whose death has led to a resurrection of the spiritual ideas and ideals for which they died . . . But the mythogem of the hero can take on another form, the emphasis falling not on self-denial and submission, but on courage and struggle.” It is this latter embodiment of the hero that I was thinking of when I wrote my earlier response to you.
In ‘Man and His Symbols,’Joseph L. Henderson writes: “These hero myths vary enormously in detail, but the more closely one examines them the more one sees that structurally they are very similar. They have, that is to say, a universal pattern. . . . In many of these stories the early weakness of the hero is balanced by the appearance of strong tutelary figures — or guardians — who enable him to perform the superhuman tasks that he cannot perform unaided. . . . The essential function of the heroic myth is the development of the individual’s own ego-consciousness — his awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses . . . once the individual has passed his initial test and can enter the mature phase of life, the hero myth loses its relevance.”
So it seems to me that the hero can be both a journey of human transformation and an archetypal energy that can be adopted psychologically as a personality. I thought Ester Harding’s insight about the innocent hero was interesting. She says they overcome “not by resistance but by adaptation.” She mentioned Christ and I thought of Joan of Arc as another example. I wonder if she says the innocent hero is an evolution of the puer aeternus because their hero journeys didn’t begin from the standpoint of discernment — say being consciously aware of good and evil and choosing good over evil. Their journeys began with a calling, some voice, drive or yearning within them that they could not ignore, they had to sucumb to it.
I really appreciate your taking the time to post your thought-provoking comments Teikari.