Technology representing evil in science fiction tends to have a cause—some type of evil force behind it—and is thus signified by this cause. In Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, the spectacular human development that occurs and ultimately destroys humankind is set into motion by a singular, evil force, the Overmind. In the case of Clarke’s story, humans become aware of this cause but are powerless to stop the effects. The evil of the advancement that takes place in Childhood’s End is signified by the Overmind, a galactic entity far beyond human comprehension, but still existent as a being somewhere in the universe. Science fiction in general seems to follow this basic formula—only the ending varies in terms of whether or not the hero or heroes are able to prevent disaster from occurring. When the heroes are able to prevent malevolent technology from destroying the world, they may use that technology against the force behind; however, it usually comes at the price of destroying the technology itself as in Philip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report” or Asimov’s I, Robot.
Watchmen, however, seems to defy these terms. Technology exists as a threat; however, it is difficult to pin down any real source for the perceived threat. Rather than conceiving of the events in Watchmen as incited and then directed by one malevolent force that comes to signify the technology it uses to achieve a specific end, we can conceive of technology as a trace that evades signification—that is we can read no malevolent force that exists behind technology to bring it signification and thus the characters in the story act against an intangible, an empty signifier. The signification the reader expects is continually deferred; technology exists as a moment of différance. Whenever the evil of a technology threatens to manifest itself completely, it becomes displaced by another, refreshing the feeling of paranoia that the society of the novel feels. It is this necessity for paranoia on a societal scale that seems to drive the major events of the novel forward rather than the desire of the heroes to stop a singular entity from committing wrong and using technology as a vehicle to do so.
Technological threats exist in three primary ways within the text: Dr. Manhattan, nuclear war, and the plot by Adrian Veidt to prevent nuclear war and thus, end the Cold War. The novel comes across as particularly ironic, possibly even troubling or problematic because the heroes are not able to prevent Veidt, the “villain,” from executing his master plan, which requires the death of hundreds of thousands, and they decide to protect him rather than turn him in. I use the term villain very lightly with regard to Veidt because he is not a typical villain per se and not for the reasons one would normally classify a villain as atypical, i.e. a Byronic hero, etc. However, a reading of the somewhat problematic ending can be best advanced by reconceptualizing the catalyst for the events in the novel. What we can see developing within the novel is a technology that exists simply to further nothing but a societal desire to remain paranoid about the looming threat of technology in general.
Dr. Manhattan represents two sides of a traditional sci-fi conception of technology. He is both savior and threat. The extent of his capabilities are not just unknown—they are unknowable. The reader learns that he is able to not just manipulate all matter, but he also sees the atoms that comprise it. He comprehends not the totality of the universe, but its infinitude. He is outside of human existence both temporally and spatially, and because of that, eventually becomes unable to see the value of humanity. He sits on Mars, contemplating his past, present, and future simultaneously. As he recounts the events, he says “Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been here all the time. I’m there now, in 1960, saying those words watching that T.V. set” (IV, 13). Dr. Manhattan is not confined to presence. He is omnipresent.
While his presence overshadows the Cold War, the Russians are kept at bay. Dr. Manhattan has helped the U.S. win the Vietnam War. With him, the U.S. is invulnerable. However, his presence does not necessarily put the American public at ease. The magazine vendor, who represents American public sentiment, declares: “We oughtta nuke Russia and let God sort it out. I mean, I see the signs, read the headlines, look things inna face, y’know? I’m a newsvendor, goddamnit! I’m informed on the situation! We oughtta nuke ‘em till they glow!” (III, 1). Even with Dr. Manhattan’s presence, there remains a sense of paranoia. This vendor, as well as the media, knows that Dr. Manhattan exists. They know he is in the United States, working with the government. They know what he did in Vietnam. The vendor has no reason to fear the Russians and no reason to want them destroyed by nuclear weapons because of Dr. Manhattan.
It seems that Dr. Manhattan’s value, his presence, has been forgotten; however this is not necessarily the core of the problem. More accurately, Dr. Manhattan’s presence fails to provide the narrative the American people are looking for for salvation from evil primarily because labels such as good and evil cannot be placed directly onto him. This type of signification is continually deferred. The public not only does not understand even a fraction of his capabilities, but they desire a certainty that he does not embody. He is not a traditional superhero. He is all superheroes combined. However, in this, he seems to embody characteristics that could be classified as villainous insofar as he has no empathy. The American public never looks to him as a savior until after he is already gone. Dr. Manhattan is accused on national television of causing cancer in the people he had been close to over the years. This creates a brief moment of hysteria for the press, and in that moment, the final barrier from the possibility of Russian attack is removed. Dr. Manhattan travels to Mars.
As one government official puts it immediately following these events, Dr. Manhattan was “the lynch-pin of America’s strategic superiority” (III, 23). With Dr. Manhattan gone, Veidt just has to wait and watch as America grows more and more restless, more and more paranoid. Dr. Manhattan was never the threat he is accused of being; he actually did have the ability to be a protector. The threat of Dr. Manhattan’s “technology” so to speak has no force behind it. As soon as this threat is signified, its meaning is immediately deferred. The Russians seem to become the true threat and remain in this position until near the end of the novel.
The Russians occupy a different space in the novel because the reader is only given their actions through the perspective of the media. This perspective is contained to the background noise of the majority of the novel: Newspaper headlines and television news reports that appear between the dialogue of characters. One of the first news reports following the departure of Dr. Manhattan states:
In Afghanistan the fighting spreads… As the conflict moves closer to its borders, Pakistan today called on the U.S. to intervene…Thus while Russia claims to be merely securing her borders, western experts see only opportunistic hostility in the wake of Dr. Manhattan’s departure. Meanwhile, America’s European military installations have been place on full alert [. . .] And throughout the world there is tension with no sign of a breakthrough (VII, 12-3).
The lack of hope in these news reports can be read as an attempt to resignify technological threat. There is comfort in at least knowing the threat the country faces. However, that lack of hope, the paranoia regarding the escalation of the conflict must remain. And, in fact, the escalation of the conflict is never allowed to come to fruition. As soon as it seems as though the Russians will finally launch an offensive on the United States, Veidt unleashes his plan, and signification is deferred again.
This escalating conflict, however, runs behind what appears to be the main plot, the driving action of the novel. The protagonists are in search of the entity that seems to be behind a conspiracy to rid the U.S. of superheroes, possibly to prevent them from intervening in the Russia conflict as they did in Vietnam. The Comedian is killed at the opening of the novel; Dr. Manhattan is forced to leave Earth; Rorschach is set up and arrested by the police. Even Veidt is shot at. Nite Owl and The Silk Specter, both thought to have been retired, rescue Rorschach and convince Dr. Manhattan to return, but their pursuit is ultimately futile—not because they are unable to physically prevent Veidt from unleashing his plot, but because Veidt actually does not bring signification to technology.
Veidt’s plot requires that signfication be deferred again. Once it is executed, the Russian threat, specifically their nuclear weapons, is neutralized. Veidt’s plot is essentially to create a mock alien invasion that will kill hundreds of thousands in New York so that the world will unite against this new threat. In describing his master stroke to Night Owl and Rorschach, he says that he “saw East and West locked into an escalating arms spiral, their mutual terror and suspicion mounting with the missiles [. . .] Both sides realized the suicidal implications of nuclear conflict, yet couldn’t stop racing towards it lest their opponents should overtake them. Afraid of their weapons, afraid of losing them, afraid to blink or turn their backs” (XI, 21). Veidt continues to lay out his entire thought process. He sees continuing environmental ruin at the hands the of the atomic age, and says that “[Dr. Manhattan’s] presence accelerarted this [. . .] Nevertheless, he somehow symbolized mankind’s problems (XI, 22). In this moment, Veidt too attempts attribute some kind of signification to technology. He understands Dr. Manhattan’s presence better than anyone. This presence may signify incredible advancement in technology; however, Veidt’s assertion that Dr. Manhattan symbolizes mankind’s problems is not entirely accurate, especially given what he has already done.
His plan involves using the technology that Dr. Manhattan’s existence brings to the world. With Dr. Manhattan’s help, Veidt makes extensive leaps in the fields of teleportation and genetics. On an island he had purchased fifteen years before, a team of artists and scientists develop a massive creature—an alien. Veidt teleports the alien to New York City, which causes an explosion—an unexplained side effect of teleportation that seemed to render it useless during Veidt’s and Dr. Manhattan’s research. Veidt also uses his enormous wealth to prevent Dr. Manhattan from seeing the unleasing of this plan in the future: he creates tachyon interference so that Dr. Manhattan cannot see his future and know what Veidt is doing. Veidt uses this technology to unleash his plan—yet the technology remains an empty signifier because only Veidt and the protagonists know that that was the reason behind it. And they choose to remain silent. The alien invasion does resignify technological threat, but in a way where from this point on it will always remain a threat, never to manifest itself again. The world will be locked in a state of perpetual paranoia where the technological threat—alien teleportation will never appear again because it was not real.
This ending becomes problematic because the reader is not one of ignorant citizens of the world—the reader knows the truth. Yet even Veidt’s actions themselves evade being signified as evil. He is not the same malevolent force behind destruction that many villains are in science fiction. When his plan is revealed to have worked, he asks the protagonists, “Will you expose me, undoing the peace millions die for? Kill me, risking subsequent investigation? Morally, you’re in checkmate” (XII, 20). The novel puts the reader in moral checkmate as well; however, it may be more accurate to say that what the reader experiences is the inability to create a master narrative that comfortably explains the events of the novel. The terms good and evil cannot be effectively centered as signifieds for the characters. No matter which character the reader tries to attach to regarding these terms, he finds that the character will slip away. Rorschach wants to expose Veidt’s plot, which the reader sees as possibly redeemable. At the same time, however, the reader knows what this exposure would do: plunge the world back into war, causing greater devastation and death. The reader cannot fully relate to Rorschach’s position, especially when he tells the others, “Even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise” ( XII, 20). The reader paradoxically finds himself aligned with Veidt and now the other protagonists who agree to keep quiet, in a state of continually deferred, decentered meaning. Or as Nite Owl puts it, “How can humans make decisions like this? We’re damned if we stay quiet; Earth is damned if we don’t” (XII, 20).
Works Cited
Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. 1986-7. New York: DC Comics, 1995.
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