| | JA: Really? Do you think deconstructing the concept of a hero is great work?
John, whatever problems The Watchmen has -- and I was not enthusiastic after reading it -- I do not see "deconstruction" in the presentation.
Deconstruction is the name given by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to an approach (whether in philosophy, literary analysis, or in other fields) which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or, indeed, impossible.
Deconstruction generally operates by conducting close textual readings with a view to demonstrating that the text is not a discrete whole, and that it on the contrary contains several irreconcilable, contradictory meanings. What is shown through this process, therefore, is that there is more than one interpretation of a text, that these interpretations are inextricably linked in and by the text itself, that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible, and thus that there is a point beyond which the particular line of interpretative reading cannot go: Derrida refers to this point as an aporia in the text, and hence he refers to deconstructive reading as "aporetic." J. Hillis Miller has described deconstruction in the following terms: “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air
Deconstruction -- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction
I thought that by the end of both the book and the movie, everything was tied up very neatly or nearly so. The contradictions were resolved.
I will agree that The Watchmen does ask basic questions about costumed superheroes. Unlike Superman -- strange visitor from another planet -- costumed heroes are really only ordinary people who have taken on more than ordinary personal responsibility. But "more than ordinary" does not mean "heroic."
Since 9/11, and again with Katrina, we have been inundated with the “heroism” of emergency services workers doing their jobs, and with the stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, and general dysfunction of those faced with disasters of various sorts. The authors of this article submit that the commonly held views of heroism and stress response are both inter-related and misplaced.
The United States has an acute shortage of heroes. Few in this country other than the old have combat experience (the Gulf War, Gulf II, and Afghanistan to the contrary notwithstanding). We look for heroes where we can, often labeling as heroes those who are merely doing the jobs for which they were hired (sports figures and emergency services workers) and as “victims” those who were recipients of no physical harm at all.
In essence, we have become accustomed to dramatizing the routine.
"Stress and Psychological Effects" by Bernard H. Levin and Joseph A. Schafer in
Policing and Mass Casualty Events: Volume 3 of the Proceedings of the Futures Working Group Edited by Joseph A. Schafer & Bernard H. Levin
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