Friday, October 28, 2011
Watchmen
I'm new to the comic world, and I absolutely love it! After I started Watchmen I couldn't put it down. I was constantly talking to my friends who had already read it and I kept telling others that haven't read it that they need to. I couldn't believe how captivated I was, sometimes too much so that I would try to examine each detail to the extreme. The one symbol that really stuck out to me was the Nostalgia perfume. In class we discussed that nostalgia is a word that means longing for the past, and I find it a very fitting name for this perfume. Every time it is shown in a picture with a character that person is always thinking about the past, or a figure from their past comes back. In the first few chapters Dan reminisces about being the Nite Owl because Rorshach comes and reminds him that he chose to quit. In chapter 3 Rorshach comes back to Dan's apartment and we see him taking a bottle of Nostalgia perfume with him. After the bottle of perfume is removed, Dan thinks only of the present and future. Instead of longing for the past, Dan then is not afraid to establish a closer relationship with Laurie and then is not scared to jump back in his Nite Owl costume in order to spring Rorshach from jail. In chapter 8, Sally Jupiter's phone rings and on the other end is Hollis Mason. In the very scene where Sally realizes that it is Hollis, there is a picture of a Nostalgia perfume bottle with almost a spark coming out of it as to say that it will then cause Sally to reminisce on the past. Hollis tells Sally of her daughter and the new Nite Owl had saved the people from the burning building. Hollis then says "Takes you back huh?" Sally responds with telling him of how she had been thinking of the past a lot lately, the effects of the Nostalgia perfume. The last example I can think of, though I know there is plenty more, is when Laurie is at Dan's and Dr. Manhattan shows up. Right before he shows up, Laurie had a bottle of Nostalgia perfume in her hand. Then engage in a conversations where Laurie says that she was just thinking of Jon and how she wanted to talk to him. From here he teleports them to Mars where they can converse alone. All of these instances are obviously not coincidences, they are connected with Vedit's perfume. My questions is since he is planning to take away the Nostalgia perfume and replace it with Millenium line of perfume. How would this have a symbolic reference to someone's life?
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I really liked that you chose to focus on a particular symbol, mostly because I didn't have the patience to do it myself, hahahaha. I think the Nostalgia bottle was really interesting, and I think you were pretty spot on with your analysis of it.
ReplyDeleteAfter I read your post, I thumbed through the book to try to find as many images of the bottle as possible and you were totally right - each time the bottle was in a frame, someone was either having a flashback, or referring to the past in some way. That's just one of the million ways that this novel was so smart. Not only is the word "nostalgia" just a super sick name for a line of perfume, but it's a really poignant term that was applicable to almost each character in the story.
I've been pretty closely surrounded by comic nerds for most of my life, so while I was familiar with this territory, I'd never really dove too deeply into it. I think it's safe to say that I too am a bit of a convert into this crazy world of comics :)
To answer this very good question, you might think of the difference between the meanings of both actual words. And also, given the context, think of what Veidt did, and why he did it, given that he owns both lines. I'd have really liked to see you pursue your observations a little further. There's a lot here, and you drop it before really following through, sadly.
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