Did the good guys win? Who makes that call? The Watchmen comic was an expression of the Cold War, the result of the long twisting and squeezing that that paranoiac end of the world time imposed upon our collective whoness, whatness and whyness. It looked 1986 square in the eyes and asked: “What the heck happened to Superman’s Truth, Justice and the American way that it comes out with this?”
“What happened to the American Dream?” It came true. God *is* an American. We won. The struggle between Western Civilization and the Soviet Union came to a conclusion just a few years after the Watchmen. Western Civilization had killed every other major civilization in the world and, after a long struggle, its laws of economics took down the last one standing. The ability of Western Civilization to produce material wealth overcame the Byzantine solider with all of its soul sucking glory. It was a battle between Matrixes and our Matrix won (and spent the next two decades ingesting everything). Boo Yah!
And so, the Watchmen movie is a slightly different power. The comic was edgy, marginal. Even among comix fans it was a strange and uncomfortable new world. But it spread out. Out and up. GenY kids who never even heard of the comic. Aging Boomers who remember the times that gave rise to Alan Moore’s vision. Xers who were weaned on its darkness and clarity. And now, thanks to the mycelia of popular culture, people all over the world are watching the Watchmen and getting a straight hit of the American Dream. Tribesmen in Afghanistan are getting the Watchmen, in English, and are trying to decode it. Chinese scientists and businessmen. Trying to figure out what kind of machine produces something like this. Can it be lived with? Can it be defeated? All sorts of people are watching the Watchmen. Rich and poor. Young and old. And some of them are going to see something in it that makes sense.
Our post-Watchmen Watchmen is even more relevant. Because it is about the fault-lines between cultures and between affinities. What holds things together and what makes things fly apart? Did Watchmen go “too far”? Depends. Does that mean that it went so far that it was “too much” for the pop masses and, therefore, won’t be as successful in the market as Aliens vs. Robots? Or “too far” in that it has hit enough people in enough places to finally go to critical mass?
The old lines between people have become irrelevant. What new lines will emerge? East versus West? (Is India closer to China or the West?) Poor vs. Rich? Cyber vs. Meat? Young vs. Old? Faith vs. Science? And when those lines are drawn, who will win. Its all about winning in the end. Who won? Who Watches the Watchmen?
Fucking Cylon 
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