Jeffrey Lewis on The Watchman
blogWe went to the GFT last night for a lecture on Watchmen by antifolk icon Jeffrey Lewis. I hadn’t known what to expect. I thought perhaps it would be like his comic book and song history of Rough Trade records or his lo-fi comic book movie about the development Communism, but it wasn’t. It was, instead, a simple reading of his undergraduate thesis with the occasional illustrative slide. This sounds unpromising, especially for those of us who didn’t even like lectures when we were at university, but I came out feeling immensely stimulated.
Lewis treats Watchmen as if it were Ulysses: every frame is examined for layers of meaning, background detail, subtle use of imagery and advertising. We were told that the meaning of the book is the battle between circles and triangles, with circles representing eternity through Dr Manhattan and triangles representing Ozymandias and the hubris of trying to solve people’s problems for them. We were told to look for the denial of political reality shown by the motif of the smiley with its right eye obscured by blood. We were told to pay attention to the meaning of character names. The overall effect is to encourage you to see meaning as if it were always multilayered rather than just accepting easy utilitarian truth.