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Masked Identity In Watchman's Watchmen

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The story of Watchmen brings into question what it means to be a hero. The comic creates a world where masked vigilantes aren’t necessarily the forces for good that American culture presumes them to be. The “heroes” of Watchmen are morally questionable and often don’t do what most would consider right. Often, these vigilantes create their identities, at least partly, for reasons other than just protecting others. This includes using their identities as a way to wrestle with their feelings on sex and their own sexualities. Masked identity is used as a form of sexual expression in Watchmen. It can be used for either expressing revulsion towards sex or as a way of fulfilling the needs of a character’s repressed sexuality. Rorschach is perhaps the most extreme example of a vigilante who uses his masked identity to express revulsion towards sex. Rorschach finds sex in any way, shape, or form to be one …show more content…

In it he describes his relationship to being a crimefighter as an “adolescent romance” with a certain attraction to the idea of being Nite Owl (219, 6-8). Later, just before Laurie and Dan attempt to have sex for the first time, Laurie calls Dan “inhibited” and Dan is physically unable to have sex (225-227). In the dream Dan has after the failed sex, Dan does not feel like he has been completely undressed until he not only removes his clothes, but removes the skin of Dan to reveal the Nite Owl underneath (228). This visually represents Dan is not himself-and at his most sexually uninhibited-until he becomes Nite Owl. In the dream, he also needs Laurie to turn from being dressed as a dominatrix he encountered, the representation of desires slightly more conventional than his own, to being her own masked identity, Laurie Jupiter, to fit his own desires. The entire dream sequence has no dialogue, instead asking the reader to make their own interpretations on what it means for Dan’s

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