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Reid, Britanny. "Destroyer and Preserver: Monstrous intertextuality in watchmen." Monstrous Manifestations. Realities and Imaginings of the Monstrous. Eds. Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska and Karen Graham. At the Interface. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Pr. 2013. 87–94. Added by: joachim (20/10/2021, 09:56) Last edited by: joachim (20/10/2021, 10:11) |
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| Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English DOI: 10.1163/9781848882027_010 BibTeX citation key: Reid2013 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "Watchmen", Gibbons. Dave, Intertextuality, Monster, Moore. Alan, United Kingdom, USA Creators: Graham, Reid, Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska Publisher: Inter-Disciplinary Pr. (Oxford) Collection: Monstrous Manifestations. Realities and Imaginings of the Monstrous |
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The following chapter contends that in the consideration of sole authorship, texts such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen complicate typical notions through the extended use of intertextuality. The result of this explicit heterogeneity is a bastard form that conflates traditional literary forms with comics and frustrates hierarchical binary distinctions. The creation of Watchmen was a watershed moment for future compositional practices and the academic treatment of texts formerly considered ‘commercial art.’ Through a reliance on established tropes and generic conventions, topical cultural references and thematically poignant literary epigraphs, Watchmen is the culmination of its varied influences. In addition to their role as central contributors, Moore and Gibbons act as curators and compilers. Combing poignant classical and popular references, they engage in conversation with some of the most influential champions of progress, innovation and social action throughout history, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Bob Dylan. The resulting text is the literary equivalent to Frankenstein’s creature - the progeny of creative harvesting and an attempt to achieve the ideal form through selective composition. Playing the role of Dr. Frankenstein, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons exhume bodies of work and splice radical thinkers into their own narrative to create a seminal text that proves to be as great as the sum of its illustrious parts. However, this re-appropriation requires further questioning in line with Roland Barthes’ and Michel Foucault’s studies of the author-function: How does this overt application of intertextuality influence traditional literary analysis? An evaluation of these implanted sections both individually and as they relate within Watchmen is useful to understanding the work as a cohesive whole. Also, the inclusion of authorship as it pertains to other works, especially graphic novels, offers an instructive paradigm for how we can consider these new definitions in this emerging academic field.
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