In the ‘Watchmen’ graphic novel and movie, is an intriguing vigilante character called Rorschach. Yes, you guessed it – his name was inspired by the Rorschach Test, which is also popularly known as the inkblot test, where black ink is splattered randomly on a piece of white paper and folded into half to create whatever symmetrical image that takes shape. Showing a number of such images to a psychologically perturbed person is used as a test to discern what he or she is preoccupied with. It works (but not always?) because by the power of perception, we tend to see what we want to see, or already keep seeing in our minds.
In the novel, Rorschach wears a full face mask made from a special fabric that uses two pressure and heat-sensitive liquids suspended between a layer of latex, which create black-on-white shifting color patterns, ‘always changing, never mixing into grey’. In other words, his face is the very three-dimensional expression of a Rorschach Test that keeps morphing with his physical and mental (emotional) changes. He dons it most of the time, and is in fact, rather attached to it, because he considers it as his true face – a poker face of change. When he is later unmasked in the story, we realise what his ‘real’ face is like doesn’t really matter, because it too changes in time.
(Rorschach quote in poster above as tagline – ‘The city is afraid of me. I’ve seen it’s true face.’ But has Rorschach seen his own true face in the first place?) In a sense, we are not unlike Rorschach, because we too are shape-shifting creatures. Physically, we are changing from moment to moment, at the cellular and molecular/sub-atomic level. Mentally, we are changing from moment to moment, from one thought to another. Also like Rorschach, we do know the truth that we change, but only to some extent, while we still cling to certain aspects of our delusions, such as the belief that there is an (illusory) ego to protect.
In Rorschach’s case, he clings to ‘moral absolutism’, where he too clearly differentiates the good from the evil, going to the full extent to punish the evil, forgetting that forgiveness is also good, that vengeance is also evil, that there is potential for the evil to repent to be good, that there is potential for the good to become evil. Ironically, his version of ‘moral objectivism’ becomes moral ambiguity at times, making him more grey or even black than white without him being mindful of it. When does righteousness becomes tainted with self-delusions to become self-righteousness? If you’ve watched ‘Watchmen’, what did you see in Rorschach? He is a Rorschach Test for you!
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