Size doesn't matter. Or does it? -- The essay that will never be.

I was busy with the first draft (below) for an essay that I thought I might use for my column in the quarterly (P~YP!) I’m involved with. Unfinished I sent it to a friend to read and see if it will be appropriate. He kindly suggested I find another topic. Trusting his judgment I will therefore not work on it any further. If I was to continue writing the essay, I would probably have looked for more examples of motifs that are overthrown, but in the end I would have complimented the movie a bit more.

Feeling it somewhat of a waste I decided to just post the first draft here, as is. After all, inspiration for the essay did come from a previous post I wrote.

Size doesn’t matter. Or does it? The Curious Case of Dr Manhattan’s Penis.

Did you notice Dr Manhattan’s big penis? What a silly question – if you’ve seen the movie, Watchmen, based on the graphic novel by the same name, you couldn’t help but notice the big glowing phallus. Apart from it shining in the dark, a big penis ought not be such a curious thing; however, when compared to Dr Manhattan’s penis in the graphic novel the difference is striking, and the cause for much hype.

When the director, Zack Snyder, went through painstaking efforts to make a movie rendition that matches the source material so closely, why the decision to upsize Dr Manhattan’s penis so dramatically? And does it really matter? Well, I think it does and here is why:

The graphic novel is overtly violent and doesn’t shy away from adult themes and sexual explicitness (with both rape and love scenes). However, in the graphic novel Dr Manhattan’s penis is very much downplayed. It is therefore clear that the author (Alan Moore) and artist (Dave Gibbons) did not intend to make Dr Manhattan’s nudity a sexual motif. His nudity carries themes of alienation from society, an abandonment of human customs and something something something [...find more reasons...]. Dr Manhattan’s undertoned penis in the graphic novel is also a symbol for his impotency at changing the future. Impotency is a recurring motif in the novel.

Contrary to the graphic novel, the film’s depiction of Dr Manhattan’s much larger penis is an overthrow of these motifs. The penis gains undue attention, eliciting themes opposing to the source material. Dr Manhattan has become not an impersonal symbol of science and power misused by those in control, but is now a symbol of masculinity, a symbol of penis-driven wars using phallic shaped atom bombs.

The climactic discourse by Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre discussing the fate of the world is not a debate of logic versus emotion, but most unemphatically it became a discussion of men with big penises versus women with big breasts.

Of course, the director has the freedom to reinterpret the source material. Unfortunately on this occasion it was at cost of the main theme of the story – whether the end justifies the means. But maybe the big glowing blue penis in the film is exactly such a “means”. Did Snyder hope that full frontal male nudity will up the ticket sales of the movie? If so, Snyder has turned a pop culture classic into bad soft porn with an overly complicated plot.