These are the questions that Jared Davidson sets out to answer in Remains to be Seen. After extensive research drawing on archival material, much of it previously unpublished, he concluded that while there is no “concrete evidence” of Joe Hill’s ashes arriving in New Zealand – or even being sent here in the first place – it is highly likely they were. While the IWW in New Zealand was on the decline in the later half on the 1910s (a result of state repression) there were many members who were still agitating and maintaining contact with the US IWW.

Ashes did arrive in Australia (though they were destroyed by police soon afterward in a raid on the Sydney IWW offices). At the time Australia and New Zealand shared the same postal shipping route which went to Sydney via Auckland so if the ashes were indeed sent here, chances are they arrived. The mostly likely scenario is that they were intercepted and destroyed by state censors.

Remains to be Seen is largely a historical account of the New Zealand state’s repression of militant labour during World War One. Under the War Regulations Act the state was given immense power to censor publications and imprison agitators. Solicitor-General John Salmond had the ability to circumvent parliament in deciding what material needed to be censored, and described IWW publications as a “public evil”.

The book is an easy read and doesn’t require a great amount of prior knowledge about labour history on the part of the reader and would serve as a good introduction to anyone wanting to discover more about repression of dissent in New Zealand during the first world war. Some of the material may come as a shock to those unfamiliar with this history. In the forward a number of books on the topic are suggested for further reading.

Jared Davidson has written books on design and does the design work for the Labour History Project. This is his first labour history book.

This collection of essays brings together a number of different perspectives on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) currently being negotiated behind closed doors between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and the United States. The policy framework is still largely neo-liberal, despite that economic model’s credibility taking a knock since the Global Financial Crisis.

Recent US-brokered trade deals, such as its December 2005 agreement with Peru, contain clauses to prohibit “expropriation and measures ‘tantamount to expropriation’, with the exception of a ‘public purpose’ (which carries a right to full compensation), and provides investors with due process protection and the right to receive a fair market value for property in the event of expropriation.” (p.74) This could have far-reaching consequences for any future socialist or progressive government.

But will the TPPA lead to a more liberal immigration policy with respect to the US’s TPP partners?  Lori Wallach and Todd Tucker comment: “on a bipartisan basis, leaders of the congressional committee that sets immigration policy… have repeatedly insisted that no future trade pacts provisions may contain visa or other immigration policies. A TPPA with immigration provision would be dead on arrival in Congress.” (p.67)

The effects of recent FTAs are most brutal in poor countries, particularly for indigenous populations. The traditional territories of the Mapuche people in the south of Chile have been ravaged by intensive forestry, fishing and the building of hydro dams, which have expanded massively since the US-Chile FTA, effective from January 2004. Indigenous people, and particularly Mapuche, reacted with social protest against the consequences of investments in which they had no say or participation. Three Mapuche activists have been killed by police agents in the last decade. While the killers have escaped justice, thousands of indigenous activists have been prosecuted by the state, including under widespread use of anti-terrorism laws. (p. 77)

José Aylwin notes that while opposition to FTAs is nearly universal among indigenous peoples, some New Zealand Māori organisations buck the trend. This he attributes on the one hand to the inclusion of Māori entities in activities such as fisheries, forestry and the geothermal industry as a result of Treaty settlements; and on the other hand to the Government’s inclusion of Māori representatives in the negotiation of such agreements, “even if it is for pro-corporate reasons”. (p. 81)

The US’s motivation for the TPPA goes beyond trade, according to Paul G. Buchanan. The agreement “would provide the US with a trade-based counterbalance to Chinese ambitions as well as address the current soft power imbalance that favours the Chinese in the South Western Pacific.” (p. 89) In a similar vein, Jock Given argues that “at a time when Washington Consensus capitalist countries have found themselves uneasily dependent on the economies of nation states choosing different ideological routes to economic growth, the TPPA provides an opportunity to lay some political bedrock beneath the trading practices of the Asia-Pacific region – a ‘Western’ Far Eastern bloc.” (p. 188)

Another aspect of such deals, known as “issue linkage” is the assumption that partners to trade and security deals develop stronger mutual dependencies compared to those who are not trade or security partners. Buchanan explains how the degree of integration between imperialist countries influences trade talks:

The fifth Labour government’s reluctance to join the invasion of Iraq was partially attributed to the lack of progress in getting the US to reciprocate New Zealand’s interest in negotiating a bilateral FTA, while both Labour’s and National’s deployment of Special Air Services troops to Afghanistan is seen as an inducement for US consideration of a bilateral agreement. For the Australians, issue linkage is a given, which is why the bilateral FTA with the US that entered into force in 2005 is explicitly seen as a reward for Australian military support of the US invasion of Iraq and its ongoing operations in Afghanistan. Conversely, slow progress on a US-New Zealand bilateral FTA was attributed, again in part, to US displeasure with New Zealand’s reluctance to join the ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq. [p. 90]

John Quiggin notes that when Australia-US FTA came into effect in 2005, enthusiasm for neo-liberalism was already in decline. “Rather than using the provisions of the AUSFTA to advance an agenda of privatisation and deregulation, as was widely expected, the Howard government adhered to the letter of the agreement, but was not, in practice much constrained by its provisions.” (p. 108) Public pressure forced a number of U-turns on privatisations, and changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The dispute between the tobacco companies and the Australian government over the adoption of plain packaging for cigarettes is still on-going. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris lodged a submission with the USTR complaining that the measure “would amount to expropriation of its intellectual property rights in its trade mark, as well as ‘limit the freedom of commercial free speech, significantly restrict competition and breach Australia’s obligations under [an existing FTA]” (p. 158-9) Furthermore, they lobbied for “an investor-state settlement provision that would allow the company to sue governments for introducing tobacco regulation that it believed reduced the commercial value of its investment.”

Bill Rosenberg questions whether the investment provisions of the TPPA would be in New Zealand’s “national interest” – a concept that is largely a fiction in such a radically class-divided society as ours. Restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) currently mainly apply to land and fishing quota. However, as Rosenberg points out, “the largest part of FDI by value is… business investment – such as ownership of banks, telecommunication, media, supermarkets, elderly care facilities and transport firms”, which is minimally regulated.

Thus some of the major recent controversies around overseas ownership have centred around acquisition of land. Rosenberg cites the case of a Chinese shareholding bid for sixteen (mainly dairy) farms owned by the Crafar family after it went into receivership. “Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden, for example, expressed concern that ‘New Zealand’s economic future could, in fact, be in jeopardy if we allow our dairy industry to slip from our control’, and Prime Minister John Key warned that New Zealanders could ‘become tenants in our own country.’” (p. 202)

What Rosenberg fails to note is that the whole campaign was designed to protect some of the richest special interest groups in Aotearoa, served up with a good dose of “yellow peril” racism. (After all, the single purchase of Otago farmland by Canadian singer Shania Twain six years ago was four times the size of the 16 Crafar farms, and there was no national scandal then.)

So, should we ever support protectionist measures for domestic industries? Bryan Gould points to the examples of Japan and Korea, and latterly China and India, “which have all been developing economies over relatively recent times, we can see they all chose to protect their industries behind tariff walls and other obstacles to free trade, so that their less-than-competitive industries had a chance to develop and gain strength. Once they had done that, they were increasingly able to free up their economies to free trade.” (p. 38) So far, so reasonable. Gould then goes on to argue: “It would be helpful for New Zealand to identify itself correctly, not as a developed country and only perhaps as a developing one, and to frame its economic policies accordingly.” Such are the contortions Social Democrats must go through in order to support protectionism in an advanced capitalist country!

There are many good reasons to oppose the TPPA (the issues around intellectual property are dealt with elsewhere in this issue of The Spark). However, we must be careful to oppose it in the name of a positive alternative – internationalism.

(This article will appear in the June issue of The Spark)

Privatising parts

Richard Meros

Lawrence and Gibson 2011

Reviewed by Joel Cosgrove, Workers Party Wellington Branch

“Who better than students to teach teachers what students ought to be taught?”, so asks Richard Meros in his new fiction Privatising Parts. Quite simply this is a beautifully crafted piece of satire. On the surface this is a stinging critique of the far-right dwellers floating far out in the political stratosphere, think Muriel Newman, Roger Kerr etc. But this is not just a lampooning of the free-market logic taken to its extreme, it’s a satire of the underlying free-market logic itself.

For those unfamiliar with the work of Meros, he is the author of a number of independently produced books (so independent, that he takes part in the printing and binding himself). On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover, and Beggars and Choosers: The Complete Written Correspondence between Creative New Zealand and Richard Meros volume one are amongst a slew of self-published titles.

Young Lover… was the breakout title, being successfully adapted to theatre and described by The Guardian as “skip[ing] between sociology, psychoanalysis and cringe-making erotica.” Privatising Parts picks up a couple of months after the 2008 general election, with Meros freedom camping and trying to escape the supposed backlash-permeating feral blogs and bitchy Labour Party cliques. He meets a hitchhiker and in an awkward conversation with Silence of the Lambs/Buffalo Bill undertones he proceeds to unleash his grief and sadness on being rejected as a young lover by Helen Clark.

This rejection has made it clear to him that “only the compulsion of a competitive market will sew up the aorta loopholes that perpetuate humankind’s recurring errors in love”. Meros proceeds to outline the basis of this proposition.

The intimate sphere is neither a public or private sphere, but a personal one. Not governed by the laws of the market but also not overseen by the state. Huge amounts of emotional time and energy are wasted in the failed pursuit of intimate relations. The ultimate goal is for the competitive disciplines of the free market to provide the optimum outcomes for society as a whole. Or so it’s said.

But in order to enforce free-market discipline. You need information. This is because the failings of the current framework are due to a lack of information, of people thinking with their loins and not reason. The first step towards rationalising intimate relations along a more free-market framework, is for the Labour Party to nationalise the intimate relation into an SOE, Randycorp. Starting from an overwhelming faith in ‘progress’ Randycorp will manage intimate relations using rigorous, modern, scientific methods to most efficiently distribute the intimate relations of the population as a whole, not as a dating agency (which only deals with the dregs of society) or as a eugenics project (the aim being not to persecute or criminalise but to maximise total happiness).

The endpoint here is that what Labour nationalises, National then privatises. “Obviously there would be many companies like Randycorp and refinements would be made with experience, as occurs in any mixture of planned and free economies” says Meros, intentionally ignoring the glaring examples of the insurance or electricity industries and the method in which they collectively conspire to fuck over the unknowing consumer.

While this book is hilariously extreme in the manner it stretches the logic of privatisation to its limits, it is very much an attack at the core basis of the ideology and surface truisms that are put forward on a wider basis as an aspect of capitalist hegemony. In reality, situations that aren’t very much less outrageous than this are put forward as truths, on the basis of nothing much more than hack-pseudo-psychology e.g. the idea of perfect information, or the natural selfishness of people etc.

At the launch of the book, I gave a reading of the passage extolling the virtues of privatisation. Although put forward with the ideological inanity of a university debater, the book still drove the audience to stop the reading and argue. Even though a satire at its opening, the book is so borderline in its deep understanding of its subject, that it is more than believable. Which is kind of what makes it funny.

The Spark December 2010 – January 2011
Byron Clark

‘For The Win’ is possibly one of 2010′s best works of fiction, at least for those readers who enjoy books that deal with big issues. Paraphrasing other writers in the genre, author Cory Doctorow has said that “good science fiction predicts the present” and part of what makes the novel so enjoyable is that this story could be taking place next year. While his last novel, Little Brother, explored issues around civil liberties and state power in the post-9/11 USA, For The Win shows that Doctorow’s unashamedly left-wing worldview extends to many other issues; globalisation, inequality, labour rights and the farcical nature of finance capitalism are all explored in the space of 375 pages.

The story revolves around “gold farming” the practice of amassing virtual wealth in an online multi-player video game, and then selling it for real-world currency. Typically, that virtual wealth is collected by people in the developing world, and sold to players in the developed world who want to avoid the work required to advance in the game. For the gold farmers, the income is comparable to what they could earn working in other available jobs. Of course, most of these gold farmers don’t own the computers and internet connections required to be a gold farmer (the means of production-albeit production of virtual commodities) and work for bosses who expropriate most of the wealth they create. Looking to remedy this situation is Big Sister Nor, a former garment factory worker in Malaysia who became a gold farmer after a strike caused the owners to move the factory to Indonesia. Nor has founded the “Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web” or “Webblies” (a homage to the Industrial Workers of the World (also known as Wobblies), the syndicalist union that had its heyday a century ago) and is organising gold farmers across borders in the virtual worlds they work in.

The story alternates between Nor’s group of organisers located in Singapore, and Leonard Goldburg (a teenager in LA who joins the cause of the gold farmers he befriends in-game), and further groups of gold farmers in Dharavi (India) and Shenzen (China). In switching between the locations, Doctorow is able to paint a vivid picture of the disparity between the United States; the planets largest slum, and the new ‘factory of the world’.

In parts you almost feel as though to be breathing the fumes of Dharavi’s plastic recycling plants.  Shenzen, where most of the novel’s climactic action takes place, is like the archetypical dystopian city of cyberpunk fiction. But this is a post space-race subgenre of science fiction that is more down to earth (literally), as it often explores social issues, and is infinitely more realistic because the sweatshops, heavy handed police force, and authoritarian state exist today.

The novel also includes explanations of global economics between chapters (some influence of Doctorow’s Marxist parents is visible here). These are well placed and serve to reinforce parts of the story rather than distract from it. The only criticism I could make would be that with so many important characters there is little room for character development. A small number of characters are given elaborate back stories, but few change throughout the novel. This is a minor point however and For The Win is a thrilling read that should be in every high school library. An in-depth knowledge of economics, labour history, and massive multi-player video games is not required to enjoy it.

“It all began with a beautiful pass from Eric Cantona.” So begins the latest film from socialist film maker Ken Loach.

From the movie’s outset, it is clear that Eric the postie is languishing in life’s relegation zone: estranged from his wife, unable to handle his teenage tearaway stepsons and contemplating suicide. In desperation, he raids his stepson’s marijuana stash, and after a couple of crafty tokes, he is astonished to discover that footballing legend Eric Cantona has appeared in his Manchester United-adorned bedroom. Cantona then proceeds to dispense considerate advice along with soupçons of his Gallic philosophy.

Unsure whether he is finally losing his mind, Eric the postie nevertheless finds his new-found acquaintance with his hero is bringing positive change to his life. Meanwhile, his postie mates form an entertaining comic ensemble. But things take a decidedly dark turn when his stepson becomes enmeshed in the schemes of a ruthless gangster who owns a flash SUV and an executive box at United. His individual attempts to confront the hoodlum are hopeless. Only when he and his workmates put their heads together is there any cause for optimism.

Discussing his film, Loach indicated his desire to make a movie that was “less ostensibly political, more kind of a relationship story.” He also explained the attraction of the project to Cantona: “I think he is very wary of being drawn into overtly political organisation, but I think in a general sense he is in favour of the interests of ordinary people. His roots are in the working class culture of Marseilles. His grandparents, of whom he is inordinately proud – and rightly so – fought for the Republicans against Franco in Spain.”

As someone who has worked on the Post in Britain for seven years I can attest to the authenticity of Loach’s depiction of the workers: the obsession with football, the camaraderie of the sorting office and pub lounge, the endless piss-takery. But a single aspect is curiously absent: the continual, sometimes intense, class struggle that conditions the job. When Eric the postie recalls Cantona’s glory days with United in the mid-90s, that was also a period of full-on industrial action in response to management changes intended to increase the commercialisation of the Post Office. Many of the same issues (job cuts, “flexibility”) lay behind the return of nation-wide strike action last year.

Of course Ken Loach is not obliged to emphasise that aspect simply because he is Ken Loach. But the fact that there is not even a passing reference to the posties’ famed militancy smacks of self-censorship.

No doubt, “Looking for Eric” is a more commercial film than some of Loach’s other offerings. But looking back over his body of work, one could say that this fairly simple tale of standing up to the local bully is closer to his allegorical film “Raining Stones” than a more “didactic” movie like “Land and Freedom”.

As the credits roll, the message of the film is pretty clear: these are dark days where the powerful seem invincible and the oppressed appear feeble, but don’t give up hope, “trust your team mates”, act collectively and you can win the day.

 The Help is an ambitious novel set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. It encapsulates a city that was a bastion of Jim Crow racism – a phalanx of state and local laws that were designed to keep black and white people separate from cradle to grave.

 The story alternates between three narrators: one a young “society lady” and two of them maids:

 -Skeeter, bored and frustrated by the Junior League ladies that form her social set, is an aspiring writer who stumbles into the idea of clandestinely documenting the thoughts and experiences of her friend’s black maids.

 -Minnie the firebrand who is curious about the mysterious behaviour of her new employer, and harbours a dark secret of her own.

 -Abileen who showers her charges with love, often giving them more affection than they receive from their blood mothers. But as the infants grow and loose their natural colour blindness, Abileen feels the pain of seeing them taking on the attitudes of their parents.

 A number of historical events are portrayed in the story, including the racist murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. After the death of Evers, Abileen attends the “Community Concerns” meeting at her church. Tempers run high, and a section of the flock demand something more than the peaceful protests and prayer proffered by their pastor. But such contradictions are never fully explored in the novel. 

Skeeter learns a swift lesson in the dialectics of resistance shortly after a maid who has agreed to participate in the project is fired by her employer. “If the maids were afraid to help us yesterday, I’m sure they’re terrified today,” opines Skeeter. But to her astonishment, eleven fresh volunteers step forward, emboldened by a changing mood in the African American community. From then on, big changes are inevitable.

 Much of the blogosphere debate about The Help has focused on the question of whether Kathryn Stockett, as a white author, can authentically write in the voice of African American characters. This controversy is an exercise in futility that ultimately leads us down the blind alley of identity politics. A more interesting investigation is to engage with the ideas that underpin the novel.

 Reflecting on the results of her and the maid’s project, Skeeter, the daughter of a cotton plantation owner, concludes: “We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

 This thought echoes Aibileen’s opinion that: “Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”

 Such ideas were dangerous indeed in Mississippi in 1963. Standing up for them could result in your house being firebombed, or worse. But today, in the era of President Obama, formal legal equality is the political consensus of the age. Those once radical ideas become conservative, since they blur the very real divisions of class.

 Where The Help is most successful is when it probes the relationships between individual characters. In an afterward to the novel, Stockett quotes the journalist Howell Raines:

 “There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.”

 For attempting to tackle that question, Stockett deserves a measure of praise.

Don picks up from the tradition of political folk, but his work is distinctive because it discusses contemporary issues directly relevant to people in New Zealand today. It is an important historical catalogue of not only the recent Labour government, but the transition into the new National government which took over in 2008, and the various struggles that activists, workers, and unions have had to fight in that time period. Some songs are written for specific pickets or issues (such as One more Thursday in Black) whereas some are more general in their detest of both Labour and National (I hate the Labour Government, and Fuck John Key). Many of his songs have hints of tongue-and-cheek humour, such as the wedding march riff at the beginning of Talking Civil Union, making it a very entertaining album to listen to.

Don Franks has a clear understanding and sense of direction with his music. He achieves fleshing out a range of moods and this results in a diverse variety of songs, making it an exciting album to listen to with many surprises. There is an air of spontaneity in many of the songs. Take the guns of their hands sounds very much like a punk band jamming together. Free Mumia Abu Jamal has a distinctive drive to it. His partner Jill Brasell used a distortion pedal on her bass which adds a raw flavour to the song. The odd diversion from the folk feel gives to this album a crisp and refreshing quality. Don Franks will be going on tour with a CD launch in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch, so keep an eye out for posters or the Workers Party website.

If you would like to purchase a copy of his CD and cannot make it to the launch contact the Workers Party and we will arrange for it to be sent to you.

Review by Don Franks The Spark Dec 2009  – Jan 2010

My most entertaining and memorable read this year has been a self published family account titled “The Ballad of Bantam Billy”. The author is Jack Perkins, Bill Perkins’ son. “Bantam Billy” was the nickname Lancashire coal miners gave to a short statured young workmate who became – and remained for life- an uncompromising fighter for socialism. “ If dad sensed any challenge or disrespect for his beliefs he was instantly and fearlessly outspoken. There were never any beg-your-pardons in his outbursts. I remember a bus trip when some unsuspecting passenger slighted the Soviet Union. Dad’s volcanic response turned heads, including the driver’s who brought the crowded vehicle to a temporary halt while things calmed down.”

Born into a mining family in 1897, Bill Perkins left school at 13 to go down the pit. British mining conditions then were comparable to Chinese mining conditions in 2009. “It was hard, dirty and dangerous toil. Thousands were killed by explosions from gas build-ups. In the period between 1900 and the first World War, dad remembered three disasters which in total took the lives of about one thousand men.”

Bill Perkins continued his education at night school and became a voracious reader. When world war I broke out in 1914 the young miner was a committed socialist. When called up, Bill refused to serve in the capitalist army. He was sentenced to two years hard labour and jailed in Wormwood Scrubs. Back in the mines after the war Bill took an active part in the General Strike of 1926, and later, when unemployed, in the hunger marches.

Bill’s reading of left reformers Beatrice and Sydney Webb interested him in the supposed socialist experiment of New Zealand. In 1928 he and his wife left the discord and squalor of working class Lancashire to seek a new life halfway across the world. This involved coal mining on the West Coast, more unemployment, relief work, and a job in Wellington as paid organizer for the Communist Party. That was at a time when New Zealand communists suffered sever state repression.

In 1933, the whole Central Committee was imprisoned for six months. After a lifetime of struggle, Bill Perkins died at the age of 98. ” He was intelligent, well read, a good speaker. He would have had little trouble finding a place in the ranks of the Labour party, but he’d have none of it. In his eyes they were traitors to the working class.”

He also reflected some of the movement’s inflexibility and dogmatism: “During the 1950s and 60s, as former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s murderous excesses became undisputed, I would have long arguments with Dad, but he would never budge in his support for the Soviet Union” Weaknesses of twentieth century communism have been endlessly trumpeted by establishment historians.

Trumpeted while the inspiring principle, heroism and humanity of many party members and their partners has been ignored, forgotten and lost. This moving book rescues and celebrates a singular piece of working class history. (Jack Perkins is Executive Producer of Radio New Zealand National’s weekly documentary series Spectrum. Jack has spent 50 years in broadcasting, mostly in documentary work, much of it exploring the social and political history of New Zealand.) Copies of “The Ballad of Bantam Billy” may be obtained for $15.00; email jperkins@…

Based on the highly acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore, Watchmen is a story made to show superheroes be in the real world. Superheroes have been a constant target of Moore’s satire and venom. Influenced by Anarchism, Moore sees the superheroes as combinations of lonely, pathetic, psychotic, paternalistic, self-indulgent and fascist. These consistently brilliant comic’s are not just an attack on a pernicious form of culture, but an insightful metaphor about those that would claim to lead us within the current capitalist system. Politicians, generals, priests, media moguls and union bureaucrats can all be read into the cast of powerful characters that Moore has created over the years. The Watchmen graphic novel stands at the apex of this important body of work.

Hollywood has not been kind to Alan Moore and his creations. From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine and V for Vendetta have all been watered down, benign, apolitical, misinterpretations and just appallingly bad films. Since the atrocity of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a dark anti-colonial satire graphic novel adapted into a campy celebration of the British Empire, Moore has refused to let his name be connected in anyway with any adaptation of his work.

Unfortunately, Watchmen goes much the same way as the previous Moore adaptations. This film has many weaknesses, the action is over-stylised, the film is long and boring, and the overall feel is too clean and lacks the grit of the novel. But by far the biggest and most important weakness is the subtext. There is none. In the novel the superheroes are authoritarian defenders of the status quo and from this position they see the mass of humanity as nothing more than unruly scum that need to be controlled. However the point made in the graphic novel is that this is a miss-shaped view created by the fact that their position has disconnected and warped them. Disturbingly, the film is missing this subtext and the psychotic anti-humanity ratings of the Superheroes are taken at face value and therefore become the moral of the story.

This was not surprising. The nihilism and cynicism that the film puts forward conform much more to the view that our rulers try to put forward as being mainstream. The Watchmen graphic novel takes a much more complex and subversive look at those very rulers and why they push such pessimism.

Stephen Hay