Note: If you haven't read Watchmen or seen the movie,
skip this post. There are spoilers, and you won't know what I'm
talking about anyway.
Brian Doherty writes at
Reason that Rorschach is "probably the most vivid and
well-thought-out Objectivist hero that Rand didn’t create." It's
true that Steve Ditko created The Question as an Objectivist
hero, and that Alan Moore based Rorschach on The Question. But
it's a little silly to think of Rorschach as a Randian given how
much Moore, a leftist, deviates in his portrayal from how
Randians actually think. In one scene Rorschach menacingly scolds
Moloch for having illegal medication; Randians are generally
libertarian on drugs, and wouldn't get indignant about a
violation of prescription drug laws. Rorschach's attitudes toward
sex also don't quite fit for an Objectivist; Rand herself had
convoluted and sometimes contradictory ideas about sexual
morality that some of her followers may defend, but there's
nothing Randian about Rorschach's repulsion at fornication
per se.
The political landscape of Watchmen really doesn't allow
for philosophical subtlety. The right-wingers are all grotesque
caricatures. The New Frontiersman at one point runs an
item from the "crank file" addressed to "The Jewnited States of
America." Moore has actually refered to Rorschach in interviews
as a "very fascist character" (which indicates that Moore doesn't
really understand fascism, either). This is defensible in a comic
book, especially in Watchmen, where the twist at the end
is that the good lefty turns out to be the villain and the crazy
righty turns out to be the only one who stands up for the truth.
In a way, Rorschach is both too simple and too interesting to
really be thought of as an Objectivist hero.
