Unmasking the Masked Vigilante: Rorschach and Incel ideology

At first glance Rorschach as a character should not be a foreign concept for most of the pop-culture consuming audience. He is a lone, masked vigilante, solving crimes and doling out justice in his own way; one of the most common concepts in comic books. Characters like Batman or the Green Arrow are often uplifted as symbols of masculinity, strength, and stoicism. But the personification of Rorschach as a socially maladjusted, misanthropic, far-right radical is also not foreign to most people. Moore intended Rorschach to be a satire of the masked vigilante, what a character like Batman would be like in real life and in doing so brings out the very worst of these characters. In doing this though Moore created a character who appeals to another well-known archetypal male. Incels. Incels are a widely known and talked about subject, especially following incel-inspired terrorist attacks that have grown in frequency. Incel ideology believes that women are naturally subservient and that their sexual liberation has caused most of the faults of modern Western society, and especially has caused these incel men to be unhappy and alone. Incels are not foreign to the modern media-consuming audience but a character like Rorschach is uncommon in the combining of these two archetypes. With this melding, the masked vigilante and the incel, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons unmask the masked vigilante. Rorschach encapsulates everything wrong with the masculine superhero, and through Moore’s writing and Gibbons’ art, the true depravity of the archetype of the masked masculine vigilante is revealed, and the audience claims to identify with Rorschach.

As a child, Rorschach witnessed his mother, a prostitute, having sex with a client (Moore and Gibbons 182), his first act of violence is against another child who insults his mother for her sexual promiscuity (Moore and Gibbons 184–185). In the first sentences, we read from Rorschach his hatred for women and sex, in particular, is clear (Moore and Gibbons 9). Sexual violence, sex, and the rejection of sex are integral to who Rorschach is, and also integral to understanding why he represents the worst of the male masked vigilante. There is no sex in Rorschach’s story, almost every other character we meet has sex at some point in the comic or is shown to have engaged in sex one way or another, but Rorschach has no love interests and no sex, this might seem contradictory to the incel ideology but in fact, when many incels are presented an opportunity for a relationship or sex they take what they call the blackpill and decide to reject the women entirely even if it solidifies their identity as an incel(Glace et al. 291). Unlike similar positive depictions of masculine comic book characters like Batman, Rorschach is not living a bachelor lifestyle, he rejects the notion entirely. Sex for Rorschach is relegated to a violent disgust and rejection of sex and by proxy a violent disgust in women. Rorschach rejects sex and rejects those ‘degenerates’ who have had sex. Unless of course, he admires them like the Comedian.

The Comedian to Rorschach is a patriot, a true man, but Rorschachs unwavering moral code only seems to extend so far. When confronted with the reality of the Comedians actions as a rapist it is a ‘moral lapse’ (Moore and Gibbons 29). Parallels emerge between ‘tough on crime’ politicians who also happen to excuse or defend sexual violence. Watchmen shows that the masculine urge to protect people and correct the world only goes so far, it is not truly about protecting anyone it is about fulfilling violent fantasies and the moment protection requires a confrontation with someone they respect, masculinity instead serves to defend the offender. That same feeling is found throughout the incel community, they consider themselves victims but when one of their own murders people it is considered a mistake an unfortunate result of their perceived victimhood or sometimes outright praised as heroic(O’Malley et al. 4997).

“When I had cut it enough, it didn’t look like a woman anymore” (Moore and Gibbons 188). Rorschach wears the cut-up remnants of a mask on his face, a mask that he made while working in a garment factory, a traditionally female job, and made from the dress that should have gone to a woman who was raped (Moore and Gibbons 188). Throughout Watchmen Rorschach tries and fails to be a masculine figure but no matter how hard he tries he ultimately cannot escape the grasp that femininity has over him. He wears platform shoes to appear taller and he is constantly called ugly (Moore and Gibbons 172; Miettinen 106). In this way, Rorschach is essentially engaged in an obscene imitation of the masculine superheroes he is meant to represent. Batman never wore platform shoes, no one has ever called Bruce Wayne ugly, and yet Rorschach sees himself more in line with a character like Batman because ultimately Rorschach is everything wrong with the ideology of a male masked vigilante, all the flaws embodied. In Rorschach’s failed imitation of the masculine hero Rorschach ultimately is perceived as feminine. Rorschach is a traditionally feminine man making his constant rejection of femininity a cruel irony, Rorschach is seen by those around him the same way he perceives sex workers, communists, and women - as a perverse, creepy, and feminine thing. The similarities in Rorschach and the incel movement and ideology do not stop there though, Moore did not write Rorschach as an incel, a concept that did not exist at the time, but incels draw inspiration from the same beliefs that Moore meant to criticize with Rorschach creating remarkably similar archetypes, and in many cases incels looking to Rorschach as insperational.

The incel movement is a complicated and storied movement, but the basis of the ideology is anti-feminism, and misogyny (O’Malley et al.; Glace et al.). Acts of violence have been committed in the name of the incel movement and often these figures are deified by the movement. Rorschach himself, as well as other pop culture characters like the Joker, are defied by incels for their rejection of women, their violent acts, and the way that they are shown to have rejected societal norms. Alan Moore himself has said

“I wanted to … make [Rorschach] as like, ‘this is what Batman would be in the real world’. But I have forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans, ‘smelling’, ‘not having a girlfriend’, these are actually kind of heroic! So Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. … I have people come up to me in the street and saying: ‘I AM Rorschach. That is MY story.” (Steven Surman)

Rorschach much like the incels that admire him, admires masculinity, they admire men who they believe can do what was necessary (O’Malley et al. 4994), but they themselves are neither masculine nor are they admirable. Incels idolize ‘true’ masculine men and treat women as something repulsive and yet they fail to actually fulfill traditional masculine roles and their repulsion for women and in sex feeds into their cycle (O’Malley et al. 4994). In actuality, though Rorschach himself is perceived by society as a perverse and feminine thing. Rorschach thinks he is saving society while also hating the majority of it, incels believe that society is worthless and has rejected them and yet they want to fix it with puritanical ‘justice’ (O’Malley et al. 4997). In incels own words Rorschach would be a ‘beta’ (Glace et al. 291) and yet they contradictorily idolize him. Rorschach is the worst of the mask male vigilantes, his ‘justice’ is ruthless and indiscriminate, he is misanthropic and sexist, he despises the people he claims to help and revels in pain and suffering, he is everything wrong with a hero like Batman and the masculine ideology behind it, that is how Moore intended Rorschach, but in drawing out the very worst of masculinity he created something that attracted incels. By trying to highlight the flaws of the masculine masked vigilante he created an audience that instead sympathizes with him.

Rorschach is meant to highlight everything wrong with the masked vigilante, a commentary on masculinity, right-wing politics, sexism, and the contradictions of the people who believe in these ideologies, but despite this Rorschach like so many other satires before him has become idolized by the very people they were meant to criticize. Moore and Gibbons meant to use Rorschach to show what the worst of the masked vigilante is, what the contradictions of masculinity mean and the depravity of vigilante ideology and of inceldom, and throughout Watchmen they do this, they clearly highlight the flaws of the masked vigilante and of masculinity but it was not enough. Like Rorschach, incels believe themselves to be the only people who can see the truth about the world and the only ones who can fix it. But like Rorschach, they themselves are everything they criticize. Rorschach sees a world full of violence, insanity, perverts and creeps, and sees himself as one of the lone forces that can fix it, but he is in fact the very thing he wants to stop. Moore and Gibbons unmasked the face of the masked vigilante, and peering back at us was the ugly face of sexism, masculinity, and violence, the face of men all over the world who consider themselves Rorschach.