Ideology: The Minutemen And The Watchmen

Ideologies are what make us fundamentally human; they influence what we believe in and dictate our actions. The existence of ideologies extends outside of reality, as seen through comic book heroes such as Superman and Batman. Compared to the older ages of comics, their ideologies lie upon responsibility rather than Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), like religion and family, or Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs), like the government and the police. In the years following Watchmen’s publication, these heroes have been seen to interact with real world issues, creating a connection to ideology (Hughes).
The heroes in Watchmen are divided into two generations: the Minutemen and the Watchmen. The Minutemen were the first heroes of the society
Despite the leverage of these ideologies on his life, he is aware of their presence (Hughes); he mentions that “other people seem to make my moves for me” (Moore and Gibbons Ch. IV, 5) as if he is a human puppet, but he does not seek to cut the strings. As he gains his powers and the ideological apparatus shifts from family to government, he begins to cut the human strings. He initially abandons the costume that he wore as a hero, eventually discarding clothing altogether; as he rids himself of clothes, he further forsakes the ideologies that previously tied him down (Hughes). In this way, he detaches himself from humanity, subsequently abandoning what made him fundamentally human; however, he adopts new, visible strings and becomes a puppet of time. When Ozymandias questions his decision to create peace through chaos, Manhattan understands that he is consumed by the strings of ideology and does not make an effort to denounce him, but simply states that “Nothing ever ends” (Moore and Gibbons, Ch. XII, 27). He knows that the peace will not last forever and that conflict will inevitably ensue because of the nature of mankind, displaying how detached he is from humanity. He is not interested in maintaining Ozymandias’s utopia because he would rather study the ideologies