There By Tommy Orange And Watchmen By Alan Moore By Dave Gibbons

Do we make our costumes, or do our costumes make us? It’s a war that wages within each one of us and alters the personas we choose to wear and who we choose to become. Nations put on masks for diplomacy, and people put on costumes to fit in. Yet there is another side to the coin, one exemplified in the books There There by Tommy Orange and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Regalia, as depicted in There There, plays a bigger role; it is used as a tool for cultural and identity reclamation, and masks, as portrayed in Watchmen, can help navigate a broken society. All while, ironically, concealing who society dictates them to be. Clothing and masks are instrumental in cultures and identity, and, subsequently, are integral to their reclamation. In There There, Tony Loneman

In this passage, Tommy Orange constructs a scene with tangible tension between assimilation and cultural preservation using clothing. Describing the world Tony must endure day to day and the importance clothing has in that struggle. On a similar note, in Watchmen, vigilantes such as Rorschach use masks to operate outside laws and explore moral gray areas. As a result, his mask resembles an alternate personality who has coped with the harsh realities of life. Rorschach becomes cold and unforgiving after a morbid encounter with a kidnapper, and attributes these characteristics to his mask and “Rorschach,” quoting, “Shock of impact ran along my arm. Jet of warmth spattered on chest, like a hot faucet. It was Kovacs who said “mother” then, muffled under the latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again.” In order to withstand the broken society surrounding him, Rorschach becomes uncompromising, ruthless, and paranoid. In that sense, Rorschach’s mask becomes his sextant in a turbulent wave of