"Keywords: Polyphony, Film, Chronotope, Adaptation, Comics. Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009) has a tortuous multi-studio production history, but finally arrived on cinema screens in 2009. Adapting Moore and Gibbons‘ 1986-7 comic series, which became undisputably the most critically acclaimed superhero tale ever when republished in trade paperback‘ format (Moore and Gibbons, 1987), and is renowned for its 'realist‘ take on the implications of a world in which powered heroes actually exist, the film imagines an out-of-control American dystopia defined by nuclear brinkmanship and the persistence of far-right politics. Distinctively, a diegetic counterfactual history is formed after the intervention of one of the heroes, the godlike Dr. Manhattan, decisively settles the war in Vietnam in favour of the U.S. Thus, it is implied, popular support is secured for second and third terms for Richard Nixon, who is shown as maintaining Cold War hostilities at a high pitch. Watchmen, then, presents the counterfactual scenario familiar in science-fiction, culminating in a diegetic apocalypse that is linked to a plan for world renewal masterminded by sinister, possibly amoral forces (like another time-travel text, Chris Marker‘s La Jetée/The Pier [1962]). Form relates to content: individual chapters of the comic shuttle between times, and represent different historical incarnations of the 'Minutemen‘ team of heroes from their 1940s 'GoldenAge‘ to the cynical 1970s. Characters like Dr. Manhattan are endowed with a certain novelistic subjectivity by this structure (which is emulated in sequences of Snyder‘s version). Bakhtinian readings of the science-fiction film as exploring carnivalesque alternatives to the temporal controls of life under capitalist mass culture have been presented by Dimitrakaki and Tsiantis (2002), who discuss time paradox films like Twelve Monkeys (a 1995 near-remake of La Jetée, directed by Terry Gilliam), as do Fry and Craig (2002), with ideas around carnival and chronotope well-represented. Chronotopic values are certainly pertinent to Watchmen, but its counterfactuality and interest in themes like quantum physics and the perception of time also bring it into the orbit of Bakhtinian polyphony.The latter, with its removal of predetermination from the field of character consciousness and ethical behaviour, calls to mind 'a pluralistic, restless universe in which no single point of view can ever take in the whole scene‘ (William James, cited in Morson, 1996: 87). As a literally 'de-authored‘ text, following the well-publicised removal of Alan Moore‘s name from the production (Anon., 2008), the regime of time in Watchmen seems to demand a reading that not only notes its chronotopes and many temporal thresholds, but explores its register of 'crisis time‘ in more detail. As one example of the concern with notions of authoring, its ethical problematic concerns how the citizens of earth maintain the interest of a virtual god in a world whose reality and future he can see far beyond.Yet, a further twist about the film version of this tale is that, in its commercial life, the ambiguous representation of temporality does not end here; if anything, it is expanded by its commodification and manner of release. Aimed at a cult audience already tantalised by years of counterfactual production scenarios that 'might have been‘ (including announced deals with directors like Paul Greengrass, and others like Gilliam who were associated with the project), Warner Brothers‘ eventual multi-platform release of Watchmen can be seen to spiral out into a poly-diegetic form that exceeds the fragmentary status even of the typical contemporary event film. Some of the textual forms comprise: the animated 'motion comic‘ DVD version; the 'massively multiplayer‘ online iPhone game; the separate animated Tales of the Black Freighter (DanielDelPurgatorio/Mike Smith, 2009), an intratext of the original Moore and Gibbons series, excised from the 'main‘ film; and, post-theatrical release, a slew of DVD recuts of varying running times – 'Director‘s Cut‘, 'Ultimate Cut‘- that follow the recent Hollywood trend of equating aesthetic impact with extra duration. Exploring these temporal complications and contradictions, this paper will draw together the Bakhtinian themes of open time and polyphony while also questioning why the film provoked ambiguous critical responses that identified a certain hollow, aesthetic monologism in the exactitude of Snyder‘s adaptation, with A.O. Scott calling the film 'an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present‘ (2009). Notably, even this criticism is expressed in terms of a breakdown or confusion of time."

Mikhail Bakhtin and the group of thinkers known as the Bakhtin Circle have had a massive influence on contemporary literary and cultural theory. Bakhtin is recognised as perhaps the key theorist on the novel as a genre, and his writings on carnival in popular culture are a recurrent theme in cultural studies. The influence of the Circle has recently spread into social theory, philosophy and psychology, which means that a narrow literary approach is now inadequate for fully understanding the breadth of their ideas. Moreover, recent research has revolutionised our understanding of the work of the Bakhtin Circle and retranslation has shown that many of the existing translations are significantly flawed. It is also now clear that the work of the Circle was the product of discussions between members of an extraordinary group of scholars. This is the first book to bring together this significant new research on the Circle, setting it within a historical and intellectual context and emphasising the importance of the work of the Circle as a whole. Craig Brandist offers a new look at the significance of Bakhtin's legacy, and brings into clearer focus the contribution of others in the circle--including Voloshinov, Medvedev, Pumpianskii and Kagan--whose work has so often been obscured, assessing the fundamental role they played in shaping Bakhtinian thought.

Critical Theory refers to several generations of German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School. Many “critical theories” have emerged in relation to various social movements that show the wide scope of the domination of human beings in modern societies. What societies needs today is a free world of communication where individuals can speak their minds freely. In the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of “Dialogism”, this study intends to describe the future role of critical theories in giving voice to diverse ideologies in the context of societies. The main concern of this paper is to answer the critical question of how critical theories should provide space for a future dialogized world? Truth is neither born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person; it is created between people collectively in the process of their dialogic interaction. This study highlights Bakhtin’s contribution to literary stu...