Coincidence? I think not.

I made a wonderful inter-textual connection today! It goes as follows:

Last week, I started reading the graphic novel, Watchmen. It's pretty amazing in spite, if not because, of how depressing it is. Either way, I recommend it. Point is, on page 10 chapter 6, it is revealed that the initial motivation behind the vigilante Rorschach's career was the murder of a young girl, Kitty Genovese.

Here's the connection:

The film Boondock Saints begins with a priest's homely, honoring the death of one Kitty Genovese, on the one-year anniversary of her death. This event, though it doesn't actually take place in the movie, lays the foundation for what later is the motivation of the film's vigilantes, the McManus brothers, i.e. the Boondock Saints. The film poses on of the same questions as the comic: Who watches the watchmen? Who's right is it to administer justice.

Is it a coincidence that writer-director Troy Duffy unseen but ever present character shares her name with an identical character in More and Gibbons' Watchmen? I thought not. So, I did some google-ing. It didn't take much searching.

As it turns out, Kitty Genovese was a real person who was killed in 1964 under similar circumstances alluded to in both the comic and the movie, though the year and location of her death as well as her age are altered in Duffy's film while the comic almost certainly is referring to the exact same death. Now that my ear and eye are more aware of her presence and the symbolic nature of her murder, I think she'll be popping up everywhere, like a rare word you learn the meaning of for the first time.

There's just another addition to my random fact arsenal/ cult fandom encyclopedia.