Watchmen (HBO) TV Show • Page 28

The misinformation more came later, when the history books were written (like Hollis Mason baselessly speculating he was a white circus strongman in Under The Hood) and things like American Hero Story got made. The whitewashing in real time was incredibly tragic though, for sure. The scene when he gets introduced as part of the team, only for Metropolis to cut him off before he could “get political” and then pivoted to an advertisement was the most messed up part of that.

 

Doesn't mean that's really him though. Could be another trick from Trieu

 

Best show on television right now IMO. Flawless.

 

That was a great episode but I’m also incredibly invested in the modern day mystery (looking glass, portals etc) that I’m mad this episode makes me wait another week

 

These are both good reads.

‘Watchmen’ episode six: ‘This Extraordinary Being’

Watchmen embraces its noir roots and Black trauma

 

Ok, watched this week's. Great TV, very very odd choice to make Hooded Justice an unequivocally good guy

 

i don't think a guy who is shown having an affair and choosing work over wife and kid gives off this look.

 

Right, but the superhero work he does is certainly righteous

 

I don’t personally think that just because his crusade was righteous doesn’t mean he was overall a great person.

I also think it worked primarily as a recontextualization of what we thought we knew about HJ from the book.

 

And he was using the mask/HJ moniker to enact justice against nazis, providing a fresh context at the interplay between justice "within the law" and extraneously

Loved that he was wearing his officer uniform when he finally "breaks"

 

I can't stop thinking about this episode. Its incredible

 

The point is that perhaps the major point of the Watchmen book is that masked vigilantism is bad, while this version of HJ seems to imply that it is actually quite good

 

I agree that that's the major point of the watchmen book

but my interpretation was that this episode was making the case for the fact that masked vigilantism, while proposing itself as "just" to the public, still falls to corporatism and overall societal structures that define everything else, meaning that its almost fruitless and pointless to be a masked vigilante. The outcome is the same. There is no such thing as mask vigilantism "justice".

 

how fucking cool was the "adrenaline" scene. pure damon lindelof and cemented this up there with International Assassin for me. and the scene transitions were stunning!

 

He went off and appointed himself the law and shot a bunch of dudes. Bad dudes obviously, fuck the klan, but i don't necessarily agree that they portrayed HJ as just.

 

Well, the organized group of masked vigilantes falls to those structures because it is made up of money- and power-hungry white racists. HJ individually is a victim of this not a perpetrator. And in the end, he goes and kills all the white racists in the PD. Very righteous and cool. The implication of this to me is that if vigilantism is done by righteous pro-black crusaders, it can be good. The problem is that the group of vigilantes are white racists, so the black man takes it on himself and gets it done. It's a pretty obvious parallel story to Angela's, except in her case we're asked to believe that policing can be good, if done by anti-racist black officers. Also not true.

 

I think the fact that Will/Hooded Justice ends up at a point in his life where he's using the same mind control he was fighting against makes this very much in keeping with the themes of the original novel.

You can argue that HJ killing racists is just. You can also argue that Rorschach killing pedophiles is just. That doesn't mean the material comes anywhere close to landing on their side.

 

I think essentially that what you've seen as answering the question is meant to ask it. Like, the question is whether or not its okay to appoint yourself the law and act as a vigilante, if we all went into this with the understanding that becoming a vigilante is inherently unjust, a lot of the political questions of the show are moot. However,

This is fair, although he's still using it for 'good'. But, iirc we don't know all the details of his collaboration with Lady Trieu yet. You've convinced me at least that the show has left this question yet ambiguous, at least somewhat

 

i mean, the book presents rorschach as about as close to an antithesis of how that image is presented in the show, and it’s incredibly effective. the show is about as loose of an interpretation as we’ve seen with IP. idk why we would expect damon’s interpretation of vigilantism to be exactly the same as moore’s.

 

I guess I sort of equate the argument with “there are no good cops” which is an inherently true statement within the confines of a corrupt system. If a cop is a just person they will see the corruption and call it out which then results in them typically losing their job. If they choose to turn a blind eye to it in order to keep citizens safe from corrupt cops, they’re still partaking in a system of corruption and are therefore not a good cop. In the comics Hooded Justice dips during the McCarthy hearings and Hollis Mason clearly respects him for that because he chose to stick to his principles. If you choose to work within the confines of a corrupt system then you too are corrupt and so he walks. That’s why I don’t think this development here is necessarily a repudiation of the novel but rather, as NitrateDawn said, keeping in step. So far. Who knows where they take this. I’m hoping Lindelof doesn’t ultimately land on the soft handed “some cops are good tho!”

 

This is where I land with it. Its a nuanced take that makes Watchmen susceptible to gross misinterpretation (e.g. Rorschach) but ultimately even though the idea of killing racists and pedophiles is just as they can very much be argued to be wrong, the systemic failure of the law to equally appropriate justice to these "evils" forces a natural counter-weight, in this case HJ, to be created. Reeves remembers the quote "Trust in the Law" very explicitly and idealistically.

I'm not as good at presenting my ideas on paper as some of you guys, but I think what the show is getting at is that justice, no matter how just in its inception, will always fail as the institutional forces of society corrupts it. and it almost always will, as the forces of transgenerational trauma will inform the rational and emotional actions that are born out of the past. this is going to have a very cynical ending, I believe.

I kind of view it as this:

Opening with Bass Reeves (real man, who had a movie made of him) - The idealized story of the the first black hero -> ends with the police force that is sympathetic and corrupted by the KKK, lead by a community business leader
Will Reeves - first black "superhero" -> ends with whitewashed superhero force that ignores crimes of institutional racism and conspiracies for more "commercial" justice sympathetic to corporate america (e.g. the bank poster)
Angela Abar - ????

 

Considering the police have continued to be portrayed as masked thugs who just happen to be aligned against even worse people at the moment in time we're seeing them on this show, I still don't think this is what the show is saying about Angela, either, tbh. And with the Reeves backstory we now have it makes the show's portrayal of the police overall even more negative.

 

But the masked thuggery only emerged in the face of the neo-KKK. They don't just happen to be going against them, they're the reason they exist and it seems like a pretty good reason. And Reeves remains a cop (right?) and even is wearing his uniform when he kills the racist cops. Idunno. A lot depends on how Angela reacts to the revelations in her visions, I guess.

Well, I guess essentially because I think Moore was right, lol. There is room for a more modern take on it that also incorporates the idea of anti-racist vigilante justice for sure though. But then the commentary becomes much less about superheroes, because even in the era of woke Marvel movies that's not really a premise of any work of superhero fiction. Not that this show would have to just be a commentary on superheros, but you know, I don't think it's ridiculous to feel like that should be a major part of it.

Also, apparently Hollis' book within the original book includes a line about HJ being a nazi sympathizer, which is odd, though I guess you could chalk it up to maintaining his cover or just an unavoidable incongruity that has to happen with a situation like this. But I'm sure there could've been something interesting there, too

 

He claimed to think HJ was a German strongman, so that would track to some degree.