The Brave New World of HBOs Watchmen – The Atlantic

Whats the equivalent now of impending nuclear war? Whats creating the big cultural anxiety? For me, its the anxiety of a reckoning, Lindelof said in an interview with The New York Times. The identification of white supremacy as a bad guy in a superhero comic book that could not be defeatedthe Klan wears masks, but why are its members never the villains in a superhero story? Those ideas felt like natural fits for Watchmen. Moores opus was about the extent to which people place their trust in costumed avengers and asked the age-old question of who watches the watchmen. Lindelofs Watchmen takes the comics most potent symbolthe maskand shows how it can protect not only superheroes, but also the flawed institutions Americans rely on.

The show begins with a depiction of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, massacre of 1921, in which a white mob ransacked and destroyed the vibrant Black Wall Street neighborhood of Greenwood, dropping firebombs from planes and murdering hundreds. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about Tulsa in his Atlantic piece The Case for Reparations, which Lindelof said served as an inspiration for the show. As the horror of Tulsa rages on-screen, men in Klan outfits parade around shooting at peoplea chilling, if detached, vision of supervillainy.

In delving into Americas real history of racist violence, HBOs Watchmen initially seems a far cry from Moores original work. The latter is steeped in its alternative reality, which unfolds through the personal recollections of its core cast of superheroesRorschach, Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, and the Comedian. But the first scenes of Watchmen do slyly mix historical fact with comic-book lore, as ScreenCrushs Matt Singer identified. In the Tulsa sequence, viewers see two black parents trying to save their child from danger, arranging to have him smuggled out of the city as it explodes around him. The scene is reminiscent of Supermans famous origin storyexcept the boy in Watchmen isnt eventually rescued by a kindly couple and must instead make it on his own.

Much like that sequence, Lindelofs show is a marriage of pulpy mythmaking and grim reality, telling a weighty story under the guise of mass-market entertainment. Thats long been Moores specialty: His Watchmen chronicled the seedy truths and vicious nihilism that often underlie superheroism, upending the cheerful idealism of old-fashioned comic books. The first issue features the creation of the Minutemen, a 1940s assemblage of costumed do-gooders formed as part of a publicity stunt. But their squeaky-clean, patriotic image is just a facade: After the group poses for press pictures, one of the members, the sardonic Comedian, attempts to rape another, the Silk Spectrea crime for which he goes unpunished.

Another attempt to create a team of heroes fails before it even begins: Years later, in 1966, the aged leader of the Minutemen, the polished Captain Metropolis, tries to start a new group called the Crimebusters. Metropolis, a throwback hero who wants to fight hippie-era social ills such as promiscuity, drugs, [and] campus subversion, makes a rah-rah pitch but is thwarted by the Comedian, who sets his presentation on fire. Whats going down in this world, you got no idea, the Comedian scoffs. It doesnt matter squat because inside 30 years the nukes are gonna be flying like maybugs. The crowd disperses, with a horrified Captain Metropolis shouting after them: Somebody has to do it, dont you see? Somebody has to save the world.

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The Brave New World of HBOs Watchmen - The Atlantic