[Along with Bosch, another acclaimed show I’ve
finally had a chance to check out during lockdown is HBO’s Watchmen,
and it lived up to the hype. Among its many strengths, I’d emphasize in
particular its remarkable depth when it comes
to American history, and this week will focus on five sides to those themes
and threads. Leading up to a special weekend post sharing student perspectives on
both the show and its graphic
novel source material!]
[NB. SPOILERS
will abound all week—go check the show out and then come back to read these
posts and share your thoughts!]
On the adaptation
choice that changes everything, and why it makes perfect sense.
The decision to adapt
a beloved cultural work—I’m talking about Dave Gibbons’ and Alan Moore’s
magisterial 1987
graphic novel, obviously; the less said about Zach Snyder’s 2009 film
version, the better—must always be a complex and fraught one. If you try to
recreate the original text in this new medium, you’re likely going to just
remind audiences of how your version won’t ever be precisely the same as that
established classic; but if you make any significant changes, you’re definitely
going to make some subset of those fans (Tom
Bombadil stans, we might call them) very angry. When Damon Lindelof decided
to make a TV show based on Watchmen,
he went all in for the latter type—and while his show is more of a sequel
than a straight adaptation, it does engage in central ways with a number of
characters and stories from the graphic novel. And moreover, Lindelof has
stated in interviews [one more time, MAJOR SPOILERS here and throughout
this post] that it was the chance to radically rethink one of those characters—Hooded
Justice, the graphic novel’s foundational early 20th century superhero—that
made him want to work on the show in the first place.
Lindelof and
company hold the reveal of that rethinking until the
show’s 6th episode (of 8 total; and again, SPOILERS in that wonderful
Alan Sepinwall piece, not just for this reveal overall but for all the details of
that episode in particular), but when we get it it forces us to rethink all
five prior episodes, among many other things. Hooded Justice, it turns out, was
black, and indeed the same young boy (Will Reeves) whom we followed during the first
episode’s 1921 Tulsa-set opening sequence. That boy grew up to become a police office
in late 1930s New York City (played as a young man by the wonderful Jovan Adepo, and as an
elderly man in the show’s present by the eternally wonderful Louis Gossett Jr.), and
then when he realized the law was not the source of justice he (like his childhood
hero and namesake Bass Reeves) thought it was, he decided to take justice into
his own hands. The episode’s historical revelations thus change our entire perspective
on both the multi-generational legacy of superheroes (HJ was the inspiration for
the Minutemen, the
first group of superheroes who then inspired the Watchmen who then inspired the
show’s current superheroes) and the show’s multi-generational family story (Regina King’s character
Angela Abar/Sister Night, our most consistent protagonist, is revealed to
be HJ’s granddaughter).
Given that many Watchmen readers are apparently big fans
of the character Rorschach, who is at best a reactionary sociopath
if not also a blatant white supremacist (and the TV
show goes with the latter, on which more in tomorrow’s post), I have to
imagine that a black Hooded Justice didn’t go over well with them. But for me,
it’s one of the best and smartest choices I’ve seen in any TV show or cultural
work. It works very well within the show’s and graphic novel’s stories and
worlds, both extending and challenging core elements of them. But I think it
works even better within the broader frames of American history and culture. It’s
pretty telling that when comic books were finally able to feature black superheroes,
the first
prominent such character was from a fictional African country, rather than
here in the United States. I understand that choice, but at the same time, no
American community would have more reason to seek the kinds of extralegal,
vigilante justice that superheroes offer than African Americans, which is
literally how Will becomes HJ—he is nearly lynched by fellow police officers,
and when he subsequently happens upon another crime in progress, the lynching
rope still around his neck, he decides to put on a hood and deal out his own
justice. That just might be my favorite American pop culture moment of the 21st
century, and is the central, unequivocal triumph of HBO’s Watchmen.
Next
WatchmenStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other takes on the show you’d share?
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