[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 how both the
new show and a new central character challenge a fan favorite.
I don’t tend to
quote myself in this space, but since this post builds directly on a somewhat
tangential line from the final paragraph of yesterday’s post, I thought I’d
start there: “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.” As is often the case, there are
layers beyond what I could capture in that one line, so I should add: the first
time I read Watchmen, as an early
20-something, I was certainly also drawn to Rorschach, a unique and compelling
character with a striking voice, a tragic backstory, and a dogged determination
never to give up on the quest for justice (as he sees it) even when he is
literally alone in that pursuit (“Never
compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon”). The problem lies in that
parenthetical phrase “as he sees it”—Rorschach’s perspective on his society and
his fellow Americans (and humans) is not just profoundly judgmental and pessimistic
(although yes on both counts), but also full of reactionary prejudice and
hatred that, the more I’ve read and thought about it (having taught the graphic
novel five times across the last 13 years), seem to me to mark him as a white
supremacist (or at least a sympathetic fellow traveler to that cause).
In HBO’s Watchmen’s first sequence set in the 2019
present (following the 1921 Tulsa-set opening), the show takes an immediate and
striking stance on the central image associated with that established and often
beloved character. An African American cop (still in Tulsa) stops a suspicious white
motorist, sees what he calls a “Rorschach mask” in the driver’s glove
compartment, and while he’s waiting for authorization to release his firearm for
use (the show’s
alternate America has a very different relationship to guns than ours) the
motorist puts on that mask (which indeed closely resembles Rorschach’s from the
graphic novel) and guns the police officer down in cold blood. We quickly learn
that the show’s chief villains, a white supremacist domestic terrorist group
known as the 7th
Cavalry, consistently wear those Rorschach masks, a statement that at least
from their perspective they have taken up the legacy of that famous member of
the 1980s Watchmen. Since (SPOILER, if a less time-sensitive one than most of
this week’s) Rorschach himself was killed at the end of the graphic novel, the
show is not able to offer us a clear vision of how he might have seen these
white supremacist terrorists, but their embrace of him is a striking commentary
nonetheless.
While Rorschach
doesn’t appear in the new series, however, it does feature a new character who
bears a significant resemblance to him: Tim Blake Nelson’s Wade Tillman/Looking Glass,
a suspicious and paranoid loner who is revealed to have a tragic backstory that
has led him to his role as a superhero wearing a mask that
reflects those around him.
Moreover (SPOILERS again, this time for the show) Wade is eventually recruited
by the 7th Cavalry, who tell him the truth about the infamous Alien
Squid attack that Oxymandias unleashed on New York at the end of the graphic
novel; that truth confirms the worst of Wade’s paranoia (“Is anything true?,”
he asks Regina King’s Angela) and seems primed to turn him into another
cynical, pessimistic vigilante like the original Rorschach. Yet that
transformation does not occur—over the show’s final two episodes Wade continues
to fight alongside characters like Angela and against the 7th
Cavalry, in the process ironically donning a Rorschach mask (taken from a
terrorist he has killed) in order to infiltrate their ranks. While those
choices and actions are of course about the character of Wade Tillman, they
also read to this WatchmenStudier as another direct and crucial challenge to
the ultimately less heroic character and perspective of Rorschach.
Next
WatchmenStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other takes on the show you’d share?
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