![]() ![]() Watchmen is a big and bold series, unlike any other TV show I’ve ever seen, and just when you think it’s shown you all of its many faces, it reveals another one. You might wonder why the first episode, at least, seems to take a cavalier approach to real-world stories about white supremacists’ relationship with police forces in the US.īut even if you hold these concerns, I would say you should keep watching. You might also wonder, if you’re aware of who’s on the show’s creative team, whether a group that boasts lots of black voices but is headed up by a white showrunner ( Damon Lindelof) and white director ( Nicole Kassell) is the right one to tell this particular story, and whether the genre they’re using to tell it is the best one. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark You might wonder whether this sequence is being used to infuse Watchmen with false gravitas. If you watch these first 10 minutes (hell, if you just read my description of them), you might be tempted to wonder why a moment so thoroughly steeped in all of the country’s worst selves is leading into what is, at least nominally, a superhero show. The intersection of race and power - and more specifically, how that power is so often handed to white people, while black people are only allowed it if they uphold the white status quo - weighs heavily on Watchmen’s mind from the first. Then again, also core to Watchmen is the idea of Bass Reeves, a black marshal from Oklahoma whose exploits are celebrated in a silent film that plays in a Tulsa movie theater during the series’ opening moments. It is widely considered one of the most shocking acts of racial violence in American history, and it’s core to what Watchmen is saying about America today. The massacre was pure malevolent violence committed on Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” undertaken by white citizens who killed dozens and wounded even more (exact totals are unknown) while burning black property to the ground. Watchmen is set in 2019, but these opening 10 minutes depict the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre of 1921. “If you’d rather not watch this kind of show, we wanted to let you know up front.” The opening 10 minutes of HBO’s new Watchmen series - not a straight adaptation of the acclaimed 1986 graphic novel but a companion to it - are a statement of purpose rarely seen on TV: “Here is what this show is,” they say. ![]()
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