Watchmen TV Series

[irishda]

Anyone else catch the new Watchmen series premier on HBO last night? Most of the social media comments I saw about it were very negative, because it used the source material as a base to branch off into a new story, rather than just retell the comic book. For those unfamiliar, the series takes place 30 years after the events of the comic book in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A white supremacy group calling themselves the Seventh Kalvary, all sporting Rorschach-style masks and spouting passages from his journal, has started attacking police, who in response have begun wearing masks and deputizing other vigilantes, like Regina Hall's Sister Night.

The cast is solid, with Tim Blake Nelson likely poised to shine the most (and Jeremy Irons as an aged Ozymandias, though I doubt he'll have a lot of screen time). But how does the community feel about the adaptation?

I personally enjoy that they've translated it to what feels like a more relevant voice. Watchmen was good, but too many people latched onto the romanticism of Rorschach's "never compromise" mentality. And I have no doubt he would be a hero to the wrong kind of people. One of the things that's always bothered me about the standard superhero fare is how often black Americans' perspectives are ignored when discussing vigilantism, as the rules can both protect black Americans from the predations of a public looking to take the law into their own hands (the show even opens with the Tulsa Race Riots and the burning of Black Wall Street) and also be utilized by a corrupt system to destroy them (like how Misty Knight in Luke Cage was the worst cop ever). It'll be interesting to see how the show balances this perspective against the murder mystery that's likely to envelop the show.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Most of the social media comments I saw about it were very negative, because it used the source material as a base to branch off into a new story, rather than just retell the comic book.

You'd have to be really out of the loop on the whole promotion, to get an impression that this was supposed to be a simple, direct adaptation of the comic book .
I wasn't really following it prior to premiere either, but still the info got through to me.

I liked the first episode. It gripped me. I'm a sucker for the 5-minutes-in-the-future kind of dystopia and the world has this "Clockwork Orange but in America" vibe to it. Plus there's a ton of winks and nudges, and references to the original comic book.
The casting leaves positive impression too, both Regina King and Don Johnson were great.

Spoiler

Which makes me a bit sad he's been already killed off, but i guess he'll serve as a Comedian type of figure, and we'll see him in retrospectives.

(I say both, cause other cast members, even Jeremy Irons, simple didn't have that much to act yet.)
Overall, i wasn't really counting on anything, but left satisfied, and wondering what direction will this follow.

 

[irishda]

I liked the first episode. It gripped me. I'm a sucker for the 5-minutes-in-the-future kind of dystopia and the world has this "Clockwork Orange but in America" vibe to it. Plus there's a ton of winks and nudges, and references to the original comic book.
The casting leaves positive impression too, both Regina King and Don Johnson were great.

I'm assuming there's more to Don than meets the eye, especially for Regina, that will be uncovered. I also recall the wheelchair man's statement at the beginning when Regina first meets him outside her bakery when I saw the end of the episode. "Do I look like I could lift 200 pounds?"

Spoiler

I suspect Don's character was tied to the Kalvary somehow, and that he was prepared to "shut up" the cop who was waking up in the hospital about who exactly was driving the truck.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I am waiting till the show finishes its first season.

Still think making it a Sequel was a dumb idea. I just wanted the Snyder movie more or less but with a TV's pacing and a better soundtrack.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'll probably end up having to get the DVD set unless I just want to get HBO for a month for binge watching. I'm curious if this is gonna be a one off or they're going to make it into yet another long running series.

I'm also kinda surprised that I had to dig to find out this is based off the comics(not the film) so we're post-space squiddy. I would think that would have gotten mentioned a bit more readily int he reviews and articles I've read about it, instead of having to dig and guess based on a very brief shot of squid falling from the sky and Dr. Manhattan not being treated as a villain in the trailer.

 

[Cette]

I was going to skip it since I have low hopes on the quality but it being set in the area I've lived pretty much my whole life raises the curiosity level.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Anyone else catch the new Watchmen series premier on HBO last night?

Just did, and honestly not impressed at all. I'll give thoughts on a point by point basis.

A white supremacy group calling themselves the Seventh Kalvary, all sporting Rorschach-style masks and spouting passages from his journal, has started attacking police...

This fits, I guess. It's clumsy, kind of ham-fisted, and unintentionally sends a message that whistleblowing atrocities is unforgivable if the whistleblower was shady, held unfashionable political views, or if they're blowing whistles on shit you don't want to hear. I can't watch this without thinking of Snowden or Assange, but that's just me.

...who in response have begun wearing masks and deputizing other vigilantes, like Regina Hall's Sister Night.

And this is where the show promptly shits its pants. When your protagonists are basically the stasi and you don't immediately call that shit out on the spot, but instead glamorize it and expect the audience to not think about it too hard Because Racism?, you've shat your pants. To say nothing of the fact the show's written itself into a corner, because to actually deconstruct that premise on its own bases in anything approaching a serious manner, involves critically examining identity politics, the current state of race relations, and anti-racism activism. It'll be the fuckin' day that happens.

...One of the things that's always bothered me about the standard superhero fare is how often black Americans' perspectives are ignored when discussing vigilantism, as the rules can both protect black Americans from the predations of a public looking to take the law into their own hands (the show even opens with the Tulsa Race Riots and the burning of Black Wall Street) and also be utilized by a corrupt system to destroy them (like how Misty Knight in Luke Cage was the worst cop ever).

This is why the show blew out the seat of its own pants, and hard. The premise works right up until you realize the main vehicle for white supremacy in the United States today, and has been since the birth of Jim Crow, is the criminal justice system itself. To say the show indulges a touch of role reversal is myopic and stupid, because the very act of engaging that role reversal is to validate core white supremacist belief in the first goddamn place. Moreover, it carries with it a fundamental misunderstanding of what the civil rights movement was actually about -- the extension of civil rights and liberties, and human rights, to historically-disadvantaged peoples.

If anything, the show's a(n as far as I can tell) unintentional study of horseshoe theory, and based upon the pilot alone makes the statement "you know what, maybe fascism is a pretty good deal after all, as long as we're the fascists".

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I disagree with this article and I disagree with the commmenters in it:

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/zack-snyder-watchmen-shows-the-limits-of-faithful-adaptations/

And I can't make a response because I don't have a Disqus account.

 

[09philj]

I disagree with this article and I disagree with the commmenters in it:

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/zack-snyder-watchmen-shows-the-limits-of-faithful-adaptations/

And I can't make a response because I don't have a Disqus account.

Watchmen, the comic, drips with open contempt for the idea of "realistic" superheroes. It borrows the look and outwards veneer of Golden Age and Silver Age DC and installs an wretched, rotten heart there. Watchmen is about a variety of things, but if there's a central thesis statement to the whole affair, it's something along the lines of "superheroes are bad and dumb and the world is better without them", and it goes out of it's way to make every character as ridiculous and/or unsympathetic as possible. Doctor Manhattan can't relate to humans, Ozymandias is a narcissistic megalomaniac, Nite Owl is a weird slobby awkward rich guy who decided the best use of his inheritance was to build himself a huge panoply of owl-themed gadgets to fight mid level criminals, Silk Spectre is a very damaged young woman, the Comedian is fucking evil, and Rorschach is a horrible smelly hypocritical violent fascist maniac who eats cold baked beans. Watchmen the movie took all of that and drowned it in a sea of Snyder artifice and point missing. The Snyder movie looks at all the same violent and corrupt and pathetic characters and decides that they're all pretty cool, actually, and that since it's adapting a comic nothing in it should look remotely real, because nothing is truer to the spirit of a comic which tried to bring real grit and realism to a rather silly genre than a cavalcade of pointless slow motion and really fake looking sets and costumes. The ultimate and fundamental issue is that Zack Snyder thinks superheroes are pretty great, and if you believe that you fundamentally can't make a faithful adaptation of a comic which holds the opposite belief. (Aside from that, directly transplanting the script from a rather slowly paced twelve issue comic directly into a film doesn't really work, hence why it's a two hour forty minute monstrosity with dreadful pacing.)

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I disagree with this article and I disagree with the commmenters in it:

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/zack-snyder-watchmen-shows-the-limits-of-faithful-adaptations/

And I can't make a response because I don't have a Disqus account.

Watchmen, the comic, drips with open contempt for the idea of "realistic" superheroes. It borrows the look and outwards veneer of Golden Age and Silver Age DC and installs an wretched, rotten heart there. Watchmen is about a variety of things, but if there's a central thesis statement to the whole affair, it's something along the lines of "superheroes are bad and dumb and the world is better without them", and it goes out of it's way to make every character as ridiculous and/or unsympathetic as possible. Doctor Manhattan can't relate to humans, Ozymandias is a narcissistic megalomaniac, Nite Owl is a weird slobby awkward rich guy who decided the best use of his inheritance was to build himself a huge panoply of owl-themed gadgets to fight mid level criminals, Silk Spectre is a very damaged young woman, the Comedian is fucking evil, and Rorschach is a horrible smelly hypocritical violent fascist maniac who eats cold baked beans. Watchmen the movie took all of that and drowned it in a sea of Snyder artifice and point missing. The Snyder movie looks at all the same violent and corrupt and pathetic characters and decides that they're all pretty cool, actually, and that since it's adapting a comic nothing in it should look remotely real, because nothing is truer to the spirit of a comic which tried to bring real grit and realism to a rather silly genre than a cavalcade of pointless slow motion and really fake looking sets and costumes. The ultimate and fundamental issue is that Zack Snyder thinks superheroes are pretty great, and if you believe that you fundamentally can't make a faithful adaptation of a comic which holds the opposite belief. (Aside from that, directly transplanting the script from a rather slowly paced twelve issue comic directly into a film doesn't really work, hence why it's a two hour forty minute monstrosity with dreadful pacing.)

Just gonna get this out of the way, your talking to someone who read the comic book first and then watched the movie, and at first I thought, eh this movie is iffy, but the more I watched it, especially the fact that it had Director's Cuts that actually improved upon the film, I ended up liking it a lot because of details.

I think the casting of The Comedian, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan was great and imo the best parts of the movie (and Comic)

Also the idea Zack Snyder trying to make everything look "cool" is not completely true with scenes like The Comedian killing a pregnant woman he fucked in the bar, and there was no "style" to the killing. It was just that quick and shocking. Samething I argue with the guy in Prison getting his arm hacked by a Chainsaw.

I also felt the pacing was fine enough for a movie but I wish that the HBO adaption would be just the Zack Snyder movie but with a TVs/Episodic Pacing. Nope, I got a fanfiction sequel. I don't care if its in the spirit of Watchmen as the article says. Watchmen is a very SPECIFIC story. I cannot be replicated in some other form.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

It borrows the look and outwards veneer of Golden Age and Silver Age DC and installs an wretched, rotten heart there...a cavalcade of pointless slow motion and really fake looking sets and costumes.

You understand visual novels and film aren't the same medium, and as such require different stylistic and creative choices to convey a given message, don't you?

Moore and Gibbons adapted "Golden" and "Silver" age comic aesthetic and sensibility for their own ends to tell a subversive story, and attack the level of perceived nostalgia and respect for the period down a peg.

Snyder, meanwhile, adapted post-Bay, post-Wachowski, hyper-stylized action cinematography and direction for the same end. You realize he didn't invent that but was rather taking a popular industry trend to its extreme, right? That's in harsh conflict to the non-action scenes in the film adaptation, since the cinematography and pacing are straight out of heyday noir -- a film genre contemporary to those comic ages itself. Did it occur to you that contrast, and how ridiculous either look in light of that contrast, might actually be a statement in and of itself?

You're complaining about how silly the "superheroes" look in the film based upon a comic, the entire thesis of which is that "superheroes" are silly. Think about that.

 

[Silvanus]

Snyder, meanwhile, adapted post-Bay, post-Wachowski, hyper-stylized action cinematography and direction for the same end. You realize he didn't invent that but was rather taking a popular industry trend to its extreme, right?

I really didn't get the impression Snyder was making any kind of deconstructionist statement with the cinematography, though-- partly because Snyder uses that kind of shiny-but-empty cinematography in his other films as well. I think he just thought it looked cool, and that's about as deep as the appreciation went.

The guy's not an auteur, and he's certainly no Moore or Gibbons.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I really didn't get the impression Snyder was making any kind of deconstructionist statement with the cinematography, though-- partly because Snyder uses that kind of shiny-but-empty cinematography in his other films as well. I think he just thought it looked cool, and that's about as deep as the appreciation went.

The guy's not an auteur, and he's certainly no Moore or Gibbons.

Well, let's examine that "shiny but empty" cinematography in the two films that sandwich Watchmen -- 300 and Sucker Punch (setting aside that animated owl movie for obvious reasons). 300 was a fictionalized retelling of Thermopylae, using the perspective of a Spartan soldier -- a highly biased and unreliable narrator -- as a framing device. Mythologizing the battle is the entire point, we're watching what a Greek war propaganda movie would have looked like. Sucker Punch was the escapist fantasy of a heavily-drugged young woman unjustly committed to an insane asylum, no shit it's going to be surrealist. Complaining about surrealism in Sucker Punch is about as sensible as complaining about surrealism in Requiem for a Dream.

I'm not even a fan of Snyder. I'm just willing to look past the flaws in his work to see what he was up to, and style-as-message is what he was up to -- in all three of these films. Whether he conveyed that message well is very much up for debate, but his style has clear intent behind it, and for that reason this isn't the hill to die on when criticizing him.

 

[Silvanus]

Well, let's examine that "shiny but empty" cinematography in the two films that sandwich Watchmen -- 300 and Sucker Punch (setting aside that animated owl movie for obvious reasons). 300 was a fictionalized retelling of Thermopylae, using the perspective of a Spartan soldier -- a highly biased and unreliable narrator -- as a framing device. Mythologizing the battle is the entire point, we're watching what a Greek war propaganda movie would have looked like.

Hrmmm... the framing, including all that mythologising and embellishment, was the work of Frank Miller, not Snyder-- and Miller was a pretty unashamed lover of the unironic "300 badasses being the epitome of awesome dudes" approach. This is not deconstruction or a statement on propaganda. It's a straightforward power fantasy. I'll definitely go with shiny-but-empty for 300, and I say that as a fan of a lot of Miller's work (even the generally disregarded Strikes Again).

Sucker Punch was the escapist fantasy of a heavily-drugged young woman unjustly committed to an insane asylum, no shit it's going to be surrealist. Complaining about surrealism in Sucker Punch is about as sensible as complaining about surrealism in Requiem for a Dream.

I haven't seen Sucker Punch, but keep in mind that my complaint has nothing to do with surrealism whatsoever.

I'm not even a fan of Snyder. I'm just willing to look past the flaws in his work to see what he was up to, and style-as-message is what he was up to -- in all three of these films. Whether he conveyed that message well is very much up for debate, but his style has clear intent behind it, and for that reason this isn't the hill to die on when criticizing him.

It would perhaps be a more appropriate comparison to bring in his other superhero films. Do Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman, and Justice League strike us as particularly intelligent takes? They strike me as pretty basic, surface-level flicks.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Hrmmm... the framing, including all that mythologising and embellishment, was the work of Frank Miller, not Snyder-- and Miller was a pretty unashamed lover of the unironic "300 badasses being the epitome of awesome dudes" approach.

Sure it was. And, as was the case with Watchmen, it fell to Snyder to adapt that theme and tone from comic to film. He felt the best way to accentuate the fantastic elements of the story, and communicate to the viewer they are not watching a truthful accounting of the battle, was to heavily stylize the violence.

I haven't seen Sucker Punch, but keep in mind that my complaint has nothing to do with surrealism whatsoever.

Frankly, it does, because stylized depictions of violence such as Snyder's are inherently surrealist. In Sucker Punch this is doubly the case, as the film is surrealist even setting aside the violence.

It would perhaps be a more appropriate comparison to bring in his other superhero films.

I'd argue 300 and Sucker Punch are also superhero films, at least in that superheroic qualities are imparted to "regular" people as a consequence of fiction or fantasy. But, you intend to talk about capeshit, so let's go with it.

Do Man of Steel, Batman Vs. Superman, and Justice League strike us as particularly intelligent takes? They strike me as pretty basic, surface-level flicks.

I think the situation's a little more complex than you would like it to be, here. Man of Steel wasn't a great movie, but it wasn't terrible either, and frankly its biggest failing was its script. Glaring flaws in that aside, most people's issues with it seem to be the revisionist take on Superman. I can understand that, but people need to separate the quality of the film from whether or not they like its interpretation of the main character.

Here's the fly in that ointment. Man of Steel was Goyer's and Nolan's work. Snyder was brought on to direct in 2010, once WB was ready to begin casting and filming. Goyer and Nolan are sacred cows, and people would rather scapegoat Snyder than blame the two who brought us the Dark Knight trilogy.

BvS was deadass the victim of executive meddling. An original runtime of three hours was excessive, sure, and the script could definitely have been streamlined a bit and some of the story beats were incredibly iffy, especially Lex Did Everything and Arbitrary Doomsday. But WB wanted what WB wanted, and that was pretty obvious based on the end product, at least compared to the director's cut.

The best contrast to that, and proof of WB's destructive interference, comes right out of Wonder Woman. Which, by the way, was the first DCEU movie on which Snyder actually had writing or production credit. The studio still fought tooth and nail to tank their own movie, by nearly cutting the no-man's land scene, and mandating that stupid fucking CGI fight at the end that had absolutely no reason to be there and shot the entire movie's thesis and core themes right in the foot.

So...Justice League. The movie on which Snyder was allegedly forced out (the thing with his daughter being a face-saver excuse typical of Hollywood) after principal photography had been completed, for the studio to go with Whedon and reshoot a quarter of the movie, and the studio still fucked around with Whedon's material in post. That one?

 

[Silvanus]

Sure it was. And, as was the case with Watchmen, it fell to Snyder to adapt that theme and tone from comic to film. He felt the best way to accentuate the fantastic elements of the story, and communicate to the viewer they are not watching a truthful accounting of the battle, was to heavily stylize the violence.

That's what you took from that? That's not particularly what Miller was trying to convey, so I saw no reason to think it was Snyder's unique intent. I think you're giving a lot of credit to a relatively basic aesthetic decision.

Frankly, it does, because stylized depictions of violence such as Snyder's are inherently surrealist. In Sucker Punch this is doubly the case, as the film is surrealist even setting aside the violence.

Stylisation isn't really anything to do with surrealism. It's a particular and distinct movement. High levels of stylisation can exist in almost any artistic movement or form: hyperrealism, expressionism, etc etc.

I think the situation's a little more complex than you would like it to be, here. Man of Steel wasn't a great movie, but it wasn't terrible either, and frankly its biggest failing was its script. Glaring flaws in that aside, most people's issues with it seem to be the revisionist take on Superman. I can understand that, but people need to separate the quality of the film from whether or not they like its interpretation of the main character.

Here's the fly in that ointment. Man of Steel was Goyer's and Nolan's work. Snyder was brought on to direct in 2010, once WB was ready to begin casting and filming. Goyer and Nolan are sacred cows, and people would rather scapegoat Snyder than blame the two who brought us the Dark Knight trilogy.

BvS was deadass the victim of executive meddling. An original runtime of three hours was excessive, sure, and the script could definitely have been streamlined a bit and some of the story beats were incredibly iffy, especially Lex Did Everything and Arbitrary Doomsday. But WB wanted what WB wanted, and that was pretty obvious based on the end product, at least compared to the director's cut.

Well, I'm looking for the evidence of a great auteur creative process, aiming to deconstruct the genre... and I'm not seeing it.

So...Justice League. The movie on which Snyder was allegedly forced out (the thing with his daughter being a face-saver excuse typical of Hollywood) after principal photography had been completed, for the studio to go with Whedon and reshoot a quarter of the movie, and the studio still fucked around with Whedon's material in post. That one?

Yep, that one. You know, if there have to be excuses for how unimpressive the films are with almost every one he has a credit on, then we're a bit lacking for evidence of his brilliance.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

That's what you took from that? That's not particularly what Miller was trying to convey, so I saw no reason to think it was Snyder's unique intent. I think you're giving a lot of credit to a relatively basic aesthetic decision.

That's not what I took from that. That's what Snyder had to say about his stylistic choices about the film thirteen years ago [https://web.archive.org/web/20080610064002/http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=34442]. In multiple interviews and commentaries, to wit, of which that archived article is but one cited example.

Once again, that's not "a relatively basic aesthetic decision". That was the same decision made, in three different and concurrent live-action movies, that fulfilled a specific narrative purpose congruent to their source material in the two adaptations.

Well, I'm looking for the evidence of a great auteur creative process, aiming to deconstruct the genre... and I'm not seeing it.

For one thing, I'm not the one using words like "great" or "auteur". You are. If you want to make my argument into something it isn't, be my guest, but I'm sticking to my point, which is he made deliberate creative choices to convey a message, and that he's been undeservedly made into a fanboy punching bag. You may disagree with those choices or dislike them, but to say there was no clear intent behind them as shorthand to discredit and discard his work is utter nonsense.

The truly ironic thing is, you're pointing to a movie (Man of Steel) as an example of Snyder's perceived lack of talent and claiming to see no evidence of deconstructionism. Not only is that movie a deconstruction of the Superman mythos, that it is a deconstructive take in the first place is precisely why it was poorly received by fans. And if that wasn't enough, Snyder was neither writer nor producer for the film: that was Goyer and Nolan.

Yep, that one. You know, if there have to be excuses for how unimpressive the films are with almost every one he has a credit on, then we're a bit lacking for evidence of his brilliance.

Again, your words, not mine. Except, here's the thing.

Snyder isn't the only producer, writer, or director subject to WB's executive incompetence. That was a universal, up until the DC Films restructure and Hamada's installation which is why Aquaman and Shazam weren't complete clusterfucks. Snyder had little to do with Suicide Squad and only received EP credit on it, but it turned out shit nevertheless; Wonder Woman was almost completely ruined thanks to studio interference, and Jenkins deadass went on record about that to the media. If we were talking about only films Snyder had touched, that would be one thing. But we're not.

But once again, I guess it's simply more convenient to blame Snyder.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

My take: It's a movie in the larger Watchmen universe (the early sign of that are the universal electric cars), though its unclear if it is the universe of the graphic novel or the movie with similar tone and a focus on a overarching mystery. It would definitely be worth a few bucks a month, but I'm inclined to just wait until the free weekends I occasionally get in as I'm not interested in $15 a month for this, His Dark Materials, and John Oliver.

Spoiler: Spoiler time

While it's not laid out explicitly, the set up with the Tulsa law enforcement system appears to be this: following the incidents of a few years ago at Christmas, the exact events remaining to be revealed to the audience other than Sister Night's perspective, cops were allowed to formally shield their identities, including having covers, in order to protect themselves from terrorist violence, notably from the Seventh Kalvery, a clear white supremest organization that is modeled after the KKK. It should be noted that this is not unique to the Watchmen universe, as some law enforcement in countries dealing with drug cartels use similar masks to protect certain units tasked with taking on drug cartels.

While rank and file cops remain in uniform with yellow baklava, Detectives don more elaborate personalities such as Looking Glass, Red Scare, and Sister Night, though it is unclear if they are formal detectives or authorized vigilantes. Beat cops, at the very least, require both authorization to use deadly force as well as a physical remote unlock by the desk sergeant to use their weapon, though it is unclear if this is related to the use of cover or a larger police reform (one that I think would be controversial today, but may reduce fatalities by police misconduct). It's notable that it appears that there doesn't appear to be a formal second in command of the Police Department, which results in Red Scare taking at least initial command following the death of the Chief.

The Bombing of Black Wall Street (an actual event in US history [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot]) starts the series, which appears to be an "echos of the past Haunt our present" theme that remains to be fully connected with the primary plot (which is primarily a murder mystery of the Chief of police and secondary mystery of the Kalvery plot, and a side matter of whatever Iron's eccentric billionaire character is up to). "Redfordrations," which appears to be targeted reparations to the descendants for at least the Tulsa massacre, act both as a harsh point of cultural contention and a plot device to identify the mysterious Will Reeves as Night's grandfather. Interdimensional attacks are an occurrence of some frequency, which I suspect will be elaborated on in later episodes.

All in all, not a bad start to what I hope is a good season, filled with small references that exist as world building rather than easter eggs. I'm looking forward to finishing it when I have access to it again.

 

[irishda]

...One of the things that's always bothered me about the standard superhero fare is how often black Americans' perspectives are ignored when discussing vigilantism, as the rules can both protect black Americans from the predations of a public looking to take the law into their own hands (the show even opens with the Tulsa Race Riots and the burning of Black Wall Street) and also be utilized by a corrupt system to destroy them (like how Misty Knight in Luke Cage was the worst cop ever).

This is why the show blew out the seat of its own pants, and hard. The premise works right up until you realize the main vehicle for white supremacy in the United States today, and has been since the birth of Jim Crow, is the criminal justice system itself. To say the show indulges a touch of role reversal is myopic and stupid, because the very act of engaging that role reversal is to validate core white supremacist belief in the first goddamn place. Moreover, it carries with it a fundamental misunderstanding of what the civil rights movement was actually about -- the extension of civil rights and liberties, and human rights, to historically-disadvantaged peoples.

If anything, the show's a(n as far as I can tell) unintentional study of horseshoe theory, and based upon the pilot alone makes the statement "you know what, maybe fascism is a pretty good deal after all, as long as we're the fascists".

But it wasn't just the criminal justice system, vigilantism in the US has a long and storied history with white supremacy. Extra-judicial killings were often the result of lynch mobs targeting accused black men more than anyone else. Pair that sense of racial "justice" with a deep distrust of government institutions thanks to libertarianism (exemplified by figures like Rorschach), and a vigilante mob that preaches race wars and anti-government sentiment makes perfect sense.

Moreover, this is obviously a system that is not built to be sustained. The fascist state only grew out of the Kalvary's terrorism, so it is a relatively recent system. And the cracks are already beginning to show, as evidenced by episode 2's revelations. This is not a static show wherein how things are in episode 1 will be how they are in episode 8, and I expect the "glorification" of fascism will have consequences within the show.

 

[Silvanus]

That's not what I took from that. That's what Snyder had to say about his stylistic choices about the film thirteen years ago [https://web.archive.org/web/20080610064002/http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=34442]. In multiple interviews and commentaries, to wit, of which that archived article is but one cited example.

Hmm. Not really saying the same thing, though, is he?

The truly ironic thing is, you're pointing to a movie (Man of Steel) as an example of Snyder's perceived lack of talent and claiming to see no evidence of deconstructionism. Not only is that movie a deconstruction of the Superman mythos, that it is a deconstructive take in the first place is precisely why it was poorly received by fans. And if that wasn't enough, Snyder was neither writer nor producer for the film: that was Goyer and Nolan.

Sorry, how is it a deconstruction of the mythos? It's a really straightforward plot with some hamfisted and unbelievable attempts at moral ambiguity ("maybe you should let all the kids die, son!")

But once again, I guess it's simply more convenient to blame Snyder.

I don't think any positions in this debate are particularly inconvenient. It's too inconsequential.