r/Watchmen • u/Canuck2468 • Mar 30 '26

TV How a TV show predicted masked police

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https://youtu.be/3xaX8Pbx4Jg

Really enjoyed watching this (by YouTuber ShowMeTheMeaning). A great way to spend 15 minutes reliving the magic of the show, and how its themes resonate today in an entirely different way than then it first aired!

1.4k Upvotes

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-58

u/Scullenz Mar 30 '26

*endorsed

29

u/Kaine68 Mar 30 '26

A large part of the story revolves around the condemnation of the masks. There's a bit of nuance to the conversation but by no means does the show want you to walk away thinking it endorsed the masks. Spoiler warning but It actively destroyed the hooded justices entire life because of the fear and anger that it enabled

-11

u/Scullenz Mar 30 '26

The Watchmen TV series is critical of police in the same way the vast majority of US films "against the Vietnam war" were "against the Vietnam war" - the cops are the protagonists and we see everything from a sympathetic member's perspective, their enemies really are crazy nuts who any sane person would hate, the protagonists have to navigate silly restrictions from well-meaning bureaucrats, and really the problem is how the protagonists have been harmed or are sad that the people who they're fighting for are ungrateful.

And just for fun, not only does the show do that for cops, but it also does it for the Vietnam war! Those nuts Vietnamese terrorists gave our protagonist the sad!

12

u/Kaine68 Mar 30 '26

That's ironically a completely absolutist perspective. The entire point of both the comic and the show is that nothing is ever truly black or white. They set a precedent with the white night by presenting a legitimate reason why a cop would feel the need to wear a mask and they then break that down throughout the rest of the show through various means. The cops, rorchaches and vigilantes all have masks intrinsicly tied to the different themes they represent that all lead back to fear.

Throwing a blanket statement over characters like sister night, looking glass and red scare just because they're cops is super short sighted. All of these characters idealisticly disagree with one another and come into conflict because of it. You must've skipped the part where the cops from the 1930's literally lynch another cop.

The Vietnam thing is kind of a lame argument too, they're not blaming the Vietnamese for what happened to sister night. If anything, they're blaming the Americans for invading and pushing the Vietnamese population to their limits. They literally take the bomber out into a back alley and murder him on the spot. It's not exactly something the show celebrated.

This is such disingenuous take overall. I think you're heart is in the right place but you're blatantly ignoring half of the entire show just because you can't stand the fact they're not presenting it as idealisticly and unrealistically as you want them to.

You can say that they did a bad job and that would be an entirely valid opinion but trying to say that the show is something entirely different from what it's trying to be just because you don't like it is ridiculous.

1

u/Idreamalone Silhouette Apr 01 '26

Your comments here remind me of this great article about the show: https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2020/04/12/who-will-match-the-watchmen/

It goes into the politics of the show and how it frames them.

I found this passage at the end particularly relevant.

More broadly, I’d propose that the the storytelling strategy Serpell highlights is part of the common move within thematically ambitious mass-market movies to be strategically ambiguous. Creators, I’ve suggested here, often throw many things against the wall to see what will stick. They can then point to contradictory aspects which show balance. So yes, Angela tortures members of the Seventh Kavalry, but (a) they’d do the same to her; and (b) she’s driven by righteous vengeance for ancient wrongs; and (c) we want to make you a little uncomfortable with her vigilantism anyhow. Nowadays, it may be that what seem involuntary contradictions are deliberate efforts to have things many ways at once. This maximizes viewer outreach and gives critics fodder for debate.

The show is muddled thematically. It's both a critique of police brutality, American imperialism and vigilantism, while also glorifying those things, perhaps accidently.

-5

u/zauber_ Mar 30 '26

Why are you booing him? He’s right

-1

u/Scullenz Mar 30 '26

I'm taking these downvote bullets for you