I've been hesitantly following HBO's "Watchmen" series, unsure whether it will progress in interesting directions, but I want to comment on this episode, "This Extraordinary Being," because it's some of the best TV I've seen in awhile. It's a shame, really, that something this cinematically self-reflexive wasn't produced for theatrical release, but this is the so-called current "golden age of television" we live in, I suppose. Regardless, this is unusually smart superhero stuff here. Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and, later, Zack Snyder's movie adaptation, were always hyper reflective of reality relative to other superhero fare; in that case, it was an extension of Cold War politics. In HBO's follow-up series, it's mostly reflective of race in America. The brilliant aspect of this particular episode is how well it integrates the history of film, real-life masked vigilantes and comic-book superheroes with the racial issues, all of which lends itself well to a desaturated black-and-white look.
It reminds me of two recent feature films that similarly dealt with doubling and representation as it relates to race and motion pictures. Most recently, in "BlackKklansmen" (2018), Spike Lee, rather clumsily I thought, drew a line from "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), through "Gone with the Wind" (1939), to President Donald Trump today and, conversely, looked for a rebalancing of these racist misrepresentations in the history of Blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s. A better picture is Jordan Peele's "Get Out" (2017), which includes a "sunken place" not entirely unlike the "Nostalgia" drug trip Angela finds herself in this episode. The benefits of feature-length filmmaking seem apparent to me in this comparison, as Peele was afforded more time to subtly develop the doubled themes of societal and photographic racial representation. "This Extraordinary Being" covers much of the same material, but has to be quicker and blunter about it, but that's the only reservation I have for what is otherwise some of the best TV has to offer.
In it, we have the framing narrative of the rest of the series, whereby Angela ingests the memories of her grandfather and, consequently, falls into a coma that is the main narrative we see. Thus, there's already a doubling of characters in sharing memories, but the two are also related genetically and share similar lives as police and masked vigilantes. The themes of doubling and motion-picture representations of race are furthered by a series of self-references to relevant fake and real motion pictures and a comic book. Angela's grandfather, who it turns out is the superhero Hooded Justice, was inspired by another, actually-real, hero, Bass Reeves. In the show, there's a fake 1921 silent-film-within-the-TV-series, "Trust in the Law," about Reeves. Again mixing fantasy and reality, the fake film is credited to a real-life filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux.
In addition to this African-American inspiration for H.J., there are two important products of the dominant White culture at play. The first are the Superman comics, which include a Moses-like narrative (of him being orphaned by his birth parents and sent to another land) similar to H.J.'s origin story of surviving the 1921 Tulsa race riot, or massacre. Like Superman, Hooded Justice grew up to put on a cape and fight baddies, too. The second, unspoken product here is D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic "The Birth of a Nation," probably the most influential film ever made. Two important consequences of Griffith's film here are, one, that it really did influence Micheaux to combat such hateful ideology by making films of his own ("Within Our Gates" (1920) probably remains his best-known real surviving film) and, two, "The Birth of a Nation" largely revived the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, it was employed by the bigoted terrorist organization as a recruitment tool. In this "Watchmen" episode, the Klan likewise employs cinema to attack African Americans--albeit in a more convoluted fashion resulting in Black people being mesmerized into attacking each other and themselves. Later, Hooded Justice co-opts this trick with a stroboscopic light.
Out of this racial context, H.J. adopts a dual identity that straddles both cultures: Black policeman (inspirational, perhaps, but ineffective as thwarted by racist cops who double as Klansmen) and superhero Hooded Justice (who conceals his racial identity under whiteface makeup, thereby undermining the representation of his race, while otherwise being more effective at combating the Klan). He also discovers in teaming up with other supes for the Minutemen that they're a joke. Not surprising, after all, given that Hooded Justice was originally written by Moore as seemingly another White character--despite the connotations his wearing a noose around his neck imply regarding the history of lynching in America. Changing his race for the series was wise. Ironically, there's also a TV-show-within-the-show where H.J. is portrayed by a White actor. That the superhero is also a homosexual or bisexual in a past age of rampant homophobia only furthers the dualities largely forced upon the marginalized groups by the dominant culture.
Thus, within an hour runtime, we have one character's memories played out within another character's mind, both of whom share genetics and lifestyles. This is played as a dream that goes in and out as reality fights to set back in. We also have nested films and a TV series within the actual HBO "Watchmen" show. Some of these motion pictures inspire hope and others incite hatred. We have the Superman comics, too. We have good masked vigilantes (H.J. and Sister Night, presumably), bad ones and, more or less, just stupid ones (Captain Metropolis). Furthering the doubling, we have gay men passing as straight, a Black man passing as White, a White actor in the role of a Black superhero in the inner series, and a real-life Black marshal celebrated by Whites only in the fiction of the inner film. This is powerful because the show-makers demonstrably understand the power of motion pictures, from "The Birth of a Nation" through the golden age of TV. Beware the cyclops: the mesmerizing one-eyed cinematographic apparatus.
It reminds me of two recent feature films that similarly dealt with doubling and representation as it relates to race and motion pictures. Most recently, in "BlackKklansmen" (2018), Spike Lee, rather clumsily I thought, drew a line from "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), through "Gone with the Wind" (1939), to President Donald Trump today and, conversely, looked for a rebalancing of these racist misrepresentations in the history of Blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s. A better picture is Jordan Peele's "Get Out" (2017), which includes a "sunken place" not entirely unlike the "Nostalgia" drug trip Angela finds herself in this episode. The benefits of feature-length filmmaking seem apparent to me in this comparison, as Peele was afforded more time to subtly develop the doubled themes of societal and photographic racial representation. "This Extraordinary Being" covers much of the same material, but has to be quicker and blunter about it, but that's the only reservation I have for what is otherwise some of the best TV has to offer.
In it, we have the framing narrative of the rest of the series, whereby Angela ingests the memories of her grandfather and, consequently, falls into a coma that is the main narrative we see. Thus, there's already a doubling of characters in sharing memories, but the two are also related genetically and share similar lives as police and masked vigilantes. The themes of doubling and motion-picture representations of race are furthered by a series of self-references to relevant fake and real motion pictures and a comic book. Angela's grandfather, who it turns out is the superhero Hooded Justice, was inspired by another, actually-real, hero, Bass Reeves. In the show, there's a fake 1921 silent-film-within-the-TV-series, "Trust in the Law," about Reeves. Again mixing fantasy and reality, the fake film is credited to a real-life filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux.
In addition to this African-American inspiration for H.J., there are two important products of the dominant White culture at play. The first are the Superman comics, which include a Moses-like narrative (of him being orphaned by his birth parents and sent to another land) similar to H.J.'s origin story of surviving the 1921 Tulsa race riot, or massacre. Like Superman, Hooded Justice grew up to put on a cape and fight baddies, too. The second, unspoken product here is D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic "The Birth of a Nation," probably the most influential film ever made. Two important consequences of Griffith's film here are, one, that it really did influence Micheaux to combat such hateful ideology by making films of his own ("Within Our Gates" (1920) probably remains his best-known real surviving film) and, two, "The Birth of a Nation" largely revived the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, it was employed by the bigoted terrorist organization as a recruitment tool. In this "Watchmen" episode, the Klan likewise employs cinema to attack African Americans--albeit in a more convoluted fashion resulting in Black people being mesmerized into attacking each other and themselves. Later, Hooded Justice co-opts this trick with a stroboscopic light.
Out of this racial context, H.J. adopts a dual identity that straddles both cultures: Black policeman (inspirational, perhaps, but ineffective as thwarted by racist cops who double as Klansmen) and superhero Hooded Justice (who conceals his racial identity under whiteface makeup, thereby undermining the representation of his race, while otherwise being more effective at combating the Klan). He also discovers in teaming up with other supes for the Minutemen that they're a joke. Not surprising, after all, given that Hooded Justice was originally written by Moore as seemingly another White character--despite the connotations his wearing a noose around his neck imply regarding the history of lynching in America. Changing his race for the series was wise. Ironically, there's also a TV-show-within-the-show where H.J. is portrayed by a White actor. That the superhero is also a homosexual or bisexual in a past age of rampant homophobia only furthers the dualities largely forced upon the marginalized groups by the dominant culture.
Thus, within an hour runtime, we have one character's memories played out within another character's mind, both of whom share genetics and lifestyles. This is played as a dream that goes in and out as reality fights to set back in. We also have nested films and a TV series within the actual HBO "Watchmen" show. Some of these motion pictures inspire hope and others incite hatred. We have the Superman comics, too. We have good masked vigilantes (H.J. and Sister Night, presumably), bad ones and, more or less, just stupid ones (Captain Metropolis). Furthering the doubling, we have gay men passing as straight, a Black man passing as White, a White actor in the role of a Black superhero in the inner series, and a real-life Black marshal celebrated by Whites only in the fiction of the inner film. This is powerful because the show-makers demonstrably understand the power of motion pictures, from "The Birth of a Nation" through the golden age of TV. Beware the cyclops: the mesmerizing one-eyed cinematographic apparatus.