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‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

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SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

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HBO’s “Watchmen” trolls history and heroic whiteness in the most extraordinary episode yet

Damon Lindelof's take on history meets up with that of the comic books' to tell a true American hero origin story

Published November 25, 2019 11:06AM (EST)

This article goes into extensive detail about the sixth episode of HBO's "Watchmen." If you haven't seen it and do not want to be spoiled, stop reading right now.

“Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” – James Baldwin

“I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”– Alan Moore, from a 2017 interview published in Folha de São Paulo (and re-posted on alanmooreworld.com).

“This Extraordinary Being,” the sixth hour of HBO’s “Watchmen,” is one of those episodes created to launch a thousand think pieces — this being one of them — along with a few college papers and maybe even a couple of grad school dissertations. You might have read these words as dismissive snickering or sarcasm. The intended sentiment is in fact the opposite.

There aren’t many episodes of television that nail their multiple roles as exposition, cultural critique, and social commentary on the roles race, class and power play in systemic justice in one single resolute sweep. “This Extraordinary Being” does all of this by asserting a mindblower reveal that balances the potential of angering fanboys with challenging long-held assumptions about who is given permission to not merely to play the hero, but be viewed as a hero.

It is that last point, I think, that makes this “Watchmen” tick of the clock a purposefully different experience for viewers of color and black viewers in particular. Above all, it eloquently acknowledges and even (to a point) exonerates the power of black rage in a way I’ve never seen before on television.

This episode,  written by series creator Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson, addresses a couple of nagging questions that have been pulling at viewers watching this season so far. But its boldest move is to answer the biggest unsolved mystery of Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ “Watchmen” comics: the true identity of the Minutemen hero called Hooded Justice.

Seizing that liberty without the blessing of Moore may turn off a few zealots insistently clinging to some false notion of “canon,” although Lindelof and his writers have been slyly swiping at that strange religion throughout this season.

It also helps that Lindelof and Jefferson honor what traits the comic book’s readers know about Hooded Justice, aligning their story with details described in the comic books.

Hooded Justice, distinguished by his dark executioner’s cowl and heavy rope binding his wrists and fashioned into a noose around his neck, is said to be the costumed hero who inspired all the others. He’s such a giant among the caped legends of old that his exploits inform the A-plot of “American Hero Story,” the hit television drama of “Watchmen’s” 2019 alt-United States.

In that TV show within our TV show, Hooded Justice is depicted as a white man and the secret lover of Minutemen team member Captain Metropolis. What distinguishes Hooded Justice from the rest of the heroes, however, is that nobody ever finds out his true name. Nevertheless, “American Hero Story” presumes he is a white man (played in “American Hero Story” by Cheyenne Jackson)........

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