Nothing Ever Ends: The Philosophy of Watchmen (HBO) - Wisecrack Edition

Hey, joke, quarantine, Jared, it's been a while since HBO's Watchman concluded and many of you have noticed that we've been unusually quiet, that's because this show is dense, it sure deals openly with race in America. United, but there are so many things happening that abound. with god complexes allusions to the graphic novel and characters reading very specific books like ernest hemingway for whom the bell tolls it seems like

nothing

in this series is a coincidence and we really wanted to get it right so what are the watchers trying to say among the convoluted conspiracies well we have an idea to quote our favorite blue man

nothing

ever

ends

what n

ever

ends

let's find out welcome to this witty

edition

on the

philosophy

of HBO's vigilante and of course spoilers ahead first a recap Watchman's Fast takes place more than 30 years later. the events of the graphic novel by alan moore and dave gibbons, so let's start there in the 1980s, the united states and the ussr are about to annihilate the world in a nuclear apocalypse, so the smartest man in the world Adrian White invents a plan to avoid war through fear and sends a giant psionic squid to attack New York City, killing millions.

The squid the world believes is an invader from another dimension so everyone comes together to prevent it. a nuclear apocalypse the history of the vigilante world is very different from ours before and after the graphic novel the united states won the vietnam war richard nixon was never indicted robert redford becomes president and term limits have been abolished good god robert redford is still president also dr. Manhattan used his divine intelligence to invent a lot of electronic devices, but people thought he was giving them cancer, so now the world exists mostly devoid of things like cell phones and lithium batteries.

Watchmen, the television show picks up in present-day Tulsa Oklahoma. Rorschach, who in the graphic novel sent his diary detailing the fight plot to a right-wing newspaper, has been largely dismissed. like a nutcase, but his face has been adopted by a group of white supremacists known as the Seventh Cavalry. They have been terrorizing the police, who have also been wearing masks to protect their identity within this literal race war. It's Detective Angela Abar, a black woman. who must learn about her family's past from odin in her grandfather's memory pills and also she is very implied to become a god before we can understand what the show means without anything we have to understand one of the recurring motifs of vigilante trial moore and gibbons the vigilantes invoke the Latin phrase who watches the vigilantes to warn of the dangers of masked vigilantes taking justice into their own hands, that's what people with unlimited power do if you're the comedian who you gleefully murder with a smiling badge because it's also funny on the show the cruelty and tyranny of individuals who exercise their judgment outside the law is everywhere, he callously ignores the life that exists to serve him, creating the most creepy thing that a father has passed on to his daughter when he is tried for his crimes, the judge is interested. point out that a jury of peers is the cornerstone of a fair trial before pointing out that you are not your peers as such, I have taken the liberty of assembling an alternative jury much better suited to the task, since one has the right to be judged by peers and although vite could be considered a quasi-god above these creatures, the judge considers him below humanity, the whole problem with vigilante justice, especially of the masked variety, is that they steal from people the opportunity to be judged by the legal system or their peers, but the program is not only interested in individual vigilantism but in mob vigilantism.

In the show's opening scenes, a young Will Reeves watches a movie about a black sheriff who captures a white cattle rustler and refutes the mob's calls for justice with a plea. to trust the law, this scene is interrupted and we are shown another type of collective justice when white Tolsons massacre their black neighbors after a black man is accused of assaulting a white woman. One way to answer the question about vigilante violence is with the work of sociologist Max Weber, who defines a state as an entity that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a community;

In other words, I can't just go and gather my friends to beat up the guy who sold me a pirated copy of Pokémon. gold nor can I physically force him to give me a refund. Instead, I have to call the police who, as agents of the state, can use force to enforce the law. This is the basic conflict between the US government and our masked adventurers as an overzealous act criminalized vigilantism, but relying on the law and the state's monopoly on violence is not, as Reeves learns a magical cure for the evils of the world.

You won't get justice with a badge. Wheel Reeves, you'll get her with that hood. One way to understand this is through Michelle Foucault's proposition that politics is the continuation of war by other means. Foucault was reversing the famous aphorism that war is simply the continuation of politics by other means. If, for example, the goal of the American military was to defeat the threat of Nazism during World War II, we can see the politics of World War II Germany. post-war as a continuation of the Allied victory as the country rapidly denatified, of course, the show explores a similar idea with Vietnam statehood, as the police play the role that would otherwise be played by the United States. military, but wars don't always have to be fought with tanks and generals.

If we consider the historic armed suppression of America's black community through lynching, firebombing, etc., as a type of war, then we can see how that war became institutionalized in politics. In Watchmen, the Tulsa Race Massacre is war and much of what comes after is politics seeking justice through the law by becoming a police officer. Will Reeves soon discovers that many of his colleagues are secret white supremacists who protect their allies from arrest years later. This relationship is made even clearer by Senator Joe Keane, who more or less admits that he started a race war to aid his presidential aspirations in which he could use the full power of the law to keep American minorities in his place.

It is not racist, we seek to restore balance in those times when our country forgets the principles on which it was founded because the scales have tipped too much and it is extremely difficult to be a white man in America right now, but much sooner than expected. which describes. the tension between the police and the 7th cavalry as a piece managed to achieve their ends I came here and assumed leadership of these idiots to prevent that from happening again and my friend judd did the same as chief of police, each of us managing our respective teams so that we can maintain peace as fuco writes, the role of political power is to perpetually use a kind of silent war to reinscribe that relationship of force and re-inscribe it in institutions, economic inequalities, language and even bodies of individuals, even Cyclops members implicitly share this view of politics, but with themselves as victims with Redford as president, Cyclops members feel that they have lost the war and that policies such as redfordations are just a way to describe as sharply as humiliating the white man first. took their weapons and then made us ask for forgiveness over and over again sorry for the supposed sins of those who died decades before we were born sorry for the color of our skin In other words, Watchmen is not just about the dangers of vigilante justice , whether of lynchers or comedians committing war crimes, but about how war and violence can become embedded in the law and when violence becomes embedded in the law, it can often evade prosecution as a result, after all, justice is blindly speaking of judgment if you are not sure. this was at the top of damon lindelof's mind there's a song that keeps coming up that you may have noticed during the vites trial that's the lacrimosa from mozart's requiem let's translate those lyrics full of tears it will be that day when from the ashes will resurrect the guilty man to be judged, therefore forgive him, oh God, you know just a song about being judged at the end of the world, the end is near, plays when Lady True tells Angela that Dr.

Manhattan is in Tulsa when Wade discovers the Cyclopes' hideout, but most notably it plays when Blake arrests Vite and says who do you think you are, judge on me, the point is whether they are real god-like gods or just people dressed up as Batman, many of our characters feel that their human companions are inadequate to judge them, enthusiastic and true, they want to become gods. It's true for precisely that reason, because he believes he can unilaterally solve the world's problems and apparently wants to restore the glory days of white supremacy. The unilateral decision of white people to save the world from nuclear apocalypse is unknown to the world and therefore cannot be judged.

I saved the world from nuclear armageddon, apart from you and a select few that no one knows, so are the actions of the metropolis captain, justice hood, rorschach or the lube guy, a mask in the vigilante world protects his bearer of the judgment of others, making Judd's recitation of the Latin phrase that guards the vigilantes of his masked police force incredibly ironic squeeze the custodian ipsos custodias especially when they respond cyclops conspiracy aside the vigilante does not is ashamed of how that culture quickly leads to an out of control police state where torture and lack of rights are the norm, I want my lawyer, yes, we really don't have to do that with terrorists, when certain types of violence are incorporated into the law, the state can effectively protect itself from prosecution, whether you're throwing someone into the trunk of your There's a Guy in My Trunk car or exploding people's heads on behalf of the federal government, but if you hide the identity of one protects one from the judgment of one's peers, it can also make one hide one's history.

One of the sources of white power is their ability to hide their past crimes. The public does not need a mask to avoid trial, but this idea is not simply limited to Vite, we learned through Pedipedia, the HBO supplementary material compiled by Agent Pedi, That Fog Dance, a book Vike reads in prison , is about American soldiers getting rid of evidence of American war crimes, he claims he reads it because it's about loneliness, but maybe it relates to the themes of covering up one's own crimes, you wouldn't understand that it's about loneliness, if White hides his history to avoid judging who or what else he is.

To fully understand that we have to look at the one true god of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan, part two, nothing ends, while Dr. Manhattan is not even seen until the penultimate episode. His view of his world is critical to understanding the show. In episode 8, he explains his unique relationship with time. It is not a flow of events from the past to the present but something that simultaneously experiences how much time has passed for you 24 years 41 days and 13 hours for me it is happening right now yes yes I remember that with this premise the program goes back and forth between childhood of the doctor fleeing the nazis his meeting with angela and their future together the show wants us to think of the story like dr. manhattan without the idea of ​​before I don't experience the concept of before in other words a vision of history in which nothing ends history is not dead but alive in our current moment and the show constantly explores how the past continues to the present.

We see the fictional events of the graphic novel seep into every detail of life in a nod to the final pages of the graphic novel. Angela and her grandmother eat at a chain called Hamburgers and Borscht, a cultural fusion made possible by the threat of extradimensional annihilation in a dinner the children play to recite the presidents of the united states move to where the history of the vigilantes diverges and nixon never resigns and is succeeded by gerald ford and robert redford enjoys the smallest detail imagining that steven spielberg made the list of schindler not about the holocaust but about the giant squid attack the movie is in black and white so the red really pops, you know, and the girls stumbling around herald square walking under the tentacles through all the dead bodies and she's scared or suggesting to the viewer that john grisham has become a supreme court justice, of course, if the alternate history gives way to the alternate present, theReal history also gives way to the real present, apart from the small ones. easter eggs you can't underestimate the incredible level of detail that Watchmen puts into thinking about the story blake's partner petey has a doctorate in history i wrote my graduate thesis on the police strike of '77 will june's wife is a reporter for the new york amsterdam news why Are you writing your story about me because Amsterdam says a black cadet is making the forces big news?

One of New York's oldest and most influential African American newspapers that was especially active in covering the civil rights movement and chronicled the rise of Malcolm x Lady True. It is named after the Vietnamese historical figure who fought to resist the Chinese state of Eastern Wu while it occupied Vietnam and is cited by her mother when she steals vitexy. The key events take place in a literal museum and the US Treasury Secretary is real-life historian Henry Lewis. gates jr and here we return to dr. manhattan because just as manhattan's experience of time jumps seamlessly from moment to moment, so does the show like manhattan laughing at a joke from six months ago, this angela must be something extraordinary six months ago she tells me that I have a fantastic imagination.

The show intercuts moments from the story to show their connection. The show often juxtaposes similar objects from different eras. This is done most explicitly as Angela overdoses on nostalgia as Angela remembers that a Vietnamese police officer gave her a badge. Officer, the show quickly cuts to Bass Reeves' badge in the 1920s and Will Reeves receiving his badge more than a decade later. Chief Crawford's bloodstained badge more than half a century later, when a police officer puts a sack over a suspect's head, Angela remembers Will putting on his jacket after almost lynching him or when Will Reeves sees a police car drive past two The bodies of the Tulsa race massacre are dragged through these techniques .

The show asks the viewer to consider past and present acts of racism as a continuing legacy. Other examples in the show span between episodes. In Tulsa we see a Molotov cocktail thrown through a shop window. an event that repeats itself years later in a Jewish deli, Angela's makeup looks a lot like the hooded judges, but blackens her skin instead of whitening it, and a racist banking ad we see revealed by Captain Metropolis is later hung on the hideout of the seventh cavalry, very similar to the graphic novel. The show uses the clock motif to ask the viewer to consider the idea of ​​time and how, unlike a constructed clock, there are a series of meticulous gears that create an illusory march from the past to the present.

This counterintuitive approach to time seems fundamental to one of Watchman's most important themes: historiography, which is the writing of history. Simply put, debates around historiography can allow us to ask questions such as what is or was historically considered the important enough to discuss in the first place. Much of history involves finding facts about individual events and discerning a narrative in them and that's where things can get especially complicated: was the Holocaust an anomaly of European history or was the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and others deeply influenced by practices and ideologies born from Europeans when they colonized Africa, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt or other historians maintain about the same event? different story vigilante show within a show american hero story as the comic book novel within a novel under the hood serves as a reminder of what happens to history when sensationalism meets a complete disregard for the truth grievances of the police about its accuracy other than the show being garbage it is full of historical inaccuracies, it manages to tell the story of hooded justice while ignoring the lack of information about the person behind the mask.

In this case, what the show portrays is a fun game of a robbery that was actually a black man fighting the clan. Drive the point home, the scene plays more or less backwards, hinting at how the show got it historically speaking, backwards, while the fictional Hood of Justice bursts into the store from the window to save the day for some nameless thugs, the real hooded justice jumped out of the window while fleeing a prominent white supremacist, much of Watchmen's story, like its fictional critique of American hero history, focuses on exactly what has been forgotten or ignored Deliberately in the conventional writing of real American history throughout the show, we are presented with events in the newspaper. cuts that one could easily dismiss as part of the show's convoluted mythology, but time and time again they're not, they actually happen.

Hooded Justice has posted articles stating that Nazis marched through the streets of Long Island and 22,000 Nazis demonstrated at Madison Square Garden, the latter. Being a reference to the German-American Bund rally in New York, the implication is that support for Nazism in the United States is closely linked to the fictional Cyclops' white supremacist mission. Of course, many people have discussed the show's opening portraying the Tulsa race event. massacre in which the richest black neighborhood in America was destroyed by a mob of white Tolsons, as NBC reported, many people were shocked to learn that this was real, since most history textbooks do not is often talked about, not even the small details of the presence of black soldiers who had served in World War I in Tulsa and the bombing by planes are all historically accurate.

Later we see German propaganda during World War I asking black soldiers why they would fight for a country where they were second class and enjoyed the same rights as whites in America obviously they are treated better than second class citizens. class, the pamphlet that a young William finds in his father's coat reflects true German propaganda of the time, what's more, a local newspaper carries the real headline from the Tulsa Tribune in the Before the massacre, the article even reaches us days, as seen in the Greenwood museum. The museum is run not only by a prominent historian, but also by a man who sparked national outrage over racial profiling after being arrested for breaking into his In his own home there is a rather appropriate moment when Will Reeves confronts Judd again about the clan robe in his closet.

History is not a coincidence. The clan often collaborated with police departments, especially during the civil rights era. The clan had helped elect a white racist named Eugene Bull Connor. As police chief of Birmingham in Florida, for example, the FBI also knew that in the 1940s and 1950s the county sheriff openly joined the clan, writes Gilbert King in his book Devil in the Grove, during the Tulsa massacre. , some police officers directly substituted members of the lynch mob. Of course, police departments' regular involvement with lynch mobs in the clan is simultaneously ignored or, in Judd's case, part of his legacy.

I have the right to keep it. It's my legacy. To which William replies that he was very proud of your legacy. Could you hide it? as if the history of white America had been protected from judgment. Alan Moore, although he has had harsh words against the HBO show, has made similar statements about the history of the masked heroes, saying that a good argument can be made for DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation as the first superhero film US. and the point of origin of all those capes and masks in the griffith movie that glorified the clan is credited with helping the revival of the kkk in america, then of course there are the more subtle or perhaps simply coincidental historical parallels: mesmerism Cyclops encourages African Americans to harm and hate each other by causing harm to no white man, woman, or child, only each other, which seems like a lazy fictionalization of the idea, as held by thinker Bell Hooks, that everything the world of advertising and the media in general, which sends both the covert and the overt.

The message that blackness is negative is part of the propaganda machine to shame members of the Seventh Cavalry who live in a place called Nixonville, obviously after the president, but Nixon could be of specific importance to the show's fascination with history, while pandering to white racists was a favorite pastime of Democrats like George Wallace Nixon and his political allies were able to transfer votes from the traditionally Democratic South to the Republican Party by arousing racist fears in white voters (to quote Nixon's strategist , Kevin Phillips in 1970), the more blacks register as Democrats in the South. the sooner the negrophobic whites abandon the democrats and become republicans, that's where the votes are.

The idea that the 7th Cavalry is not a modern anomaly, but the product of a specific history, is reinforced by smaller details: its name derives from the famous US Army regiment commanded by General Custer during the Great Sioux War of 1876, a war sparked by America's desire to obtain gold on Native American territory, at one point Judd even sends a pager message that reads Little Bighorn in reference to the famous last stand of custer, the idea that they are driven by was given by Senator Keane to remind Judd how formidable our savage enemies can be. The

philosophy

of the vigilantes could be written sheepishly right there in the title of episode 4, if you don't like my story, write your own by borrowing a quote from author chinwa chebe.

It is worth mentioning that Achebe's famous novel, "Things Fall Apart", is about the arrival of European colonizers. In Nigeria, Achebe, as scholar John Tima points out, was interested in recovering the image of Africa in contrast to European writers such as Joseph Conrad, who portrayed it as a place of savagery and barbarism through the character of Angela, we see the approach of Watchman into history as he learns the truth. of her past and how it has deeply affected her her entire journey is how will describes it to know where she came from she wanted to meet you and show you where you come from she not only has to deal with the trauma that defines her but also how that trauma seems ingrained in her Genealogy In a different episode, Lady True tells two farmers that legacy is not in the land, but in the blood passed down to us from our ancestors and bought us our children.

Angela learns that the legacy she inherited was that of a granddaughter. from a survivor of the Tulsa massacre elsewhere they talk to us about genetic trauma in a support group I read an article here there is this genetic drama while the psychic squid mass murder is fictional the concept of genetic trauma is the real hypothesis and current awareness that stressful or traumatic experiences could alter their children's genetic expression. Small studies of the children of Holocaust survivors, for example, suggest biological changes in their children, but if squid survivors can engender their trauma on their relatives in the eyes of watchers, so can victims of the Holocaust.

Racist violence when Angela Foley finds out. Her story of becoming homesick almost broke her head, but in the end Angela learns not to repress her personal trauma, as Will explains, the hood when I put it on you so I felt angry, yes, that's what I thought too, but no. I allowed it. I'm afraid it hurts, it can't be healed with mascara, wounds need hair, and what about Angela's heavily implied apotheosis for a show obsessed with the monstrous actions of characters trying to become gods? It seems strange that the protagonist becomes one, but if we think back.

Time, one of the main motifs of the show and how Dr. Manhattan experiences it, perhaps Angela's arc is to experience the past, present and future as one to understand as the show reminds us that nothing ever ends , but what do you think is a joke? Let us know in the comments. Shout out to all of our amazing sponsors who support the channel on our podcast. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and we'll catch you next time.