People and police who wear masks on the street in order to feel safe. Innocent Black people getting killed for no real reason. Cops who seem like good people only to be revealed as closet racists. Political agendas driven by single-minded people with racist ideologies. It all sounds like what’s happening in real-life 2020 right now but it’s actually from HBO’s brilliant Watchmen series.
Watchmen was seen as a searing indictment on racism when it was released in 2019, but following George Floyd’s death and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the critically-acclaimed HBO show has gone from brilliant to essential viewing in just a matter of months.
The GOAT team talk about the George Floyd protests, Black Lives Matter and how you can help on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Starting with the real-life Tulsa race massacre of 1921 as launching point, Watchmen launches into a nine-episode exploration of a society struggling with unresolved trauma – racism in this case – and wraps it up in the window dressings of a superhero comic book.
The show is deeply rooted in Black identity, what it means in America, and how much it’s changed (or not changed) after nearly a century of what we thought was progress. Using a mix of real-life history and retconned Watchmen lore, the show slowly peels back the layers of racism that has been gradually normalised over decades.
Themes like Black trauma and how it trickles from through each generation, the normalisation of racism in our everyday lives and institutions (such as the police), and the masking (literally and figuratively) of people’s true selves in order to survive the status quo are all explored without restraint. It’s a painful yet incredibly important watch in which the line between reality and escapism is almost the same.
That’s not to say Watchmen‘s examination of racism wasn’t relevant when it was initially released. It’s that the show has become even more relevant in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020 America.
Seeing how racism has infiltrated the institutions we’re supposed to trust to protect us, and how the Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests has exposed the giant festering wound white people have tried to bandaid over for generations, Watchmen‘s rooted-in-reality allegory about not trusting the system has been given new power in the wake of what’s happened.
At a time when there’s a real need for people to educate themselves about racial injustice and a lack of agency to actually do it, Watchmen has also become the ideal middle-ground solution for this: an unflinching look into racism that’s also a great piece of entertainment.
It shouldn’t fall upon a TV show to educate people, yet it was Watchmen that brought to light the aforementioned 1921 Tulsa race massacre, a horrific event that was all but erased from history until now. How are we supposed to learn about important historical stories of Black people if they keep getting suppressed?
Go watch Watchmen for its great love story and the weird comic book stuff, but stay for the incendiary commentary on how racism is weaved into America’s fabric and how it still influences what’s happening today.
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