Quiet Member
This is some serious race baiting. I'm not from the US and not progressive or concerned about US politics so it's practically unwatchable to me. I do like Zack's movie and the 30 minutes I watched of the series made me want to watch the movie again. Bring on the downvotes, as always. Hooray for tolerance for different opinions!
Trollhunter
Your opinion is dated and shitty. It also harms others and is inherently wrong. Fuck your “opinion.” Nobody is making you watch or comment.Originally Posted by Balthier
This is some serious race baiting. I'm not from the US and not progressive or concerned about US politics so it's practically unwatchable to me. I do like Zack's movie and the 30 minutes I watched of the series made me want to watch the movie again. Bring on the downvotes, as always. Hooray for tolerance for different opinions!
Anyway, who do you guys think is helping “Reeves?” And is that Dan seen leaping off that balcony in the teaser for next week?
Quiet Member
You're so tolerant. Why did you use quotation marks by the way? How can my opinion be wrong? Is that a sign of left-wing tolerance? It looks like one. Well, since you want a mature discussion. Fuck your opinion too. And your mom is ugly!
Hairy Member
This is some serious race baiting. I'm not from the US and not progressive or concerned about US politics so it's practically unwatchable to me. I do like Zack's movie and the 30 minutes I watched of the series made me want to watch the movie again. Bring on the downvotes, as always. Hooray for tolerance for different opinions!
To be honest, I'm not American either and I felt the same during the first episode, but I trusted Lindelof enough (after the Leftovers) to give him a benefit of a doubt not to play into the binaries of American politics. The second episode, as well as the incredible ARG they have going on at at Peteypedia, made me realize that it's much more nuanced than that. It's more faithful to the novel than Snyder's film could have even dreamed of.
Yes, the show is set in a very liberal context, with Redford at the helm, but the more you watch, the more you realize how his extreme left-wingism is just as dangerous as the dangerous conservatism of today. Rorschach's journal is being treated as a hoax by the show's left-wing characters and as gospel by the right-wingers; both of whom are distorting the truth based on ideology: the left wants to "protect" the populace by lying to them, while the right are purposefully misrepresenting the book and Rorschach's ideology so as to go forward with their own hateful tendencies.
No one is right in a way, because in this world (like Alan Moore's world, or even Lindelof's own Leftovers world), there really is no right or wrong, no truth in any manner of speaking. Everything is just painted in many shades of grey.
When Regina King's character tells the boy in the last episode that "We know that the world is just black and white," you can tell that it's not supposed to stand in as a "truth" being told to the audience. Rather, it's the opinion of an extremely violent individual – who wears a mask no different than the Rorschach imitators or the mad and mentally ill Watchmen before her – trying to justify both her own imposed violence (and that of the world surrounding them) to the boy, in incorrect terms.
So far, the show has been impeccable in using the current political climate (a theme I often roll my eyes at while watching films or television in the past few years) in crafting a very intricate and complex narrative. I think we've been so conditioned to recent American shows often having an agenda, that we can't see past a show that is reflecting all agendas thoughtfully and impartially, while also having something to say.
Also, it bears remembering that even Adrian Veidt (as we see in the ARG too) was one of the heroes of the liberal cause: and yet, he was the same man that triggered a giant squid attack to murder thousands of people in the name of his ideology. While one side of the political binary don't give humans agency and want to decide the way of the worlds based on their own higher-than-thou virtues (Veidt for example), the other side of the binary (the Rorschach imitators/Kavalry) believe in unfiltered, unbridled agency, where instincts rule over the cult's actions, be it hateful or murderous. And then we look back at Veidt: a man, presumed dead, alone in his castle murdering clones brutally. We know he has no moral compass, and yet, he does have a sense for "justice" with his intricate plans, one that he is in the process of hatching as we watch. What, then, the show asks us, is the difference between these two binaries? One virtuous, the other spiteful, and yet both have little care for humankind beyond humanity as just an idea.
And we also see callbacks to the original novel, linking new character's to the old. Blood on the Judd's badge reminds us that he is an extension of the Comedian, a man with no stance at all, a man who treats everything as deterministic, who represents within himself all the complexities of a non-ideologized individual. The Comedian, in the original book, was a rapist, a murderer, an assassin... and yet, to some degree, his stance was undeniable: Nothing matters, so go with it, make the best of it, and suffer through the sham the best you can. It's all a joke anyway. And that is a stance that the ideologized of the book or the show were unable to understand: they believe in "justice," and would do anything to achieve it, even if it meant slaying as violently as the Comedian slew – but justifying it because they had "the good of all" in mind. And yet, all these Watchmen were, always, was sick, ill, and lonely. Ideology, like the masks they wore, were meant to dress and disguise this loneliness. And we see the same in TV Watchmen.
These characters, married as they are to their binary ideologies, are using justice as a means to compensate for something lacking within themselves. Just as the characters in Leftovers used mourning as an excuse to be myopic and selfish. And the same with the Watchmen book.
The show, in this way, really has a sense of "history" – both literary and political, which makes for an absolutely engrossing, challenging watch. After all, no show for the past while has made me overanalyze, assess, (and waste time over writing this!) like this show has in a long, long time.
Last edited by Morad; 10-29-2019 at 11:47 AM. Reason: Typos!
she/her/hers
having an opinion is fine, but one that is rooted in ignorance that leads to the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and negative, real-world consequences for entire groups of people is an opinion that needs to be reexamined.This is some serious race baiting. I'm not from the US and not progressive or concerned about US politics so it's practically unwatchable to me. I do like Zack's movie and the 30 minutes I watched of the series made me want to watch the movie again. Bring on the downvotes, as always. Hooray for tolerance for different opinions!
you're not from the US? cool, racism exists everywhere. you haven't experienced racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia? i envy you. but just because something doesn't directly affect you doesn't mean it doesn't affect other people, and it definitely doesn't mean it's not worth having a conversation about, or having art focus on it to hopefully break down the unfair biases that people have in an effort to help institute change.
the fact that people in this country didn't know about the Tulsa Massacre (yes, it's a real thing that happened)—partially because of the fact that it was literally covered up until less than 20 years ago—is proof in itself that the show is on the right page in bringing this shit to the forefront.
also, if you're gonna come into a thread literally challenging people to get pissed off at you, what's the point? do you really revel in being a dick that much? why not try to have a productive, insightful conversation with someone instead of instigating shit?
Active Member
This is some serious race baiting. I'm not from the US and not progressive or concerned about US politics so it's practically unwatchable to me. I do like Zack's movie and the 30 minutes I watched of the series made me want to watch the movie again. Bring on the downvotes, as always. Hooray for tolerance for different opinions!I remember back when I was in high school, I went to the local fair with my friend D (who is black and we will call him D) and my friend Nick and his mom and little brother. We were having fun all night, going on rides together, joking and laughing. We were there for maybe 45 minutes when as we're walking to the next ride, 2 cops stopped us. They began interrogating my friend D because apparently something happened at the fair and I'm guessing it may have involved a black man. But they were trying to pin it on my friend who never left our side that night. My friend's mom stepped in front of D and went off on the cop saying how he has never left her side. The scene was enough to make them walk away. But after that, we left the fair because the fun was ruined and I remember D going from a happy kid at a fair to sitting silently as we drove home.
The next year, another high school kid said he got jumped over by our school. He was known as a douchebag wannabe thug. He was white and his father was a police officer. He was also known of being a racist piece of shit. He claimed a black kid jumped him and pulled out a knife on him. At that time, my friend D was at the school football game with friends. Even with numerous people saying he was there at the game and had no knife on him, he was arrested and eventually charged for the attack.
He went away to juvie for a year. My friend Nick, myself, and, Nick's family went to go get D when he came out. He never had a great family of his own. He lives with his grandmother who could barely act like she gave a shit about him. So he usually stayed with Nick or I. But I remember when he got out and we were hanging out again, laughing and joking around like how we normally did, but you could feel something was off. He stopped us out of nowhere and was like, "I have to ask this, but do you believe I did what they said?" My instant reaction, "I know you. Of course not." He seemed to feel better after that.
Does racism exist? Yes, I learned it all the way back in high school that it exists. You haven't experienced any of this kind of bullshit? Well then, you are one lucky person. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
The fact that the Tulsa incident was pretty much scrubbed from history books is enough to show you what it is like here in the US.
Last edited by neorev; 10-29-2019 at 02:13 PM.
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