"Who am I? If I knew the answer, I would not wear this fucking mask!". Thus unnerved, a masked avenger rules the owner of a general store whose business he has just saved from robbery, causing a bloodbath among the crooks. Bibbernd asks the man at the cashier, who is his savior. Well, good question.
The small, interspersed scene with its perplexed protagonist does not matter to the larger storylines of the new HBO series "Watchmen", but much of what touches the core of this multi-layered narrative is in the new project of "Lost" - and " Leftovers' creator Damon Lindelof just casually negotiated. But the richness of detail and density of the fictional world, which the TV author and showrunner with his lead director Nicole Kassell designs, are stunning.
That "Watchmen" is based on a groundbreaking comic book from the eighties, is almost bonus: For connoisseurs of the template by author Alan Moore and draftsman Dave Gibbons, which was filmed in 2009 for the cinema, there are only in the First episodes are plenty of insider referrals, but Lindelof's "Watchmen" adaptation is anything but fan service. You do not have to know the template to be captivated by the series.
The comic template faithful than it seems
The emancipation of Plot and staff of the comics goes so far that "Watchmen" Although highly praised by US critics, but is criticized by fans rather grudgingly: "This is not Watchmen, it's Wokemen, sorry, Woke Persons," wrote an angry commentator into the forum of the cinema website "Imdb", annoyed by the left-liberal, angry tongues would say: politically correct ductus of the pilot episode.
The magazine "Watchmen" 1986 was also a sensation because it asked the myth of the upright superhero some uncomfortable questions: What if the supposedly good in truth are character pigs like the right-wing extremist rapist "Comedian" or the mentally unstable, self-justifying detective "Rorschach"? How do state and society control an omnipotent being such as "Dr. Manhattan", which has long since alienated human interests? In the same year, Frank Miller published his graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns" and showed Batman as a depressive border liner. Thereafter, the hitherto well-arranged good-versus-evil world of superhero comics was forever out of joint.
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"Watchmen" series: Rorschach test for realitySeen in this way, the new "Watchmen" remain very loyal to their original. For even the series, which starts in a time in which comic superheroes in cinema and TV are omnipresent and successful, brings apparent certainties tremendously unstable. In the parallel reality of the plot, Robert Redford has been President of the United States for over 30 years and has passed laws designed to compensate African Americans for their enslaved and discriminated lives for centuries: Black people are not required to pay taxes.
It is constantly raining baby squid
Through this "black privilege" the whites feel oppressed and fear for their cultural existence. The more radical are organized in the "Seventh Kavalry", an update of the Ku Klux Klan. What fans of the original "Watchmen" particularly angry: The white suprematists wear as identifiers no longer cowls and pointed hoods, but the therapy mask of the comic hero Rorschach. But are they really the bad guys?
The hood, meanwhile, wears one of the main characters of the series, the black ex-policewoman Angela Abar aka "Sister Night", by the way, probably the first African-American super heroine with such a prominent role. Dressing like a mix of ninja fighter and nun, she helps police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fight white terrorists. In order to protect the officers from attacks on their private lives, they are allowed to cover their faces in the service with masks by law - just like criminals or vigilantes.
On the one hand, the Utopia of a left liberal society has come to fruition here, on the other hand, a popular TV show called "American Hero Story", the trigger warnings against violence, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and misogyny, is on television are preceded. Apparently, the comic characters from the original play the main role in it. Heroes? Horror! And besides, it is constantly raining baby squid from the sky. Something is so lazy, not only because of the fishy smell of decay.
In general, the future version of the "Watchmen" series is anything but promising. Many signs of reality have just twisted: The white hillbilly with the salad load in the pick-up truck is afraid of racial profiling when he is controlled by the black patrolman for suspected terrorism. However, it wants the vicious irony of this series, the official ultimately draws the short straw, because he gets his because of the tightened gun laws secured gun not timely unlocked from the headquarters.
Militant moralizing enemy images
In any case, to enforce the beautiful new order, the state must legitimize extreme violence and torture methods that counteract any peace-loving humanist principle. They are practiced by costumed and armed lawyers for the good and the right, such as Angela (Regina King) or her psychotic interrogation specialist Wade aka Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson). He wears a mirrored full-face mask and exposes racists with a multimedia waterboarding technique reminiscent of "Clockwork Orange" as well as "Blade Runner's" Voigt-Kampff test. These "heroes" are absurdly oversubscribed avatars of those "social justice warriors" who like to stylize opponents of enlightenment and "woke" culture in internet forums as militant moralizing enemy images.
Because as an imaginative visualization of the verbal war of position around social norms and forms, which today is primarily held on social media channels, "Watchmen" can also be considered: Whether right or left, conservative or progressive - the debates there are harder and more relentless, the tone is unforgiving, every tweet must be a hit in the pit of the stomach, every posting a devastating blow. "Watchmen" cleverly illustrates this general stupor with the strong resources of the sci-fi, action and mystery genres, but does not take sides - at least not in the episodes available to the press.
Terms like "good" and "right" gradually dissolve in this mirror warfare with politically coded masks and identities: If the good can only be enforced with violence and illiberal methods, is it still good? Only one thing is certain: more astounding and elegant than in "Watchmen" is the insecurity of our present on television just not shown.
"Watchmen": From 4 November on Sky Germany
