Reparations and Masks: Pondering the Politics of Watchmen
Everyone should be watching Watchmen on HBO, and not just because Regina King is the hero.
Watchmen premiered on HBO October 20th, and 1.5 million viewers watched, making it the strongest performance for an HBO show’s premiere since Westworld. It’s a continuation of the Watchmen comic book series published in 1986, taking place 30 years after in an alternate reality from our own, where masked detectives try to keep the peace against a domestic terrorist group in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The premiere brought a lot of buzz, mostly because it opened with a depiction of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921.
It’s the type of show that makes viewers obsessed with noting and discussing all the little details of the changed universe, that leads to thinkpieces and every week. It’s so though-out and detailed that it requires an official online encyclopedia of extra details, and when a sight-gag becomes popular online, it’s the type of show that can provide schematics for the object in question.
Most fascinating to this viewer, it’s a show that serves as a thought experiment for a world where our two political parties are even more antagonistic than they are now. Below is an explainer for the politics of the show’s alternate universe, where police keep their identities hidden and every once in a while it rains squids.
Redford-ations (aka Reparations)
There’s a lot going on in Tulsa, OK, in the world of Watchmen (including that squid thing). Two world changes affect Regina King’s character, Angela Abar’s, life most. The first is the presidency of Robert Redford, who’s been president since 1993 in the show’s timeline. It seems that with his long presidency, he was able to enact multiple liberal policies. One such is the Victims of Racial Violence Legislation, which is a benefit for victims of racial violence and their descendants.
Basically, anyone whose ancestor was a victim of a designated event of racial violence gets a lifetime tax exemption. Angela is a descendant of victims of the Tulsa Massacre, along with many whose ancestors had lived and worked in the neighborhood of Greenwood. In the series timeline, Greenwood has been rebuilt into a thriving center, where Angela owns a bakery that’s still under construction. In the premiere a bystander asks if the bakery will ever open, which hints at it being a cover for her Night job.
The Police Wear Masks?
While Redfordations helps fund Abar’s day job, the second big world change gives her the alter ego, Sister Night. In the time since Redford’s become President, a group of right-wing extremists called the Seventh Calvary has formed in Tulsa. They isolate in a trailer park named after Nixon, with a huge statue of the man at the front gate. A few years before the events of Watchmen, they organized “the White Night,” in which they attacked every member of Tulsa’s police force on Christmas Eve, while they were asleep in their homes. Angela was one of the only members of the Force to survive.
In the series timeline, alternate 2019, it is now legal for the Tulsa police force (not sure if also the whole country) to wear masks and disguise themselves. We see the new protocol when a cop dies in the series premiere, and his widow has to say it was a carjacking because no one can know he was a cop. In addition to the standard masks for uniformed officers, detectives get special costumes and names, more in the form of vigilante heroes. Hence Angela Abar becoming Sister Night (with one of the baddest costumes in recent memory).
Diffusing the Cold War
Ok, so the squid thing.
In the world of 1984 Watchmen, Nixon is serving his fifth term as President; in this world, he had become popular after winning the Vietnam War and making Vietnam the 51st state, with the help of superhero Doctor Manhattan. In part because of these events, the U.S. and the Soviet Union are still in the Cold War, and nuclear war seems imminent. So the bad guy (as much as there are good and bad guys among the characters) from the comic series, Ozymandias, comes up with a hoax to get the two superpowers scared of another thing, and join forces to figure it out. That hoax is a giant squid falling on New York City and killing three million people.
So from that the Cold War dissipates, with the world powers working together against whatever brought the squid. Nixon decides not to run for another term. Eventually, Redford becomes President, and enacts sweeping Democratic policies, including reparations, gun control, and others that will probably be revealed over the course of the new series. Plus, small squids rain from the sky from time to time, a reminder of the 1984 incident.
And those are the politics to watch for in the world of Watchmen.
Why You Should Watch
So, the show is objectively fascinating. Creator Damon Lindelof wrote it as a “remix” of the original comics, according to an open letter he posted on Instagram. Putting the show in the current day, he and his writers’ room had debates on how the world of the comics would progress after thirty years. There are Easter eggs throughout that show how the show is a little off, and it’s fun to decode the changes throughout the episodes.
However, the ethical questions of Watchmen’s politics are really worth a thought. It’s a world where the isolation and weaponization of domestic terrorism is brought to a new level through the Seventh Calvary. Where masked vigilantes are illegal, but cops and detectives wearing masks are protected, and police powers have even increased with advancements in technology. (Some tech is advanced, with electric cars being the norm, and some isn’t).
Plus, along with a war brewing between the political left and right, there’s still microaggressions to deal with. Whenever she runs into conservatives, Angela has to deal with some jabs about Redford-ations. Also, there are hints of animosity remaining between people of color and the police. Even in an age with many of the policies that would do real good are enacted, the problems we have don’t disappear, just mutate.
This new Watchmen series is worth a watch because it opens your mind. Whether it’s just the act of wrapping your brain around the alternate reality, or questioning the underlying politics of this world, Watchmen gives us something to think about.
Have you seen Watchmen? What do you think? Comment below!
Photo and video credit: HBO
