HBO’s “Watchmen” trolls history and heroic whiteness in the most extraordinary episode yet
“Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” – James Baldwin “I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”– Alan Moore, from a 2017 interview published in Folha de São Paulo (and re-posted on alanmooreworld.com). “This Extraordinary Being,” the sixth hour of HBO’s “Watchmen,” is one of those episodes created to launch a thousand think pieces — this being one of them — along with a few college papers and maybe even a couple of grad school dissertations. You might have read these words as dismissive snickering or sarcasm. The intended sentiment is in fact the opposite. There aren’t many episodes of television that nail …
