Unmasked – Around the themes and themes of the series “Watchmen”

Mirror, tell me …

Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is here that Angela Abar (played by the great Regina King) leads a seemingly idyllic life with a loving husband and a group of children raised together. The idyllic picture, however, is only a facade, and Angela herself, an experienced detective, secretly puts on a mask and, as Sister Night, investigates the Seventh Cavalry – an organization of white supremacists who also hide their faces. This is happening in a reality where the activity of self-proclaimed “saviors” is forbidden and the camouflage, sanctioned by federal law, becomes an element of the political game. On both sides of the ongoing conflict, the symbolism of counter-cultural opposition is appropriated and processed in such a way that it corresponds to the official rhetoric,modus operandi of representatives of the apparatus of power.

After all, according to agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), how to distinguish a masked, illegal hero from an ordinary clay in hiding? The differences between them seem to blur, but the implications of hiding faces remain the same; the attribute of an ancient theatrical creation assumes entering a certain role, adopting the features of collective identity derived from the costume, in this case – uniforms. The hidden image, in the official discourse to ensure security through anonymity, also has a flip side. The namelessness guaranteed in this way may, of course, allow aggression and brutality, symbolically releasing from responsibility for one’s actions, in the world created by Lindelof, however, it much more often provokes behaviors at the other end of this spectrum: suppressing emotions,

If you don’t like my story, please write your own

In the first minutes of the pilot episode, the creators take us to Tulsa in 1921. We see a thriving city district inhabited primarily by black residents. The inconspicuous everyday life is interrupted by an angry crowd, relentlessly attacking God with the spirit of guilty passers-by. The frames are filled with a bloody symphony, and the slaughter is crowned with the sound of bombs. Many viewers – also in the United States – were surprised by the fact that the presented pogrom, which is one of the darkest pages of American history, really happened. Another authentic character is Bass Reeves, one of the first black law enforcement officers, adored by the boy in the cinema. Like the original narrative of Moore and Gibbons, Lindelof proposes a reality in many respects similar to ours, but with some shifts and alternations, often unidentifiable. Authentic events are mixed with fiction, in a historiosophical spirit, asking the question: what makes history worth commemorating and describing? What constitutes memory and legitimizes a given narrative?

The fact that the problem of post-truth and modifying the narrative is of key importance to Lindelof is demonstrated by the repeatedly scored examples of distorting history. It’s enough to mention that Agent Petey – a historian with a PhD – scrupulously tracks inaccuracies in media adaptations of the Minutemen team history, in particular the series in the series – American Hero Story– a thoroughly sensational, even tabloid product. Of course, the similarities to the production behind which Ryan Murphy stands are not accidental – after all, he himself approaches the factual background of his stories quite … liberally. The extreme effect of appropriating the idea is the manifesto of the Seventh Cavalry – an extreme right-wing terrorist organization, in which Rorschach interprets it, a figure in the case of whom it is difficult to make an unambiguous judgment, has become a dangerous ideologist, deprived of the ability to defend his own words. His legacy – the diary – is subject to apropriation, taken out of context and reinterpreted into a ready thesis.

The reality proposed by Watchmen, of course, to some extent fits into the current of alternative histories – but is it so distant from the one we know all too well again? Minor transgressions and role reversal are aimed at breaking the viewer out of their comfort zone and making them reflect on the status quo . While the sight of a white policeman exceeding his powers in relation to a black citizen will make a smaller impression (as the media, by multiplying such messages, effectively desensitize the recipients to such a balance of power), the black officer stopping the driver, in his characterization reminiscent of stereotypical an image of a potentially racist (and above all: white) rednet, will signal a problem – especially when the detention itself may seem unfounded at first glance. A sentence borrowed from the Roman poet Juvenal resounds bitterly : Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – who is watching the follower? Who controls the organs of power – and is it possible to refer to the remnants of any morality at all in an amoral world?

For those who are hungry for knowledge

As befits a child of Damon Lindelof, the multitude of contexts and details – both visual and narrative flavors – encourage repeated contact with individual episodes of Watchmen. Galapagos Films comes to the rescue of the hungry and inquisitive. Released on three DVDs, the series includes almost two hours of additional material. And while a large part is simply short promotional clips, briefly outlining extremely interesting threads (such as a walk around Wade’s shelter – Zwierciadła, or just two-minute spots presenting the motivations of individual characters), the longer documents solidly develop the themes (by I’m just “licked” here to stimulate your appetite) present both in the HBO series and the original graphic novel – the role of masks and costumes, intergenerational inheritance of trauma, alternative stories in times marked by the concept of post-truth.

Also worth noting is the material titled Visual Effects in Watchmen , which presents – and how – the subsequent stages of creating individual scenes and computer-generated locations. It should be noted that while the episodes themselves will be watched in several language versions (both with subtitles and a voiceover), the additional materials have not been translated – so they will not be available to people who do not speak the Shakespeare language.