HBO's Watchmen and Copaganda

bad news everybody content is coming up I put contents in this one this video is going to contain some discussion about police violence against black people in the United States if you're sensitive to that type of discussion I would definitely recommend not watching this particular video hello it's me Ninja Turtles - the secret of the use before I get started I'd like to point out that bad empanada I already did a video about Watchmen and liberal ideology his video covers a lot of the same stuff I'm gonna talk about but he comes to a very different conclusion than I do this is a different video no plagiarism intended all rights belong to the owners I love Watchmen the comic by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore not the TV show we're going to be discussing today that I'm not so hot on I first read it in my early 20s so you know homeboy misinterpreted it I first read it in my early 20s so you know homeboy misinterpreted it misinterpreted it did Miss interpreted it to think Rorschach was an uncompromising badass instead of a crypto-fascist monster I like to think I have a better understanding of the subject matter now the comic doesn't need me to sing its praises if anything it's over celebrated presented as though it alone redeems the graphic novel as a storytelling medium in a sea of erstwhile garbage in 2005 Time magazine created a list of the 100 greatest novels of all time and Watchmen was the only comic book on that list though it was still number 98 because it's comic book come on it's not for Smarties its masterpiece don't get me wrong you already know Watchmen is a masterpiece you don't need me to tell you that if you're at all familiar with comic books you know Watchmen is one of the best comic books of all time maybe even if you're not familiar with comic books you know that then in the future year of 2019 Damon Lindelof made a TV series with HBO that continued the Watchmen universe I'm going to be very critical of this show and I want to emphasize it's not really because I think the show does a bad job of living up to the legacy of the comic or even that it shouldn't exist probably it was inevitable that somebody would do this kind of shit with Watchmen it's way too popular to just let's sit as a cohesive work of art no it had to become a franchise that's just how art works under capitalism and no television program is going to live up to the legacy of Watchmen and certainly no television show of Watchmen should exist even if we set aside the issue of ownership or whether or not DC Comics or their parent company Warner Brothers even has a legitimate right to adapt this property in the first place just narrative Lee the story's over I'm not looking for more stories in this world because this world only existed to tell this story also Watchmen is like so specifically a comic book like it's designed to tell a story in a way that only a comic book can but you know someone was gonna do it eventually and all things being equal this show is about the best we could have gotten at least the show attempts to grapple with the themes of the novel at least it shows a basic understanding of the character motivations of the returning cast except for Laurie and dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias and at least Zack Snyder wasn't involved not today you stay out of this hell I even kind of liked the show I have a lot of problems with it as you'll see but the whole time I was watching it no matter how frustrated I got with the subject matter the idea of stopping was just inconceivable to me the show has a lot of problems but it is never boring not even for a second I don't think it's very good but it's so ambitiously not very good it's not good in such a brilliant and interesting ways and it does have some genuinely good elements to be sure the soundtrack is fucking amazing every shot is beautiful and the performances are great even if some of the people delivering those performances are garbage human beings what we had in England which was it was not marriage but it was a union you could make if you were if you were gay and you wanted to make up a civil partner several Union sort of has same rights as marriage but that's right in same rights not the name and it seems to me that now they're fighting for the name and I worry that it means somehow we debase or we change what marriage is [Music] the opening scene of the show takes place during the Tulsa massacre where white supremacists invaded the Greenwood district of Tulsa Oklahoma killing people and destroying black run businesses a chilling reminder of the type of white supremacist violence that is foundational in American history the very next scene shows a black police officer being murdered by a white supremacist because he was unable to unlock his gun holster because the bureaucrats in the head office care more about following regulations than the lives of officers on duty and just okay that's fucking all right to frame these two things side by side presents a pretty clear message in the past in the 1920s a hundred years ago racism was institutional there was no way for people to protect themselves from white supremacy because white supremacists controlled the government and society but now in the year 2019 which was now then then it became not now now it's them where the show takes place white supremacy is just a fringe ideology on the outskirts of polite society something rural bumpkins in some barn might believe but not something the police and state are complicit in the police and state protect people from white supremacists so any attempt to defang them or take away their ability to easily kill at a seconds notice will inevitably put power into the hands of white supremacists so a few things one you might notice that the American government has been getting way cozier with white nationalism lately guys like Steve Bannon Steve King presumably some racist guys not named Steve the president just straight up saying nationalism is good a few times the concentration camps that's a big one secondly it's a little fucked up to write a white civilian shooting a black cop given that in real life there's an epidemic of white cops shooting black civilians in the United States data suggests that black men are Weitz is likely to be fatally shot by the police as white men police fatally shot eleven hundred and sixty five people in 2018 and about 50 cops were fatally shot in the line of duty a disparity of roughly 23 to 1 black people were also far more likely to be shot by the police specifically when unarmed which should put the whole fictional drama about the cop not being able to get his gun out of his holster in perspective thirdly it's a bit rich to suggest that cops are what's protecting us from white supremacists given that according to FBI reports there is considerable infiltration of law enforcement by white supremacist groups we don't know exactly how much because much of these reports are redacted and also because there's no screening process in place to make sure that cops aren't part of hate groups and I think there probably should be given that hate groups have made a consistent and prolonged effort to place members into active law enforcement something I'm sure the police were able to absorb quite easily because fourthly American policing evolved out of slave catching patrols and has always been a white supremacist institution to quote an article by dr. Victor II Kapler at Eastern Kentucky University's Police Studies department the birth and development of the american police can be traced to a multitude of historical legal and political economic conditions the institution of slavery in the control of minorities however were two of the more formidable historic features of american society shaping early policing slave patrols and night watches which later became modern police departments were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities this this is all the first two scenes of the fucking show hey American racism that was a real problem back in the 20s the old 20s not the current you know it's getting black people killed now they attempt to curb police violence we've breaking news out of Dallas Texas right now a jury has just found a former Dallas police officer guilty on murder charges remember amber Geiger she was charged last year after shooting and killing her unarmed neighbor we're following tragic news out of Fort Worth Texas an african-american woman was shot and killed by a white police officer while she was inside her own home this incident marks the 9th police-involved shooting in Fort Worth just this year alone we don't know what the SWAT team was looking for that night the FBI isn't commenting on this story but according to the lawsuit the agents were looking for the wrong house the right house was about a block away they said we apologize this is the wrong house went down the street to the correct house and you just hear it all over it again a bang the boom and in my mind I'm thinking I pray that that family is ok new and troubling video a deadly encounter with police this time in Delaware for officers rushing to the scene two of them you can see here their weapons drawn pointing at a young man in a wheelchair if police can't just pull out their gun and start blasting we'll be overrun by white supremacists ok I suppose it would be a lot easier to let go of this if the show wasn't trying to be critical to the police like if they were just the usual cop again that you see on TV I wouldn't care so much but the show seems to be trying to critique the police in its own useless liberal way the cops all dressed like superheroes echoing the criticisms of superheroes that the original comic made their violent jingoistic and oh yeah it turns out they're being led by a Klansmen and a secret beta or orc looking guy who is part of the Rorschach guys so he's beta or Rorschach got him but then the other cops are like no I don't I don't like that I don't support that that that that will get rid of that you see the problem is individual not institutional but there's an extended subplot about a black police officer trying to change the system from the inside but finding that institutionalized racism resists reform and then the justice system resist any attempt to root out corrupt all of which happens in the 1940s so once again institutionalized racism is framed as a thing of the past these scenes are literally shot at black and white they're literally someone's memories just so you know that's old tiny that does that type of stuff doesn't happen anymore in the modern day if we just get rid of two or three backwards individuals then everything's gonna be okay - okey and the show barely even talks about police surveillance how the cops have their eyeballs on you I said the secret word hello and welcome to the eyeball zone look upon my eyeballs MIT and is fair get it Ozymandias that's the character in Watchmen we all know that capitalism is a death cult but how are we going to explain it to your pals you don't own enough costumes to do it theatrically enough you're gonna look like a big nerd if I seem like a big nerd to you that's why but don't worry youtuber Grimm part of the pamphleteer family of YouTube video friends has you covered check out Graham's video the cult of capitalism all about how capitalist indoctrination eerily mirrors the indoctrination methods used by cults to recruit people to give you free personality tests just kidding this is satire don't sue me do you have an explicitly leftist project you'd like to see featured on the eyeball zone then send me exactly one email to the slime editor at gmail.com with pertinent details and your pronouns and what might be helpful is if you wanted me to do that favor for you that you listen to the instructions that I gave instead of just asking me somewhere else even though in literally every video I make I did they tell you exactly what to do okay bye the whole thing about the police dressing like superheroes would probably make a better point if the police weren't framed like actual superheroes on the show they're better at doing violence than anybody and they look cool and they get all the cool one-liners and yeah sometimes they torture a guy but it was a bad guy so don't worry about that there's quite a few scenes dedicated to showing how this super cop can read people's micro-expressions and determine when they're lying now this is complete pseudoscience which would be fine in a sci-fi television show however this particular shooter science is used in real life to convict people of serious crimes even though there's no real evidence that it works Paul Ekman an American psychologist who is not a total fraud and if you're paying close attention you might have noticed that when I said Eckman was not a fraud I looked down into the left indicating I might be being dishonest dr.eggman not to be confused with dr. Eggman teaches law enforcement agencies all over the world methodology for catching Liars which he has studied extensively and he no it works but he can't publish it for peer review of course because then people would learn all sorts of government secrets from an article in nature calm Eggman's critics argue that most of his peer-reviewed studies on micro-expressions were published decades ago and much of the more recent writing on the subject has not been peer reviewed Heckman maintains that this publishing strategy is deliberate that he no longer publishes all of the details of his work in the peer-reviewed literature because he says those papers are closely followed by scientists in countries such as Syria Iran and China which the United States views as a potential threat oh and by the way he also says some people are just naturally good at detecting micro-expressions and thus deceit and he calls those people wizards no I am not joking and they don't require any sort of training they just use their wizard power to look at you and know when you're lying and that's enough to convict someone of a serious crime all of this sounds very legit to me why would he lie about it what we have the game seems kind of irresponsible to me to validate something like that in a show that is attempting to honestly grapple with the problems of modern policing it gives the impression that bogus forensics like this aren't worth questioning once again can't publish this shit for peer review the Chinese might find out but you can sign up for a course and learn all about it also a lot of our clients are companies that do a lot of business in China so it seems kind of weird to me that we're not even when it's revealed that the police in Tulsa are being controlled by white supremacists all that is required is to get rid of the racist individuals and the problem is solves no changes to the system required in fact the two changes that the show posits making the cops have to call into dispatch to use their guns and making cops wear superhero costumes for no reason are presented as very bad ideas and to be fair one of them definitely is the cops dressed like superheroes because otherwise there wouldn't be enough superheroes in your show based on the comic entirely about superheroes as a concept the fictional explanation is that beta or Rorschach needed to introduce a bill to let cops wear masks so we got all the check bunch to kill all the cops in Tulsa and then they had no choice but to hide their identities and also wear weird ostentatious colorful outfits that suit their personality he needed to do this you see so that he could become president but then later off-screen he abandoned that master plan and came to another master plan that didn't involve that but he kept doing the mask thing I get you know just in case he needed to become president later in case his other master plan didn't work out and he needed to become president obviously the mask bill that he needed to do that because it would be so wildly popular that that would make him president that makes sense that's good writing but the other reform the idea that there should probably be some checks on police violence that's like the central demand of black lives matter also there's a character who's a super genius billionaire and then we find out that the reason she's a super genius is because she's the daughter of another super genius billionaire so you know genius is heritable but just so you know she got there on her own marriage her dad didn't give her any money because anyone who's smart enough can just become a billionaire also there's a scene where a character asks dr. Manhattan about the genocide he committed and he's like oops and then that character who he's talking to who is a Vietnamese citizen herself just accepts that and also falls in love with him also her parents were wonderful loving American GI is in Vietnam who were killed by a suicide bomb she points out one of the guys involved in the bombing to the police and he is summarily executed on the spot on the word of a child this child grows up to be our main character and this is such an uplifting memory for her that she becomes a police officer herself then in the end she becomes God because dr. Manhattan can see everybody and she's the only one on earth who deserves it now what am I saying about this show am i saying that it's racist am i saying that everyone who watches this show is a big racist yes I personally get to decide what is and is not racist and this show is the most racist work of art of created and if you watched it and liked it as I did you're the world's worst racist no I'm not saying that it's just it's a it's okay if you like the show it's I just think it has some fucked up Pro cop bullshit and some ideas it didn't really didn't really think through that much don't get mad at me on Twitter please thanks for watching another one of my classic videos another video in the books from me but slime check out all these cute little drawings you can get a drawing like that over at patreon.com slash thought slime the maybe you can't afford to and that's okay too in that case which you can always do to support your old buddy your old pal thought slime let's give that video a like and hit that subscribe button ring that fucking bailed thing did that's the own that that'll make the videos show up in your subscription feed because YouTube makes a lot of sense but maybe you're not satisfied and you want more thought slime in your life that's weird but fine you can go to youtube.com slash scaredy-cats TV and if that doesn't do you do you good enough you can check me out every Thursday at 8 p.m. eastern standard time at twitch.tv slash spot slime who watches the Watchmen I do apparently I watched it good joke rolling snare drum everybody laugh

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 169,336

Rating: 4.7618294 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: CfvGVJCNpoY

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Genoscythe_]

Honestly, I mutch preferred BadEmpanada’s take on how as long as we ignore the author's external commentary, the show can be easily read as a condemnation of a milquetoast liberal regime.

Yes, in our world white supremacist cops shoot black civilians, but I don't think that it's inherently offensive to imagine an alternative world, where a few diveregences have been made by a white liberal Presiden's long reign, but ultimately the deeper problems remain the same.

The second scene of the show didn't feel like it was saying that racism is only individual today. It demonstrated that much has changed since 1921, and much is different from our world (that's traumas it was very directly intending to evoke in the audience), but ultimately the whole thing still plays out to black people getting shot. That IS a systemic problem.

That ON IT'S OWN it's not enough to regulate guns more, ore to hand out reparations, if the deeper problem is not treated, a doofus in the white house passing well-meaning liberal laws, is not going to reverse the soul of the nation.

[u/ValkyrieBladeDancer]

There's stuff to criticize in the show, definitely, but if you can watch the series from beginning to end and come away ready to call it "a world where racism has been moved to the fringes of society" then you missed a *whole* lot. I stopped watching the video there, honestly.

[u/GWATHROWA]

This! I liked the show, but was perplexed by the positive reactions from leftists. It was centrist bs right from the start and you'd have to squint real hard to make it resemble anything close to a critique. Thank you for posting.