I don’t trust Damon Lindelhoff—the showrunner of HBO’s Watchmen. He’s a damn compelling writer, but he is one that often conflates philosophical inquiry with good storytelling, which can result in pretentiously puzzling television; of which I’m very familiar. That said, I can’t stop watchingWatchmen (no pun intended) and that may be because, as many on Twitter have professed, Watchmen is the“Blackest” show on television.
Ahistoricism is dangerous and I am well aware that creating any Black character untouched by the legacy of The Atlantic Slave Trade—anywhere along the Diaspora—is an act of violence via erasure. During an interview with Reelblack, a Black film archival company out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Tufuku Zuberi said about ahistorical artistry, “[W]e don’t simply communicate with people, simply by our own imagination. Our imagination is in the shadow of the past.”
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Zuberi’s words in mind, I realize the question is framed incorrectly. It is less a question of whether trauma shouldexist but how it exists. The question of how Lindelhoff uses violence, especially in relationship to Black bodies, I believe exists in one of the shows most daring reveals: The origin of Hooded Justice.
Hooded Justice is known as the first superhero of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen universe. I won’t get too deep into the lore, as I feel it is an important work of literature well worth the time of discovery, but I will say that Hooded Justice’s vigilantism is the spark that lights the flame of every iconic moment of this beloved work.
Lindelhoff, and co-writer, Cord Jefferson took this character and offered him an origin story that made him a Black man who is haunted by the memories of having witnessed his parents be murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. The man, William Reeves, becomes a police officer and discovers corruption among fellow white officers. They attempt to lynch him for attempting to discover a conspiracy, but he survives and proceeds to use the rope and hood from his assault to take on the corrupt officers—who happen to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Source: Why must Black heroism in fiction be continuously made of our historical injury?
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