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Colonel Whitey posted:The politics of the show aren't really clear yet. I have a distinct feeling that it won't be clear until we've seen most, if not all, of the show. However certain people have already made up their minds about it and just enjoy punching themselves in the taint every week, so that's what the ignore function is for I mean, uh, what's the difference between discussing the show's unrevealed plots and discussing the show's unrevealed politics? Seems they're roughly similar. Beyond that, I think it's worth talking about the show's politics, because - beyond the fact that all fiction is basically political - this is an expressly political show. For what it's worth, I view this show as leaning centrist/liberal, but that's because pretty much all of Lindelof's stuff does, and also because it's the kind of show that acts like the questions it's asking - is policing inherently, structurally flawed? are superheros problematic? - are ambiguous or even relevant or useful questions. Other than some questions of race, it's not really asking anything the original comic was answering, and given that Lindelof has argued that he's really more interested in just the asking of questions rather than the manufacture of answers I doubt it's going to try. But I'm still interested in watching the show, despite its derivative qualities, partly because it's got my attention, partly because it's got this thread's attention, and partly because I am to see if I'm right. It's basically LOST all over again, only with political opinions instead of polar bears. Which is probably the point.
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Nov 4, 2019 23:56
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beanieson posted:I don’t understand how anyone ever doubted he was ozymandias. Like, it was announced that actor was cast as Veidt, he was acting like Veidt, and just because he hadn’t put on his silly costume people were speculating it wasn’t him?? For what it's worth, neither was Jeremy Iron's casting announced as him playing Veidt, and he spent multiple episodes being credited as Lord Of The Manor. So the original argument about the pointless withholding of information remains true, made all the more egregious for it being entirely obvious who he was playing.
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Nov 18, 2019 04:04
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graham cracker posted:In this instance Nostalgia looks like a perfume though. Weird. Yeah, that's because it was in the comic. This is a different kind of nostalgia, I guess. KoRMaK posted:I now also understand some of the talk in this thread earlier about Hooded Justice and Nazis. Hollis says they were sometimes Nazis, Hooded Justice sympathized with the Nazis until pearl harbor. I... just kind of don't know what Alan Moore's point is really by having these characters identify with them that way. He's suggesting that superheros and fascism are inherently linked. It's not just there, Veidt's strongly associated with art deco and Metropolis style imagery, and his new brand of perfume designed to replace Nostalgia -- Millennium, the name itself being a joke -- has strong Aryan imagery on its advertising. It's interesting that Trieu decided to revert back to the nostalgia-based branding again, though I think it's a bit of an own goal for the show to be criticising nostalgic impulses when it's essentially not so much a sequel as a remix. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Nov 21, 2019 |
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Nov 21, 2019 05:57
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It's a pretty common reaction generally, beyond television. I've seen plenty of arguments where people have argued that sympathetic motivations are justification for their actions, rather than just an explanation for them. Give a television character sympathetic enough of a motivation and people will believe they're morally justified in their actions. It's ethics as aesthetics.
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Nov 21, 2019 07:11
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Berke Negri posted:there's almost certainly a non-zero amount of people that read watchmen in the 80s and thought Rorschach's last stand made him the most morally correct protagonist in the comic I keep coming back to the (fictional) cover up of the squid attack by the Redford Government, and the parallel the show's drawing between that and the real historical cover up (or just plain denial) of America's historical massacres, including Black Wallstreet, and what the show's saying about the public recognition in either case. Honestly seems a bit ambivalent.
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Dec 6, 2019 17:31
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Niwrad posted:The last few episodes were really bad and killed what was a really interesting premise. Classic trap. Early episodes ask.questions and juxtapose apparently unlinked events in a way that suggests further questions in the audience's mind. Show keeps moving the goal posts on many of these questions, even as it appears to be answering some. Audience is compelled to watch. But the questions and linkages the audience is making, potentially very complex ones, can't live up to the actual content of the show. Not only is the experience too individuated and personal, the show has no real way of justifying its choices. As the final episodes roll around the show reveals itself to be less than what it is in many people's heads, and a great portion walk away unsatisfied. True of a lot of shows, yeah, but this is the kind of television that deliberately invokes that kind of relationship, and places it as a centrepiece of its narrative philosophy. Would the story work at all without the mysteries and teases, if the narrative had been upfront from the start? My main complaint, though, is that the ending is a dodge. Who cares whether she gets powers, or even that she gets them. The real drama is what a pissed off black lady would do with all of God's gifts, and how other people have just got to deal with that. Cowards.
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Dec 16, 2019 10:49
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Jay-V posted:Episode 6 was great also for cleverly recontextualizing a character that previously was just "strong gay kinky man!" He was also a Russian, misogynist fascist with no empathy. Not bad for a character with one line. Look, it's a clever choice, but I don't think the episode makes it commensurate with the original work. We get an apologia for the fascism, but a) that's less interesting that him being fascist and also black, and b) I feel uncomfortable about white washing the character while also making the character black, and yeah, I recognise the irony in those words. I'm uncomfortable with any Watchmen adaptation featuring perfect (or at least, only marginally flawed) supes. Capes aren't good people. Watchmen's Capes are cultural imperialist arseholes with a legacy inherently tied to acts of oppression. The idea of Trieu, a capitalist oligarch with more money than God and an obsession with dynasty, makes a more compelling Watchmen Cape, and she's basically a cypher. But then again, so many Watchmen capes were. Just Chamber posted:Damon Lindelof comes across in interviews as really awfully cringy far left woke I... who? what do these words mean to you?
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Dec 17, 2019 03:38
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KoRMaK posted:um a little thing called #METOO where a bunch of wolves and wolves in sheep clothing were revealed. Yes I'm agreeing with you. Hello. The idea of this show being "far left" -- which has since been covered -- is more what I took issue with.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:17
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Bernstrike posted:lol that they cut straight before Angela fell into the water like a doofus Someone edit that last scene so this is canon.
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Dec 17, 2019 11:00
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Punkin Spunkin posted:Silly fuckin reply...that's why im talking about the non-original music Same thing happened on The Leftovers. How many covers of Where Is My Mind did they end up playing? Two? Three?
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Dec 23, 2019 07:07
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like "I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire", "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)", etc
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Grandpa Palpatine posted:Only problem is that it has been so long since I've seen season 2, I don't really remember all the minor details, so I'm not sure if I need to rewatch it before season 3???? Most of the minor details are irrelevant after the first episode. Hell, after the cold open. It's pretty egregious.
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Jan 21, 2020 23:35
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There really isn't one to be honest. It was certainly one of three pronounced views when the show was airing, though. (The other two being "it's all good" and "it's all bad")
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Jul 31, 2020 07:21
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I dunno. My overwhelming memory of the show is that they made the cop characters, particularly Angela, very cool. Yeah, they do bad things, but they're kinda awesome at it. She's badass. So's Laurie. Even Lookingglass is a lovable loser with a sympathetic backstory. If they're meant to be so bad, why depict their actions so favourably? They're not unlikable. They're often quite the opposite, even when they're doing horrible things. (I'm mentally comparing them with what Lovecraft Country did just this last episode, which I think was a more pointed and obvious critique of its lead than anything Watchmen did.)
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Sep 23, 2020 14:38
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:I understand the argument that the show’s representations of violence from Regina King are highly aestheticized and, uh, cool-looking” for lack of a better word: she looks cool, does cool poo poo, is a badass, and succeeds. She tortures a guy to get information in the first episode, and the torture works—and this isn’t undone by the knowledge that the police chief arranged for the raid to happen, as the kkk guy getting tortured isn’t in on it. I can understand the claim that the show thereby normalizes and celebrates violence in a way that is at odds with the show’s critique of police and the state. That’s a problem in film that’s been around for a long time and maybe it’s unsolvable because drat violence can be very exciting to look at and create a sense of catharsis in an audience that enjoys seeing a nazi get cut apart by a chainsaw and so forth. I thought The Sopranos did a really, really good job eliminating nearly all the hype from its violence. The "big" heist sequence in the second season involves a character making GBS threads into a bucket while everyone feels uncomfortable. I mean, yeah, we have Lubeman and Panda and some of the other crusty heroes, but then there's Sister Night. She's got the outfit, the attitude, the ability, the action music.. I don't see it as that much different to Snyder (and the criticism of his style of storytelling seems to be exactly that, a criticism of his style, not his substance). I can intellectualise the irony, but I don't find it particularly persuasive. That, and the tendency for the script to fall into typical clichés of this kind of thing (the finale, as frequently pointed out, is very route, but there are other moments) makes me think it either doesn't go far enough, or wasn't really capable of recognising what it's handling and acting appropriately.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:19
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