How Watchmen takes on white supremacy
Showrunner DAMON LINDELOF on giving the Alan Moore graphic novel a timely update for TV
THE HERO OF Alan Moore’s landmark 1986 graphic novel Watchmen was Rorschach, an uncompromising vigilante who’d stop at nothing in his hunt for justice. In Damon Lindelof’s HBO continuation of the superhero satire, set 30 years after the original, the character represents pure villainy. “We thought it’d be interesting to show bad guys appropriating Rorschach, twisting and subverting the idea of him to their whims,” says the Lost co-creator, whose new show sees violent criminals donning Rorschach masks to terrorise
“race traitors” and people of colour. Welcome to the new Watchmen: a white supremacy-battling update of a comic book classic, tailor-made for our time of alt-right rallies and sky-rocketing hate crime figures. “We talked a lot about racism,” says Lindelof, who grew up reading Moore’s edgy tales. “Watchmen really tapped into the fear everyone was experiencing as a result of the nuclear stand-off between the US and Russia at the time. Superhero stories were supposed to take place in Metropolis or Gotham City — not real places. But this took place in New York and the political climate very much mirrored ours.” When he started developing his own version of Watchmen, he wanted it to similarly grapple with urgent social issues. “I asked, what’s the thing that’s causing a tremendous amount of anxiety in America today? The only authentic answer was race.” “It’s a very aggressive, dark world right now,” agrees director Nicole Kassell, who has close personal attachment to the show’s themes: she grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where “overt racism made me not feel safe” long before the alt-right parade that shocked America and left one person dead in 2017. “We wanted to say something sincere about that, to react to what’s been happening.”
Rorschach’s evolution into a poster boy for violent bigots in this HBO show has real-life precedence. In the years since Moore’s graphic novel, and Zack Snyder’s 2009 movie adaptation, the character has been championed by rightwing figures: in 2015, controversial US politician Ted Cruz listed him as one of his favourite superheroes. “I don’t wanna editorialise on whether or not Rorschach was a white supremacist. I don’t think he was, but he certainly had what would now be considered some alt-right views,” says Lindelof. “We wanted to explore that.” Watchmen, as we know it, is about to be turned upside down.