People don't generally know about Roseland or the NY Draft riots either.
People don't generally know about Roseland or the NY Draft riots either.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
Yup! Which is one of the reasons we still have issues in this country and why some people don't understand how institutionalized racism from the past still affects black people today. And it really wasn't that long ago. My father was born 15 years after the Oklahoma Massacre, so this was something my grandparents dealt with. It's not like we're talking about our "ancestors" here.
I think it speaks to just how many awful things happened that have been collectively buried from awareness. It's hard to know them all considering their frequency and the attempts to pretend they never happened.
As Knight said earlier, so many of these require you to chance upon them just so you can research them enough to be informed. I'm sure there are a great many more I'm unaware of unfortunately.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
I was just going to point out....as a kid who grew up in the Midwest I bet I know quite a few local atrocities on the Native Americans that are not known to the rest of the country either. We tuck a lot of awful shit down.
Hell, practically, I'm not sure we have enough time for all the shitty stuff.
Again funny how the great liberators of the Civil War such as Sherman and Grant were greatly responsible of the destruction many Native Americans. Sherman organized the killing of an estimated 5 million bison for the soul purpose to destroy the plains Indians way of life. Grant called for the Modoc tribes “utter extermination” after they refused to comply “peace policy”. Hell Lincoln sent Gen. John Pope, , to deal with uprising among the Dakota Sioux in Minnesota. The result was the largest mass execution in the nation’s history to that date.
Surely not everybody was kung fu fighting
Currently sitting at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, so the amalgamated opinion of critics is that it's very good indeed.
The audience score is 43%, so like Captain Marvel etc., it's been review-bombed by the usual incels.
I can't say I'm 1000% sold yet but I am super intrigued by it. Very strong cast, nice world-building and I like that it has a sense of humour about itself. I have no problem with it being a sequel to Watchmen because as all the comic book sequels to Watchmen prove, whether the sequels and spin-offs are good and bad, the original graphic novel/ series still stands as arguably the greatest comic book ever created. And, hey, I'm very curious to see where Lindelof takes the Watchmen world decades after the comic. I'm not fully gripped by either the characters or actual plot yet but there's still time for that.
As for the political aspect, I have zero issues with the show being political but I do kind of wish it wasn't about race. Obviously, I think that America - like much of the world, including, obviously, my home country, South Africa - does have an extremely troubling history with racism and it remains a smaller though still plenty large issue today. And, I hope this goes without saying, I certainly think that racism and bigotry, in general, is a vile, evil thing. None of this, however, makes it a particularly interesting subject to discuss.
Accepting that racism is bad as a jumping-off point means that there isn't actually all that far to go with exploring it. Racism = bad, tolerance = good is a fine real-world philosophy but it's so black and white that it's a fairly uninteresting theme to be explored in art. Which is why I find so many race-based stories so boring. To say anything really interesting about the subject requires an ability to play devil's advocate and try and actually get under the skin of the racists and to try and understand why racism continues to flourish. Some stories do manage to do this but, honestly most race-based stories never really get much past "isn't racism evil and isn't systemic racism especially horrible". I mean, yes and yes, but at this point... eh, I've heard it enough. Again, this isn't to negate that it's a very serious and important real-world issue but at this point, stories that revolve around racism are starting to lose their power... indeed, they make what should be a shocking and eye-opening issue into something that is, dare I say it, overplayed and mundane.
I say this, incidentally, as a Jew who, despite having actually written a number of articles on the subject of antisemitism, is really tired of having my entire religion, culture, and people defined overwhelmingly by hatred and perpetual victimhood when there's so much more that's positive and worthwhile about Judaism/ being Jewish. Surely the same goes for black people, gays, Native Americans, Muslims, or any other previously (or even currently) oppressed and disadvantaged minority?
This doesn't mean that these bigotries shouldn't be discussed and shouldn't be the subject of art but I guess the questions that should be asked each time around are a) are we really saying anything new here and b) does constantly defining the minority in question as victims actually do them justice and not just work entirely counter to what you're trying to achieve by telling the story?
Now, ALL that said, it's hardly impossible to make a story about racism incredibly nuanced and emotionally gripping (Get Out, for example, was both and then some, and is a modern-day masterpiece because of it) and it is 100% possible that Watchmen will too be a brilliant story about race. Indeed, considering the "speculative fiction" nature of the series, it's even more likely that it will succeed where so many others have failed. I'm just weary about it because hanging such an involving bit of world-building -which is itself based on such a layered source text - on so simple and unlayered a theme as "racism is, like, bad, m'kay", could bring the whole thing to its knees.
Either way, though, even if it doesn't deliver on its promise, we can at least take comfort in that it has already raised some interesting discussion and - by all accounts - pissed off legions of racists asshats at the same time. I can't wait for episode 2.
Check out my blog, Because Everyone Else Has One, for my regularly updated movie reviews.
NYC draft riots. Still the 2nd worst riots in USA history.
Dropping dynamite from airplanes. Always blow my mind.
I bet Panda cop working for the 7 Kavary.
Anyone know about this massacre?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
Last edited by gwhh; 10-26-2019 at 08:58 AM.
I wasn't wowed by the first episode. I think they could have done a better job connecting to the previous material. I'm not really sure if this is a continuation of the comic series or the movie. Doesn't make sense to me how Rorschach could become a symbol of white supremacy.
https://nerdist.com/article/watchmen...venth-kavalry/
I thought it might help.