Watchmen | Time's Up
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Featured music:
Sampa the Great - "Time's Up (feat. Krown)"
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - How the West Was Really Won
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There may be some people who would like to watch this video even though they haven't seen the Watchmen series. Below is a little write-up of some context, containing spoilers for the show, to help set up the video and get more out of it for those who haven't seen the show.
The scenes are all from one episode which explores a central character's (Angela's) mind as she learns about her grandfather's past, via some pills she swallows that contain his memories. In the series Watchmen, there's a 'show within the show' called “American Hero Story”, which depicts the first vigilante in the Watchmen universe, Hooded Justice, as a white man. In (Watchmen) reality, it's Angela's grandfather who was Hooded Justice, a black man living in 1930s America. He put on white makeup around his eyes because, as his wife tells him, "if you gonna stay a hero, townsfolk gonna need to think one of their own is under it".
Angela's grandfather was a young kid during the 1921 Tulsa Massacre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot), and joins the police force as a young adult with a naive trust in the 'law'. Several fellow (white) police officers give him a 'taste' of being lynched (hang him but cut him down at the last second), which is a formative moment that pushes him to don the persona of Hooded Justice and exact justice outside the 'law', particularly focusing on trying to take down a sect of the Klan. (Historically, there was a significant number of police officers who were in the KKK, and/or exhibited racist behaviours and actions - a trend which continues today, as institutions of power and control have grown out of America's racist history. America has plenty of growing left to do before it works through its racist history - and present).
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I also want to share a few words about my feelings on the video and its creation. I'm a white person. This is of course, a very 'black-coated' video, not only in terms of the show's subject matter, but also Sampa the Great's amazing song "Time's Up (feat. Krown)". And then to top that off, one of the major themes of both this episode of Watchmen, and also the song, is appropriation of Black excellence by white people.
"Blackface industry
Lying don’t invest in me
Only want the money off our backs
Like history"
When making the video I was struggling with feelings about this, whether I was playing into a trend of appropriation by white people, whether I was diluting the messaging of the show or enhancing and developing it, whether I had any place making this video at all.
I can say this about it:
Internally, I know that when I created this video it was coming from a very authentic place. I know that money or social clout is not an impetus (I think that's the right word?) for this creation. I know that I connect to a lot of the themes present in the show and my exploration of the material, belonging to groups that carry historical and present day marginalisation/persecution - for starters, I could point out I am a (non-practising) Jew, pansexual, and polyamorous.
My experience is individual to me, and of course the many multitudes of 'black experience' are certainly different than mine in so many crucial ways. But I think my experience also provides many points of connection and understanding. Although I'm certainly still full of all manner of ignorances, I do genuinely care deeply about the subject matter. I've been slowly learning and growing in regards to it, and I hope my work reflects that.