Comic Con @ Home: GeekEd: Watchmen and the Cruelty of Masks
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HBO’s Watchmen and the source comic it was based on have inspired a lot of amazing conversations and this Comic Con GeekEd panel was no exception. Bringing in educators from around the country, they tackled the topic of masks and what hides behind them. Recorded the weekend of Juneteenth, the panel got an extra layer of prescience.
Panelists: Dr. Kalenda Eaton (University of Oklahoma), Dr. David Surratt (University of Oklahoma), Hailey Lopez (UC Berkeley), Robert Hypes (Phoenix Creative Collective), and host Alfred Day (UC Berkeley).
What is the purpose of masks?
The panel kicked off with a discussion about masks and what makes them useful. I was really struck by Dr. Kalenda’s comments on how masks serve a dual purpose: we wear masks to conceal hurt but also masks are often worn by those who inflict trauma, even in ignorance. During these crazy times, masks of ignorance are taken off.
I loved hearing how Alfred Day was able to speak to the intersection of both heroes and villains, after all both do wear masks. Watchmen does a good job of nailing down how the mask that fiction stories often wear is not in Watchmen. The show opens with a man watching a movie about Bass Reeves (a real Black person) that inspired the Lone Ranger (a fictional WHITE person) that inspired the superhero genre that Watchmen deconstructed. That’s a fascinating chain but it shows how masks can be used to form false narratives.
So what about Watchmen?
One of the most interesting things about watching Watchmen is as a Black person, I felt like every episode I would be slapped with something horrible that Black people endured from our history. Hailey put this show into an even more fascinating context by bringing up that Watchmen is set in an alternative universe with an extended Cold War and Robert Redford presidency…and it’s still telling truths about modern society. In this way, fiction can actually tell us the truth.
Looking at the particular characters, Alfred (a noted Batman fan) pointed out that while in comics people put on masks to do good, in reality, masks are used to hide identities from the deeds they are committing like Sister Night or the police officers. Dr. David brings up Hooded Justice, probably my favorite back story on the show. While fan theories about who that character is have been well founded, Lindeloff’s take on the character is a master stroke of storytelling. Dr. David broke this down that the psychology of Hooded Justice is interesting in that he wears his mask in self-preservation, feeling that the world wasn’t ready for a Black hero, but he has a noose as a way for him to attempt to work through his trauma. Ugh the levels of Lindeloff’s mind!
Robert: people are getting to learn about the real history
-masks have a strong history in drama, used to show emotions in chorus and stock characters and who they are, masking performers because people had a low opinion of theater
What’s the real world influence?
Mask wearing is something that is almost as old as time, but in our age of social media and internet the concept of unmasking has taken on a new definition. The last chunk of the panel began to relate to how our world, specifically the young people the panelists come into contact with due to their jobs. I was fascinated on looking at the way that the way we unmask people now is different because the vigilantes are not wearing masks.
You can watch the full panel here:
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