I don't even mean a bad thing, necessarily. I mean a thing that is made to normalize the status quo, pave over inherent contradictions in late stage neoliberal capitalism, make even the idea of changing society somewhat seem evil or impossible, and have lots of performative gestures that hide the stench of affluent arrogance. :zizek-preference:
I know it came out well before 2020, but I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 and I stopped at the instant Tony Stark said "I've successfully privatized world peace." It was bad. Very bad. The original movie was entertaining even if it had some painful deliberate adjustments to the comic book character to make him more like :my-hero: but the sequel played out like Ayn Rand fanfiction, especially the big smart awesome genius giving a speech about how the evil government and the ungrateful moochers were taking the sweat from his brow and so on and so on. :zizek:
The flood of MCU movies wore me out to the point that I stopped watching them and because of that I have only seen maybe half of them by now. Maybe it was a mistake returning to try watching Iron Man 2 because I now have even less interest in seeing anything MCU ever again. :zizek-fuck:
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right? And the main conclusion he drew is if liberals had too much power then the cops wouldn't be able to effectively fight white nationalists both external and within their own ranks. It's such a bonkers conclusion to both admit cops are full of racist scum, but also they need to be funded and able to shoot who they want, because otherwise they get taken over by racists. The show might as well have been subtitled "there should be more black cops."
I don't fully agree with your take on that being the message of the show...but I would like to add:
Lindelof should get the wall if for no other reason then because of the hooded justice retcon and the entire thematic inversion the show does. Alan Moore's entire thesis is that the genesis of the modern American Superhero is in Birth of a nation: IE a bunch of costumed vigilantes with ridiculous titles like "cyclops" running around the streets dispensing anonymous violence in the service of "law and order". Hooded Justice and his entire costume design is a *direct * nod to this. If I remember right there are even newspaper clippings in the comic that praise the kkk as some of the first vigilantes.
In Lindelof's head I think he's trying to plant the seeds of redemption and to address this critique by making the first superhero a black man...except that isn't actually engaging with and addressing the original critique Watchman presented: its dodging it and moving the goal posts.
The best adaptation watchman has ever had is The Boys season 2.
I don't think your two takes contradict. The entire show is copaganda that proposes the problem with cops are a few bad actors and the system can be redeemed, but only redeemed in specific ways. But because Lindelof is a liberal, he's framing it in liberal terms. "Liberal" in very west wing terms. Like how the cops have their guns locked is liberal to him, but the masked vigilantes doing extrajudicial enhanced interrogation is probably something right wing in his brain.
He's avoiding the structural criticisms of American society Watchmen entirely, you're right. It should have been really obvious when Captain Metropolis had his map of problems in America and listed among them were black unrest and anti-war movements.
I liked that episode where they show Chris Dorner's backstory though :dorner:
I struggle to see how that's the message. If that society is bad, it's because the forces of reaction weren't properly guillotined, not that a liberal was in office no?
I've watched it twice and I never once thought that was a message of the show.
I did see a lot of the show as a liberal self-criticism. If you grill some liberals enough, ask them the main problems with their ideology, they'll eventually bend to saying like they're too harsh on gun ownership, or they don't support the military hard enough, or they're not hard enough on racism. I think liberals know they're far too forgiving of reactionaries and know if they had unanimous power, that reaction would still fester and eventually consume them. The show is pretty honest in that regard, but it makes the wrong conclusion of asserting liberal institutions are still redeemable.