美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Watchmen' Creator Damon Lindelof: Not Talking About Race Felt 'Irresponsible'

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

There are a lot of superheroes and a lot of vigilantes crowding the pop culture landscape. But HBO's new series "Watchmen," which was inspired by a DC comic, kind of stands out.

DAMON LINDELOF: I think that Alan Moore, who is the brilliant writer behind "Watchmen," and Dave Gibbons, who illustrated¹ it, were sort of asking - what happens if these people existed in the real world? Shouldn't we be a little worried about people who put on masks?

KING: That is Damon Lindelof, the executive producer. He set the series in Tulsa, Okla., in a world where white supremacy² is a rising threat and where police officers conceal³ their identities.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WATCHMEN")

JEAN SMART: (As Laurie Blake) You know how you can tell the difference between a masked cop and a vigilante?

REGINA KING: (As Angela Abar) No.

SMART: (As Laurie Blake) Me neither.

KING: "Watchmen" the comic came out in 1986. It was groundbreaking. It was realistic. It was emotionally complicated. And when Lindelof was 13 years old, his dad handed him a copy.

LINDELOF: I'll never forget it. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he handed me the first two issues of "Watchmen." And he just gave them to me and said, you're not ready for this.

KING: (Laughter).

LINDELOF: And he sort of ominously⁵ walked out of the room. Obviously, this was not happening, but it felt like there was a static charge to these two things. And it was very different than any comic I'd ever read. It was violent. It was gritty. It was scary. It was weird⁶. It took place in New York, not in Gotham City or Metropolis⁷. Nobody had any superpowers. It was political.

KING: In 1986, the man who wrote "Watchmen," Alan Moore, he was writing about the fear of a nuclear holocaust⁸, about a confrontation⁹ between the United States and the Soviet¹⁰ Union. Your show - your "Watchmen" deals really directly with the threat of white supremacy, specifically with this group that calls itself the Seventh Kalvary.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WATCHMEN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Soon, the accumulated black filth¹¹ will be hosed away, and the streets of Tulsa will turn into extended gutters¹² overflowing¹³ with liberal tears. Soon, all the whores and race traitors¹⁴ will shout, save us. And we will whisper, no.

KING: I was about five minutes in when I realized - oh, this is a show about race; this is a show that is explicitly¹⁵ about race and racism¹⁶. Why did you make that your dynamic?

LINDELOF: Yeah. I - you know, that's a great question. And I think that at the time that I was sort of approach to consider rethinking "Watchmen," I had to answer the question, what is the pervasive¹⁷ sort of anxiety in America right now? And it was impossible, as all these things were happening - not just Charlottesville but everything was happening through the lens of race. And it felt like there was a great reckoning happening in our country, overdue¹⁸ and necessary. This idea that "Watchmen" has always been about the history that has been kind of hidden and camouflaged¹⁹, and also it's about the pain and trauma²⁰ that is sort of buried in the American consciousness. And I started to feel like it was incredibly important to tell a story about race. To not tell a story about race in the context of a political text in 2019 almost felt borderline irresponsible.

KING: The first episode opens immediately with the Tulsa massacre²¹, which is this terrible true crime committed in 1921 where white residents of Tulsa destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood and killed many, many people. It is an incident in history that I think many black Americans know of; many white Americans don't. Why did you choose to open the show with a scene of that?

LINDELOF: Essentially²², about four or five years back, it became very popular to have read Ta-Nehisi Coates.

KING: "The Case For Reparations."

LINDELOF: Yes, especially if you were a white liberal - and when I finished "Case For Reparations," I just didn't see the world in the same way anymore. Mr. Coates mentioned Black Wall Street, which I had never heard of. So I bought this book called "The Burning" that was all about the Tulsa massacre, and I read it cover to cover in a couple of days. And right at that same time, I was being approached about "Watchmen." And I was trying to think about one of the things that made "Watchmen" sort of electric was this sort of blending of - is that real history, or is that not real history? And I started to feel that the Tulsa massacre, even though it was built on this incredible, horrible taking of treasure and destruction of an African American utopia in 1921 Oklahoma, I sort of felt like that was an incredibly compelling story worth telling. And it felt like a superhero origin story in some weird way. It felt like Krypton, you know? It felt like the destruction of a world.

KING: In the show, the protagonists²³ are mainly cops - at least in the first couple of episodes. And they wear masks. They cover their faces to protect themselves from people who want to hurt them. I've been wondering - in this climate of where we have these high-profile police shootings and a lot of scrutiny²⁴ now of police conduct, did you have any reservations about making cops the victims of violence, the ones who have to fear, when, in our world, it's often the civilians²⁵ who have to fear?

LINDELOF: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that a lot of our creative process was based on, we have real reservations about this. And I think that there's certainly a concern, coming into the first episode, that the show is essentially saying you're supposed to feel for the cops or you're supposed to by that cops and white supremacists are two separate entities⁴ and that there's no overlap²⁶ in between, when we all know that the real world is much messier than that. That said, that I feel like that the show doesn't take a position of being pro-cop or anti-cop. I think that because it's taking place in an alternate history, the question that it's really asking is - what makes someone want to be a cop? And what is the idea of the law. What's the line between the administration of the law and vigilantism?

KING: When "Watchmen" came out in the mid-'80s, as I understand it, no one really took comic books that seriously. They were popular, but it wasn't like - oh, this reflects the culture of our time; this is making a serious statement about society. But that's not true anymore. And I'm thinking of "Joker," which just came out...

LINDELOF: Sure.

KING: ...You know, obviously, a commentary on toxic²⁷ masculinity, among other things. How does your show fit into that context? Is now, like, the right time to make it? Are you in an ultra-competitive world now?

LINDELOF: I don't know about the timing²⁸. I do know that now is a really interesting time to look at where we are with superheroes. There's something to the fact that we idolize and look up to these figures and spend billions and billions of dollars to watch their stories. And so I think that you see movies like "Joker" using these preexisting myths to sort of subvert²⁹ or reflect the times that we're living in now. That's the way that we like to hear stories. Sometimes it's too hard to get the docudrama, to get the real taste of what's happening out there. We want some degree of escapism. But I think that there is a responsibility, even if you're doing comic book storytelling, to mirror the world that we're living in now and reflect it back at the audience.

KING: Damon Lindelof, thank you so much for joining us.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LINDELOF: Thank you so much for having me.

KING: Damon Lindelof is the executive producer and the writer of the new HBO series "Watchmen."

1 illustrated   

adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• His lecture was illustrated with slides taken during the expedition. 他在讲演中使用了探险时拍摄到的幻灯片。
• The manufacturing Methods: Will be illustrated in the next chapter. 制作方法将在下一章说明。

2 supremacy   

n.至上；至高权力

参考例句：

• No one could challenge her supremacy in gymnastics.她是最优秀的体操运动员，无人能胜过她。
• Theoretically,she holds supremacy as the head of the state.从理论上说，她作为国家的最高元首拥有至高无上的权力。

3 conceal   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽

参考例句：

• He had to conceal his identity to escape the police.为了躲避警方，他只好隐瞒身份。
• He could hardly conceal his joy at his departure.他几乎掩饰不住临行时的喜悦。

4 entities   

实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Our newspaper and our printing business form separate corporate entities. 我们的报纸和印刷业形成相对独立的企业实体。
• The North American continent is made up of three great structural entities. 北美大陆是由三个构造单元组成的。

5 ominously   

adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地

参考例句：

• The wheels scooped up stones which hammered ominously under the car. 车轮搅起的石块，在车身下发出不吉祥的锤击声。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mammy shook her head ominously. 嬷嬷不祥地摇着头。 来自飘（部分）

6 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

7 metropolis   

n.首府；大城市

参考例句：

• Shanghai is a metropolis in China.上海是中国的大都市。
• He was dazzled by the gaiety and splendour of the metropolis.大都市的花花世界使他感到眼花缭乱。

8 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

9 confrontation   

n.对抗，对峙，冲突

参考例句：

• We can't risk another confrontation with the union.我们不能冒再次同工会对抗的危险。
• After years of confrontation,they finally have achieved a modus vivendi.在对抗很长时间后，他们最后达成安宁生存的非正式协议。

10 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

11 filth   

n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥

参考例句：

• I don't know how you can read such filth.我不明白你怎么会去读这种淫秽下流的东西。
• The dialogue was all filth and innuendo.这段对话全是下流的言辞和影射。

12 gutters   

（路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地

参考例句：

• Gutters lead the water into the ditch. 排水沟把水排到这条水沟里。
• They were born, they grew up in the gutters. 他们生了下来，以后就在街头长大。

13 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

14 traitors   

卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人

参考例句：

• Traitors are held in infamy. 叛徒为人所不齿。
• Traitors have always been treated with contempt. 叛徒永被人们唾弃。

15 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

16 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

17 pervasive   

adj.普遍的；遍布的，(到处)弥漫的；渗透性的

参考例句：

• It is the most pervasive compound on earth.它是地球上最普遍的化合物。
• The adverse health effects of car exhaust are pervasive and difficult to measure.汽车尾气对人类健康所构成的有害影响是普遍的，并且难以估算。

18 overdue   

adj.过期的，到期未付的；早该有的，迟到的

参考例句：

• The plane is overdue and has been delayed by the bad weather.飞机晚点了，被坏天气耽搁了。
• The landlady is angry because the rent is overdue.女房东生气了，因为房租过期未付。

19 camouflaged   

v.隐蔽( camouflage的过去式和过去分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰

参考例句：

• We camouflaged in the bushes and no one saw us. 我们隐藏在灌木丛中没有被人发现。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• They camouflaged in bushes. 他们隐蔽在灌木丛中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

21 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

22 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

23 protagonists   

n.（戏剧的）主角( protagonist的名词复数 )；（故事的）主人公；现实事件（尤指冲突和争端的）主要参与者；领导者

参考例句：

• Mrs Pankhurst was one of the chief protagonists of women's rights. 潘克赫斯特太太是女权的主要倡导者之一。 来自辞典例句
• This reflects that Feng Menglong heartily sympathized with these protagonists. 这反映出冯梦龙由衷地同情书中的这些主要人物。 来自互联网

24 scrutiny   

n.详细检查，仔细观察

参考例句：

• His work looks all right,but it will not bear scrutiny.他的工作似乎很好，但是经不起仔细检查。
• Few wives in their forties can weather such a scrutiny.很少年过四十的妻子经得起这么仔细的观察。

25 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

26 overlap   

v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠

参考例句：

• The overlap between the jacket and the trousers is not good.夹克和裤子重叠的部分不好看。
• Tiles overlap each other.屋瓦相互叠盖。

27 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

28 timing   

n.时间安排，时间选择

参考例句：

• The timing of the meeting is not convenient.会议的时间安排不合适。
• The timing of our statement is very opportune.我们发表声明选择的时机很恰当。

29 subvert   

v.推翻；暗中破坏；搅乱

参考例句：

• The rebel army is attempting to subvert the government.反叛军队企图颠覆政府统治。
• They tried to subvert our state and our Party. This is the crux of the matter.他们是要颠覆我们的国家，颠覆我们的党，这是问题的实质。