Episode #38 - Watchmen & 2020 Politics with Matthew William Brake

In the run up to Election Day in the United States (Tuesday, November 3rd), here at The Two Cities we've been doing a series of political podcasts. This episode extends that conversation further, but situates it as part of a conversation with a major pop-cultural artifact—Watchmen. Originally a comic series in the mid-1980s, Watchmen is revered as one of the best graphic novels of all time. It was made into a (much-derided) film in the mid 2000s by Zack Snyder, but more recently Damon Lindelof extended the storyline in his adaptation of the story for HBO. Set in 2019, the Emmy Award Winning TV show Watchmen addresses relevant political issues in our day just as the original graphic novel did in the 80s. In particular, the show addresses systemic racism, suppressed racial history, and policing. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne chats with Matthew William Brake, who is the series editor of Theology and Pop Culture (Fortress/Lexington Press) and Religion and Comic Books (Claremont Press), and who also runs a blog called Pop Culture and Theology (popularcultureandtheology.com). Over the course of our conversation we talk about the original graphic novel, how Lindelof handles the original material in the new TV show, and how relevant both stories are for thinking about politics.

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