The Vigilantes in Pop Culture Memorandum is an American government document authored in September 3, 2019 by Dale Petey of the Anti-Vigilante Task Force's Research Unit.
Summary
American Hero Story: Minutemen
Dale Petey describes American Hero Story's overnight advertising campaign for the show's second season outside of his government office in Washington, D.C. He questions how Laurie Blake must be feeling seeing her parents, Sally Jupiter and Eddie Blake, on advertisements on her way to work. Petey has made several requests to the cable network responsible for American Hero Story provide him with review copies of the series, but the network has refused, and wonders if he should send a subpoena.
Petey suspects that Season 2 will be similar to the show's inaugural season, which he describes as a "sensationalistic hyper-pop narrative that plays recklessly with history, proceeds from an overtly left-wing point of view, and risks alienating the fringe constituencies who regard “costumed adventurers” with problematic reverence". Petey states that even though the upcoming season won't be provocative as the last season, people should be wary of its cultural influence regardless.
Unlike Season 1, which focused on the life of Walter Joseph Kovacs, aka Rorschach, American Hero Story: Minutemen dramatizes the origins of the masked vigilante phenomenon through the figure of Hooded Justice, the first masked vigilante who was active between 1938 and 1955. He vanished after refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and disclose his name to a state representative. Petey uses Hollis Mason's memoir, Under the Hood, as a research source for the new season. Mason, the first Nite Owl who was directly inspired by Hooded Justice, speculated that HJ was Rolf Müller, a former circus strongman from East Germany, and a Communist spy. Müller's body was discovered off the shore of Boston Harbor with a bullet in his head in 1956.
Because American Hero Story: Minutemen is a period piece — and because AHS, in general, fictionalizes real-world events enough to qualify as “alternative history” — Petey suspects that contemporary audiences won't see any relevance to current circumstances or even take it seriously. However, due to the reverence among conservative psychographics for Edward Blake, aka the Comedian, and given the liberal perspective of the storytelling, Petey suspects that Season 2 will be highly critical of the Comedian, which he suspects will anger the late vigilante's fanbase. Petey realizes that Agent Blake would understand the appeal of her father better than anyone, and if she wanted to craft a threat assessment of the show, he would be more than happy to assist her.
The Book of Rorschach
Dale Petey writes about the re-release of The Book of Rorschach by Sons of Pale Horse, a short-lived space rock band named after Pale Horse, the popular death metal group that perished on November 2, 1985 during the Dimensional Incursion Event. The new edition is set to be released on November 4, 2019 a couple of days after the 34th anniversary of the D.I.E.
The album was originally released in early part of the 21st century, and was regarded as a one-hit wonder and considered controversial for offending the sensibilities of the time. The album was inspired by Rorschach's journal, and that the record is known to be popular with two types of vigilante profiles on the Wertham Spectrum, the rare Objectivist/Messianic and the increasingly common Paramilitary/Nihilist. The album is very popular with the Seventh Kavalry in Oklahoma. According to field reports coming out from Tulsa, original editions of The Book of Rorschach were found in 7K homes during the police raids that followed the White Night in 2016. Petey managed to obtain an advanced copy of the re-release, and to his shock, the record features an essay written by Seymour David.
David is a scholar of post-modern culture who discovered Rorschach's journal while working as an editorial assistant at New Frontiersman in the 1980s. He gained fame following the discovery and launched a career as an academic. Petey has met David at several conferences, and considers him an embarrassment to his field of study and a self-possessed know-it-all. Despite David's lack of credentials, he has a following, and because of this his essay is going to receive some attention, which concerns Petey. David's essay portrays the band as misunderstood misfits who made a “masterpiece” that deserves to be re-discovered and appreciated anew. Since Rorschach has inspired copycats over the decades since his journal's publication — including those, like the 7K — Petey considers the possibility that the re-release of The Book of Rorschach might further stoke renewed interest in the vigilante. Petey questions if he should work up a more detailed threat assessment and tells his readers to be advised.
Gallery
