Adult Swim jumps into the center of the national debate about race and police brutality Saturday when it premieres the animated musical “The Wizard of Watts.”
Not that Cartoon Network’s after-hours animation block hasn’t been in this position before. “The Wizard of Watts” is the season 2 finale of “Black Dynamite,” a series that takes on racially charged subjects on a weekly basis. Produced by Carl Jones and Jon Steingart, the series is a spin-off of the 2009 Sundance favorite of the same name and lampoons blaxploitation films of the 1970s. It follows the title character and his associates as they work to protect their city from various nemeses, including “The Man.”
Conceived years before the recent controversy over police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, the hour-long “The Wizard of Watts” is especially prescient with its topical take on police brutality as you can see in the NSFW trailer above. A play off “The Wiz,” the musical kicks off with a riot that is sparked when The Man increases police patrols in Black Dynamite’s neighborhood. After being smacked in the head with a brick, Black Dynamite is knocked unconscious and begins hallucinating.
Our hero imagines himself in the Magical Land of Oz-Watts, where the Rodney Munchkings are being terrorized by overly zealous pigs. Before reaching the Great and Powerful Motherf@$%er’s palace in order to get home, Black Dynamite has to bring down the Pig Chief as well as The Wicked Bitch of the West Side. Along the way, he joins forces with a band of misfits including Scarecorn, Lionhorn and Tin Bee.
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In a New York Times article, 42-year-old Jones, who directed and co-wrote the musical with Byron Minns, said two years ago he saw on social media how African-Americans were using cellphone cameras as “protection from police, like as a weapon.”
“Nobody was talking about it and so I decided we had to take it on,” he told the Times.
In the special, the Pig Chief cannot be stopped with water a la “The Wiz,” but with a camcorder. Jones told the Times that even he is surprised by how topical the project has become.
“The Wizard of Watts” premieres at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 10 on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and features appearances by Tyler The Creator, Erykah Badu, Tim Blake Nelson and J.B. Smoove.
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