People Should Not Be Afraid of Their Governments
by Mike GodeskyThe long awaited V for Vendetta came to theaters this weekend, claiming the number one spot at the box office. The adaptation of Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s 1980s comic book is without a doubt the most controversial action movie you’re likely to see this year. Vendetta centers around a masked freedom fighter known only as V, who uses startlingly violent tactics to bring down the dystopian government that has risen to power in the United Kingdom.
Though certain parts have obviously been changed from the book for the move to the big screen, the Wachowski brothers have managed to maintain most of the central elements of the source material. And they certainly aren’t pulling any punches. In the post-9/11 world, it’s almost a miracle that anyone could produce a movie in which the main protagonist says, “With enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.”
In other words, as great as this film is, audiences would be wise to not go in expecting more of the typical superhero fair to hold them over until X-Men 3. There is certainly plenty of action of quench the movie-goer’s thirst for thrills, including one the Wachowskis’ signature slow motion fight scenes, only with knives instead of bullets. But that’s not really what this film is about. Like The Matrix trilogy, it’s the philosophy more than anything else that is at the forefront.
Still, V for Vendetta is, as a whole, a solid film. The visuals are as impressive as you would expect from the people who brought you The Matrix. Alan Moore’s absolutely outstanding style of writing has been largely maintained. Natalie Portman, of course, does a terrific job as Evey Hammond. And even Hugo Weaving gives a powerful performance as V. Surprisingly so, considering that his face is never seen during the entire movie.
Yet while the reviews have mostly been positive, I have noticed some negative commentary floating around the internet. These mostly tend to be criticisms of the updates that have been made to make the story more of a statement about the Bush administration than about the Thatcher administration that was Moore’s original target. And this is true. There are a number of a small changes that make the story more current. For instance, Muslims are added to the government’s list of targets. Prothero, the country’s prominent news anchor, has been turned into more of a Bill O’Reilly figure. However, none of these changes seem to be what the criticisms focus on. In fact, they tend to be focused on things that are not changes at all. For instance, Michael Kane of the New York Post writes,
But the movie’s seditious, anti-President Bush subtext is obvious: The regime that V and Evey seek to undermine controls the masses through wiretapping, television spin and misinformation, using religious piousness for political gain and positioning itself as the protector of a fearful public.
Almost all of these “anti-Bush” elements, from the wiretapping to the public misinformation, are prominent in the comic book, which was written at least fifteen years before Bush became president. This reaction to the most common of dystopian elements seems to speak much more about the current state of affairs than the movie itself.
There was, however, one point on which I was disappointed with V for Vendetta. In the comic, V has a clearly anarchist philosophy. Alan Moore does the best job I have ever seen of clearly and accurately describing anarchist philosophy and of correcting the misconceptions that many people have about it. It would have been nice to have seen V’s distnction between the “Land of Do-As-You-Please” and the “Land of Take-What-You-Want” on the big screen. But alas, all references to the voluntary order of anarchy were scrubbed clean for the film, transforming V from the world’s first anarchist superhero into a simple masked freedom fighter. If V has a plan in the film for what will come after Britain’s fascist government is gone, he never says what it is.
That one point not withstanding, V for Vendetta is still an excellent film, assuming you go to see it with an open mind. In other words, if you go in expecting to see a page-by-page adaptation of the comic book, you’re probably going to be disappointed. If you go in expecting to see a mindless summer action flick, you’re probably going to be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a good action movie with a smart and thought-provoking political message, you have to see this film.
Leave it to a regular Post writer to use the word “piousness.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 March 2006 @ 5:08 PM
“If V has a plan in the film for what will come after Britain’s fascist government is gone, he never says what it is.”
Although it was stated with understated subtext, I do think that this is brushed on at the end of the film, when the end has come for the fascists, and no government, group, or philosophy is standing ready to take their place. This is unlike any revolution I’ve ever heard of, and may subtly point to anarchy.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 20 March 2006 @ 8:46 PM
Well, you sold me on going to see it. Normally, I detest movies based on comic books, but this will be the exception.
Comment by Peter — 21 March 2006 @ 2:18 AM
Check out A For Anarchy.
Comment by Disillusioned kid — 21 March 2006 @ 4:06 PM
I saw the movie on DVD two nights ago. The observant will notice that V’s signature-symbol, a “V” with a circle around it, looks curiously almost like an inverted “anarchy” symbol.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 14 September 2006 @ 6:45 PM
Oh, and another interesting thing is that in the movie, it turned out that the fascist movement engineered the very terrorist attack that catpulted it into aboslute power. That’s especially interesting in light of the fact that there is so much buzz that the W. regime may have been somehow complicit in 9/11 that The New York Times just recently sounded off about these theories.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 14 September 2006 @ 6:52 PM
I’m not so sure about that one. The whole “Dubya planned 9/11″ thing is still firmly in the realm of whacko conspiracy theory—not because it’s not something Bush wouldn’t do, but because there’s utterly no evidence whatsoever for it. Popular Mechanics published an article some time ago debunking some of the most popular myths about 9/11, but it’s been ignored and spurned by the conspiracy theorists. Theories continue to proliferate, usually based on a loose grasp of physics. For instance, how could jet fuel burn hot enough to melt steel when it’s used in steel pistons? Conveniently ignoring the crucial difference between burning fuel, and exploding its vapor under pressure. Or the much-reported “free fall” of the tower, ignoring the sheer momentum of that much material, and the fact that the underlying structure wouldn’t be expected to hold up to such forces. Wikipedia’s “9/11 Conspiracy” page provides much more detail.
I think it’s much more reasonable to compare V’s regime to the Nazis, with reference to the Reichstag fire. It’s actually quite common for governments to do this sort of thing—the United States even planned a series of terrorist attacks to marshal support against Cuba, called Operation Northwoods (though it was never implemented). There continues to be questions of whether or not FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance.
I find the core of the 9/11 conspiracies to be a singularly myopic focus on American power. It rejects out of hand the notion that there might be anyone else in the world capable of giving 19 men airline tickets and box cutters. The United States is far from the only—or even the worst—agent of destruction in the world. I had been watching al-Qa’ida for years before 9/11. I spent most of that day explaining to others what was going on—what a “Taliban” was, where these had all come from, why this had happened.
The United States government has done some dastardly things, but so have a lot of other organizations. Al-Qa’ida is not a group of nice people, either, and it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine why there might be multiple groups of “bad guys” who all dislike one another. In years to come, I won’t be surprised if evidence surfaces that the government knew it was going to happen, and chose to look the other way, but this assumption that 9/11 had to be an inside job, when there are so many groups that have been trying to do something like this for so long, is so incredibly myopic and Americocentric, I don’t know how to put it.
Yes, I’m taking a stand here. I’ve noticed a number of anti-civilization authors taking up the 9/11 conspiracy banner, and I think it’s insane. Not just because it’s such a stupid conspiracy theory in its own right, but that being so fundamentally ignorant of basic physics casts the rest of anti-civilization criticism under a cloud of suspicion. I can certainly see how an anti-civilization stance would lead one to be suspicious of the government; I always am. But suspicion is not sufficient to be a theory unto itself, and being blind to any malevolent group in the world other than the U.S. does not speak well to our credibility, nor even less to our perception. The “9/11 Faith Movement” isn’t about facts—it’s about a worldview. If we really think that all the evils of civilization rest inside a single organization, then we have severely missed the point.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 September 2006 @ 1:19 PM
Actually, that’s one of the things I like better about the comic than the movie. In the comic, the government didn’t take power through some dastardly conspiracy. They were given power by a frightened populace. To me, that just seems more realistic.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 15 September 2006 @ 1:38 PM
That hits on the notion Bradbury captured in Fahrenheit 451: that totalitarian governments don’t need to sieze power—we demand them.
But as far as realistic, there’s no denying that many corrupt governments have created the very atmosphere of fear that prompted their rise, e.g., the Nazis and the Reichstag fire, so we’re certainly not talking about an unrealistic scenario. Governments have shown the capacity and willingness to use such measures at many times in the past.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 September 2006 @ 1:55 PM
I think Maddox stated the Occam’s razor aspect of this as succinctly as one can.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons
Comment by Chuck — 15 September 2006 @ 3:11 PM
Be sure to check out the book “Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory� due out in March by Dr. David Ray Griffin.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781566566865&itm=2
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/156656686X/sr=1-4/qid=1168895874/ref=sr_1_4/102-3028549-2492937?ie=UTF8&s=books
Comment by stinker — 29 January 2007 @ 12:16 AM
Why would we waste our time with that?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 January 2007 @ 10:38 AM