V for Vendetta (Spoilers) Film and Politics Discussion by AnthonyT

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V for Vendetta (Spoilers) Film and Politics Discussion

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 5, 2006 16:19
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Tuesday, March 28, 2006 4:27 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

V for Vendetta

In the original comics, V was purely an anarchist and the government was purely totalitarian. It was left up to the viewer to decide who was right, if anyone.

One of the reasons Moore distanced himself from the film is because it takes away much of the ambiguity, making V a good-guy freedom fighter.

Based on those facts, it's no coincidence that the film has an anti-establishment feel aimed right at the current U.S. government. It was re-engineered to that purpose. (Quite effectively, I thought.)

So, that having been established... What did you all think of the film? What did you all think of its message?

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REALISM:

I found V's resources improbable. Forget his lair and personal equipment. None of it was over-the-top. But how could he possibly produce and distribute tens of thousands of masks? They weren't paper masks printed at home. They may not have been bulletproof, but they were high quality reproductions. Were they plastic? If so, what factory did he manufacture them at? Were they ceramic? If so, are we to believe that he had an unseen kiln at home and spent the past ten years baking masks and painting them? And where did he get the money needed to have them mailed to all these people? And didn't anyone think it was odd that this guy walks into a DHL office and ships 50,000 packages?)

I also thought the 'fireworks' which accompanied the building demolitions were fanciful. You can't load fireworks into a subway car and expect them to go off properly after a ton of fertilizer goes off and tons of building material collapses on them.

MESSAGE:

I enjoyed the re-vamped message of the film, even though Moore didn't. I can easily see a future where our government becomes too controlling, and some citizens feel the need to perform 'acts of terror' in protest, and in the hopes of sparking rebellion. It is only too true that people, in general, are happy to trade their freedoms for a sense of safety. The problem is, if you trade away your freedoms, and then decide that you wish you hadn't, it's probably too late to do anything about it. In real-life, I don't think a rebellion would be successful. There'd be a handful of WACO style crackdowns and that would be it.

The movie hinted an echo at various 9-11 conspiracy theories that suggest the government engineered the Sept 11th attacks in order to get their way with the people, complete with demolitions devices in the Twin Towers, fake phone calls from passengers on a 747, and missiles hitting the Pentagon instead of a jetliner. (In the movie, the government engineered a virus outbreak to corral the people.) While intriguing, I don't believe such theories. I do believe that the government was well poised to take advantage of the opportunity that Sept 11th presented. I just don't believe they would need to go through all that trouble faking things when real terrorists and jetliners are readily available, and more than sufficient for the job.

I'm glad to see movies like this one. It makes me feel we're not too far gone, and that maybe we won't be. As long as I continue to see anti-establishment films like this one, I'll feel a measure of comfort. It's when they stop appearing that I'll get really nervous.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Wednesday, March 29, 2006 8:20 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:
Kevin Smith: Well, you don't have to have them come out and say it. Look at their body of works. Look what they're doing. What did Joss Whedon's Serenity and Firefly series tell you? What are they trying to tell you through their craft?

Alex Jones: What does V For Vendetta say?

Kevin Smith: Even better. I just saw it last week. I left V For Vendetta walking on a cloud. I say, we're gonna win!

Alex Jones: Let me tell ya what's happening. I can't get into details. But major Hollywood people are being pressured Big Time to SHUT UP. If I could only tell you folks. I then confirmed from a prominent 9/11 leader, that one of the biggest musicians in the world, one of the most loved, is very close to going public. It's so close. And they're watching to see what happens with Charlie Sheen, who hit the barbed wire for us. But again, CNN wouldn't have Ed Asner on last night. They were gonna have him, then they cancelled him. They cancelled because they cannot deal with it.

Infowars Radio, March 29, 2006
www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/asner_on_cnn.htm
www.infowars.com/video/clips/news/september_11/032406_showbiz_tonight_
guests_wm.htm
www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=19100

Jewish V For Vendetta movie glorifies terrorism by Bush Crime Family.

Gunpowder Plot to bomb British Parliament was exactly 400 years ago, perped by Constable Thomas Percy, ancester of Barbara Pierce Bush, mother of George Bush Jr.
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/piratenewsrss/message/174

VIDEO DOWNLOADS:
http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com
(Includes Hangman game to test your knowledge of history of totalitarian dictatorships, and full history of Gunpowder Plot of 1605)

"You can't stop the signal!"
-Mr Universe, Pirate TV

FIREFLY SERENITY PILOT MUSIC VIDEO (VERSION 2)
Tangerine Dream - Thief Soundtrack: Confrontation
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/8912.php

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Thursday, March 30, 2006 10:44 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

An interesting analysis from Chud.com:

V FOR VENDETTA IS THE MOST DANGEROUS FILM OF THE YEAR
02.26.06
By Devin Faraci
V For Vendetta is the most dangerous film of 2006.

If you’re an idiot or a fascist, that is. Remember that when people begin complaining about this film, and try to figure out which of the two categories they fit in. Or maybe they’ll fit in both!

I cannot bring you a review of this film, since my name is not Harry Knowles or Drew McWeeny and this site’s initials are not AICN (no hate to these fine fellas and their site, it just chafes when I walk out of a screening and get the “no reviews until release” reminder and know that the film has been already reviewed on other sites. That’s a whole different editorial, though!), so this is not my review of James McTeigue’s V For Vendetta, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Rather this is an editorial about this brilliant piece of work.

It’s shocking that a film like V For Vendetta, in which the hero can be described in no other terms but terrorist, has been made by a major movie studio, which is itself a part of a major, world-dominating corporation. Either the folks at Warner Bros and Time-Warner weren’t paying a lot of attention or they just don’t think that a movie will make any bit of difference at this point. I couldn’t disagree more, and I have to tell you that if I was still actively working as a political organizer I would be standing outside theaters showing V and handing out anti-Bush and anti-Iraq War pamphlets to exiting moviegoers. Sure, this film is about a fictional fascist state that denies its people basic liberties and makes them live in fear, and sure it’s set in the London of the future, but there’s no hiding the fact that the film’s timeline is one that begins today.

AICN’s Drew McWeeny wrote a piece about the film where he said that the right-wingers who are already bristling about the movie (and feel free to check out some of these goose-steppers over at the Libertas forum, where they hurl invective at a film they haven’t seen and say the main character looks “gay.” Hey, isn’t it interesting that the fascistic future rulers of England corralled and exterminated gays in the film?) should check themselves – the movie is anti-fascism, and not taking on a particular current American ideology. He’s right. Sort of. But it’s no accident, no mistake, that the fascist government of this film is a conservative Christian one.

The Dead Kennedys wrote a very good song called California Uber Alles, about then-California governor Jerry Brown and his aggressively liberal policies. The song is funny. A few years later the band remade the song to be about former California governor Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t really so funny anymore. The Smiley Faced, be happy or else fascism of the original song is satire while the remake is stark reality. As much fun as it is to muse about a liberal fascist state, the realities are two-fold: one, there is no serious liberal political presence in this nation. The Democrats, while putatively liberal, are at best middle of the road, and more accurately right of center. Two, it isn’t self-identified liberals keeping men in cages without the due process of law.

The film is being very specific – the policies that we are pursuing have one end-point, and that is a society where our basic freedoms are curbed for supposed security and comfortable routine. We see it now – the right to privacy is under astonishing attack, and the only thing more worrying than how much our government wants to listen in on our conversations and know what books we check out of the library is how little the people care. “I don’t have anything to hide,” is the refrain, a bit of sick logic that implies the person who wants privacy does have something dark to hide.

Of course there’s also a universality to this – while the specific circumstances that lead to the creation of the world in the film are undeniably rooted in the Bush Administration’s Orwellianly infinite war on terror, the suppression of rights for security has long been a hallmark of American politics. Hell, John Adams, the second president of the United States, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which used fears of the new French revolutionary government to ban spoken or written criticism of the government, the Congress and the president. I once thought that, right or left, all Americans with a serious love for liberty could agree that limiting freedom is no way to save it. The last few years have proved me right in that those who would limit freedom, who would support illegal wiretaps or endless detentions, must despise liberty. So yes, the basic concepts and warnings of this work, which were crafted 25 years ago, could be easily adapted to deliver the same message in a timely way throughout history. But this film has been crafted to deliver that message specifically in relation to the world we currently live in.

What’s really freaking conservatives out, though, and will probably send such evil blowhards as Bill O’Reilly through the roof is the fact that V For Vendetta is a film in which the protagonist is a terrorist. Again, there’s no getting around that. You can call the guy a freedom fighter or an urban guerilla if you like, but essentially he’s a guy who wants to force political change by blowing things up. What will give these guys strokes is the fact that it works.

What’s happened in the world in the last few years is that we’ve had our dialogue taken away. Remember when conservatives freaked the fuck out about the PC movement – where they took offense at the idea that maybe it wasn’t cool to use unpleasant racial or sexual remarks? When they decided that being polite was some kind of liberal conspiracy? Well, we live in a world which has become PC times a thousand, where to even question the US occupation of Iraq or the way that the War on Terror has been fought is to be un-American. If you try to even begin to understand why a huge percentage of the Middle East hates us, you’re a jihadist sympathizer. Why do you hate America so much with your questions and refusal to just accept the party line? But for the love of God, don’t tell me I can’t call gays “faggots,” because that’s PC nonsense. V For Vendetta seeks to dynamite open that blocked dialogue and to confront us with many issues – what is our security worth? Is terrorism inherently evil? What the hell is terrorism anyway?

V isn’t the only place these questions are being asked. Last week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica impressed me as it showed heroic human resistance fighters on Cylon-occupied Caprica blow up a café full of quite possibly innocent human-looking Cylons. Show creator Ronald Moore and his writers are no dummies – they took the characters we sympathize with, that we understand, who have been almost driven to extinction by the unspeakable aggression and brutality of the Cylons, and put them in the position of a Palestinian terrorist. We never saw what any of the Cylons killed in that explosion had done before. They may have been administrators or accountants – at least one was a barista. But the human resistance didn’t care if they had had a direct hand in the attempted genocide of the human race – they were complicit, guilty by association. And brilliantly the show puts us in the mindset of a terrorist. That's the beauty of what art can do, and how it can present to us new ways of looking at issues we thought we had already covered.

Some would say that’s glorifying terrorism; smarter people would say that’s examining how terrorism happens. Which is V? I think in the end it’s riding a fine line; it’s not explicitly condoning terrorism, but it is making the argument that sometimes the people need to commit violence against the state. Ironically, this is a statement that conservatives should agree with – it’s the basis, they say, of their impassioned defense of the Second Amendment. Violence against the state will always be classified as terrorism – by the state. If the modern concept of terrorism had been in vogue in 1776, I can guarantee to you that that would be how the Revolutionaries would have been smeared by the British. Instead they had to stick to the usual old-fashioned lines of treason and such. In the end the American Revolution was the illegal use of violence to make political change – and if you don’t believe it was illegal, I suggest you do some reading as to find out why the signing of the Declaration of Independence was such a big deal. Each man who signed that document essentially signed his own death warrant, should he be captured – the British didn’t recognize American sovereignty and saw the Revolutionaries only as traitors who would be hung.

Much of V’s anti-conservative stance boils down to the meaning of the word conservative. The meaning in America today is eerily similar to the meaning it held in Thatcher’s dark Britain of the early 80s, the time this work was originally created in serial comic format. V is a film that confronts the lie of modern conservatism, showing that it’s not a movement about individual liberty and smaller government – if anything, it’s quite the exact opposite. It reminds us that those who wish to take away our liberties for safe-keeping are the true enemy. I keep waiting for true conservatives to wrest back the label from the (barely) crypto-(mostly)fascists who wear it today. Of course I'm still waiting for an actual liberal to stand up and take a bow on the national stage.

Most inspiring of all, though (and the movie’s climax is incredibly inspiring), is the film’s final statements that while violence against the state sometimes, in extreme circumstances, must be done with gunpowder, it can also be done with ideas and words. That’s why our dialogue has been so restricted for the last few years – the people in power, the people seeking more power by the day, know that their ideas of tyranny and fear cannot beat our ideas of hope and freedom. V For Vendetta is a dangerous film for these people and those who support them; it exposes their every trick. It gives the audience who perhaps hasn’t second-thought the continuing assaults on liberty and the rule of law in this nation a safe, action film shaped space to explore new concepts about where this country is going. And whether or not they like the inevitable destination.

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, March 30, 2006 12:54 PM

SASSALICIOUS

Everything he wrote was amazing. It was interesting, intelligent, and well-thought out. I sort of just sat here looking at my computer screen in awe.

Quote:
What the hell is terrorism anyway?

I don't think many people can answer that because obviously the answer will shift depending on a person's views, but I just wanted to say that National Geographic did an awesome article about terrorism. It was written sometime in the past year and basically talked about modern terrorism hot spots and the fact that terrorism/terrorists have always existed in one form or another throughout history and we've only recently become obsessed with them.

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Friday, March 31, 2006 2:23 AM

GRAVY

I think V for Vendetta was a total cop-out politically. The chancellor was a two-dimentional Hitler copy so who wouldn't want to get behind V. They made him the people's revolutionary hero instead of an anarchist. Because of the films linear storytelling and narrow focus the ordinary people/citizens got lost in the telling, and other than V chiding them a little bit on TV - their complacency wasn't discussed at all really. Instead of making V someone who wants to make political change through violence and upheaving society as we know it (like an anarchist would, perhaps) they portrayed him as if he was merely trying to fend off this evil force that had taken a hold of the country. V was supposed to change the way people think, he was supposed to stand for something else, a different perspective not help the people replace one evil government with a supposed good one. I'm not an anarchist myself but that doesn't seem to ring true for the concept of anarchy.
V for Vendetta's only message seems to be: "Power to the people!" That's not a controversial movie, it's a crowd pleaser.

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Friday, March 31, 2006 6:25 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"V for Vendetta's only message seems to be: "Power to the people!" That's not a controversial movie, it's a crowd pleaser."

You might be right. Strange, then, that so many political groups found "Power to the People!" to be such a distasteful message...

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Wednesday, April 5, 2006 3:19 AM

ZISKER

Gravy does have a point - the movie was a crowd pleaser. I saw it yesterday and also left 'walking on a cloud' because wouldn't we all like to see everyone united and coming together against everything we don't like in our government? Of course, we never see the messy aftermath of rebuilding.

One part I enjoyed was where V blamed the people for letting their government happen. He understands why they did it, but nonetheless they are accountable. Makes me think of what the kiddies will say in twenty, thirty years.

Fruit's Oaty Bar! Is a person from the mouse! Fruit's Oaty Bar! Makes your bust from yours female shirt! Continuously eats them! Let them cause you to be surprised!

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Wednesday, April 5, 2006 9:34 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Will this post?

---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.

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Wednesday, April 5, 2006 2:15 PM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Signym:
Will this post?

Maybe, who's post?

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

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Wednesday, April 5, 2006 4:19 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

The problem I have with V is two-fold:

1) as an event, I can't see the movie sparking a real-life movement and,

2) the premise of its content - if people saw how many are disaffected they would feel the power of numbers and rise up - is probably not accurate.

And the reason for both is the same, which is the government has control of the media, and hence reality.

Look at the anti-war demonstrations in Europe. MILLIONS showed up all at the same time and in the same place. And - England still has Bliar and Italy still has Burlesqueoni. So what happened? People showed up, were heartened by the numbers, went back home and waited for ... they're still waiting.

The continuing issue, the next step, were muffled, smothered by the media, and have rotted while people still ... wait.

Unless you can gain a prominent continuing media presence, your cause might was well not exist.

And I did have trouble with the structure (there were two movies, an 'everyman' 1984 and 'the phantom of the opera' which did not fit together), the delivery (heavy handed), the plot (unbelievable), the pacing (slow), and even the soundtrack (too much dynammic range).

The ONE SCENE that (almost) redeemed the movie was the scene where the Chancellor says to make the people afraid and make them feel the government is the only thing they've got - followed by the scenes of the news playing on the Telly in homes, bars etc - just one disaster after another threat scattered near and far. Hmmm, just like home.

Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

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