V for Vendetta

Saw the movie V for Vendetta. Didn't care for it. It could easily be intrepreted as anti-American and anti-Christian. A dystopian vision, but even more far-fetched than usual, and with some leftist slant.

Alan Moore who wrote the original graphic novel, disowned the film for the American slant the film was given. As he pointed out, it had nothing to do with the US, it was about England. I'm not saying you would enjoy the book but it is a completely different beast than the film.

ps...i thought the film was ok, especially compared to some of the other big studio films that have been released over the last few years.

The movie seemed to me to glorify terrorism and revolution.

Compare this to Conrad's counterrevolutionary novel about anarchists, The Secret Agent.

Here's the official synopsis:
Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (NATALIE PORTMAN) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked man (HUGO WEAVING) known only as “V.” Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

Sounds like it should have been set in China, or Russia, or Iran.

Although I am not a Christian, it has often surprised me how Hollywood films will slip gratuitously anti-Christian material into their scripts, material which has nothing to do with the plot: I'm thinking of one of the Alien series, where the spokesman for a group of brutal convicts implausibly announces "We're all fundamentalist Christians here". Or A Few Good Men, where a Marine lieutenant who is trying to railroad two innocent men to prison announces his belief in the Bible of Jesus Christ. Zhdanov is alive and well and working in Tinseltown.

That line comes from Alien3, which then culminates in Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) being impregnated by the alien, and then sacrificing herself for the sake of humanity. (She does this by throwing herself into a vat of boiling material, which is shot from above, showing her fall in the shape of the cross). Talk about having your cake and eating it.

Things started to go awry in Alien 3.

I did like Natalie Portman in Vendetta. Where was she in Star Wars(2)?

The threat England faces is from militant Islam, not Christianity. The Muslims don't want to unite church and state. They want to replace the state altogether with sharia.

The movie went to great lengths to show how the Koran ought to be treasured, while the Catholic priest was shown to be a pedophile who wanted Natalie Portman to dress in a little schoolgirl costume for his weekly perversions provided by his fellow clergy.

Any movie which comes down in favor of terrorism, in today's political climate especially, is irresponsible.

I never said that all my interests were highbrow. For example, I rented V for Vendetta.

I preferred other comic book movies like Spiderman, Batman Begins, and X-men.

I plan not to answer snotty and immature replies.

Alan Moore is at heart an anarchist (who havent agreed with the Socialists on much since the split between Marx and Bakunin at the Congress of 1872 - Bakunin said quite accurately that Marxists would turn in to a bunch of dictators). Moore like most anarchists dislikes and distrusts both the state and organised religion, particularly when it violates seaparation of church and state. In America these sorts often call themselves libertarians, but they dont have an official establishment like the CofE to get under their skin.

V for Vendetta was written in the first half of 1980s, a somewhat grim period when there was violence on the streets between unions and the state, and the threat of global nuclear war hung over the horizon.

One thing to make clear right off - It was *not* a conspiracy plot like the movie. The nuclear war that brought the authoritarian govt was not deliberately provoked. It also had nothing to say about Islam or Muslims in the West because they werent really in the public consciousness at the time.

People may not understand this now, but in 1940-43 after the USSR Britain was the most state-regulated society in the world. The threat of invasion, the shortage of resources meant that although Britain remained at its core a liberal democracy, most Germans felt the state's hand less often than those living in the UK. That changed when the tide of the war changed in the West in 1943, and the Germans felt the pinch of both rationing, and a police state that no longer trusted a grumbling majority to back them up.

In any case, Alan Moore back in the 1980s wondered what kind of climate might be created in the event of a ''limited nuclear engagement" that led to a breakdown of global trade. So he wrote this cautionary tale, much like Orwell's 1984.

Again there is an echo back to World War II. I cant say that V's tactics are worse than anything SOE or OSS trained the resistance to carry out in places like Norway, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, etc.

This business of blowing up Parliament is however deeply distateful to me, but I have to hand it to Moore for making me think about Guy Fawkes more than I ever did before, and look more closely at that turbulent period in English (and by extension) American history. I still cant agree with his anarchist perspective, but he did make me think.

It is also outweighed by the moving and powerful testament against authoritarianism, totalitarianism and hatred, like 1984 ('a boot stamping on a human face, forever'), but unlike 1984 it is fundamentally optimistic about humanity's ability to triumph over such oppression. It suggests that the individuals suffering in such circumstances can be a source of strength for those who survive, strength that will eventually shatter such bonds.

I suggest that people look beyond the cheap headline grabbing sentiments of the directors, and even beyond differences with Moore's own political philosophy to find a rich, powerful and uplifting creation.

Since I have neither read the comic, nor seen the movie, I am free of prejudice about both and thus qualified to comment on two points which seem to me important:

(1) The historical context in which modern conservatism developed, combined with its nationally-limited outlook, tends to make conservatives reflexively unsympathetic to the idea of revolution, as opposed to organic peaceful change. But on reflection we must admit that in some cases, peaceful change is blocked as a perspective.

(2) People who do tend to think about political revolutions, especially those whose aim is to portray them artistically, tend to focus on the most superficial aspects of them: the conspiracy, the violence. Genuine socially-transformative revolutions, as opposed to mere coups d'etat or palace revolutions, require many years of ferment among the population, accompanied by a profound change in their consciousness (that most conservative of historical factors, as Trotsky called it). Unless tens of millions of people, at one level of understanding or another, begin to experience a change in how they think things ought to be, the kind of social and political order they want to live in, then even profound collapses -- such as happened in the Soviet Union -- can leave habits of servitude and cynicism in place among the population, permitting the regrowth of an oppressive political apparatus. But such organic change, and the kind of actions that might encourage and fructify it, does not make good theatre. (And, it might be added, it is lack of attention to such a perspective that has led to our being stuck on the horns of a false dilemma in the Middle East: to tolerate and cozy up to oppressive governments, or to try to change them at one stroke by being democratic missionaries with bayonets.)

I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those who say the novel was different, because I have not read it.

A couple examples in the movie struck me as simply foolish and offensive. One, the portrayal of the priest as evil. Two, the portrayal of the Koran as the sacred text which most be preserved. In today's political climate, that seems an especially naive and provocative position to take.

Some say that if I liked 1984, I should like this. But for some reason I didn't. Perhaps 9/11 took some of the anarchist rhetoric out of me. Now that it is the militant Islamists who are the ones voicing criticism of the U.S. government, it seems a good time to speak up for liberal democracy and America, rather than tear ourselves apart over their imperfections.

You know what I'd like to see? A movie showing a plausible scenario whereby the mullocracy in Iran is overthrown. Why can't some rightwing Christian millionaire fund it? You could probably get 5000 volunteer actors from among the Iranian exile population in California. This would be worthwhile, unlike movies about nutty stuff like The Rapture.

I've said for some time that there is a remarkable absence of Muslim terrorists from movies and TV. Which is odd, because they are so present in the rest of our lives.

Instead the villian will be something like a skinhead Nazi. Come on. How many skinhead Nazis have you met?

In Flight Plan the bad guy is . . . the air marshall!

Nicole,

I read the work, which I have valued for years as a first rate dystopia and I have seen the movie, so I dont mind saying again that the directors and/or script writers diminished and cheapened a fine work through ham-handed desire to change the present.

Really good stuff transcends the moment, and creates something of lasting value. In order to transcend the moment you the creator have to transcend your own narrow *immediate* political prejudices - avoid hitting the readership too heavily over the head and avoid scoring cheap points for the deeper message. Moore as an artist, unlike the film-makers was a)smart enough and b) enough of an artist to want to go beyond such fleeting things.

Two things in particular

- As has been mentioned here already mentioned here Moore quite disliked Thatcher. But he didnt use the story as a vehicle to attack Thatcher and her policies in the cheap transparent way that the movie attacked the Bush administration.

- By extension he focussed on what *really* concerned him about the future; *ie* the human tendency to seek security over freedom when threatened by chaos and breakdown. We have seen this in Russia since the fall of communism, and we may see it in Iraq.

He didnt waste his shot on conspiracy rubbish - i.e. implying that ambitious political forces witihin our democracy might trigger mass death just to destroy liberal democracy.

On the other hand this is precisely the message of the movie, and its right up there with the deeply disconnected, self-hating people who insist that the USG or the Mossad were behind 9/11, or that the Bush Administration allowed the terrorist plot to proceed so that they could seize additional powers or derive political benefit. Much like the allegations over Peal Harbor.

It is a free society of course, and artistic license allows such things. One might even argue that it might strengthen democratic vigilance. But why sow such an *extreme*, unjustifiable degree of doubt at a time of war? The makers claim that this is a serious movie, not just entertainment. I would say that makes it all the more damning. The moral of the movie? The threat from religious extremism is not real, but the threat from our own governments is. Fantastic. So when the next bomb goes off, we will know who to blame, the government.

No wonder Alan wanted nothing to do with it.

deniro,

When it comes to the Archbishop, the movie follows the book.

Before you dismiss that element as anti-Christian garbage, I would like to say that Moore was painting the picture of a rotten state - any Church that supported and was integrated in to such state would ergo be headed by a rotten and evil man.

This is not without precedent.

What sort of Popes did the Borgias make? Power corrupts institutions, which is why spiritual power is not compatible with lay temporal power. They were only one group out of a succession of evil and disgusting men who were drawn to the Papacy for as long as it was the most powerful institution in Europe. They committed every sin imaginable.

Not until the separation of Church and state did more spiritual men begin to don the holy crown (it was a crown until a few decades ago).

Even in the 19th and 20th centuries it was diplomats who most often made it to the top spot, which meant they were often prone to cutting deals with nasty people - the Vatican concordats with Hitler and Mussolin for example. On the other hand it is the deeper faith of those like John Paul II and Benedict XVI which come from a life of serving congregations, or being engaged in religious thought that produces Popes of true moral and spiritual greatness.

Ironically, the CofE's record is better than most others, in its refusal to bow to the wishes of temporal power. It was the English church that promoted celibacy to undermine the motivation for the mass thefts of Church resources by venal Bishops. Thomas Becket was murdered for his refusal to obey Henry II. The CofE since the 1960s has been wrongheaded about most conflicts, but they have generally refused to back the government over the question of war, etc.

Re. the Koran

This is an element that wasnt in Moore's work, but did play a part in the film.

If the film's over all tone wasnt so vested in attacking US and Bush Administration policy since 9/11 it would have been an interesting point.

In the film the Koran has been banned as the ultimate subversive work, whose posession brings real penalties.

It has not been in the modern Western tradition to ban ideologically subversive materials - the communist manifesto, Mein Kampf, etc were freely available.

However laws against hatespeech, incitements to violence, etc are already in effect. There were also limitations up till the end of WWII on what was considered enemy propaganda and subversion at a time of war.

There were recent efforts in Germany to have the Koran banned under the same kind of hate-speech controls used to limit neo-Nazi materials and activity. It failed, but who is to say that it may not come to pass somewhere or somewhen else?

Did you guys see the same movie I did? Most of what is written here seems to be about an entirely different movie...perhaps as a non conformist, I honed in on that theme.

Given that the original was targeted at Thatcher and very much meant to link the then-current regime in Britain to the goose-stepping Norsefire goons. Seeing it here in America nearly twenty years later, with a different conservative government in ascendance, was likely designed to replicate the effect a British reader in the 1980s would have experienced.

Think of it like the inclusion of rock tunes in "A Knight's Tale". We perceive that music the same way tournament-goers of the day would have perceived their popular music.

(Of course, the movie's ending was junk. At least they didn't have V turn out to be Evey's father or something ridiculous like that, which was the plan in at least one early draft.)

"I've said for some time that there is a remarkable absence of Muslim terrorists from movies and TV. Which is odd, because they are so present in the rest of our lives.

Instead the villian will be something like a skinhead Nazi. Come on. How many skinhead Nazis have you met?" - deniro

How many Muslim terrorists have you met?

I stand corrected. Muslim terrorists do not exist.

Well, alrighty then.

To understand terrorism better, I recommend Inside terrorism by Bruce Hoffman. The author is an counterterrorism expert at West Point who describes terrorism as a way of publicizing the forgotten plights of the dispossessed and disenfranchized in order to create political change.

Sadly, it's a PR exercise in which terrorists create "major media events" by targeting symbols of power in their particular struggle. (Tea in Boston harbor, Western decadence, the great Satan, etc.) He goes on to argue that terroist tactics are often effective through the advertisement of their cause through worldwide events. That is, the violence creates worldwide recognition (and, sometimes, sympathy) for the cause advanced by the dispossessed. The media is part of the ongoing process ("if it bleeds, it leads").

The problem is that terrorists now require increasingly horrible events to gain enough attention to make it into the media spotlight. He points out that news of more "car bombings" in Baghdad start to sound like daily weather reports.

By unpacking the rhetoric and putting aside hysterical thinking about "evil" and "Muslim extremists" he goes a long way in helping us understand and, hopefully, counteract terrorists.

To understand more about everyday "Muslim" (an impossible generalization) thinking, I highly recommend books such as Reading Lolita in Tehran and Lipstick Jihad.

Reply to #21
deniro,

Actually, if you watch Fox's 24 you'll see there are. I still remember the hoopla that followed where there were Muslim terrorists shown and CAIR and other groups got outraged at that.lol.

I wonder why 24 is such a popular show, and we all love it huh. But it's gotten such flak and criticism for stuff like that. I really used to enjoy watching it, but I can't stand the tension and edge-of-your-seat drama so I don't watch it anymore.haha.