V for Vendetta
Press Action
Saturday, March 25, 2006
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/vendetta03252006/
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” -“V”
When Washington Post movie critic Stephen Hunter panned V for Vendetta for offering “no insights whatsoever into totalitarian psychology,” I took that as my cue to go see the movie. I was intrigued by what I had learned about the movie prior to reading Hunter’s review. But I wasn’t a fan of the Wachowski brothers’ first Matrix movie (I never saw the next two in the trilogy). So I was apprehensive about going to see another movie by the same filmmakers.
Hunter’s political views are closely aligned with the pro-Washington establishment, pro-interventionist foreign policy editorial stance of the Washington Post. Imagine David Ignatius or Jim Hoagland as a movie reviewer. That’s Stephen Hunter. (Ignatius and Hunter also share side gigs as writers of semi-entertaining political thrillers.)
Well, my hunch proved correct. I resisted Hunter’s warning against seeing the movie and did not regret my decision. I thoroughly enjoyed V for Vendetta.
I generally share Butler Shaffer’s opinion of the movie. In his review on LewRockwell.com, Shaffer writes:
“I have no doubt that this film will generate ‘terror’ in the minds of those who regard the domination of others either as some inherent right or as an inevitable necessity for social order. But it is not the fear of violence that will be their principal concern. Violence will be the fear that the media will transmit to the boobeoisie to keep them huddled at the feet of their masters. The establishment’s fear is not that buildings will be blown up—on the contrary, the destruction of the World Trade Center actually benefited the state—but that men and women will begin to dismantle the structures of political authority in their thinking. To paraphrase the words of Evey, it is not buildings that people need, but hope.”
I particularly appreciated Shaffer’s observation about how V for Vendetta does not resort to turning a government official of the fascist British state into a hero (although Stephen Rea’s police inspector Finch is a sympathetic character). Shaffer writes:
“I have seen enough movies in which tyrannical statists brutalize innocent people, but with an heroic FBI or Justice Department official entering, at the end, to expose and rectify the wrongdoing and, in so doing, leave the audience with the assurance that the “system” works to correct itself.”
-Mark Hand