V For Vendetta

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!

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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.

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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.

via: What the Futch?