V for Vendetta

(If one can "spoil" a movie based on a graphic novel that’s 20-some years old then beware, "spoilers" ahead.)

As I walked out of the Metreon with jactitation and goodbadgirl the dudes in front of us said, "Well, that was a cynical movie."

I was shocked. I thought it was a rather optimistic fairy tale of a film. Revolution has never looked so easy. I wanted to pull out my magical dagger and run him through. But I kept walking.

First off, any film that has a triumphant blowing up of Parliament as the final scene is ok by me. It’s even better when that is followed by a Malcolm X snippet about violence and self-defense . Those are the kind of things that make me leave movie theaters happy. Off the pigs! Should we go home or get a drink?

But let’s start at the beginning. I’m not sure why the filmmakers felt the need to not make the movie as dire as the comic. Making the plot less coherent, everyone seems to have jobs, there’s no appearance of grinding poverty, the surveillance state is less all-knowing even though the governments of this country and England have much more ability to monitor us than they did back in the ‘80s. I’m not really sure why Evey was going to visit big, gay Gordon instead of trying to turn a trick so she could eat in the opening, perhaps they thought the audience would be less sympathetic even if V still saves her from despoilment. But there’s no real point in guessing about motivations. They took out a lot of the roles of women too, but one was such a cliched castrating bitch, I wasn’t saddened by her absence. (sabotabby does a wonderful job of comparing the comic and the film especially around class politics.

Before we went and saw the movie, Jactitation reminded me that back in the ‘80s that the graphic novel wasn’t nearly as cynical as we were. It’s, in the end, a Great Man story. That one person, through omniscient symbolism and a few well-placed bombs can change everything. Though billed by some as "anarchist" (and the circle "V" is no accident) it’s actually fairly traditional story-telling. That V is training a woman to take his place, and that we are all Spartacus "V" in the end, is something of a twist, but not much of one.

I don’t want to impose realism on a comic book or movie here, except to point of that neither the graphic novel or the movie are what one could call "organizing tools". They are spectacle, and good fun, but fleeting, especially when easily seen in the context of Hollywood big screens and when the hero (who is much more likable than in the comic) has unexplained and unlimited resources (nihilistic_kid covered that aspect very well in his review) that make the storyline more fantastical than anything else.

A lot of people, when walking out of an action film feel like they want to get in a fight. But not really. A fantasy fight where they having all those Hong Kong Action moves and they don’t feel any pain. That’s the nature of movies. Like thinking about stabbing the film critics walking out in front of me, it provides a short-lived fantasy of being more powerful than one really is. At least on an individual level.

Where V manufactured a million identical masks and got the money to mail them to everyone in London is probably the biggest let’s-not-think-about-this moment in the plot. The obvious comparison to me is with the revolutionary teen punk movie "Times Square". But in that movie, all you had to do to be a Slime Sister was to grab a plastic garbage bag and smear on your mom’s makeup. Everyone had access to those things. The officially produced "V mask" (next year’s Halloween fave?) has to be produced, transported and hand-delivered to those who would bring down the totalitarian state. That seems rather odd for the revolutionary trying to poke holes in the culture of dependency and obedience spawned by fascism.

The climactic moment where Eminem (Thanks Goodbadgirl!) and his friends in Scream Guy Fawkes masks storm the soldiers and they don’t shoot because they don’t have orders (they are such automatons that they can’t do anything without orders) was a pretty big cop out. V is kinda fucked up, after all. He tortures Evey to set her free and he sends a bunch of unarmed folks to their potential deaths storming the military barricades (though the re are some similarities to the colorful revolutions of Eastern Europe here, both with the non-violence of the mob and the symbolic branding of the "revolution" (spaceoctopus has been writing about this a lot recently). Not that storming the military barricades (by people who’ve lost their fear without being imprisoned and tortured by "V") is a bad thing, just that this might have been the most consequence-less defeating of fascism ever. Only V ever has to kill anyone and his dirty hands blow up with parliament. It’s a baggage-less revolution!

The comic, and to a lesser extent the film, are often viewed as anarchist. I would submit that they are "anarchist " mostly because at the time of the writing, the anarchists had the most new, vibrant and semi-underground white subculture. I mean c’mon, are you gonna write a graphic novel about the exciting subculture of Trots? Besides the trappings in the graphic novel (circle V, the responsibility of one’s oppression is both internal and external etc. ) I think it’s mostly seen as anarchist because anarchist theory is so heavily mythological when it comes to revolution.

The general strike has historically been the mythical event that was most often cast to usher in the new world. Leaving the caveman fetishists aside (who, no, I don’t view as "real" anarchists"), the critique of vanguardism and political manipulation has left anarchists, in a post-revolutionary union world, without a grounded theory of revolution. Paris ’68 suggested that students spraypainting walls, refusing to attend class, and fucking in the streets might be enough to disrupt the "Spectacle" and push people towards true awareness of their role in society of oppressed and oppressor. Nearly 40 years of bad art and politics later we’re worse off than before.

Which isn’t anarchism’s fault, mind you. It’s just that many anarchists and fellow travelers are so starved for positive signs that we mistake repackaged hipness as revolutionary art. But hey, art is not a telegram and can mean different things to different peope, so maybe it is in some ways.

The other thing I came out of the movie wondering was could they make a movie like this (and Guy Fawkes obviously is a historic character who has no equivalent in US mythology) where the White House or Congress or even the Pentagon is destroyed as a good thing with no drawbacks? Sure, a lot of stuff got blown up happily in "Fight Club" but that was pre-9/11. Let’s have a sequel!

Lastly, and this is more of an aside, but could they have picked a more cliché song for the credits? "Street Fightin’ Man" by the Rolling Stones? Ugh. What would you have picked?

I had "Shaved Women" by Crass in my head from the prison scene on but that wouldn’t really have been appropriate. "Big A/Little A" might have been a good choice but a sad, rap/metal version was used in Scream 2 or 3 (again with the masks...). Nazi Punks Fuck Off" would have been fun but a little too punk-centric.

No, I think "Persons Unknown" * by the Poison Girls or "Firing Squad" by the Subhumans ( a band that actually put their politics into action!) would have been inspired choices.


*oh those lyrics are hard to read. The first stanza is:

This is a message to persons unknown
Persons in hiding. Persons unknown
Survival in silence
Isn't good enough no more
Keeping your mouth shut head in the sand
Terrorists and saboteurs
Each and every one of us
Hiding in shadows persons unknown