There’s a new film out entitled “V for Vendetta”, and it has right-wing (i.e., pro-fascist) film critics like Michael Medved frothing at the mouth.
The whole theme of the film, V says that blowing up buildings can change the world. Is that really a message that we should welcome right now? We`re engaged in a war on terror. There are people who are exposing their bodies and their lives to terrorists every day to try to make us safer. Hollywood has yet to make a film about the heroic role of American counterterrorist activities. And yet they`ve made several films that express sympathy and in this case treat as heroic terrorist activity.
This actually could lead young people to vandalism at best and some real terrorist incidents at worst.
…V is for venal, vicious, vapid and verminous.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11857813/ (Interview with Medved by Tucker Carlson)
What’s the plot of this dastardly film? Why, it stars Hugo Weaving as V, a masked freedom fighter/terrorist (remember, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter) who blows up buildings (with people in them) as a way of fighting a fascist government that has seized control of a future Great Britian. V rescues a young woman (Natalie Portman) from the torture chambers of the fascists and enlists her aid in his ultimate plot: blowing up the British Houses of Parliament, which have become the centres of evil.
Well, the French Resistance used acts of terror to fight the Nazi occupation during World War Two. The Zionists used acts of terror (including blowing up the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv on July 22nd, 1946, killing 92 people and wounding 58) to drive out the British occupying authorities from Palestine so the Zionists could establish the modern State of Israel. And the Founders of the American Republic organised an army that killed British troops (and Hessian mercenary soldiers) by the thousands. And of course the Iraqi terrorists who are killing American and British soldiers, as well as their own countrymen in Iraq today, are called “freedom fighters” by some. The September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, was condemned as an act of terrorism
Quite simply, what would you do if a fascist government seized control of your country? Would you fight “by any means necessary”?
Anyway, “V for Vendetta” is, at the end of the day, just a movie–and one that brings up an important question: when is violence an acceptable means to fight for freedom? Who defines and decides what is “freedom” and what means are moral?
My own answer would be: a freedom fighter targets the leaders of an oppressive government or occupying authority and uniformed soldiers–not innocent men, women, and children. When you start killing non-combatants, you cross the line from “freedom fighter” to “terrorist”. That’s why it’s state-sponsored terrorism when the US drops bombs on a city like Fallujah, knowing that those bombs will kill civilians…and why directing those two jet liners into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, was terrorism.
What’s YOUR answer?
No tipping, please!
What the hell is he talking about? On network television right now you’ve got “24” and “The Unit”. USA Network had military experts hunting criminals on “Wanted”. All of the “Navy Seals” movies, “Delta Force” … bunches of movies by the big action heroes over the last couple of decades. Too many to list. “Sleeper Cell” on Showtime. Granted, a lot of the big screen movies are cheap action flicks w/ lots of explosions and cliche’s, but Hollywood has been making movies about brave American men killing endless numbers of terrorists as long as I’ve been watching movies, and long before that.
Medved is a hack.
I’m looking forward to seeing “V”. It’s getting an interesting mix of reviews, and many of the write-ups I’ve read seem to reflect more about what the reviewer projects up on the screen. For an example, check out this generally positive review by a self-described conservative over at Ain’t It Cool News:
The review that you linked to makes me think that it could be worth seeing.
Medved is not taken seriously as a critic and hasn’t been for at least a decade–he makes it quite clear that his political views colour every review he does. Medved was actually upset at the “pro-environmental message” of “Finding Nemo”. No, I’m not kidding. And had he been writing at the time the original “Bambi” was released, I’m sure Medved would have found some anti-conservative message in there, too (I mean, hunters DO kill Bambi’s mother….).
But Medved is a good pulse indicator of what the more articulate right-wing nutjobs are going to say. It’s odd, though–those people blowing up buildings, cars, and killing other people in Iraq and elsewhere don’t seem to have a copy of the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” nor could they have possibly seen the movie. I wonder where they got the idea of setting off bombs?
I love your blog name.
Thank you! It was actually chosen by my partner in crime, the Curmudgette. And we do have our own blog.
http://thebloggingcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/
Not to spoil anything, but the buildings are blown up at night when it is likely that there were few people in the buildings (not placing any value judgment, just making clarifying). For the most part, there aren’t innocent civilians killed outside the main character escaping from a given area, killing policemen, or trying to accomplish a different goal. Sorry for the vagueness, I’m trying not to give anything away!
Don’t the janitorial staff habitually clean offices at night? I’m not saying I’m against nor for V’s tactics, but the fact that he does kill people who are merely in the employ of the fascist government, and not just its leaders or thuggish police, is an issue for debate.
Sure, that’s why I mentioned that there would be a few people there. But even so, these people aren’t even in the movie. That is something that one would have to think of outside what is explicitly stated.
And, it is worth noting that it probably isn’t a coincidence that the buildings are destroyed at night. It is a sign that V’s aim was symbolic, as he states in the movie, and that he doesn’t have the intention of killing innocent civilians. But yes, the violence is something that is up for debate, I totally agree.
It raises questions of the use of violence which contrasts from the non-violent themes many liberals espouse. The way in which he thinks of justice in almost eye for eye terms is something that isn’t typically included within a progressive point of view either(I’m thinking specifically of the scene with the woman doctor). So yes, it’s all up for debate.
But I still think it’s worth mentioning that the killing of police isn’t something he seeks out, it’s something that occurs when he is trying to escape a from a scene or trying to achieve another goal.
I see it all as more utilitarian.
I know for a fact I would be capable of violence in defense of my family or myself. I believe I would also be capable of violence in assisting in the removal of a fascist leader, via means that did not involve killing innocent civilians, if all other methods of removal of that leader had failed.
But to wage preemptive attack against any country that has not attacked us, knowing full well innocent civilians would me killed in great numbers, is nothing less than an abomination that requires a deliberate dehumanization of other human beings so as to justify the desired action.
Exactly Noam Chomsky’s point–what the US is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq IS state-sponsored terrorism. The Afghani and Iraqi people now live in a state of fear and the Iraqis, Lord help them, may have actually been better off under Saddam (and you have to make things pretty bad to make Saddam look like a desirable alternative!).
You may also recall that previous US Presidents have not been angels. President Clinton, for example, ordered the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Africa that he claimed was a manufacturer of terrorist weapons. Turns out it was…a pharmaceutical plant. The destruction of that plant deprived thousands of Africans of cheap medicine they needed to sustain health and life.
And we could go on and on through the list of US Presidents, none of whom have hands clean. Bush’s terrorism, though, is on a scale that was matched only by his father, who organised half a million troops from various nations and despatched them to Iraq to make sure that no peaeful negotiations for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait could ever take place. Had to show that uppity Saddam who’s boss, after all.
You’re going to get right away that I’m pretty much conflicted about the use of violence.
All this being said, I think movies like this one are excellent if they make people think rather than, like Medved, just emotionally masturbate.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of my heroes, and certainly one of the most courageous and influential Americans who ever lived. Dr. King was once aptly described as a man who “probably felt like throwing rocks, but decided to do something constructive instead.”
But the tactics of King and Gandhi were used against governments that were not out-and-out fascist–and the purpose of nonviolence, as King stated, was to force negotiations.
One does not negotiate with fascists. Try the same tactic with Hitler or Mussolini and they’d have just had men like Gandhi taken out into an alleyway and blown their brains out with a small pistol.
The United States is not governed by out-and-out fascism right now–non-violent protests (if they were tried on a massive scale) would have a huge impact. But I guess things have to get much worse before people join mass protests–and then it might be too late.