**As I will be discussing important themes from the movie, I should warn you upfront that there will be spoilers throughout this post.**
If you're looking for a review of the recently released V for Vendetta I suggest you look elsewhere. (As always, I heartily endorse Roger Ebert.) I certainly enjoyed the movie a great deal but have no interest in letting you know whether or not Alan Moore was right to take his name off of the production. I am interested in looking into the expectations that some seem to have concerning whether or not this movie will inflame the far right in America.
I suspect that what many of these fans really mean is that this movie was produced for those on the left and that they cannot wait to see the look on the faces of those on the right who go in expecting an action movie -- only to witness a cinematic bitchslap across the face of conservative America. Let it be said: This movie was not directed by Michael Moore and no one is going to storm out of the theater feeling as though they've been politically assaulted.
With this in mind, there are some themes that I think could (and will) be construed as shots across the bow of the Bush administration; I just happen to think that they're abstract enough that no one who finds their way into a theater showing Vendetta is going to feel slighted. There are three themes that interest me and that I would like to discuss in relation to the Bush administration:
- Fear as a means to control the populace.
- The media as a means to control information.
- The thought that ideas are bulletproof.
These themes seem timely to me because I certainly think that there are people in America that have been arguing on both sides of all three for the past few years; I simply want to examine how they stack up against The United States and what it has become as a result of one and a half terms of the Bush administration.
- Fear as a means to control a population.
In the movie, the British government of 2025 essentially creates a national health disaster and then provides the only cure for said disaster. Ruling through fear is certainly the major theme and the government that rules in Vendetta goes to every extreme to remind it's populace that it should be afraid.
Does the Bush administration rule by fear? I'm certainly not amongst those who feel as though 9-11 was planned and executed by anyone other than Al-Queda. (I'm not sure that anyone with credibility believes that the Bush administration was directly involved or that they consciously allowed it to happen.) There is no way in my mind that we can equate the idea of a government creating a national disaster with the Bush administration and 9-11. What I do think is plausible is the idea that Bush exploited the fears that resulted from 9-11 for political gain. Those fears allowed the war in Iraq to occur, they allowed shoddy intelligence to be swallowed whole by politicians and civilians alike and it is certainly arguable that well timed color-coded terrorist alerts played a big part in Bush's re-election. (Is it a coincidence that we hear little or nothing of those alerts in the days since the last election? I suppose you could also argue that we're not hearing about them because Bush is doing his job.) I think the good news is that Bush has milked our fear of a middle-eastern bogeyman for about all it's worth; I'm not sure that his actions can be driven by our fears at this point in his presidency. (Especially when you consider his approval ratings.)
- The media as a means to control information.
The media in Vendetta is unquestionably controlled by the government and actively tailors (and creates) the news to fit the needs of those in power. I certainly don't think that this is something that happens "overtly" with the Bush administration. I think you're more likely to see the media restricted as to what information it's able to report but I also think that recent events have shown us that news itself cannot really be suppressed; information will surface whether the government wants it to or not. As for the media itself... is there a bias that needs to be explored? Those on the right will say that the media leans to the left and those on the left will say that it leans right. The fact of the matter is that the news media leans in both directions depending on where you look; fishing out balanced news requires that one cast a line into multiple ponds. Such is life.
The news in Vendetta is able to effectively promote the government's agenda because (20 years in the future) there only seems to be one source for the populace to choose from. In reality, we're saturated (overloaded?) with news sources and most of us should be able to separate the spin from the news being spun. Unfortunately, news free of bias isn't a realistic expectation when you consider that we're subjected to spin from the day we're born until the day we die: If you're Christian, it's most likely because you were raised in a Christian family by parents who espoused (spun) Christian values. While some may find this hard to admit, the most die-hard Christian (in most cases) would not be Christian if his or her parents had been Muslim. We're taught at a fairly early age to accept the ideas of those in positions of authority and this has taken us to a place where it's just easier to pick a media source that fits our ideology and go with their spin on the news. The great thing about the Internet is that there is a vast array of sources to consume and we're more informed today... with more choices... than we've ever been in history. Read the news responsibly (and objectively) and you can escape the issues of partisan media. (I'm taking the long way around to the following point: If you have an education, you've no call to complain about a biased media. If people would just think critically, they could filter the news without having someone else do it for them.)
While I think it's certainly possible that the Bush administration has taken stabs at manipulating the media, I don't think that doing so effectively in this day and age is particularly possible. (Classifying information so that the news cannot legally report it is an exception to this rule. Even so, the recent wiretapping leaks will show that even that tactic does not always work.)
- The thought that ideas are bulletproof.
This was (for me) one of the more interesting themes in the movie, and probably the one that people in America need to hear the most. The denouement of Vendetta involved V explaining that he was still alive after a barrage of bullets because of the following romantic thought: "Ideas are bulletproof." (For what it's worth, his bulletproof vest probably helped -- "bulletproof vests are bulletproof" just isn't as cool to say before taking out your enemy.) Still (as I understand the metaphor) the assertion is that even if he dies, his ideas would have lived on through a populace which had finally shaken off the shackles of it's fear.
This is important to America (in the present) because I look around and I see the beginnings of a time when ideas -- that aren't formed by the government -- are seen as dangerous to freedom. The Patriot Act and the Warrant-less Wiretapping revelation are both examples in which it could be argued that our civil liberties are being eroded with the pretext of safeguarding America. (And whether you believe that the wiretapping issue was legal or not, it has certainly raised discussions in which people have expressed their willingness to trade their privacy for a perceived safety against terrorism.)
Tying it all together:
I think what all three of these themes have in common is that they illustrate the worst-case scenario of what might happen if we continue to allow the Bush administration to operate in the way it has over the past few years. I don't think that Vendetta is attempting to mirror the Bush administration but I do think it's trying to depict a possible future if we (as Americans) do not continue to question the Bush administration's actions. (And indeed, all administrations to come.) I'm not sure that you can really question whether or not the situations in the movie are undesirable; I think the questions arise when you consider whether or not we're in a place that could lead down a path to those situations.