The Vendetta Against "V"

I've long been a fan of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's comic book miniseries "V for Vendetta", the story of a Guy Fawkes-inspired terrorist who wages war against a fascist British regime in a post-WWIII future. I admired the dense plotting, the layered characterization, and yes, the stylized imagery of the original.

It's now been made into a movie by the Wachowski brothers (of "Matrix" fame), and I must say I'm amazed at how faithful an adaptation it is.

Brainster hasn't seen the movie but didn't care for the comic book:

Uh, the Russians invaded Poland? Remember this is before the end of the Cold War. And the notion that President Teddy Kennedy (gah!) would have started a nuclear exchange over that "invasion" is risible. Africa's not there anymore? Why? Did the US or Russia have a large number of their missiles aimed at the Dark Continent? But Britain didn't get bombed? Sheesh, must have been because Labour got those American missiles out of the UK.

You see what I mean? It doesn't even make good speculative fiction because you're too busy snorting and rolling your eyes in disbelief.

Of course, in 1981, when "V" began, this wasn't so impossible a notion. Ted Kennedy was considered a viable presidential candidate. The Solidarity movement was putting the Russians and their Polish puppet government on edge. The debate over the basing of American midrange missiles in Britain was raging, in part for fear that the Russians would then target the UK in a first strike scenario. As for Africa not being there anymore, I seem to recall that there was some considerable Cold War hijinks going on in Africa in the late 70s/early 80s. I don't think this notion was so much far-fetched as badly dated.

Peter Suderman has consumed both, but doesn't seem to much like either:

The Wachowskis take every opportunity to stroke their pet issues. Government sponsored homosexual discrimination figures heavily in the film, but for all the time devoted to the subject, it provides very little significant plot movement. It's strongly hinted that America's downfall was caused by its military presence in Iraq. The British government uses a color-coded curfew system as a method of keeping the citizenry in check. None of these elements does much for the central mystery, but they inject themselves into the proceedings with annoying regularity.

The film seems to have a special disdain for religion, portraying the British state as a sneering den of religious hypocrisy. A government puppet figure blasts the U.S. for being "godless," blaming America's downfall on "God's judgment." In one totally outrageous moment, a priest tries to rape a young girl. In cased anyone missed the point that religious belief is just a tool for manipulation, the government continually preaches "Strength through unity, unity through faith." The film has only sympathy, though, for those who want to keep a Koran around — provided he or she ignores its religious instruction and simply "appreciates its beauty." Sacred texts, we are to understand, are great just as long as no one actually pays any attention to what they say.

On the subject of terrorism, the confusion reaches almost frenzied levels. Governments that attack their own people are bad, of course, but the proper response to it is apparently to — surprise — attack one's own people. "Blowing up a building can change the world," V says, and somehow we're supposed to sympathize with him when he wants to use London's subway system to blow up prominent buildings.

It would be one thing if the Wachowskis had constructed their narrative in a way that allowed organic integration of these issues. Instead, they seem to have poorly retrofitted Moore's original story, ripping out sizable chunks of his plot to make room for their pretentious gabbing. Particularly noticeable are the changes made to Chancellor Sutler. In the movie, he's a fire-breathing Hitler caricature, the sort of Saturday-morning cartoon villain you expect to see shaking his fist and yelling, "I'll get you next time..." Moore's graphic novel made him an honest believer in the necessity of fascist rule to preserve his beloved country — a far more compelling, complex enemy. Changes like this abound, and they are telling: V for Vendetta may be the first movie to come off more one-dimensional and cartoonish than a comic book.

This is all true, and did lessen my personal enjoyment of the film, but given how closely it hewed to the comic book I don't consider this a cardinal sin, so to speak.

I think critics have missed Moore's truly subversive message: that people who call themselves "freedom fighters" are quite often simply sociopaths with axes to grind. V was not an idealist; he was a murderer. Had the people who wronged him been a private corporation, he would likely have been content to bankrupt the company and murder his foes. Had it been a church, he would have sought its disgrace. The whole point was that this was nothing more than a vendetta---thus the title.

There is something about humanity which makes us endeavor to put a gloss on a pig, no matter how ugly. Terror, murder, exploitation---doesn't matter. We did it with Lenin. With Stalin. With Castro and Guevara. The LWM is doing it with Saddam, aided by Democrat lawyers. They'll do the same with Bin Laden and Zarqawi soon enough. In the comic book, V refers to our love for men in uniform (Nazis, not our soldiers). Something there is that loves a monster.

And V, the hero of this particular piece, is a monster in every sense of the word. He may be a liberator, but he is also a murderer, and a terrorist. He's not "supposed to be sympathetic"; we tend to try to make him so, because we love our monsters.

As V says, "Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world. Rubble, once achieved, makes further ruins’ means irrelevant. Away with our explosives then! Away with our destroyers! They have no place within our better world. But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable. Let’s drink their health…then meet them no more."

Moore may be up to something, but it's not idealizing a terrorist. He's criticizing our own human tendency to tame monsters.

Moore is a loony lefty, but "V for Vendetta" is not a loony lefty screed.