By Brendan O’Reilly
I never expected to feel this motivated to defend a fictional character, but the outrageous criticisms of “V for Vendetta” warrant it.
“The film already has some critics fuming over its portrayal of a terrorist as a hero,” said Tucker Carlson, host of “The Situation” on MSNBC. A headline on the show read, “Hollywood Glorifying Terrorism?” “The Situation” Web site posted a video clip of the segment under the title “Movie Recruiting Terrorists?” Whenever a television headline ends in a question mark, the talking head’s answer is going to be yes.
Carlson had not seen the movie yet, so he invited Michael Medved to criticize it for him. Medved is a film critic, conservative talk-radio host and author of several books including Hollywood vs. America. From what he told Carlson, it seemed Medved had not seen the movie either. He claimed a large number of British soldiers are killed during a particular scene in the movie. In fact, not a single British soldier dies in the movie.
“Isn’t the struggle against illegitimate authority a good thing?” Carlson asked Medved.
“Well no,” he replied. “Because you see there’s a difference between resistance and terror.”
“Hollywood has yet to make a film about the heroic role of American counterterrorist activities,” Medved said. I would think a film critic like Medved would be aware the governor of California starred in a movie 12 years ago named “True Lies,” which was about a U.S. secret agent who fights terrorists. In “Air Force One” Harrison Ford plays the president and personally defeats terrorist hijackers. Ben Affleck plays a CIA analyst fighting a terrorist plot in “The Sum of All Fears.”
Former Congressman Joe Scarborough called “V for Vendetta,” “a vulgar ham-fisted attempt at political protest.” “Scarborough Country” outdid Carlson’s show. Instead of having one guest criticize the film without an opposing viewpoint presented, Scarborough had two. “V” premiered at the top of the box office, but both critics tried to dismiss the film’s popularity. “It’s the only film out there really of any size or interest,” said Joshua Rothkopf, film critic for Time Out New York.
“They’re aiming it at adolescent boys,” said critic Megan Basham of Townhall.com. She claimed the adolescent audience “can’t sift through the propaganda properly.”
“It’s a terrible, terrible movie that is sending a terrible message to our children,” said Scarborough. That message according to him: terrorism is positive and Christianity is evil.
Whether or not the character V is a terrorist is a matter of opinion, and not fact. Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, defines terrorism as: “The purposeful killing of noncombatants and civilians by nonstate actors for political purposes.” V certainly is a nonstate actor and he does have a political purpose, but he never kills noncombatants for that purpose. V kills some civilians, (who are by no means innocents) but not as a result of his political agenda. He does it as a matter of vengeance, hence the title of the film
Haass’s definition of terrorism may be too narrow for some. A broader definition may include property destruction, which V is certainly guilty of. Early in the film V destroys The Old Bailey, a criminal high court in London.
“Does the protagonist of “V for Vendetta” qualify as a terrorist because he kills evil people and blows up symbolic buildings?” Kurt Loder asked on MTV.com. “It’s a cliché to say that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter, and it’s not always true.”
It is a fine line between terrorists and revolutionaries when sorting out sub-national organizations that participate in violence against a despotic regime. It is a subjective matter. Loder has come to the same conclusion I have: “V, although clearly a troubled guy, seems relatively noble.”
The creator of V may be more upset about the new film than the conservative critics
Alan Moore, who wrote the graphic novel that formed the basis for the movie, had his name removed from credits and signed away his rights to any profits from the movie. He does not like big screen interpretations of his works (i.e. “From Hell” and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”).
“The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it,” Moore said. He said his novel was about fascism and anarchism, but the movie is a “Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.” The Wachowski brothers who wrote the screenplay should have made an original story to get their message out, said Moore. Moore did not agree with Scarborough that the Wachowski message was anti-Christian and pro-terrorist. Moore’s sense was that the film is a liberal fantasy of a hero standing up to neo-conservatives.