First of all, let me state for the record how miserable the life of a critic must be. I read the reviews of this film and they are filled with expressions of boredom for the Matrix films, comic books and staples of storytelling. I am made to wonder if they enjoy much of anything. More than that, it leads me to wonder what bias they operate from when they approach a given film, especially one as blatantly cautionary as V for Vendetta.
It's this bias I'm interested in, though not - as my first paragraph leads you to believe - that of the professional critics. I'm interested in the people taking blatant offense at the film and why.
Anyone who has seen it is aware of the absence of sugar-coating. Where many films with an agenda or socio-political commentary place that message in a thematic metaphor, V for Vendetta beats you over the head with it. It eschews the elegance of allegory for the brutality of blatant representation. It makes no qualms at all about what it is and what it attempts to say (in spite of the director insisting it is no more - and no less - than a work of fiction).
Due in no small part to this brusk presentation, viewers of the film are typically falling into two camps: those that love it, and those who take issue with it to the point of frequently being offended by it. Unsurprisingly, this division is primarily along superficial political lines.
I am among those who enjoyed the film immensely. As such, I'm curious about those who disliked it and why. I take no issue with those who were just not entertained by it, but could appreciate and recognize the intent of it, but those people seem few and far between. The vast majority of those I encounter who do not like the movie don't like its message.
More accurately, they don't like what they saw in the film, not necessarily what was there. The major complaints about the film are outlined and discussed below. Bear in mind that I am addressing what I have experienced and I am in no way stating that these ideas are universal or categorical among those taking issue with V for Vendetta. All of this is anecdotal, from me*.
- V's protagonists are terrorists.
- The film promotes and endorses terrorism.
- V's themes are anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-family.
- V is pro-Muslim.
Both V and Evey are described as terrorists. This is not wholly incorrect. Given the actions they undertake they could be described as terrorists. They blow up buildings, assassinate people, and incite the populace to revolt.
The American Revolution undertook similar activities in destroying public property, killing officials, and taking up arms against their legal government. So what makes a terrorist?
According to the ICT (http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/define.htm), the largest gap in what differentiates a freedom fighter and a terrorist is their selection of targets. This definition sidesteps the idea that revolutionaries and terrorists are merely the same people labeled differently by their opponents. There are other differences, to be sure, but when your army is one guy in a mask, neither definition really works wholesale.
This article could be taken to mean the characters are or aren't terrorists, depending on how you classify their targets, but at no point in the film do any of the protagonists actively engage to harm civilians despite V insisting that the entire populace was culpable for the regime he fought.
The fact is that different countries and ideologies have different ideas about what constitutes a terrorist. Most of us, like the author of that article, define it in terms of targets. Because of that, I can't really consider V to be a terrorist, rather a man left with no other avenues for change. His opponents understood only control and violence, and so he sought to deprive them of control through the only vehicle available: violence.
Nowhere does the film insist that violence and terrorism is the only or even the best way to effect change. In fact, I'd argue that the resort of V to these activities is an expression of failure. All other methods of rousing the populace to action against those oppressing it had failed and his actions were as much personally driven revenge as a desire to effect real social and political change. It was, in short, the only method left to him in that situation. Nowhere was the option for discourse illustrated as feasible.
V for Vendetta is said to be anti-Christian, family, and America. I didn't see that. What I saw was a recrimination of intolerance. The example of the Qur'an as beautiful while no representation of the Bible was made was not a deliberate slight to Christians as is often claimed. Instead, it is a comment on how a religion so superficially different can become a bogeyman despite its merits.
Several characters are depicted as homosexual. This is, again, seen as an attack on an institution, the family in this case. The plight of the homosexual in this film is an allegorical illustration meant to evoke images of the Jews in Nazi Germany or the educated and religious in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge came to power. They are people who are simply different in one way or other, and therefore deemed bad. They are labeled as inherently bad and linked with one or more societal ills, then made to pay for it with their lives.
The common theme is differences any neighbor could possess. People you enjoy and talk with every day become the enemy and everyone sits back and watches the terrible things happen.
I am reminded of Reverend Martin Niemoller's poem.
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me.
That's the point of those illustrations.
The final and most entertaining objection to the film is the idea that 'liberals**' believe modern America is like this. Only the most screechingly out of touch believe we're to the point depicted in this film, but that doesn't make the message it sends unimportant.
V for Vendetta is ultimately a cautionary tale. It is an illustration of how a populace can willingly allow a government to oppress and abuse them and how it is up to that populace to effect change. A government maintains its power primarily through the consent of those governed whether that consent is based on fear or love being immaterial.
The government in the film changed not because V assassinated the key conspirators, but because the populace rose up and, in effect, woke up. They were presented with solid evidence that they had been enabling their government through abstinence from the political process and wallowing in manufactured fear.
Like most of us, I don't really know what I think until I start to talk about it. Once a thought becomes public, you must take responsibility for it, defend it or change it. You have to think about your thought. In like fashion, I may not have articulated some of this as well as I hope, and perhaps I can be brought to think differently on some points once I get the chance to mull it over, talk about it more, and educate myself further.
I haven't touched on everything, just the most widespread things I've encountered. There's more and there are likely more articulate rebuttals to much of the offense some viewers are taking. In fact, most people acting offended, need not be as it is not an attack on them or their general views. The message here is rather more specific and less a general assault on conservative and American views as some reviewers imply.
In the end, V for Vendetta has the capacity to make you think. As one poster on an overwhelmingly conservative site said (I am paraphrasing), "Conservatives should have no problems with this film; partisan Republicans probably will."
* If you'd like to see some of what I've seen, go to sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Free Republic, and the like and check out the negative reviews of the film. Then talk to people you know that disliked it and find out why. It's interesting to me how polarizing it's been.
** I find it interesting that Liberal and Conservative are thrown about as insults. I suppose they always have, but it seems to have taken on added vitriol in the last 4.5 years.
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