[Dialogue] Anarchism, Hollywood-Style

Mon Mar 20 14:43:23 EST 2006

Ah, yes, and then there is the novel "The Monkey Wrench Gang".  
Colleen Smith a snowy spring day in Denver, praying for our Australian
friends as they deal with category 5 cyclone.

> [Original Message]
> From: David Jago <dajago at bigpond.net.au>
> To: Colleague Dialogue <Dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
> Date: 3/19/2006 10:38:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Anarchism, Hollywood-Style
>
> Ah yes, BuSab.  The issue they were dealing with was fast, very fast  
> bureaucracy.  BuSab's role was to slow the wheels down...
>
> David Jago
> Brisbane, Qld.
> On 20 Mar 2006, at 09:46, opossum2 at att.net wrote:
>
> > Harry,
> >
> >
> > This take on anarchism, subversive terrorism, or whatever you call  
> > it, got me thinking along a tangent to a short novel by Frank  
> > Herbert (of "Dune" fame) called "Whipping Star".  In this  
> > futuristic vision, the government is so huge, bureaucratic and all- 
> > controlling that there exists, as part of the government, a "Bureau  
> > of Sabotage" whose charter is to do exactly that - commit acts of  
> > sabotage that will keep some kind of tension going in society.  The  
> > more I look around me these days, I'm not sure we are too far from  
> > that.
> >
> >
> > Thanks for the posting, as usual.
> >
> >
> > Steve Rhea
> >
> > Houston, Tx.
> >
> >
> >
> > -------------- Original message from "Harry Wainwright" <h- 
> > wainwright at charter.net>: --------------
> >
> > <mime-attachment.gif>
> >
> > Anarchism, Hollywood-Style
> >
> > By Anthony Kaufman, AlterNet
> > Posted on March 17, 2006, Printed on March 19, 2006
> > http://www.alternet.org/story/33579/
> >
> > If Andy and Larry Wachowski's "The Matrix" trilogy turned millions  
> > of Americans on to cyberpunk culture and postmodern theory, then "V  
> > for Vendetta," the brothers' latest project (which opens today),  
> > might just do the same for out-and-out revolution.
> >
> > Conceived by the Wachowskis and directed by their longtime  
> > assistant director James McTeigue, "Vendetta" is a pop-culture  
> > attack on the current administration's multiple injustices -- a big- 
> > budget call to rebellion from deep inside the belly of conglomerate  
> > Time Warner. Warner Bros.' film unit already got flack from  
> > conservatives for releasing "Syriana," "Good Night and Good Luck"  
> > and Palestinian suicide-bomber portrait "Paradise Now," but just  
> > you wait: "V for Vendetta" is a pro-revolutionary action-adventure  
> > romp that makes those films look like "Little House on the Prairie."
> >
> > In perhaps the most glaring and controversial example of  
> > Hollywood's refusal to toe the Bush party line, "Vendetta's" hero  
> > is a terrorist -- a violent rebel on a mission to destroy his  
> > corrupt government in a blaze of explosives. Is this irresponsible?  
> > Does it glamorize terrorism? Perhaps. But for many progressives,  
> > whose anti-war protests have fallen on deaf ears and whose activism  
> > has been squashed by the powers-that-be, "V for Vendetta" should  
> > feel almost cathartic.
> >
> > Set in the year 2020, "V for Vendetta" takes place in a fascistic  
> > London, some time after "America's war grew worse and worse," as  
> > one character narrates, "when unfamiliar words like 'collateral'  
> > and 'rendition' became frightening." The government is a cross  
> > between a full-blown totalitarian state and the current  
> > administration's scare tactics: with constant surveillance, a  
> > citywide "yellow-coded curfew" that instills paranoia and restricts  
> > nighttime movement, and a menacing band of secret police called  
> > "Fingermen" who patrol the streets and harass the citizens.
> >
> > When we first meet Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), she's about to  
> > pay the price for violating the city curfew when a mysterious  
> > masked stranger saves her from the authorities with an array of  
> > flying swords. Evey's savior is V, an erudite, Shakespeare-quoting  
> > burn victim who has literally adopted both the mask and the mission  
> > of long-ago subversive Guy Fawkes, who in 1605 plotted to destroy  
> > Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. With the help of the  
> > young, pretty Evey (the daughter of "activist" parents abducted and  
> > killed by the government), V plans to carry out Fawkes' dreams of  
> > violent insurrection. "Blowing up a building," he tells her, "can  
> > change the world."
> >
> > If there's any question about the film's political targets,  
> > "Vendetta" opens with a ridiculously racist and homophobic screed  
> > by Prothero, the Bill O'Reilly-like "Voice of London" who speaks on  
> > what appears to be the country's only television channel. "The  
> > former United States is the world's biggest leper colony," he  
> > spits. "And it wasn't because of the immigrants, the Muslims or the  
> > homosexuals, or the war that they started. No," he says. "It's  
> > because they're Godless!"
> >
> > In contrast to Edward R. Murrow's famous signoff of "Good night and  
> > good luck," the nasty Prothero ends his ultraconservative  
> > broadcasts with the jingoistic "England prevails."
> >
> > This isn't subtle stuff. In a blatant nod to George Orwell's  
> > "1984," "Vendetta's" U.K. is ruled by Chancellor Sutler, a  
> > vituperative, "deeply religious conservative" seen Big Brother-like  
> > on a large television screen (and played by John Hurt, "1984's" ill- 
> > fated everyman). Sutler's ruling philosophy is the politics of  
> > fear. "We will show him what terror really looks like," he screams  
> > after V's arrival onto the scene.
> >
> > Sutler's reign also involves media spin and propaganda, a la the  
> > Newspeak of "1984." When events begin to spiral out of control,  
> > Sutler declares that the government must make the people realize  
> > "why they need us," followed by panic-inducing reports of  
> > everything from civil war to avian flu. Sound familiar?
> >
> > Like any classic comic superhero myth, "Vendetta" also provides an  
> > origin story for V, which is gradually glimpsed in flashbacks and a  
> > police investigation into his past. And not unlike the secret  
> > nuclear-testing that spawned Godzilla, or the class oppression that  
> > cultivated so many angry inner-city zombies (see "Land of the  
> > Dead"), V's transformation into a vengeful killer was the result of  
> > a crass abuse of state power involving (spoiler alert) a government  
> > plan to create a biological weapon with the help of a nefarious  
> > pharmaceutical company. If the political notion of "blowback" ever  
> > needed a poster child, V would be it.
> >
> > And "V for Vendetta" isn't just about political revolt -- it's also  
> > about sexual revolution. After being captured and placed in an  
> > interrogation cell, Evey reads letters from a fellow prisoner,  
> > Valerie, a young woman who came out of the closet and embraced a  
> > forbidden lesbian love affair that landed her and her lover in  
> > similarly brutal confines. Another sympathetic character conceals  
> > his homosexual identity. And however ruthless V may be, he too is  
> > sexually ambiguous -- an effete hero who hides behind a mask, loves  
> > "The Count of Monte Cristo," melancholy music, cooking and dancing  
> > ("A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having,"  
> > he tells Evey, paraphrasing the slogan of anarchist Emma Goldman as  
> > he yearns for a whirl).
> >
> > The movie's sexual politics are also brought to the fore in a  
> > quotation heard over the end-credit music: "This is no simple  
> > reform," a woman says. "It really is a revolution. Sex and race,  
> > because they are easy and visible differences, have been the  
> > primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior  
> > groups and into the cheap labor in which this system still  
> > depends." The voice belongs to feminist powerhouse Gloria Steinem.
> >
> > Above all, "Vendetta" should be enjoyed as the first true anarchist  
> > movie Hollywood has ever made. Film historians speak fondly of the  
> > paranoid cycle of American cinema in the 1960s and '70s ("The  
> > Manchurian Candidate," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Parallax  
> > View") or the countercultural anti-heroic outlaws of "Bonnie and  
> > Clyde" and "Badlands," but nowhere in mainstream U.S. cinema -- and  
> > certainly not post-9/11 -- has there been a pop-culture phenomenon  
> > that advocates not only overthrowing a corrupt government, but  
> > blowing it up. As the film's tagline states, "People should not be  
> > afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their  
> > people."
> >
> > Anthony Kaufman has written about films and the film industry for  
> > the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Utne magazine.
> >
> > © 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
> > View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/33579/
> >
> >
> >
> > <mime-attachment.gif>
> >
> > From: "Harry Wainwright" <h-wainwright at charter.net>
> > Date: 20 March 2006 05:05:47 GMT+10:00
> > To: "'Colleague Dialogue'" <Dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
> > Subject: [Dialogue] Anarchism, Hollywood-Style
> >
> >
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