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Monday, March 20, 2006
Megan Basham :: Townhall.com Columnist
V for vendetta, T for terrorist, and A for "that's a-okay"
by Megan Basham
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I have seen the terrorist, and he is me. And you. And all of us. So says Evey (Natalie Portman), an acolyte of V (Hugh Weaving), the swashbuckling savior of future England who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes.

But don’t worry, because being a terrorist is now a good thing. As we've been told by the media, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter…or masked superhero as the case may be.

In fact, according to The New York Daily News' critic, Jaimi Bernard, even the term "suicide bombing" is now relative. "One person's idea of social liberation through symbolic fireworks is another person's suicide bombing," she insists in her review of V for Vendetta.

So even though V threatens to detonate a load of explosives strapped to his chest, killing dozens of innocent people at the BBC (oh, excuse me, BFC) if they don't give him air-time, just think of him as Batman — a little overly-dramatic and conflicted perhaps, but also sexy and an undeniable force for good.

I can see him this way because of all the Wachowski Brothers have taught me. My eyes have been opened, and I am no longer an automaton of the Right-wing religious-military-industrial complex.

Thanks to this "parable about terrorism and totalitarianism" (Roger Ebert) I have been "prodded to think" (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that.

I think that Catholics are in league with Republicans, and that together it is they, and not radical Islamists, who would like to exterminate all homosexuals and execute anyone that produces material critical of the Church-State. I think it is Christians who persecute people for reading the Koran and not Muslims who persecute people for reading the Bible.

I think that the West's military personnel are the ones who place hoods over innocent people's heads then mercilessly torture and kill them, and that broadcasts of Islamo-fascists doing so are so much laughable propaganda.

But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America.

After all, that's what the Wachowskis want, isn't it? When [spoiler alert] the English masses gather and cheer as Parliament, that British symbol of representative government burns, aren't we too supposed to cheer? Aren't we supposed to want to run out of theater ready to don our Osama Bin Laden masks, ready to confront the world's biggest terrorist mastermind on the White House lawn?

Oh, but wait, the movie is "dystopian" and therefore has nothing to do with current events. The "yellow-alerts" the vile dictator employs are a coincidence. The campy television show in which vaudevillian Al Qaeda operatives torture busty blondes, suggesting that the threat of terror is as fictional as it is ridiculous, means nothing. The balding talk show host with a pill-popping problem isn't intended to smear a real person.

And the fact that the script takes glee in constantly referring to the "former United States of America" and "their war" that left them "the world’s leper colony?" Umm, okay, that's a little hard to explain…let's just call that comic justice. Continued...

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About The Author

Megan Basham is the author of Beside Every Successful Man: A Woman's Guide To Having It All

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ps
apparantly the young men talking infront of you must have distracted you to the point inwhich you missed the fact that the governement was responsible for over 100,000 of their citizens deaths....justice for all huh?

in response
As this is the place to share ones oppinion i read your article and yes i understand yours very well. But I would as you say not be exercising my right to free speech and the right to critique my fellow man if i did not offer my own. I loved this movie, yes this did relate to the events going on today even if they say it didn't although from what i have seen with interviews, they did purposely set the movies back drop in the nineties and then project from there on into the future so basically they used the current events of todays society as a back drop. The movie tells of an anal and paranoid deceased society that's government is in control of every minute detail...something that is increasing here aswell everyday. The hero or terroist v whatever you may call him can be construed as both freedom fighter or villain that is true, from your article i see you are not fond of this style or excentric way of politicing...but basically what i am trying to say amongst all of the nonsense is this: V took action he saw an injustice he took action and did something about it when no one else was doing anything at all. Whether that is right or not i do not know. Same thing goes for today who is right or wrong that is not clear the only clear thing that is wrong is to have no voice and to take no action. But i can say this from your article, unlike the character you go out of yor way to prove is inane and unbelievable...what character would you be in this saga....from what i can tell you would be one of the mindless many that follows the leader...unable to think for your own reason and convictions..unable to do anything without having someone tell you whether it is right or not. A sheep amongst the many in society. I do not agree with your opinon at all and i know you will not agree with mine. But that is the great thing about the world in which we live neither one of us is right or wrong. But how long will it stay that way? They tell us how to do everything almost now...when will it stop?
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