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2006-03-16 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by Spot 2006-03-16 08:14|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 But would "V for Vendetta" stand a box office chance today if it were set in America, not England, and the U.S. Capitol were blowing up instead of Parliament? Unlikely.

Actually, I think that would be extremely likely. It was just that they couldn't put "V for Vendetta" in the US without mangling to story too much.

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2006-03-16 08:28|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-03-16 08:28|| Front Page Top

#2 The concept of the movie is dated. That is, it still has the "1984" perspective that government surveillance in the future is everywhere, and isn't that horrible and oppressive?

That trouble is, that today, government surveillance *is* everywhere, and most people just abide it, sheep that they are.

So you need a new approach. One that in its bare bones was alluded to in the movie "Brazil". The focus needs to be changed to the utter futility, waste, and uselessness of such surveillance. Of a government so obsessed with the minutiae of its citizens lives that it is just inert as society collapses around it.

It was remarked that East Germany was like this, before it collapsed, that its government so cared about what time "everybody ate lunch" that it ignored the possibility of World War III, or even its own collapse. Governmental insanity in the form of masturbational voyeurism.

Huge dossiers on all of its citizens, filled with such utterly useless information as how many paper products they personally consumed in a year and what route they took to go to work in the morning, along with their complete phone records.

How different is that from modern Britain wanting to track all vehicle movements in the country?

Government todays excuse is technology: "We have the technology to do it!", overrides "Why the hell should we do it?", or what they should be saying, "Gee, that is an obnoxious, offensive, intrusive and unconstitutional thing to do." The statement they almost never make.

Such governmental voyeurism is really an excuse for them not doing their job. In a way, it is like a police officer staying home and watching porn movies, "looking for criminal acts", rather than walking his beat and arresting real criminals.

So the REAL revolutionary doesn't try to blow up all the cameras, he points his finger at the porn watching policeman and laughs, and calls the cop what he really is, a pervert. He refutes what the cop says, that he is trying to stop "illegal porn", and tells him to get his ass back to work.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-03-16 09:11|| 2006-03-16 09:11|| Front Page Top

#3 The concept is dated -- so instead of a post-nuclear war gov't (the concept being intended to criticize Margaret Thatcher's gov't in 1982), we have an "ultra right-wing" government following the UK joining "America's war."

Hilariously, on a liberal-leaning (?) BBS there were complaints that the movie had in fact not only changed things (as adaptations do) but gotten the core message wrong, relying excessively on Wachowski flashy 'fights' and leather outfits. Can't say that the complaints were wrong. The ending apparently is inadvertently HILARIOUS for completely missing V's point...

Posted by Edward Yee 2006-03-16 09:20|| http://edwardyee.fanworks.net]">[http://edwardyee.fanworks.net] 2006-03-16 09:20|| Front Page Top

#4 Much ado about nothing. If they make any effort to show the government of the future is evil, and the terrorist isn't targeting civilians, I don't think people will care. Especially when I understand the hero is already shown to be semi-nuts.

If this guy is blowing up busses and cafes to make his political point, and the government of the future looks a lot like the current government I think people will wonder WTF and stay away in droves.

Posted by rjschwarz 2006-03-16 12:54|| 2006-03-16 12:54|| Front Page Top

#5 NAtalie is so hot though. even shaved

Posted by bk 2006-03-16 13:25|| 2006-03-16 13:25|| Front Page Top

#6 Does the movie show her shaved? I might even pay the price to see that.

Posted by DoDo 2006-03-16 15:35|| 2006-03-16 15:35|| Front Page Top

#7 Another Bush-bashing, pro-terrorism trope from the movie industry. Whadda shocker!

Posted by Happy 88mm 2006-03-16 19:06|| http://www.calderonswirbelwind.blogspot.com]">[http://www.calderonswirbelwind.blogspot.com] 2006-03-16 19:06|| Front Page Top

#8 I always find myself wondering where all these future movie facists come from. I mean the goose stepping troops would be our kids, right? And the NCOs and officers would be the folks on this board or our younger versions. And how likely is that?

I don't know if facism is even possible in the post-modern, post-christian West. After all, facism is a _reactionary_ movement. It's about preserving society's ties to blood and soil -- the old ways. Who even cares about those things anymore?

I can't remember which of Stalin's biographers wrote this, but it's one of the more profound things that I've read on totalitarianism. He maintained that totalitarianism was a not a phenomena of illiterate cultures nor of literate ones. Instead it was a consequence of semi-literacy. Autodidacts like Stalin and Hitler hung out in penny libraries and read all sort of claptrap: Darwinism "proved" that God doesn't exist. Eugenics improved the gene pool. There was a science of history that made accurate and unassailable predictions about the economic and political future of the human race.

Stalin and Hitler were representative of a cohort of first and second generation literates. They credulously swallowed anything written for the semi-literate masses and dressed up with chop-logic. That era is over in the West, but it is just beginning in the Muslim world.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-03-16 21:28|| 2006-03-16 21:28|| Front Page Top

#9 Interesting comment, 11A5S. Extreme or nuanced ideas, advanced in the sense that they are the terminus of a long chain of ideas - good and bad, without the context - without any understanding of how they evolved and under what circumstances, could lead to some bizarre notions... Leaving an imagination full of disconnected bits to fill in the blanks seems to be begging for constructs that make sense only to the owner of that imagination - the autodidact you mentioned - and would be either gibberish or insane to the educated.

I think we see this all around us now, in fact. The conspiracists seem to be hell on wheels when it comes to these "factual" (fantastical is closer, lol) tidbits, but mute when it comes to explaining how they came to be or what the underpinning logic might be. They weave their own understanding, inventing wholesale where they lack a working knowledge of history, ending up with these butt nuggets they think are shining jewels of brilliance - that most rational people dismiss out of hand as farce.

And we end up with this rather huge disconnect - unable to even hold a rational discussion because there isn't enough common ground to begin. Like an ideas tower of babble, instead of language.

Thx...

Posted by Glert Thetch2165 2006-03-16 23:18|| 2006-03-16 23:18|| Front Page Top

23:50 JosephMendiola
23:48 Inspector Clueso
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23:47 Frank G
23:46 Pappy
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23:31 trailing wife
23:23 JosephMendiola
23:22 Glert Thetch2165
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23:18 Glert Thetch2165
23:17 Scooter McGruder
23:16 MO
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