A Failing of V for Vendetta

Setting a crude police state and its corrupt brutal officials as V's enemies is also the too easy route taken by Moore. It's the dictatorship of decent people, doing their best, that frightens me more.

-guy herbert

Indeed. What I have said previously about V for Vendetta (What's Missing from the V for Vendetta Movie and Reviewing the V for Vendetta Movie, cont'd) doesn't explain the flaws I see with the comic book. Mr. Herbert points out a serious one.

By setting up a strawman, it is much easier for "everyday folks" to sympathize and support V's actions. Few people today would desire to see the continuation of such a totalitarian dictatorship as Britain faces in Alan Moore's work. No doubt there are and will be individuals and whole cultures where the systematic assault, arrest, experimentation upon, and wholesale murder of others based on their ethic background, chosen religion, and sexual orientation is excused and encouraged. Those people, however, reside by definition outside the bounds of rational discourse. They aren't the target audience for a work like this.

A far harder target would be the standard social democratic European government or the marginally capitalistic representative Western democracy. I actually thought the movie was better at demonstrating the horrors the above incarnations of the state perpetuate in the name of The Greater Good. Though the comic explained the fundamentals better and became increasingly explicit towards the end, the movie skipped most of that and used details of today's system amplified only a bit to show how creepy and dangerous it is when governments assume the responsibility of the individual to regulate the individual's behavior.

Posted by Drizzten at March 28, 2006 01:50 PM