| |
|
Monday, February 27, 2006
|
|
Wow, I am so looking forward to this:
V for Vendetta may be--why hedge? is--the most subversive cinematic deed of the Bush-Blair era, a dagger poised in midair. Unlike the other movies dubbed %u201Ccontroversial%u201D (Fahrenheit 9-11, The Passion, Munich, Syriana), it doesn%u2019t play to a particular constituency or polarized culture bloc, it%u2019s working on a deeper, Edger Allen Poe-ish witch%u2019s brew substrata of pop myth. Cultural conservatives will loathe it without seeing it (they love not having to leave their houses to lament the latest installment of civilization%u2019s decline and fall) once they hear of and read about the movie%u2019s disturbing political parallels (a fascistic TV host with a witty resemblance to Berlusconi, fertilizer explosives a la Timothy McVeigh; torture, renditions, and subway bombings; black hoods that will be forever associated with Abu Ghraib). Yet lots of cultural liberals with educated tastes will find it anxiety-producing and irresponsible too, not only because they%u2019re more comfortable with humanistic stories and documentary techniques than with pop spectacle (as Kael discovered whenever she praised upstart movies like DePalma%u2019s Carrie or The Warriors and received letters from profs and Ph.D couples complaining about her soiling the New Yorker%u2019s space on trash), but because V for Vendetta doesn%u2019t just depict a 1984%u2019s dystopia--it advocates radical remedy, and illustrates what it advocates with rhapsodic, operatic, orgasmic flourish. It follows the course of its own logic to its Kubrickian conclusion, but this isn%u2019t a clinical exercise, like Kubrick at his most voyeuristically detached. This movie is fully engaged. Its masked, caped vigilante is both Batman and Joker, nocturnal enigma and nimble trickster, the Count of Monte Cristo, Zorro, and the Phantom of the Opera tucked into one suavely tormented frame, the antihero%u2019s secret lair a gothic sanctuary equipped with its own Wurtlizer jokebox on which Julie London%u2019s Cry Me a River sultrily plays. The river of tears is the Thames, on the bank of which sits London%u2019s House of Parliament, the movie (based on Alan Moore%u2019s graphic novel) drawing its inspiration from Guy Fawkes and the foiled Gunpowder Plot to destroy Parliament on November 5th, 1605, a day celebrated annually in Britain with fireworks and parties. In V for Vendetta, monochromatic tyranny so oppresses, represses, and depresses Britain in its totalitarian condition that the only proper way to honor the memory and insurrectionary spirit of Guy Fawkes is to finish what he started. V for vendetta, v for violence, v for vindication. The return of the repressed with a vengeance.
11:08:34 PM 
|
|
Inspired by this thread at Skeptico.
Rush Limbaugh – “The chicken is obviously not a patriot and is an Al Qaeda sympathizer.”
Karl Rove – “Here are your talking points: The chicken is weak on defense. The chicken is an Al Qaeda sympathizer. The chicken is running from its responsibilities.”
Ken Mehlman “The chicken crossed the road because of the 'MoveOn' wing of the Democratic Party and George Soros spending billions to lure the chicken across.”
Bill Frist – “From my viewing of the video tape, it appears that the chicken did not cross the road.”
Tom Delay – “"I have the facts, the law, and the chicken on my side of the road."
Scooter Libby – “I was directed by my superiors to tell you about the chicken crossing the road.”
Condi Rice – “The Chicken is promoting democracy on the other side of the road.”
Scotty McClellean – “There is an on-going investigation as to why the chicken crossed the road and you know that I cannot comment on on-going investigations.”
Dick Cheney – “When that chicken crossed the road, it was the most miserable day of my life.” (The chicken later apologized for crossing the road.)
George W. Bush – “9/11”
Add your own…
(Via A Rational Being.)
9:03:30 AM
|
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 3/15/2006; 3:38:47 PM.
|
|
|
