Conjuring the Devil
V for Vendetta, the new Wachowski Bros. graphic-novel-turned-film, was panned by nearly everyone for being ham-fisted and overly stylized. It seemed like the smart people in my life liked it quite a bit, though, at least the more anarcho-minded of them. Kate and I laid down our $7. Seemed like the right thing to do given that all the comic book geeks have been hipified and euphemized by the Jamesonian pomo "graphic novel."
The film is gorgeous in many ways, and there are some arresting moments, such as the domino scene, a Wachowski device that gets me every time. And there are some very clever plot change-ups. The Guy Fawkes dionysian mask metaphor was really exquisite. And the Benny Hill slapstick scene is precious, but I won't spoil it for you.
Presumably, the film "calls into question" what it means to be a "terrorist" by casting the character as a "freedom fighter" in a techno-totalitarian Britain. People claim that the film is a "courageous" allegory for these tense times. The narrative form of the film, however, plays into the rhetorics of the War on Terror. In other words, the film is not a rewriting of the WoT script, but rather an underscoring.
Let's consider God and the Devil for a moment. We could say that there is no God without Satan, and as such, the two were conceived in the same Zoroastrian moment. In like manner, Christians need the existence of Satanists, largely penning them into existence with a whole genre of satanic panic books and 20/20 specials. Apparently some misguided individuals are happy to take this absurdist role and write farcical texts like the Satanic Bible, which finds its greatest success as a prop in Christian "Culture War" speeches. Christianity in many respects is a history of conjuring the devil and convincing the world of His immanent threat.
The War on Terror is a history of conjuring the devil, too - of a worldwide terrorist network led by the uncatchable Dark Prince himself, who is motivated by raw hate and resentment for being cast out of the Mall of America. The closest we can come to him is his #2 man (whom we have nabbed at least a dozen times). If Bin Laden were to be caught, which is unlikely, he would necessarily have to be invented again. Of course, we are inventing Bin Ladens all the time. The supposed Iraqi-Al Qaeda mastermind, Al Zarkawi, is even more ghostly than Bin Laden. Journalist Robert Fisk, the storied war correspondent for The Independent, questions whether Zarkawi really "exists."
Let's take one more example, since the WoT is as much a domestic discourse as an international one. Consider the figure of the black block anarchist in televised scenes of domestic dissent. This is the masked figure scrapping with black-clad SWAT police, spitting, burning road debris, and kicking in the Starbucks window. The 1999 WTO "Battle of Seattle" burned this figure into the American psyche. Now the black block anarchist says, "Don't just stand there with your signs, do something!" And when the windows get kicked in, the news cameras are more than happy to oblige. The proliferation of images of the violence of domestic dissent has legitimized dissent's criminalization. The figure of the black block, in other words, is necessary for the War on Terror to be a war on dissent.
Back to V for Vendetta. The protagonist,"V," is an underground, black-clad man in a Guy Fawkes mask - pale skin, pointed goatee, and a goulish smile: a dead ringer for Satan. His opposite, played by John Hurt, is a Hitleresque visage on a 1984 big screen, Chancellor Sutler. V traipses around town pontificating and blowing things up. Privately, the Chancellor is telling his staff that they gotta catch him. Publicly, on the state-owned TV station, V's acts are downplayed as accidents or pre-planned demolitions. The people dismiss the TV news as propaganda.
Note that the that this supposed critical allegory reverses the logics of the War on Terror. The WoT does not publicly translate terrorist acts as accidents. Rather, Bin Laden is ascribed near magical powers, such that his role in natural disasters has to be practically disproven. And clearly the administration is not concerned with catching Bin Laden, finding the villain much more valuable alive and scheming. After all, without the Dark Shadow, there is no God-King Bush.
The film reiterates rather than criticizes the narrative of the WoT, albeit by taking us on a devilish and pyromaniacal pleasure cruise. But we are already asked to do this in the WoT. We are asked to "play" the terrorist and dream up the most spectacular destructive public acts. We are asked to never again fall victim to the "failure of imagination" by the 9/11 council. We read fantasy novels about the worst possible scenarios of water contamination and dirty bomb radiation. In the same manner as the gothic satanic panic expose asks Christians to fantasize about unspeakable evil, the citizen in the WoT is asked to fantasize about what Bin Laden might do next, to out-imagine Him, to ascribe to Him the unstoppable force that will be met with the immovable object of a crystallizing fascist government.
At the climax of V for Vendetta, V stokes a popular revolution by blowing up Parliament. It is a fantastic explosion with fireworks and music. We cheer that we have overcome the powers that be. The explosion follows a series of Hollywood onscreen explosions of symbols of republican modernity - the White House, the Legislature. In this sense, it follows the Zeitgeist: the displacement of democratic institutions with corporate feudalism. After all, this is the humanist critique of the black block postmodernists: that the pomo left has deconstructed democracy along with everything else, throwing the baby of justice out with the bathwater of oppression. The Nietzschean visage of V is the very picture of the adolescent anarchist so craved by fascist image-makers. V does the dirty work; he dissolves parliament with a smile. So did Hitler. So did Napoleon. So did Caesar. And now the Bush administration is doing everything it can to weaken and make irrelevant every organ of democratic participation. The Neo-Con leadership is now steeped in pomo language about "manufacturing reality" and Bush's cronies are writing books about him with titles like Rebel in Chief. Maybe he and V can get together and blow up Parliament.
"The establishment will spit in your face and make you fight. Because when they've got you fighting, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor." - John Lennon
The film is gorgeous in many ways, and there are some arresting moments, such as the domino scene, a Wachowski device that gets me every time. And there are some very clever plot change-ups. The Guy Fawkes dionysian mask metaphor was really exquisite. And the Benny Hill slapstick scene is precious, but I won't spoil it for you.
Presumably, the film "calls into question" what it means to be a "terrorist" by casting the character as a "freedom fighter" in a techno-totalitarian Britain. People claim that the film is a "courageous" allegory for these tense times. The narrative form of the film, however, plays into the rhetorics of the War on Terror. In other words, the film is not a rewriting of the WoT script, but rather an underscoring.
Let's consider God and the Devil for a moment. We could say that there is no God without Satan, and as such, the two were conceived in the same Zoroastrian moment. In like manner, Christians need the existence of Satanists, largely penning them into existence with a whole genre of satanic panic books and 20/20 specials. Apparently some misguided individuals are happy to take this absurdist role and write farcical texts like the Satanic Bible, which finds its greatest success as a prop in Christian "Culture War" speeches. Christianity in many respects is a history of conjuring the devil and convincing the world of His immanent threat.
The War on Terror is a history of conjuring the devil, too - of a worldwide terrorist network led by the uncatchable Dark Prince himself, who is motivated by raw hate and resentment for being cast out of the Mall of America. The closest we can come to him is his #2 man (whom we have nabbed at least a dozen times). If Bin Laden were to be caught, which is unlikely, he would necessarily have to be invented again. Of course, we are inventing Bin Ladens all the time. The supposed Iraqi-Al Qaeda mastermind, Al Zarkawi, is even more ghostly than Bin Laden. Journalist Robert Fisk, the storied war correspondent for The Independent, questions whether Zarkawi really "exists."
Let's take one more example, since the WoT is as much a domestic discourse as an international one. Consider the figure of the black block anarchist in televised scenes of domestic dissent. This is the masked figure scrapping with black-clad SWAT police, spitting, burning road debris, and kicking in the Starbucks window. The 1999 WTO "Battle of Seattle" burned this figure into the American psyche. Now the black block anarchist says, "Don't just stand there with your signs, do something!" And when the windows get kicked in, the news cameras are more than happy to oblige. The proliferation of images of the violence of domestic dissent has legitimized dissent's criminalization. The figure of the black block, in other words, is necessary for the War on Terror to be a war on dissent.
Back to V for Vendetta. The protagonist,"V," is an underground, black-clad man in a Guy Fawkes mask - pale skin, pointed goatee, and a goulish smile: a dead ringer for Satan. His opposite, played by John Hurt, is a Hitleresque visage on a 1984 big screen, Chancellor Sutler. V traipses around town pontificating and blowing things up. Privately, the Chancellor is telling his staff that they gotta catch him. Publicly, on the state-owned TV station, V's acts are downplayed as accidents or pre-planned demolitions. The people dismiss the TV news as propaganda.
Note that the that this supposed critical allegory reverses the logics of the War on Terror. The WoT does not publicly translate terrorist acts as accidents. Rather, Bin Laden is ascribed near magical powers, such that his role in natural disasters has to be practically disproven. And clearly the administration is not concerned with catching Bin Laden, finding the villain much more valuable alive and scheming. After all, without the Dark Shadow, there is no God-King Bush.
The film reiterates rather than criticizes the narrative of the WoT, albeit by taking us on a devilish and pyromaniacal pleasure cruise. But we are already asked to do this in the WoT. We are asked to "play" the terrorist and dream up the most spectacular destructive public acts. We are asked to never again fall victim to the "failure of imagination" by the 9/11 council. We read fantasy novels about the worst possible scenarios of water contamination and dirty bomb radiation. In the same manner as the gothic satanic panic expose asks Christians to fantasize about unspeakable evil, the citizen in the WoT is asked to fantasize about what Bin Laden might do next, to out-imagine Him, to ascribe to Him the unstoppable force that will be met with the immovable object of a crystallizing fascist government.
At the climax of V for Vendetta, V stokes a popular revolution by blowing up Parliament. It is a fantastic explosion with fireworks and music. We cheer that we have overcome the powers that be. The explosion follows a series of Hollywood onscreen explosions of symbols of republican modernity - the White House, the Legislature. In this sense, it follows the Zeitgeist: the displacement of democratic institutions with corporate feudalism. After all, this is the humanist critique of the black block postmodernists: that the pomo left has deconstructed democracy along with everything else, throwing the baby of justice out with the bathwater of oppression. The Nietzschean visage of V is the very picture of the adolescent anarchist so craved by fascist image-makers. V does the dirty work; he dissolves parliament with a smile. So did Hitler. So did Napoleon. So did Caesar. And now the Bush administration is doing everything it can to weaken and make irrelevant every organ of democratic participation. The Neo-Con leadership is now steeped in pomo language about "manufacturing reality" and Bush's cronies are writing books about him with titles like Rebel in Chief. Maybe he and V can get together and blow up Parliament.
"The establishment will spit in your face and make you fight. Because when they've got you fighting, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor." - John Lennon
posted by thebaffler at 11:53 AM
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