posted
It can't be a true dystopia without the abominations of Simon Cowell.
I do agree with you though about the power of propoganda.
I got the impression, however, that the government's increasingly strict regulations in response to V kind of proved his point in the minds of the people.
*SPOILERS*
And when random people in the mask started getting shot? I mean, that little girl being gunned down, and the people beating the shooter to a pulp...
posted
These were a people in a very repressed society, with large gaps between the government official haves and the average joe have-nots. Curfews, banned music and words and theater, and I'll bet nearly every family in London (that wasn't "connected") lost a loved one or two to the black bags. It wouldn't take very much at all for this situation to blow up.
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posted
Not only that, but the oppresive regime was relatively new. The adults hadn't really grown up with it, it seemed (since Evey was young and still remembered some things before the serious violence and atrocities).
posted
So you're saying that repressed societies are more likely to have their citizens rise up with the most extremely slight provocation? It's like saying that women in abusive relationships are more likely to leave their husbands. It gives one some nice warm fuzzies to believe that, but it's just not plausible.
There have actually been repressive societies in the past, and I've never heard of anything like that. As I said, if there were a small group of people with an active leader that had spent the entire year plotting, planning and preparing with them, I could see it. But this is a person whose only contact with the public was a 3-minute speech given a year before the uprising was to happen. For all these people knew, it could have been a government plot to catch conspirators.
When you combine a government that generates so much terror with a system of media that works such a sophisticated spin machine, the people of London didn't stand a chance. 95% of the people that saw the broadcast would have forgotten it within a week. The remainder would either have become convinced that V was evil and dangerous or would have been too scared to try anything.
In any case, for more than London's two or three most psychotically deranged citizens to have shown up to face the firing squad, there would have to have been an overwhelming concensus that everyone was going to do this thing. I honestly don't believe that any 3-minute speech could have generated that kind of critical mass.
It's like the end of The Karate Kid. When you're twelve and you see some kid get a couple months of karate training in his spare time and then win a tournament full of kids who (1) have been doing it their whole lives, and (2) fight dirty, it's a very powerful emotional moment. But it's one you can't let yourself think too closely about or you'll just bust up laughing at the sheer absuridity of it all.
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posted
Baron, people in YOUNG repressive societies are more likely to rise up than those in societies where the regime has been in place for more than a generation.
Just like people in abusive relationships pretty much either leave at the first instance of abuse or end up staying far too long.
The point is, the longer you're in an unfavorable situation, the more likely you are to believe that it's the norm, and the less likely you are to do something to change it.
posted
(1) This clearly wasn't the first instance of repression, or even the hundreth. Any government who is convinced enough of their hold on a public's will that they've long since released a deadly biological weapon on significant numbers of their own people as a money-making scheme probably have a point.
(2) As I said, I can believe a few people wanting to rise up. What, in this situation, makes you believe that everyone would have risen up simultaneously.
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posted
Think pre-war Iraq. That was certainly a repressive society. Many of them had lost family members to Saddam. And the USA did a heck of a lot more than V ever did to incite a coup. But the fact is that a lot of people were comfortable with their lives. A lot of others just went about their lives in quiet resignation. And the minority who wanted to rise up knew it was impractical, even with the most powerful nation on Earth behind them (as opposed to a nut in a mask somewhere).
With all that we did to incite unrest in Iraq, we had to go in there and topple the government ourselves before even the hard-core anti-Saddamites dared join us. And after we completely dismantled the opressive regime they hardly joined the uprising unanimously, as we're still seeing much to our dismay.
So what is it about this society that makes is so radically different than Iraq and every other opressive regime in history?
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posted
For one thing, it's a movie. It's going to speed things up.
Secondly, this was a free London, used to freedom, that had a repressive government imposed on them. They welcomed it out of fear, but when the government became terrifying the populace was forced into action. Subtle goads like a playful terrorist who made the humorless government look like fools helped, and the thousands of masks provided a release for anarchic behavior that gave many of them a taste of freedom. Finally, the excessive force used against relatively harmless activities, culminating in the shooting of a little girl, resulted in widespread rioting.
This is not a society that has long been repressed under one regime or another, like the Russian or Muslim countries, when the new bosses never differ much from the old bosses. This was a society that knew freedom and representative government, a government that had to answer to its constituents.
There are already plenty of people complaining loudly about our enemies being treated in a fascist manner in this country. I assure you, if liberties here were curtailed in such a manner to the point where homosexuals and other undesirables were being "vanished" there would be an uprising no matter how damn powerful their spin was.
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posted
Then why hadn't there been one already? If this place was such a powder-keg (which it may have been in the comic book but did not appear to be in the movie), two questions come to mind.
Why would this 3-minute speech have been the stimulus to uprising?
And more importantly, if these people had such a hair-trigger, what about it would have convinced them to live another year under the iron fist of government before doing it?
posted
Why did the Boston Tea Party trigger a revolution? Why did the people of Petrograd suddenly start rioting in 1917? Why didn't the people of France storm the Bastille five years earlier, or ten years later?
Obviously those are simplistic. There were many factors that led up to every uprising in history. But there had to be some point when the people said "enough." In this highly romanticized story, it was hope and theatrics in a society that had repressed both.
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Ultimately, I think the killing of the Chancellor and his right hand man was what ended up allowing a revolution. It was that which prevented the soldiers from receiving an order to stop the protests. Presumably, had the government still been in control, the soldiers would have fought the crowd of masked men. Yes, there would have been quite a massacre, but there's no reason to believe it would have led to the downfall of the government any more than any other major protest does. However, when the troops failed to act, it became clear to everyone that the government no longer had control, and thus revolutionaries could revolt at will.
If Saddam and his advisors had been murdered, leaving no one in command of the government, spontaneous revolution probably could have occurred there too, if timed right then.
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posted
Because Britain over-reacted and punished Boston too severely for the Colonies' taste.
The point was, there were many different things that led to that uprising. But when you look up how it started, you hear about some guys dumping tea in a harbor. If that hadn't triggered something, another equally incidental event would have.
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posted
The same thought occured to me. In the government potrayed in the movie, all the power could be centralized in one room. Essentially, there appeared to be very little beuacracy. When that little beaucracy is eliminated, as was done, the government crumbles. The question of course, is who picks up the pieces?
EDIT: In response to Tres
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quote:The point was, there were many different things that led to that uprising. But when you look up how it started, you hear about some guys dumping tea in a harbor. If that hadn't triggered something, another equally incidental event would have.
True. I think I was getting at the fact that it was actually an action by the tyrant - one buttone pressed too many - that led to it. There were lots of things that could have done it, but the direct cause was an action of the tyrant, not the protestors.
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posted
I'm not saying that revolutions don't happen. I'm saying that V's actions could not possibly have incited the rebellion in that kind of society. We're not talking about people getting fed up and rioting independently. We're talking about a guy making a 3-minute speech. He could just as easily be a government spy as a revolutionary hero. He could just as easily be dead as alive. And yet every person in all of London is so moved by his speech that they wait a year and then, without any co-ordination amongst themselves, dress up like this stranger and storm the enemy stronghold. Not one person in all of England feels strongly enough about revolution to create a resistance movement, but every single person in London feels strongly enough about it to go to war unarmed dressed up like God-knows-who based on a broadcast that, by all available information, was made by a dead lunatic?
And it didn't have anything to do with the Chancellor being killed, either. When these people left their houses, the Chancellor was still alive. And when they got to Parliament, even the soldiers didn't know he'd been killed, so I don't know what difference it would have made to the revolutionaries.
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posted
I thought so, and kind of read them into the plot. The reaction to the Benny Hill-like sketch with the Chancellor (hysterical, by the way) and the reaction to the masks suggested it to me. But a montage might have been helpful.
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posted
My point about it being a young government is that yes, there was oppression going on for just under a generation, but it didn't seem like the black-bagging had gone on for more than...I'd say a decade, at least not on a large scale. Evey was twelve when her parents were taken away, wasn't she?
For all we know there were revolutionary cabals meeting in secret who took this opportunity to adapt a better symbol. All we know is we have a repressed society under increasingly harsh rule, with many citizens taken away without warning or explanation. We have a government preaching fear and "we know best." Odds are within a few years a revolution would have happened one way or another. Then we have the thing that repressive governments hate: someone making fun of them and getting away with it. Someone making them foolish and, worse, ineffectual, and getting away with it. This is the sort of thing that provides hope. For the next year, the government cracked down even harder, making V's words that much more meaningful. Here is what we voted for, here is what we welcomed in. Gordon's show wasn't particularly funny, but the fact that he actually did what Wasn't Allowed was cathartic. And then he disappeared, and the people saw again that they had no freedom, no rights, no liberty. And then the masks arrived. Clearly V was not dead, as the government had said he was. They were not in control anymore, even if in just this slight manner. Criminals and anarchists wore the mask and ran wild, and who's to say people didn't put one on in the privacy of their homes and get a taste of freedom. Remeber; it was mentioned several times in the movie, during the party member meetings before the Chancellor, that the citizens were talking about V more and more. You make it seem like he popped up once and then a year later everyone suddenly decided, "Hey let's go assault Parliament." When I watched the movie, I saw growing unrest. The harsher the government's reaction, the more appealing V appeared and the weaker the government appeared. When the girl was shot the riots began; not because of something V did, but because the tension of the situation broke and the people had had enough. And the masks provided something that made it that much easier to confront the soldiers in public; anonymity. If things went bad a rioter could duck around a corner, drop the mask and cloak, and be a normal bystander. Anonymity encouraged uprising where they might have been none if the rioters feared arrest and identification.
But enough of this. The movie worked for me, and the sight of thousands of Vs was an electric thrill, the only addition to the comic I felt was truly in the original spirit. Apparently it was too unlikely for you and I doubt anything I could say would change it.
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quote: For all we know there were revolutionary cabals meeting in secret who took this opportunity to adapt a better symbol.
I chose not to believe this because if it's true it's an example of cheap cinematic trickery that would have spoiled the whole movie, not just given me a little snicker at the ending. That would be the classic deus ex machina, like when the Enterprise gets in an inescapable situation and Geordi says something about subspace that saves the day, or when the fantasy character is confronted by the ultimate evil and suddenly casts a spell that overcomes it. Bringing something like that out in the end that the audience hadn't been informed of is classic bad storytelling, and I liked the movie enough not to believe that they'd pulled that trick.
quote: Gordon's show wasn't particularly funny, but the fact that he actually did what Wasn't Allowed was cathartic. And then he disappeared, and the people saw again that they had no freedom, no rights, no liberty.
Again, one of the most interesting things about the government in this dystopia was their control of the media. It had been established how easy it was for them to explain away things like the disappearance of a television host in a completely plausible way that would not give cause for unrest.
quote: Remeber; it was mentioned several times in the movie, during the party member meetings before the Chancellor, that the citizens were talking about V more and more.
This is part of what strains credibility. Sure, if there's a charismatic leader that has direct, constant contact with a group of people, I can understand that they'd keep talking about him for a year. But I can't even remember who Jon Stewart interviewed last week on The Daily Show. One short speech that has been convincingly explained away by an omnipresent media with no evidence to the contrary does not make people talk about it more and more over the course of a year until they're finally ready for a riot.
The coup itself wasn't what bothered me. It was the fact that they rallied the coup around a person that the government showed itself to be quite capable, from a PR standpoint, of dealing with. There wasn't any back-and-forth on the point in the movie to explain how V won in this respect. He made one statement, which was about as much trouble for the government as if Urkel had thrown sand in the face of Bruce Lee. Then he spent the rest of the movie bumping off some people he didn't like, building an elaborate and convenient faux-prison adjacent to his house, and getting down to the funky tunes in his basement. If he'd really wanted to incite unrest, he could have thrown the people the occasional bone, but he didn't seem too worried about it.
I won't say these people shouldn't have rioted, but I will say there's absolutely no reason anyone would have remembered V a year later with any more passion or clarity than we remember the dudes that sang "Who Let the Dogs Out."
quote: And the masks provided something that made it that much easier to confront the soldiers in public; anonymity. If things went bad a rioter could duck around a corner, drop the mask and cloak, and be a normal bystander.
Yeah, after they'd scooped up their lungs and intestines. When you're marching on a heavily armed military with nothing but a mask and a cloak, anonymity isn't high on your worry list.
Again, I liked the movie. But if the filmmakers wanted me to believe that an entire city rallied around some looney in a mask like the kids at the end of The Dead Poets Society, they could have given me a little something more to go on.
But, as you said, you've probably been a fan of the story for longer than most of us have known it existed. I'm sure I'll like Silent Hill when it comes out next month, despite any weaknesses, so I guess this would be a good place to agree to disagree.
quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: I won't say these people shouldn't have rioted, but I will say there's absolutely no reason anyone would have remembered V a year later with any more passion or clarity than we remember the dudes that sang "Who Let the Dogs Out."
Baha Men, or something like that, wasn't it?
And I see it plausible that all the people were waiting for was some sort of symbol, which was exactly what V was. They showed government posters having the "V" sprayed on them throughout the year, and also I remember the government referring to "The terrorist group 'V'". So either the government gave V a lot more credibility then he deserved, or there was other stuff going on, other people doing things in his name. Also, remember that the government said he was dead, and then still payed the utmost attention to his threats concerning Parliament. They showed very publicly that V was still out there. Perhaps if there had been no government attention payed to it at all past that one day, it would've blown over like the Baha Men, but imagine if the government had said the Baha Men were terrorists, had died, but were still a threat, and outlawed their music. I'd go out and get me a CD.
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posted
correct me if i'm wrong, but i got the impression that people didn't really believe the news. like when they were trying to explain away one of the deaths some guy in a bar said something along the lines of "can you believe this bullshit." so all of the PR that the gov't was trying to push on the people wasn't working.
regardless, i find it mildly ammusing that the riot at the end was what you found to be the most unbelievable part of the movie. i mean, the movie asked us to suspend disbelief on many occasions (which i willingly did). i don't see why, at the very end of the movie, you would go, "wait a minute, that couldn't happen" when almost nothing in the entire movie could have happened to begin with.
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quote:i don't see why, at the very end of the movie, you would go, "wait a minute, that couldn't happen" when almost nothing in the entire movie could have happened to begin with.
Because the thing at the end was the point of the movie - the idea that someone could spark such a revolution through those actions. If that's not believable, then the movie as a whole is not believable.
We all know getting bit by a radioactive spider isn't going to give you super powers. We suspend disbelief for that.
But if Peter, at the very end of the movie, were to decide to kill MJ to keep the Goblin from using her to get to him, no one would believe it.
I tend to think it worked, but there's definitely something different about the thousand Vs than the rest of the stuff we have to disbelieve.
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quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: V was willing to give his life to put power in the hands of the people. Osama is willing to give the lives of countless subordinates while he hides in a cave like a little bitch, with the ultimate goal of putting power into his own hands.
Osama Bin Laden reminds me less of V and more of Zapp Brannigan.
quote:Leela: Captain Brannigan, we really need to talk to you about our mission.
Zapp: Whatever it is, I'm willing to put wave after wave of men at your disposal.
posted
personally, i found it hardest to swallow the fascist gov't in the first place. i mean, just because there is a terrorist attack doesn't mean that the people will suspend all of their liberties and almost completely disband their gov't in order to protect themselves. i think there would have been other, more effective responses along the lines of forming alliances with other countries for protection. of course, the british gov't is the one that started the virus, but the people would have still looked elsewhere for help, instead of giving up all of their freedom. IMO of course
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quote:Originally posted by vonk: i don't see why, at the very end of the movie, you would go, "wait a minute, that couldn't happen" when almost nothing in the entire movie could have happened to begin with.
That's the thing, in 20 years or so, who's to say that stuff won't happen? Since it's set in the future, it could happen. There is no way to know for sure that it won't, therefore we suspend judgement on whether or not it is to be believed. But when we see something that strikes us as wrong, something that affronts our understanding of 'the way things work' in a time-less, universal sense, that's when we judge it as unbelievable. I saw the flood of Londoner's in mask's as improbable, but I was willing to suspend judgement on belief, again on the grounds that I don't know everything that was going on. As someone said, I suppose my mind filled in the blanks, and made it plausible, if not likely.
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posted
i guess i just didn't figure it to be that far in the future, to where there would be that many unknowns. i thought that it was based on the current political climate, with the war on iraq progressing and spreading into a world war (which i don't see taking 20 years to happen).
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quote:Originally posted by vonk: personally, i found it hardest to swallow the fascist gov't in the first place. i mean, just because there is a terrorist attack doesn't mean that the people will suspend all of their liberties and almost completely disband their gov't in order to protect themselves.
.....
I thought that the government in place in the movie was more of an extension of what was already there. Like maybe what would happen if the Christian Right busted out some...large machine guns, or something. All at once. The group itself would already have been there and been influential, but they would've all of a sudden gained a lot more oomf.
Like the government in Handmaid's Tale. In the story, I think, the religious group took over all at once and then started eroding away at people's rights, freezing women's bank accounts and whatnot.
posted
was the small group of people that were in meetings with the chancellor the parliament? correct me if i'm wrong, but i thought it was much larger than that and elected by the people. given, i don't know terribly much about the british gov't, but i didn't think what was illustrated in the movie was anything like what is in place now. i assumed it was a complete rearranging of the gov't powers in a relatively short amount of time with almost no complaint from the people, presumably because they were so affraid of the virus that they would accept absolutely anything at all.
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posted
It wasn't JUST the virus, though. There were all kinds of crazy things going on, and America was tearing itself apart, too.
And I don't remember if the group of people the chancellor met with were Parliament, but I do remember them saying that they'd created the office of Chancellor.
posted
some of the flashbacks that weren't part of the media protrayal mentioned america's war, but i thought that meant the war on iraq. but on the news they did say a bloody civil war was going on in america's midwest, but that could have been false.
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posted
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I do plan to see it. This week, probably. That said, I want to clarify something:
quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: Think pre-war Iraq. That was certainly a repressive society. Many of them had lost family members to Saddam. And the USA did a heck of a lot more than V ever did to incite a coup. But the fact is that a lot of people were comfortable with their lives. A lot of others just went about their lives in quiet resignation. And the minority who wanted to rise up knew it was impractical, even with the most powerful nation on Earth behind them (as opposed to a nut in a mask somewhere).
With all that we did to incite unrest in Iraq, we had to go in there and topple the government ourselves before even the hard-core anti-Saddamites dared join us. And after we completely dismantled the opressive regime they hardly joined the uprising unanimously, as we're still seeing much to our dismay.
So what is it about this society that makes is so radically different than Iraq and every other opressive regime in history?
An uprising took place after the first Gulf War. Saddam crushed it. Additionally, your example can't be extended to "every other oppressive regime in history," because there have been plenty of both uprisings and revolutions in human history.
I have no idea whether or not the movie is believable, because I have yet to see it, but I don't think your example works in any case.
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posted
I didn't mean that no one in history has ever revolted. But you'll see that if you keep reading past the post you quoted (or before the post you quoted, or even everything in the post you quoted)...
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posted
One thing to consider that might help with the suspension of disbelief over the end scene: Perhaps at first there was just a small group of legitimate revolutionaries that actually took to the streets that night. But then once this small crowd started forming many others started showing up as well. These secondary participants might be less bold revolutionaries, they might be more or less neutral participants that just want to see what's going to happen, and are enboldened by the anonymity offered by the masks etc... and various other reasons. Riots tend to grow exponentially once they start, not necessarily from people all supporting the riots, but just cause a crowd tends to draw more and more from every angle.
At the same time you can just look at it as this: it's a movie, and it made for a very powerful scene, if 3 people showed up instead of all london it wouldn't have been nearly as powerful.
What I think is an interesting discussion would be this: What would be better for the revolution overall? 1) The existing ending without violence that showed the government's weakness and failure to both stop V and stop the citizens from violating curfew etc... 2) A violent bloodbath that further galvanizes the general populous albeit at the cost of many individual lives.
Additional points that I thought were interesting about the movie and haven't been discussed in-depth here yet:
Is V a terrorist? He does work with fear as his main tool, but since he is trying to instill fear into the government, and ideally free the general populous from fear does that qualify him as a terrorist? (assume the ideal that he never actually hurt anyone but only destroyed property, except of course those government officials that "deserved it") Keep in mind that even if you remove the title of terrorist he would still be considered a vigilante.
I think it is an interesting look into how a person can be so consumed by an ideal so as to forget actual human companionship, and how the re-discovery of that interaction can serve to soften their will and/or galvanize it depending on the situation.
In that light: if you remind a terrorist that they have a wife and children at home is that likely to discourage them from a suicide bombing because they will be losing that personal connection, or will it make them more determined in order to create a "better world" for their loved ones?
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posted
I avoided reading too much of the other stuff because I'm avoiding spoiling the movie for myself. I did read the entire post I quoted, though.
However, you were still wrong to say that there was never a revolt in Iraq. There was. Again, I'm not disputing the validity of the point -- I can't, because I haven't seen the film. All I'm saying is that the logic in the post I quoted is predicated on an invalid example.
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posted
Show me where I said there was never a revolt in Iraq. I said before Gulf War II people weren't ready at that time to revolt just because some stranger (America) told them to. That was the analogy to the movie I was going for, and whatever had happened in their history wasn't relevant to the topic.
The time that they had revolted before was when we had an active troop presence in the area and they thought we had their back. Again, it took more than just us saying "go for it, dudes" to set them in motion.
But I've gone through all this before. It's there if you want to read it, and I'm not going to keep repeating myself.
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posted
It has been said that V's 3 minutes speech wouldn't get the response it did. The reason it is feasible is because V said things that the people already knew as facts. He told them things they already knew in their hearts.
Also, I’m sure it had occurred to many others to revolt, he simply gave them a means by which to revolt. The masks he provided served more than just the purpose of giving people a way to support their newfound cause, but also wearing a mask gives people a sense of anonymity, freeing them to do things they normally wouldn’t do, typically things of a violent nature (take the KKK for example).
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quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: So what is it about this society that makes is so radically different than Iraq and every other opressive regime in history?
Baron, I think this is the quote from you that is causing much of the disconnect.
I know you've indirectly revoked this statement by saying that you don't think every situation is the same and/or just like this, but your initial statement did indirectly claim just that.
It's a valid contention that there is some question as to what would cause a society to rise up against its oppressive government. Would further opression cause more or less active unrest? (will people's outrage outweigh their fear?) Is it easier to rise up against a newly formed government or an established one? etc...
I think each situation is going to be different depending on any number of circumstances, the history and current state of the area, the state of the rest of the world etc...
The earlier failed revolt in Iraq absolutely does have an impact on why this time around the populus may not have been as receptive. Yet it can't be the only factor, as failed revolts before the French revolution didn't stop it from succeeding when the real thing came along.
I think it would be best to accept that yes, there may be some doubt as to whether this actual event would happen irl, but one also has to accept that it IS a possibility. We get glimpses of this society in a very complicated movie that has plot jam packed in everywhere possible. Maybe it's intended that V actually made weekly broadcasts to the populus. Maybe there were already other subversive organizations that latched on to V as a figurehead for their freedom fighting. Maybe society was on the very edge of revolt already, and just needed that last straw of outrage/encouragement.
Even if V only ever made the one broadcast and just blew up the Bailey prior to the end it's obvious that those acts were enough to get people somewhat unsettled... throughout the main of the movie it is seen that people are growingly dissatisfied with the government (there is frequent "V" grafiti, people are less trusting of official news, and generally growing in unrest...)
Additionally, as someone brought up before that the government seemingly has a great control over the media and could mask things such as the death of the "good" talk show host just after his controversial episode. No matter how effective the coverup is, when immediately after such a public and political statement was made, if that individual dissapeared from the public it would be noticed and people would understand at least in part what was going on. Even if they claimed that he had just been fired, it might be enough to incense people.
Basically, we know there is a lot of other stuff going on in the background that we just don't have time to fit in the movie. If every facet of the government and civil unrest was layed out it would be 12 hours long and boring, if informative.
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quote:Originally posted by Baron Samedi: There was one thing I didn't buy about the film. They seem to have vastly underestimated the power of propaganda. I don't have nearly enough faith in the public to believe that they'd hear one speech and a year of media saturation later would be ready to march on a machine-gun bearing military encampment unarmed. We're talking about people who can't consistenly decide which American Idol contestant to get behind from one week to the next, and whose opinions on political leaders are as likely to come from a Saturday Night Live sketch or a forwarded email as actual research and critical analysis.
The people in the movie apparently watched the "British Television Network" constantly. After the first incident they saw boldface lies issued on TV as facts (later refuted by more of V's activity). If you recall, the BTC began the whole story with an absolute lie, that demolition crews were responsible for destroying the Old Bailey. When V hijacked the TV, he proved this absolutely false, and I imagine people noticed. You don't give them enough credit. Furthermore, they each were mailed a mask and cape through the "British Freight Company" (currently Royal Mail?). By the end, it is pretty clear that the government is lying to them and is not to be trusted.
quote:95% of the people that saw the broadcast would have forgotten it within a week. The remainder would either have become convinced that V was evil and dangerous or would have been too scared to try anything.
No offense, but... no.
quote:I honestly don't believe that any 3-minute speech could have generated that kind of critical mass.
The whole point was that it wasn't a three minute speech that should make people rise up, it's the idea behind that, which is stronger than one man, stronger than one speech. The people of London surely on some level felt repressed, with the CCTV surveillance, curfews, soldiers everwhere. A three minute speech can just be the spark on a tinderbox of pent-up feeling.
quote:Think pre-war Iraq. That was certainly a repressive society. Many of them had lost family members to Saddam...But the fact is that a lot of people were comfortable with their lives. A lot of others just went about their lives in quiet resignation.
Iraq was a secular society. They weren't under Sharia Law like Afghanistan. While some terrible atrocities did occur--particularly to minorities--most people, like you said, were comfortable with their lives. In any case, the situation there and the fictional England in V are completely separate cases.
quote:And more importantly, if these people had such a hair-trigger, what about it would have convinced them to live another year under the iron fist of government before doing it?
The whole point of the yearlong wait was that England needed time to boil to a revolution point. There was no hair-trigger that V instantly snapped with one speech.
quote: We're talking about a guy making a 3-minute speech. He could just as easily be a government spy as a revolutionary hero.
V would have been a lousy government agent for a government so bent on controlling the unified message delivered to the people. V's actions were disastrous to that strategy, revealing its lies to the populace. Some--like Evey, who worked at BTN--already knew that the news was full of lies: "she blinks a lot when she's reporting a story that she knows is a lie."
quote:Dagonee: Were a whole lot of publicity-gaining stunts from the comic book left out of the movie?
Some. The order of events was shifted (Parliament was attacked first, then Old Bailey, then the newsroom takeover 6 months later).
quote:Baron again: It had been established how easy it was for them to explain away things like the disappearance of a television host in a completely plausible way that would not give cause for unrest.
Not in the context of the public KNOWING that they're being lied to.
quote:I won't say these people shouldn't have rioted, but I will say there's absolutely no reason anyone would have remembered V a year later with any more passion or clarity than we remember the dudes that sang "Who Let the Dogs Out."
You don't think you'd remember Osama bin Laden's face a year after 9/11 if the media didn't keep reminding you? C'mon, man!
quote:vonk: personally, i found it hardest to swallow the fascist gov't in the first place. i mean, just because there is a terrorist attack doesn't mean that the people will suspend all of their liberties and almost completely disband their gov't in order to protect themselves. i think there would have been other, more effective responses along the lines of forming alliances with other countries for protection. of course, the british gov't is the one that started the virus, but the people would have still looked elsewhere for help, instead of giving up all of their freedom. IMO of course
The US Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act just after 9/11 in such a hurry that they didn't even read it. What if a hundred thousand people had died?
Also, what England turned into after the St. Mary's virus could hardly be called a "disbanding."
quote:It has been said that V's 3 minutes speech wouldn't get the response it did. The reason it is feasible is because V said things that the people already knew as facts. He told them things they already knew in their hearts.
I think I like you, Bubba the Hutt.
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quote:vonk: i don't really think any connection between the government in "V" and the american government, or any connection between V and OBL was intended. it was a movie about a fascist government that was overthrown.
The way I look at it, there was a definite intention on the part of the filmmakers to implicate the current America to some degree.
First, in Dietrich's gallery, you can see a poster of an American flag and a British flag joined together with a swastika and the words "Coalition of the Willing."
The movie makes reference to America's war in Iraq, as well as "future" wars in Syria and Kurdistan.
When people are disappeared in the movie, the police use black hoods similar to those made famous by the Abu Graib torture scandal.
A couple references to "Yellow" terrorist alerts
In the film, leading members of the Party own stock in the pharmaceutical companies that produce the cure/vaccine for their own created virus. Several top officials in the Bush administration own big portions of the big-pharma companies responsible for anthrax, smallpox, and the avian flu vaccine. (In particular, Donald Rumsfeld, the former CEO of G.D. Searle, a company that has since been sold to Monsanto. Rumsfeld also owns millions of dollars of stock in the company that produces Tamiflu, the avian flu vaccine that has not been shown to be effective, yet is still being pushed.)
The pill-popping pundit image seems a lot like Rush Limbaugh (coincidence?: Rush Limbaugh's show has been sponsored by "Clean Shower" shower cleaner)
The original story was a reaction to Margaret Thatcher's government, but the film clearly needs to be viewed in a contemporary context. I have a feeling that, as I've only seen the film once, I missed a bunch of relevant tiny details from the Wachowski brothers. The backgrounds of the panels in the comic were full of hints, red herrings, and allusions to literature and culture. I don't think the Wachowski brothers would have done it any differently. In fact, I wish I could compile a list of all the items in the Gallery of Shadows (and Dietrich's stash).
Remember remember the fifth of November Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder, treason Should ever be forgot...
The movie doesn't really, as some pundits have claimed it does, glorify terrorism. It presents the viewer with a character in V and allows him or her to judge, just as Evey is forced to judge him after he reveals that he has been her captor. Evey makes the decision to accept his idea and the "freedom" he has given her. In an interview, the comic's author said:
quote:...At which point I decided that that wasn't what I wanted to say. I actually don't think it's right to kill people. So I made it very, very morally ambiguous. And the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history. I was very pleased with how it came together. And it was a book that was very, very close to my heart.
One bit of advice from the movie: "People shouldn't be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of their people."
As a couple of you (Mostly the Baron), have said, you doubt that the public would have come to watch. Probably a sizable number people would stay home, given such a choice. I would go though, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one.
quote:ChrisBridges: Of course, it also reinforces the pro-conservative, anti-Bush rhetoric that's becoming more and more pervasive these days.
I just wanted to say that I didn't notice that you had said this my first time reading through the thread, and I wanted to give you a . These days a lot of cool conservatives aren't behind Bush.
(edited because I misnamed one character)
[ March 22, 2006, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: Nato ]
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posted
I honestly don't believe that any 3-minute speech could have generated that kind of critical mass.
"Four score and seven years ago..."
In fewer than 300 words delivered over two to three minutes, Abraham Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality and redefined the Civil War in a speech given at the dedication of a cemetary where he wasn't even the main speaker, and 243 years later people are still inspired by it.
Believe what you like. But I'd appreciate it if you'd stop underestimating people.
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Well said!
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I'm being brainwashed!![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I did read the entire post I quoted, though. 
