V

I watched V for Vendetta at Boston Common today and am currently also 3/4 through the comic. The story is set in an authoritarian UK where surveillance ala Mao's China (only alot more high-tech) is the norm. The government exerts total control over the people and does so by creating a constant atmosphere of fear and having a monopoly over information. Our anti-hero is "Codename: V", a vigilante on a quest to free the population from government control by first of all making them aware of their own captivity (sounds very Marx eh?).

I found the movie itself rather disjointed and probably appreciated it more because I've read most of the comic. In terms of the storyline, some changes have been made in the interests of time and clarity. For example, Evey is a little more messed up in the comic, but that would have been pretty hard to flesh out within 2hrs. Nonetheless, it is still a pretty good film though I would recommend waiting for the DVD instead.

One of the most quoted lines from the movie has been "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people" (an adaptation from Jefferson). In both the movie and the comic, V states that people are to be held responsible for their governments. If a despotic government remains in power, it is the people's fault since they do not do anything about it. While this may sound like a nice sound bite, I wonder if a government in perpetual fear of its people will lead to anything more than just populist politics which pander to whatever is in fashion at the time.

Last week I read a book for class called The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria in which he challenges the idea that democracy is an unequivocal good. He cites the infamous example of Nazi Germany as a testament to how democracy can result in less than desirable situations, and also points out that slavery was democratically instituted. Far from being anti-democratic, Zakaria's point is that there can be such a thing as too much democracy and that this tension between democracy and constitutional liberalism still persists today, even in America.

I don't think that people should be afraid of their government, but neither should the government be afraid of its people. There has to be a middle ground and advocating either extreme is probably not helpful in the long-run.