V for kick George Bush in the face

I just finished watching V for Vendetta, a movie that, for all its faults, still has something valuable to say about the appropriateness of sabotage and property destruction for political aims. I'm not going to launch into my take on that subject with all its Kantian vs. utilitarian dilemmas and its philosophical intricacies. (Nor do I really think that the U.S. is now, or will resemble, the kind of world in which the movie is set.)

If I directed the film - (the sequel is MINE!!) - I would spend more time developing an atmosphere of complacency and expounding on that theme, which would make it much more relevant to our present circumstance and therefore more powerful and worthwhile. The movies (or books, or whatever) I enjoy most are often those that make me question my sense of reality, and in presenting the population more explicitly as controlled by complacency rather than fear - and I mean really evoking the numbess and the ignorant indifference to extremism - then it would lead American viewers to pause and say, "Damn, that shit is happening NOW to US!". Of course it has that effect anyway (I think): by presenting a thoroughly dramatized, overembellished dystopian mirror of our society, in truth SO different from how we live, we more clearly consider our own state, and wonder "Is this going to be it?"

People should leave the theaters, or in my case, Chris Huntemann's basement, having felt shocked out of their complacent acceptance and harshly confronted with the utter seriousness of what is going on now in America - not just mildly pleased that they got to see someone use computer graphics to blow up Parliament to the music of Tchaikovsky.