KZBlog

One of the great things about art is that it is seen in context. I just saw V for Vendetta. I’ve read many comments on it, and I gather many are considering this movie in light of the current war and administration–incidentally I love the idiots on IMDB message boards claiming it can’t be about Bush because it’s based on an earlier graphic novel and set in England.

And I sat today in a movie theater in a nation with the adopted slogan, “Evolution not Revolution.” A nation in which people attacked the opposition candidate for President with bricks because they didn’t want him to cause instability. Whose neighbors, and close kin, underwent a revolution last year that, when the smoke cleared, was apparently about one group of powermongers swapping places with another, and letting the criminals gain even more control. Where people stormed the Office of the President and lay waste to it, while the President just disappeared and let them. And there was chaos for a few days and no one knew what was happening, rumors spread, fear was visible and even now people are afraid to go there.

Whose other neighbors, and close kin, spawn and spawned fighters and revolutionaries for the Taliban. Rumor has it the secret service boils suspects alive. Not so long ago there, soldiers fired on a crowd of possibly innocent unarmed protestors, believing them to be Muslim extremists bent on taking over the government.

And I was in a nation in which it is illegal to dishonor the President or his family. A group of people outraged by a British comedian who makes stupid jokes about them and insults their traditions and their President, daring to use his name. In which the Stephen Fry sketch is literally completely unthinkable–a newspaper was closed down after showing a picture of the President in his underwear and other newspapers have been effectively shut down due to heavy court fines for slander against Ministers and MPs.

I saw it with a group of people where many may have had relatives disappeared under the USSR. Or who died in the Great Patriotic War because they were sent to fight without supplies, without even the luxuries that an American or British trench might have. Some of them may have been through exactly what V put Evey put through. Possibly some of them live here because Stalin loaded up their grandpa or mama and put them on a train one night without explanation and shipped them here.

A nation that has spent millions and millions of dollars to build a new shining capital which is presented as the symbol of the nation and the power that will bring the country and its people into the world stage. In a city of 500,000 where almost everyone works for the government or has a close relative who works for the government. Who know that government meetings don’t really happen in dark rooms with anonymous videoscreens. Who know that the President does not talk directly to Chief Inspectors and Chief Inspectors don’t go running through the street with guns to bust the bad guys. Who in short know that the government is made up of people. Some of whom are corrupt, some of whom are wicked powerful, and some of whom are just guys.

From their point of view, I imagine (and this is a dangerous assumption) that this movie was truly subversive, and not in a good way. V was clearly psycho and while the government was certainly overbearing and extreme in its reaction, the general principle that stability is worth sacrificing a little freedom holds. Blowing up buildings is mad–Parliment and Big Ben? Many Kazakhs would give their eye teeth to gaze upon them and walk the streets of London. Masses of people walking the street in V masks is totally unrealistic, unless he paid them or unless they thought they would get something out of it.

I am not trying to be self-righteous and I hope to be able to discuss this film with people here and not just play bad anthropologist. Except for a few laughs at some of the violence (you know that “damn, that was bad ass” reaction), the only reaction I heard was the theater collectively sucking in its breath when V said, “The people should not be afraid of the government. The government should be afraid of the people.” I can only imagine some were thinking, “What a load of crap!’ and some were thinking, “We don’t need revolution. Why drive people to march in the streets and blow things up?”

It would be very interesting to interview a cross-section of Americans and Kazakhstanians and compare their reactions to this film.