And by “Fictional Media”, I mean “Hollywood”, so let’s not hear nothing about, “YEAH, I HATE CNN!” ‘Cuz then I’ll have to diss Fox. C’mon.

***

So maybe I’m just a cynical bastard and all, but I get sick — not physical sick, not quite anyway — when I’m watching some behind-the-scene making-of featurette of the latest blockbuster and all the director, stars, and crew can talk about it how they’re trying to make a “work of art” blah blah blah.

Look. I’ll admit it — I saw Armageddon. And I liked it (although it was the last Michael Bay film to get the Snay Seal of Approval). I even own the Criterion Collection DVD with like ten gazillion special features. As a director, I think Michael Bay has an artistic vision, particularly in some of the truly beautiful shots that appear in all of his films. But if you were to ask me, “Snay, is Armageddon a work of art?” I’d have to say, “No, Armageddon is a work for profit.”

And that really goes for any big box-office blockbuster that the studios seem to ride all their hopes and dreams on. You can have artistic directors who make unartsy films — Brian Singer’s The Usual Suspects? Artistic. Superman? Not so much. John Sayles is one of my favorite “artistic” directors, producing some really great films like Lone Star and Silver City that are, indeed, works of fucking art. Chris Nolan’s Memento is art. Batman Begins? A beautiful, well-written film, one of the favorite last year, but artsy? No.

Anyway. So a lot of the time, I think Hollywood is blowing smoke up its own ass. I’d love to see some star just come out in an interview and say, “I’m not making this film because I loved the script, or I love the director’s vision … I’m making it because I’ve got a mansion I need to pay the mortgage on.” But I’m just digressing here, setting you up, if you will, for the main body of the post.

Namely …

V for Vendetta. The special features, the documentaries and featurettes and interviews with the writers, the producers, the actors, who all crow about how wonderful and daring they are for making a film about a terrorist so soon after September 11th. How they’re getting us all to sympathize with V, who they equate as the Osama bin Laden to his sometime-in-the-future times.

But Osama bin Laden isn’t a sympathetic character. And V is. And why is V so sympathetic? Because he’s fighting a fascist government that the audience quickly finds itself rooting against. I understand that in the Alan Moore comics where V for Vendetta originated, V was a lot more, er, indiscrete in his choice of targets, often blowing up random people, as opposed to slicing and dicing rapists and thugs wearing government uniforms.

It reminds me, actually, of Deep Space Nine, the third Star Trek spinoff, which boasted as a lead, the “terrorist” character Kira Nerys — who of course, the audience sympathized with because her world, for fifty years, had been invaded, occupied, and raped of natural resources while its population was enslaved by the evil vicious reptillian Cardassians. Kira, as a resistance fighter (oop, sorry, meant “terrorist”), liked to kill the evil Cardassian occupiers, but I don’t think the audience ever held her terrorist past against her, because, wait, what’s the phrase? One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter?

Like Kira, V isn’t a terrorist — he’s a freedom fighter! He’s fighting an evil, oppressive, fascist government, and his big act of revenge is blowing up a Parliment building that isn’t even used anymore because there’s no fucking Parliment to need it! Anyway, imagine V as a Jew who escaped a concentration camp in the late ’30’s, who returns to Berlin to combat the fascist Nazis by blowing up shit and playing loud music. Who — aside for a Nazi — would call him a terrorist?

Likewise, V is being described as a terrorist? Sure, by the fascist government in the film. It’s hard for the audience to see him that way, though, particularly since the true terror in the film is committed by the government’s henchmen. There’s a point in the film where V denounces England’s population for being responsible for their fascist government — for standing by and doing nothing as civilization descended into hell, their share of responsibility is extreme (”By the time they came for me, there was no one else left?”) and they deserve the government they’ve let themselves get. Well, why not make the fucking point and blow some of ‘em up and see some of the civilians viewing V as a terrorist, instead of sitting around their couches smiling when he’s on TV? (It doesn’t help that a lot of the movie poster art tags the film as, “Freedom Forever!”, as opposed to, “Terrorism Forever!”)

It’s hard to believe V’s a terrorist when everyone except the fascists seem to like and approve of him. Oh, yeah. And when all he does is kill fascists and blow up empty buildings. I could get into the character as a terrorist, I could probably like him too, considering the government he’s up against. But never the chance are we given to see him as a truly uncompromising individual … just a masked vigilante with a penchant for stringing words together in pretty sentences (and, oh yes, killing fascists, which, for the record, I heartily approve of*).

PS - I’m writing this while listening to the 1812 Overture. Kaaaaafuckingboom!

*The only good fascist is a dead one. Unless we’re playing Civilization 3 and I’m the fascist in question.

The other day, watching a CNN bit about the police action/conflict/war going on between Israel and Lebanon, the reporters began discussing the proposed cease fire, then mentioned how the US wasn’t thrilled with it, but would accept it. And the first thought through my mind was, “as long as the Israelis and the Lebanese are cool with it, ain’t that all that matters?” Really, let’s be blunt here, what business is it of the United States, anyway? Yeah, I know, every nation is up in every other nation’s business, and that’s the accepted way of things for centuries and will be for centuries to come. Fine.

What isn’t acceptable, and what will never be acceptable, is for authors to get together and try to pressure another author into doing something they don’t like. Take, for example, the news bit that John Irving and Stephen King asked JK Rowling not to kill Harry Potter in the upcoming seventh book, the final of the series.

“I don’t want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls,” King said in a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle’s effort to kill off fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Pressure from fans eventually led Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes, who was found in a later story to have survived.

Uh. Look, I’ll be honest here, despite devouring books like Cartman devours chicken, I can’t recall ever hearing of John Irving. What has he written? And as for Stephen King, dude, you haven’t written a good book since … well, it’s been a good decade or so since anything of yours I’ve read has gotten more than an “okay” out of me (even Cell wasn’t all that great). Maybe you two, instead of being all uppity and shit about who JK Rowling is killing off, should put your brain power to work and try and figure out why either I’ve never heard of you, or haven’t liked anything you’ve written since, what, Needful Things?

I am a twenty-seven year old adult male. I read voraciously. And I love the Harry Potter series. I’ve got the books. I’ve got the movies. I’ve even got a seven-foot tall Lego model of Hogwarts in my living room. Maybe it’s the inner child in me, wanting out. Maybe its because the books are as good as any I’ve read for an adult audience. I wasn’t happy when the major character who died in book six died, but I understood the purpose of his death, the effect it would have on Harry and the book’s readers. I don’t know who will die in book seven, but should it be Harry, what else is it but the end of the hero’s journey?

I don’t know why I’m bothering. By the time book seven comes out I’ll probably be married with five kids.

My home defense consists of two loyal and valuable defenders of the apartmentdom: Sergeant of the Felines, Guy; and loyal Scout/Tracker Tippy.

So I got home from a happy hour yesterday evening (very good to meet you & your coworkers, Charissa!) put my feet up and started watching the excellent V for Vendetta. Suddenly I noticed that my cats were both acting very peculiar, and in a manner rarely displayed in my apartment. There was only one thing this could mean.

Invasion!

And, as it turned out, invasion personified by a cockroach running around my carpet. I haven’t seen one of those since last summer, and, really, I coulda gone another summer without seeing ‘em again too. This was also puzzling given I’d just vaccumed the living room that afternoon. Seriously … double-you-tee-fucking-eff. The cats were totally on their game, though, as this clearly lost cockroach tried to figure out how to get back out of my place, as the cats anticipated its movements and stalked around and ahead of and behind it.

And refused to pounce. Or paw. Or eat.

Clearly, they’re losing their fucking touch and forgot their oath. (Y’know. “Will eat insects”).

Anyway, I grabbed a shoe with one hand and smashed the cockroach into the carpet (this after I squealed like a girl and put my feet up and shot the cats evil looks because, really, cockroaches = disgusting).

Genocide against people is bad. Genocide against cockroaches should be law.

(I’m very upset with the lack of attack that my feline anti-insect, anti-rodent, defense force displayed. Those animals shall, sadly, be missing their weekly catnip ration).

I’ve thought a lot, lately, about a buddy from high school, whose parents had been Cuban refugees. I haven’t seen or thought about Sam A. in years, but with the questions about Castro all over the news, how could I help but remember his passionate hatred for the man and the regime which had split his family in two?

I remember a political cartoon many years ago, depicting every US President in office while Castro held the reigns in Cuba. Each President was saying the same thing, “Castro? He’ll die any day now.”

And now it looks like it might have finally happened — of course, the irony is, Fidel Castro dies, his brother Raoul Castro moves in to power, so then US Presidents can keep saying, “Castro? He’ll die any day now.”

But, uh, I can’t help but think all this speculation over the future of Cuba is just going to lead to disappointment when Castro — Fidel — shows up all healed and cheerful. “Oh, did I make you think I was dead? I’m such a bastard!”

Yes. But for different reasons there, Fidel.

“Beneath this mask there is an idea. And ideas are bulletproof.”

**

I’m watching V for Vendetta … saw it when it first came out, loved it. It’s the story of an England under the sway of a dictator whose rise to power mirrors in many ways Hitler’s — at first, through democratic channels, then the use of biological weapons on the English people as an excuse to consolidate his powers, self-promotion to a high rank, then the rounding-up of the country’s “undesireables.” Years into this fascist rule, a mysterious individual known only as V (presumeably named after Britain’s WWII slogan — V for Victory!) shows up, wearing a black cape and a Guy Fawkes mask, speaking poetically, determined to shake up the country out of its freedom-hating existance (an existance he blames on every citizen who stood by, knowing what was going on, and not doing anything about it).

It’s impossible to miss the political messages in the movie. It’s a very, I think, libertarian movie, about the dangers of granting national leadership too much power, and too little oversight. Even though the comic it’s based on was released many, many years ago, the film remains relevant as we find ourselves fighting a vague “war against terror” with no possible end in sight, with our government demanding more and more power, and revealing less and less.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to write this much — again! — on this movie, but it’s hard (for me) not to see it and tap my feet and feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. It’s a great movie, with rousing themes and excellent music and kickass battle scenes … but most important, an overriding sense of fear and dread, with just a hint — a small, vague hint — of hope.

Aaaaanyway.

So I bought the DVD. I splurged and went for the 2-disc special edition. As I watch it — right now, V’s making his way through Creedy’s security men, as they’ve all run out of bullets — I can’t help but notice something I remember from seeing it at the Rotunda. Namely, the sound mixing could’ve used a little tweaking, particularly in the early sections of the film, where over the score and sound effects, it can be difficult to hear some of V’s dialogue. You really gotta strain.

(The paragraph you just read was what I intended to write when I sat down to write this post, but the movie is so great I couldn’t help but write a bit more).