Speaking of which, and other gunpowder plots:

Woe worth, woe worth ye, false Scotland
That ever thou has wrought a slight
For the fairest prince that e'er there wast
Thou slaughest under a cloud at night.

-- Earl Bothwell

Ahh, the heady days of religious bigotry; the days when simple, God-fearing Protestants still worried that every single Catholic in the world was under the direct control of the Pope, and every single crime ever committed by a Catholic was immediate cause to condemn the entire religion as a threat to free-thinking people everywhere.

How far we've come.

Ahh, the heady days of religious bigotry; the days when simple, God-fearing Americans worried that every single Muslim in the world was under the direct control of Osama bin Laden, and every single crime ever committed by a Muslim was immediate cause to condemn the entire religion as a threat to free-thinking people everywhere.

How far we've come, indeed.

heh, Indeed.

That's from V for Vendetta, right?

(I'm kidding!)

The irony is so thick in here that if you spun the whole thread you could generate enough current to run the blog by itself; and then where would we all be, eh?

That's all very well, but how do you explain about "gunpowder treason and plot" to your three-year-old cousin who's made friends with the Guy and won't let you throw it on the bonfire?

"That's from V for Vendetta, right?"

That was the thing that always bugged me about the movie, the implicit Guy Fawkes was right interpretation which I suppose nobody meant to be there.

The Australian joke has it that Guy Fawkes was the last man to enter Parliament with honest intent.

Penny for Giuliani:

Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
I was there, I was there, I was there
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
don't you forget about me, don't you
forget about me
hey hey hey
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
I am calling my wife because
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,
don't you, forget about me
donnnn't you, forget about me
hey hey hey hey
Remember, remember the 11th September,
Remember, remember the 11th September,

...every verse, same as the first...

In the 1920s a rumour swept through a small town in Indiana that the Pope was going to come down on the train from Chicago (what the Pope was doing in Chicago was unexplained). The local Klan (the Indiana Klan was the biggest in the US) organised a necktie party to go down to the railway station when the Chicago train came in. No Pope, of course, but a travelling salesman from Chicago had a very nerve-wracking few minutes.

That was the thing that always bugged me about the movie, the implicit Guy Fawkes was right interpretation which I suppose nobody meant to be there.

I haven't read the book - I keep meaning to - but I suspect Alan Moore very much meant that interpretation to be there. In the 80s he wouldn't have been the only person to advocate (seriously or not) blowing up the Queen and the Lords and the Thatcher government.

When I saw the movie (in the US, as it happened) I was very impressed that even though V. wasn't the most sympathetic character, his arguments were given plenty of space. I'd expected that aspect to be rather more soft-peddled.

Also, it's obligatory to mention in threads like this that in Lewes (East Sussex) every year they still burn an effigy of the Pope on November 5th. An old (2004) article from the BBC here.

Having been brought up Catholic, I am still a bit bothered by this. Although apparently now it has moved on to general right-wing provocation (which the BBC calls "not politically correct") - ie. burning gypsies and Labour ministers. So that's all right then.

bryan @ #8: Why do you suppose that no-one intended to imply that Guy Fawkes was right? He tried to kill the King, destroy the Government and Parliament and seriously injure the aristocracy. All the good bits of Cromwell without the anti-catholic baggage.

candle said (#12):
I haven't read the book - I keep meaning to - but I suspect Alan Moore very much meant that interpretation to be there. In the 80s he wouldn't have been the only person to advocate (seriously or not) blowing up the Queen and the Lords and the Thatcher government.

Thinking back on the book (I haven't seen the movie)... yes, Moore did intend that interpretation, at least within the context of the story[*]. But I think he also intended a certain amount of ambiguity -- V is not really a hero in any conventional sense, and we're (perhaps) meant to be a bit disturbed to the degree that we support his actions.

[*] Not being British, I probably didn't pay enough attention to the specific historical resonances. So if the question is specifically "Was Moore arguing that Guy Fawkes, the historical person, was right?" -- I don't know.

But I think he also intended a certain amount of ambiguity...

Yes, I think you're right. I said it badly, but I meant that Moore intended V to argue that Guy Fawkes was right, while making him someone whose opinion the reader doesn't necessarily trust. Making people think through the question, in other words. And I thought the film kept that aspect very well. [Reminder: I haven't read the book. I've just read a lot *about* it. I should probably leave it to other people to talk about this.]

And yeah, I don't mean Fawkes' historical motivations so much as the right to violent resistance in certain circumstances. Which I suppose romanticises or exaggerates the Gunpowder Plot somewhat, but I suppose that's been happening since the day itself.

Not so much by God's providence, as by the letter the conspiritors sent to friendly MPs suggesting they might like to be somewhere else on that day. No wait...

You might want to check out Remember, Remember the Fifth of November by James Sharpe.

Jim did a very good job of convincing me that this particular ryhme should be allowed to die. The site you linked to neglected to mention that November 5 was an excuse for Catholic-bashing (physically) well into the 1950s.

Most people in this country use as a guy of whichever public figure is most loathed at any given time. Mrs. T was very popular or a while.

14: Not really. Cromwell certainly didn't want to destroy Parliament! And Fawkes wasn't a republican - he wanted a Catholic monarch, Princess Elizabeth, on the throne as a puppet. What he would have got would have been, probably, an oppressive Protestant ascendancy, with far more anti-Catholic policies.

hmm, maybe the impression that he was right was intended.

I suppose that the thing I minded was that nothing was put forward to argue why he was right, the impression was something of a poor freedom fighter back in those dark times when they did all sorts of nasty stuff, and maybe you were supposed to think "gee, I wonder why he was doing what he did, oh I don't know he probably was Scottish and just wanted to yell Freeeeeeeddddom! very loud or some such wonderful thing. Gosh I bet I would have agreed with also of his aims, fighter against tyranny that he was, also that blond really really loved him, he was marvelous. "

(By Kevin Wald, to "Try to Remember")

Try to remember the Fifth of November,
    A day of powder, plot, and treason.
Try to remember the Fifth of November,
    When Guy once tried to do MPs in.

More...

(This is the same guy who crossed Xena with Pirates of Penzance.)

I liked V for Vendetta, right up to the point where they show the beneficial side of torture as applied to Natalie Portman's character, at which point, it was complete bullocks.

Because there is no beneficial side to torture.

Did you miss the fact that V was batshit crazy, Greg? And I think reducing that part of the story to showing "the beneficial side of torture" is really doing a disservice. It was incredibly powerful in the graphic novel.

Although given you refer to Evie as "Portman's character" I'm guessing you only saw the movie.

But V was also batshit crazy in the film; it just wasn't played up so much. Keep in mind that one point of that whole sequence, from V's point of view, was to see if he had to kill Evie or if he could let her go secure that she would die before giving up his location. If she had broken under his torture he would have executed her rather than letting her go and risking his lair being compromised.

After that point in the story, Evie is a little bit nuts as well. Although that's simplifying things at least as much as Greg did, I suppose.

It's complicated; read the graphic novel.

Two years ago, Bellatrys pointed out that the fifth of November included exactly an instance of the "ticking bomb" torture scenario. Damn, I didn't know that!

Greg at 22, I intensely disliked V for Vendetta the movie for the same reason. I also did not like the implication that experiencing great suffering (as V did) would drive one so crazy that it could lead one into the sort of darkness of soul which would allow one to adopt torture as a tactic. (We weren't told that V had tortured cats as children or exhibited any other form of psychopathic behavior, that I recall.) AFAIK, it just ain't so.

I didn't know that it was also a graphic novel. Anyone else want to express an opinion here, besides David Bilek (thank you, David, for the suggestion) as to whether I should read it?

Lizzy L... I didn't care for the movie either and said so in "joining the omelette".

V for Vendetta the book had more bite, because it came from the era of Margaret Thatcher, and was a reaction and a challenge to that. How far dare you go to combat tyranny? Is violence, torture and killing necessary for some future greater good?

The movie played more like a Batman fantasy, with British fascists taking the place of supervillains, or the Nazis in an Indiana Jones flick.

They tried to give it a bit more substance than that, but the Warchowski (sp?) brothers use these germs of ideas and set up explosions. It really never investigated anarchy, or dissent, but that would have been a different movie.

I heartily recommend the graphic novel of V for Vendetta. Highly thought-provoking.

Not only for those of us who lived under Thatcher in the early 80's, when the riots did periodically make it look as if folk with nothing more to lose had hit upon the notion of destroying the rotten system so something new and better could be built on the ruins.

For those interested in a wider examination of the Elizabethan repression of Catholicism, complete with torture and its consequences, as well as the Gunpowder plot, I can recommend God's Secret Agents by Alice Hogge.

And as far as that book relates to the current Islamophobic war on terror? Like whoever-it-was said, those who do not remember their history are condemned to repeat it (or something similar, you know what I mean).

Lizzy L @ #25: you don't have to be driven batshit crazy to adopt torture as a tactic; check out that nice Mr. Mukasey.

V for Vendetta isn't a book for everyone*, but is more interesting than the film. One thing the film doesn't get across very well is that we can't be sure if there is anyone human left under the mask. V has certainly gone mad (as a side effect of the medical experiments more than the torture) but how mad is he? He believes that he was set free when everything** was stripped away from him in the camp; this is the only way he knows to set people free.

And of course, V isn't a hero; he's a monster created by the State (both literally and metaphorically).

* If you want Alan Moore for everyone I'd recommend The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (although you should note that there is no film. There is no film. There is no film.)
** Except the last inch

Does anyone else here hear the words "explosion" and "Guy" and think of Guy Wicker of General Technics?

Randolph: Thanks for the bellatrys link; it's a very nice piece indeed. I just wanted to add that I was uncomfortable too with V-as-torturer in V for Vendetta (the movie), but I took it as the moment when we were supposed to realise that he *wasn't* in fact a sympathetic Batman-style freedom fighter but a dangerous obsessive. Mind you, I can see Lizzy L's point that the psychology is a bit unconvincing.

I was actually disappointed in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, too. I didn't like the way it fell back on comic-book cliches; but then I like my adventure stories understated. Example: I'm somene who thought there was far too much kung-fu in Buffy.

So probably you shouldn't listen to me.

I loved V for Vendetta (the movie). I had serious problems with some of it, but not with the terrible things V did to Evie. He wasn't supposed to be entirely sympathetic. Or entirely UNsympathetic, which is why the movie is IMO such a gem. Ambiguity is rare these days.

I think the circumstances in which that story is set do justify violent resistance. They justify NONviolent resistance even more, of course, and the vast majority of people in the movie did that nonviolent resistance, and it worked. The thing that's really troubling about the movie is that they needed this violent lunatic to get them to organize the nonviolent resistance.

I love being troubled in that way. Makes me think. I'm generally a nonviolent person, and I continually struggle with the issue of what I think would justify my taking up arms.

After seeing the movie, I really wanted to get hundreds of people in Guy masks to march on the White House. But the movie wasn't popular enough to make the masks easily available, and also we'd probably just be shot by Bushista police.

Lizzy L 25: I don't think that either the movie or the book meant to suggest that anyone would embrace torture after being traumatized, but only that it was V's individual response. Moore doesn't imply that either Valerie or Evey would choose V's path, I would argue. (And as far as real life goes, we do have Stockholm Syndrome...)

More salient for me is that V for Vendetta is a revenge tragedy in the classic sense, which means that V necessarily must descend to the level of his tormentors in order to overthrow them. He's like Hamlet: you don't have to like him, just understand him.

I do think the movie didn't stress enough how crucial the torture interlude was to V--it wasn't only a practical measure (to see if she could be trusted), but more importantly it was a form of communication. V didn't simply torture Evey, he replicated his own experience of torture. He put her in his place, as close as anyone can get of truly understanding the experience of another.

Even in the novel, it's awful and insane; but it's also powerful, and beautiful-terrible in the way only art can be.

Niall at 29: perhaps I was not clear. I recognize your point -- my point is that in the real world, people who undergo great physical and mental suffering over a long period of time, especially if that suffering is generated by the machinery of state (think Buchenwald, think the Soviet gulag) generally don't come out of that experience with the strong desire to torture other people, except possibly their torturers, even if they have been driven batshit crazy. I suppose it could happen...

Sorry if I am simply repeating myself unnecessarily.

Rose at #34 - I totally agree with this viewpoint. As an American, this movie really pushed a lot of my buttons and still does. So while Moore intended it to be aimed at Thatcher, I'm thinking the Wachowski brothers were aiming at Bush and Cheney. Hell, walking out of that movie I wanted to buy a mask and a can of spray paint, then hit the streets to get into trouble.

Hugo Weaving should have gotten some nominations for his faceless performance - the way he cracked out that dialog was incredible.

I was going to say that I liked both V for Vendettas in their own way, and why, but Xopher already did. So NEVER MIND.

ethan...if we keep agreeing all the time someone's going to think we're each other's sockpuppets.

That risk aside though, I'm enjoying it like crazy.

I agree! Xopher is so right! Like always!

I bought an HDTV yesterday; an extraordinary extravagance for someone who is not an early adopter and hates the notion of expensive toys bought on a whim.

The first movie I'll be watching on it is V for Vendetta.

"Batman with British fascists as villains" is a nice capsule description, but there are some wonderful bits outside of that.

Like: Gur Punapryybe enagvat bire gur GI gb na nhqvrapr bs . . . ab bar. Gur cho, gur fhoheona yvivat ebbzf, naq gur byq ntr ubzr jurer jr'q cerivbhfyl frra sbyxf jngpuvat gur gryyl ner rzcgl.

Rose at 34: I saw the movie with my mother, and during our discussion afterwards she brought up Stockholm Syndrome. I remember being annoyed because that doesn't seem to apply in the movie's scenario. Evie doesn't know V was the person doing all that to her, so when she finds out, there's no shared bond or transference or whatever. It just didn't make sense that she'd react that way. But that was the only problem I had with the movie, which I thought was quite good. I probably ought to watch it again, and read the book too.

Regarding the rhyme, I'm only an ignorant American, but I'd guess most people don't really remember more than the first four lines without having to go look it up online. Well--that's how I am. But I have a terrible memory, too.

I only ever knew the first four lines-- the rest don't match at all. The rhyme and rhythm are all over the place.
Is it a song? That would make some sense.

K.C. Shaw @ 41: Sorry, I wasn't being clear--I was referring to V, not to Evey, and I don't actually think that anyone in the story can be said to have Stockholm Syn.

I actually wanted to use it analogously: we know that a person who has been kidnapped can come to support and identify with their kidnappers, so it might be possible that a person who has been tortured (V) might develop an ambivalence toward or even an affinity for torture.

I don't know Scott Horton's background, but he keeps writing posts which reflect my thoughts over at Harper's. He calls this piece "Happy Counterterrorism Day."

What was the result of the use of torture? It wasn’t necessary to secure his conviction in the first place. Fawkes was caught in the act, with innumerable witnesses. No useful information was gained by it. The king, for having authorized its use, was viewed by many of his own subjects as a cruel tyrant. The conspirators, for the cruelty of their treatment, were accepted by many of their co-religionists as martyrs.

Amen, brother.

Speaking of celebrations of Guy Fawkes Day, according to this New York Times article, many English towns/cities aren't even participating in the traditional festivities. They've even canceled fireworks on Bonfire Day! Apparently, it's way too expensive to fund what the English government requires for health/safety measures. Rather ironic that the bureaucracy has led to sparing Guy rather than destroying him.

Ronald Hutton explains it all.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before some killjoy gets the Maryland state song replaced with something from the "Your state's name here" genre, too.

A penny loaf to feed the Pope

Why would the author of the poem want to feed the Pope if they're just going to choke him with cheese in the very next line?

Xopher @ 33:

Oddly, the masks seem to be more prevalent this year. The teenage son of good friends went as V for Hallowe'en this year (parental 18th century re-enactment gear helps!) They found the mask at the seasonal store down the street. (Y'know, the spare space that's Hallowe'en for a month, and Christmas after that, and then turns into lawn gear eventually.)

I agree entirely with Greg @22. The problem is not that V commits torture; it seemed to me that a lot of the point was that he is anything but an admirable character, even though his rebellion against the evil regime is an admirable act. The problem is that the torture turns out to be so character-building for Evey; it transforms her from being a wet, pathetic, rather passive girl, to a strong, heroic woman (who then falls in love with her torturer, which makes it even worse). Yes, V is meant to be a monster, but the setup still makes the effects of torture far too positive.

On the topic of V torturing Evie... I think the book makes it clearer that V had been considering her as a successor, and put her through the same process that shaped him (justified or not) to see if she'd be reborn like he was -- or just break under the strain.

What didn't make it into the movie, if I'm recalling correctly after all this time, is that Evie had reached a crisis point on her own and was about to throw her life away in attacking a government-backed gangster surrounded by bodyguards when V literally knocked her down and dragged her back to his headquarters, unconscious.

Lizzy L @35: If all V had undergone was torture, I find it likely I would agree with you. What was less emphasized in the movie was that there was also a series of medical experiments being conducted by the state to create, in effect, state-controlled monsters; V could be considered a partial success in that he is indeed a monster. Assuming I recall correctly -- not an altogether safe assumption as I have not read the book in a while, and it is elsewhere.

Also, hello! I have been reading for a while but too intimidated by the smrt around these parts to comment.

Jenett 48: Well, rats! Too late now. Where do you live, anyway? I wonder if I could have gotten some V masks. Drat.

"who then falls in love with her torturer, which makes it even worse"

really? Well maybe, but I don't think you could classify it as romantic love.

David@23: Did you miss the fact that V was batshit crazy, Greg?

V's reasons or intentions for torturing Evey aren't the problem.

The problem is that he subjected her to weeks or maybe months of torture, and she emerged from that experience a powerful, couragous woman.

That's just absurd. People who've been severely tortured spend the rest of their lives waking up in the middle of the night screaming in terror.

She emerged from months of torture not only without any negative effects of being tortured, but also with an amazingly positive effect. And to top it off, it was exactly the effect V wanted to produce when he started torturing her. He was able to predict and produce on that prediction that torturing her would be good for her. And that just makes it more absurd.

I've seen the movie a couple of times now. The author seems to have an infatuation with violence, a misrepresentation in his mind of what violence is, does, and means.

From the point in time where V escapes the lab, nothing happens in that world that V did not plan or intend. There are no negative consequences of his actions. Nothing happens out of his control. He is able to use force, violence, lethal force, kidnapping, torture, and so on, without anyone getting hurt that he did not intend to get hurt.

And I can be fine with comic book stories. But that doesn't mean I give them a free pass for any unrealistic thing they portray. Give me a comic book that portrays african americans as inferior and I'll give it a thumbs down. Give me a comic book that portrays torture as effective, useful, saving the world from the "ticking bomb", or worse yet, turning someone into a fearless human being, and I can't abide it.

The truth is that torture breaks you. It doesn't build you up.

Hmmm. Falls in love with torturer. What was that novel, Ring of Swords, now I am blanking on the name of the author. But anyway, the novel concerns a human-alien war, the aliens capture and torture a human, who then falls in love with the alien commander. And the aliens are all gay cat people.

#55
Eleanor Arnason, I seem to recall.

And the aliens are all gay cat people.

wh... wh... what?

And happy birthday, Erik V. Olson. Celebrate loudly, but safely (i.e., don't drop the chainsaw on the homemade thermite [this time])

Of course, Guy Fawkes has a blog.

Guy Fawkes, patron saint of mass murder in the name of revenge posing as justice.

So began the unraveling of a plot whose audacity of conception was matched only by its incompetence in performance. The thirty-six barrels held almost a ton of gunpowder, enough to demolish not only the Palace of Westminster but also Westminster Abbey, the neighboring church of St. Margaret, which the Commons used as their chapel, and most of the streets for fifty yards around. Had it gone off as intended, it would have vaporized King James I and VI, Anne of Denmark, his queen, and their sons, Henry and Charles, along with most of the English nobility, the entire Protestant episcopate, the leading judges, and every member of the House of Commons. In comprehensiveness of intent, at any rate, the plot thus dwarfed every modern act of terrorism, September 11 included. At one blow the political elite of an entire nation would have disappeared, leaving a power vacuum which the plotters planned to fill by a Catholic coup.

May he burn and burn.

Melbourne spreads around over an immense area of ground. It is a stately city architecturally as well as in magnitude. It has an elaborate system of cable-car service; it has museums, and colleges, and schools, and public gardens, and electricity, and gas, and libraries, and ,theaters, and mining centers, and wool centers, and centers of the arts and sciences, and boards of trade, and ships, and railroads, and a harbor, and social clubs, and journalistic clubs, and racing clubs, and a squatter club sumptuously housed and appointed, and as many churches and banks as can make a living. In a word, it is equipped with everything that goes to make the modern great city. It is the largest city of Australasia, and fills the post with honor and credit. It has one specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of November, Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to be seen in Australasia elsewhere.

It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies' clothes; but one might know that.

And the winner is: Efficient

"She emerged from months of torture not only without any negative effects of being tortured, but also with an amazingly positive effect. And to top it off, it was exactly the effect V wanted to produce when he started torturing her."

really? He predicted and wanted her to leave him. that guy's even sicker than I thought.

"Nothing happens out of his control. He is able to use force, violence, lethal force, kidnapping, torture, and so on, without anyone getting hurt that he did not intend to get hurt. "

actually in the comic it is specified that the medical experiments also managed to increase his intelligence and various physical skills. In effect, he was a subversion of the superhuman mythos.

I believe the physical part was still clear in the film, but the intellectual parts were downplayed.

"The truth is that torture breaks you. It doesn't build you up. "

The torture didn't build her up. The "secret communications" from the "person next door" built her up.

Greg @54,
I could say "read the graphic novel", but it's now too late.

The movie doesn't make justice to the novel at all. VfV is a fantastic examination of fascism, anarchy and individualism... Yes, V also practices Violence (and Vengeance), but that's so because the world around him is entirely built upon brutal violence and relentless prevarication. There is no safety, as Evey finds out when his new father-husband is killed by just another crook on his way to fascist glory, without any sort of justification (in the movie, Stephen Fry's character is a threat to the establishment, which is much more logic but because of that it also partially loses meaning).

In VfV, there is no Justice, there is no Moral Way, because the fabric of society is so deeply broken ("there's no such thing as society") that it has to be completely taken away and rebuilt from scratch.

In VfV, there isn't a single character who is entirely right or entirely wrong, which is exactly how real life works, and it's even more remarkable coming from the (then manichean) world of anglo-saxon comics.

A faithful adaptation would require a (completely un-marketable) Heimat-like production. The Wachowskis managed to squeeze it in a two-hour anti-Bush propaganda piece (introducing a fairly clever double-twist on what media-induced fear of terrorism really achieves), but it's not a suprise that Moore disowned the work: all the good bits about anarchy and ambiguity went out of the window, to make room for matrix-like kung-fu and a completely unrealistic "popular" upheaval (in the novel, the population goes wild with looting and lawlessness).

Sorry, I get emotional talking about VfV... It is such a fantastic piece of work, it's a shame anybody's perception should be shaped by an average yankee flick.

And by the way, nobody yet mentioned the real possibility that Guy Fawkes was set up by the English secret service of the time, to strengthen the Queen's favour. I personally find the ambiguity of 5-nov so wonderful, it's a shame the establishment really wants to kill it off... even though the resulting noise last night made me feel like I was in the 90s Sarajevo rather than opulent modern Manchester.

At one blow the political elite of an entire nation would have disappeared...

You see, even while being against mass murder and terrorism and torture, I still have a sneaking admiration for this aspect of the plot. I suspect a number of Britons do, perhaps especially if they have Catholic connections. I can't help but feel there is something attractive about trying to remove the entire political elite, even if the methods were abhorrent.

Of course I'm sure I would be horrified if anyone tried to put the plan into operation again (for one thing I have good friends who work in the parliament buildings or nearby); and I wouldn't have any sympathy for a Catholic coup then or now. But it is worth remembering (as I'm sure Eamon Duffy does) that Catholics stayed second-class citizens for centuries instead; or else were massacred under Cromwell in Ireland. At Drogheda, for example:

Catholic priests and friars were treated as combatants and killed on sight. Many civilians died in the carnage. A group of defenders who had barricaded themselves in St Peter's church in the north of the town were burned alive when the Parliamentarians set fire to the church. Around 3,500 people died in the storming of Drogheda; many of those who survived were transported to Barbados. Parliamentarian losses were around 150.

Cromwell isn't directly linked to Guy Fawkes, of course, so this isn't exactly comparing like with like. But "may he burn and burn" seems to pick out Guy Fawkes unduly, or else reveals a horror at the apparent anticipation of 9/11 while ignoring what would now be called state terror and war crimes on the other side.

We burn Guy Fawkes, I suspect, not because of the sheer number of people he tried to kill, or because his motives were political; but because his intended victims were the privileged political elite; and because he ended up on the losing side. Or, admittedly, because it is an entertaining and colourful custom, which aspect I'm entirely ignoring...

John O'Farrell on the radio yesterday mentioned that there are two signatures known by Guy Fawkes: before torture, and after torture. You can see them here. Although they are not quite conclusive, I think Greg does have a point: the apparent 'after-torture' signature is not notable for its renewed strength of character.

Giacamo @#63 - I was in Wellington (NZ) for Guy Fawkes in 2005 and on my way home found I was walking between a beach where fireworks were shooting in all directions and a park where fireworks were shooting in all directions. That's as close to being in a crossfire as I ever want to be. My Dad (who lost an eye to a firework) taught me the golden rule of fireworks is "Don't be an idiot around fireworks". Most (although not all) of the fireworks from the beach were aimed generally out to sea; unfortunately this took a lot of them over a yacht mooring. Did I mention something about fireworks and idiots?

Correction to Mark Twain. Melbourne Cup day isn't necessarily 5th November. This year f'rinstance it was the 6th. It's the first Tuesday in November (a phrase that USians will find familiar). Much of his other comments probably still apply, tho' Melbourne (then still benefitting from being the closest capital to the Gold Fields) is no longer the largest city.

Our big cracker night with bonfires & such used to be Empire Day/Queen's Birthday/June Long Weekend — sensibly in wintertime. It's been legislated pretty much out of existence, unfortunately. November is too close to bushfire season, and not dark enough for fireworks until far too late.

re 63: Hutton essentially advances the thesis that the plot was real (though hopelessly incompetent and delusional), and that its exposure was carefully managed by Cecil and the king to their various political advantages. As to the possibility of success, the thing is that the English governmental structures didn't run so shallow that even so severe a decapitation would kill the parliamentary body. There surely would have been a civil war, and the Catholic families would surely have been massacred, but Protestants would have almost certainly have remained in power when the blood stopped flowing.

Thinking of "V for Vendetta" (film and comic), I was looking for works that are political that investigate issues in anarchy and terrorism in interesting ways. Anyone know of any good ones?

Didn't make it through "The Good Terrorist" by Doris Lessing, because its characters irritated me too much (reminding me of types I knew in college, always a good way to stop me reading a book), but I think the play "Accidental Death of An Anarchist" by Dario Fo is thought-provoking, and doesn't give easy answers.

There's also the film "Battle of Algiers" by Gillo Pontecorvo, which is about a successful revolution.

The "V for Vendetta" film brought up some topics, but made it all way too easy. If we all band together, we can defeat tyranny, it said to me. But there were no immigrants in the film, no different stripes of belief to reconcile, which tear things apart in real life.

Heard there was a doc about the Seattle protests against the WTO in 1991, which was interesting, but haven't tracked that down yet. Dissent is a complex issue, but I don't mind that.

On another thread, about Alan Moore. It's ironic that so many of his comic book collaborations have been made into films ("V," "From Hell," "League of [...] Gentlemen," and "Watchmen" upcoming), but he wants nothing to do with them. Won't even take money, apparently. Maybe that makes him more attractive to producers.

68: the classics of the genre are "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene and "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad. Or you could try "The Man who was Thursday" for something a little odder.
If conspiracy is more your thing, you should try "Treason in the Blood", a biography of St. John and Kim Philby.

Speaking of conspiracy stories... Has anyone ever seen Anthony Mann's "The Tall Target"? The titular target is Abe Lincoln. Neat movie.

bryan@62: He predicted and wanted her to leave him.

And he was going to do that by lifting her up, taking her fear away, and turning her into a powerful woman. And he did that through torture.

actually in the comic it is specified that the medical experiments also managed to increase his intelligence and various physical skills. In effect, he was a subversion of the superhuman mythos.

He's a comic book character. I understand that. My problem was that the author applied comic book rules to torture. The outcome of the torture was exactly as V had planned it. Evey got control of her fear.

The torture didn't build her up. The "secret communications" from the "person next door" built her up.

You torture someone and sneak them a letter that says "Chin up", you still get the results of torture: a broken human being. Nightmares. Panic attacks.

The author treats torture as a comic book tool. He treats it like a "radioactive spider bite", or "exposure to cosmic radiation". He treats it as some comic book method to turn Evey from a scared girl to a powerful woman.

The problem is that he does it using torture. If he had done it using cosmic radiation, or if he'd done it by having V give Evey a shot of his blood as some kind of fear innoculation, then I would have been fine with that.

But certain topics do not get a pass with me for the comic book treatment. Torture is one of them. No one seriously thinks that if you expose yourself to cosmic radiation that you'll turn into Mr. Fantastic. But people seriously think that torture is a good thing, a useful thing. There are people who have that infatuation with violence. And the author of VfV panders to that infatuation with violence by showing torture as theraputic.

I understand the story. I understand how the author explains it. It's just that torture is not a topic that I can tolerate as a comic book tool.

There's comic book tools like radiation that people are willing to go along with for the story. And then there's stuff like torture that some people really want to believe works.

Cosmic radiation doesn't win the story points for being war pr0n.

But torture that produces useful intelligence and torture that produces beneficially transformed humans gets plenty of points for war pr0n.

Shorter me: No one seriously thinks that if you expose yourself to cosmic radiation that you'll turn into Mr. Fantastic. But people seriously think that torture is a good thing, a useful thing. And fiction that pander to that viewpoint, that infatuation with violence, by showing torture as useful and beneficial are war pr0n.

Jack Ruttan @ 68: The one that comes immediately to mind is Ursula K LeGuin's _The Dispossessed_, as well as several of her other books. If you're more interested in outright political writing, you might also looks for works by Nestor Makhno, Errico Malatesta, and Federica Montseny - I particularly recommend Makhno's _My Struggle Against The State_.

candle 64: Cromwell isn't directly linked to Guy Fawkes, of course, so this isn't exactly comparing like with like. But "may he burn and burn" seems to pick out Guy Fawkes unduly, or else reveals a horror at the apparent anticipation of 9/11 while ignoring what would now be called state terror and war crimes on the other side.

Did you know that the massacre at Drogheda also took place on the 11th of September?

@ 68: Children of Men, the film.

I'm a little ways into the book. Haven't read enough yet to comment on the development of the themes.

Caroline #75: If you're like me, you never will. Read enough, that is. Over. Wrought. Prose.

"No one seriously thinks that if you expose yourself to cosmic radiation that you'll turn into Mr. Fantastic. But people seriously think that torture is a good thing, a useful thing. And fiction that pander to that viewpoint, that infatuation with violence, by showing torture as useful and beneficial are war pr0n."

okay well, why not just clarify that it is the proper purpose of writers of fiction to produce morally edifying works and leave it at that.

first of all it did not show torture as useful and beneficial in the ways that torture and useful are dreamt of as being useful and beneficial by those that want to use torture. They dream of using torture to extract information or to compel obedience. Evey did not provide information nor did she become obedient (you may wish to argue she did because V bent her to his will but I think that would be a somewhat perverse argument)

What the movie depicted was rather a variation of "the hero who resists torture" from fiction to achieve freedom. It was an especially clever variation of this because V was himself a hero who had resisted torture to achieve freedom, and while the torture was real it was masked, the purpose was not the ostensible point of the torture.
As such it might have caused people to wish to be tortured so as to transcend the torture, but I guess many movies with heroic secret agents do the same thing. It might also cause someone to wish to torture to make someone a better more confident woman, but I guess that could be true of Pedro Almodovar (the reference to Almodovar in this context is intended.)

As for the War Porn thing, well I guess, if the purpose was to get people turned on by the torture and to make them want to torture. uh except that it wasn't torture in war. uh and I guess it probably didn't have that effect with most people, actually I expect with nobody that could be classified normal.

In fact I think not just that you're wrong but your reaction to this fiction has been warped by the shocks of your current reality. When George Bush starts arguing for torture as being necessary to give the Terrorists a transcendental experience allowing them to be spiritually reborn as stronger more determined and unbreakable human beings you may have a point.

As far as the argument that everybody breaks, well maybe.

Coffeedryad #73: The Dispossessed was great. I'm hoping that recent culture such as the anti-war protests, those Danish kids and their art centre, or even squatters in various cities have inspired some sort of good fiction or film.

There was a film "The Best of Youth," about brothers growing up in Italy through the years of protests there, and one falling in love with a member of the Brigado Rosso while the other became a cop. Not heavy on politics, but you get a sense of times, and the choices.

Xopher @52: Minneapolis. A quick search, though, turned up a bunch of active hits on Amazon and various costume stores, so you may still have a chance? The prices range from $8 to $14 or so.

C. Wingate @48: Much thanks for the Hutton link! It did remind me that I keep wanting to find a decent book on James I, because Hutton's description of him is so different from what normally makes it into history summaries. (Suggestions welcome, should anyone have favorites.)

Kate @31 : Oddly enough, I didn't. Stuff blows up around Wicker so often that it's often more memorable when it doesn't.

Dr Paisley @58: Erik V. Olson. Celebrate loudly, but safely (i.e., don't drop the chainsaw on the homemade thermite [this time]) I didn't see anyone 'dropping' chainsaws into the thermite pile. Flinging, yeah. It was too hot to get close enough to drop anything into that pile. (Unlike a couple of years ago, with a much smaller pile, when the kids were throwing coins and branches and beer bottles (empty, of course) into the volcano to watch them melt and/or burn.)

Vaguely related: anyone who has not already seen Revengers Tragedy (and who does not have an aversion to very odd movies) should do so. Post-apocalyptic film adaptation of a Jacobean play starring Christopher Eccleston, Derek Jacobi, and Eddie Izzard. Quite the winning combination, I thought. Given the source material, I don't think anyone will be surprised to learn that it has a "rocks fall everyone dies" sort of ending.

ajay: If conspiracy is more your thing, you should try "Treason in the Blood", a biography of St. John and Kim Philby.

It's a great book.

Then read, Declare by Tim Powers.

That will give you conspiracy thoughts.

Xopher:
Did you know that the massacre at Drogheda also took place on the 11th of September?

Oh, I spotted that when I read the piece I linked to and then immediately forgot. Part of the problem is that September 11th is my best friend's birthday, so I'm used to seeing it in other contexts.

But yes, add Drogheda to the list of associations for that date.

Jack@78:
There was a film "The Best of Youth," about brothers growing up in Italy...

I liked The Best of Youth too, although it did suffer a little bit from the way the brothers got involved in every major event in twentieth century Italian history. (The same director made I Cento Passi, which is the best Mafia film I've seen - I don't know if there is an English version around, although I seem to remember it was once shown at a film festival in London.)

Anyway, if you read Italian then you might like Natalia Ginzburg's book Caro Michele. I haven't read it, but it sounds as though it might take on the issues of terrorism and politics you are interested in.

Should. Research. Before. Commenting.

Caro Michele exists in English as Dear Michael or (for some reason) No Way. I Cento Passi exists in a version called One Hundred Steps, although I can't see whether it is dubbed or subtitled (or not) and it seems not to be on sale anywhere.

There was also a recent-ish film about the kidnap of Aldo Moro, called Buongiorno, Notte (Good Morning, Night) - in fact, this wikipedia page lists a whole series of versions of the story.

And then there's One Day in September and Munich and a good documentary about the Weathermen I saw once...

Evidently I have an unhealthy interest in this stuff.

candle 83: My birthday too. That's why I remembered the date of the Drogheda massacre.

Years ago, I met some Sinn Fein party members (actually I think they were Provisional IRA, but they didn't announce that and I didn't ask) who denied that Cromwell ever massacred anyone at Drogheda. You see, he was a Republican (in the Irish sense, not the American), and never would have done anything like that. It was a royalist revision.

I politely changed the subject.

Triple post! Sorry, I'll stop for a bit now.

Also of interest, from that Wikipedia page (which doesn't cite a first-hand source):

During the investigation of Moro's kidnapping, General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa reportedly responded to a member of the security services who suggested torture against a suspect, "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture."

This when a well-respected Christian Democrat Prime Minister had been kidnapped by terrorists and was known to be still alive.

candle 83: My birthday too. That's why I remembered the date of the Drogheda massacre.

Years ago, I met some Sinn Fein party members (actually I think they were Provisional IRA, but they didn't announce that and I didn't ask) who denied that Cromwell ever massacred anyone at Drogheda. You see, he was a Republican (in the Irish sense, not the American), and never would have done anything like that. It was a royalist revision.

I politely changed the subject.

To Jack Ruttan @68, on the subject of "works that are political that investigate issues in anarchy and terrorism in interesting ways":

Barry Longyear wrote a short story called "A Time for Terror." Doesn't deal with anarchy, just terrorism. I read it in his collection It Came from Schenectady. The book came out in 1984, so you may have to search a bit.

shadowsong #81: I clicked on the imdb link, saw it was directed by Alex Cox, went "Ooh!", and went to add it to my Netflix queueueueue, and lo and behold, it was already there. So now I'm moving it up in the queueueueue.

...necessary to give the Terrorists...

YM 'Gully Foyle'

...a transcendental experience allowing them to be spiritually reborn as stronger more determined and unbreakable human...

...who is able to perform a Space Jaunt.

Lizzy L @25:
Do read the graphic novel/comic book version.

Greg London @71:
Might I suggest that you read the comic book version if you already haven't already? They are very different beasts. The plot elements are basically the same but the movie version glosses over & simplifys what is a complex & nuanced tale that resonates with the reader long after it ends.

Moore's concern that viewers of the movie version would equate it to the/his comic book version, when in his opinion, they couldn't be more different, was his reason for publicly disassociating himself from the movie version.

Moore's name doen't appear on the movie credits. In the movie, the end credits state, quite laughably IMO: "Based on the graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd". It's like disliking the movie "Starship Troopers" and then complaining about Heinlein being a bad writer. The writer of the original doesn't have much (if any) say on how it's adapted into a movie.

Jack @68:
It's ironic that so many of his comic book collaborations have been made into films ("V," "From Hell," "League of [...] Gentlemen," and "Watchmen" upcoming), but he wants nothing to do with them.

Yeah, but if you compare his comic book originals to the movie versions (one is tempted to type "aberrations"), can you blame him?

candle 83: My birthday too.

I feel I should probably have known that. Evidently it was a propitious date to be born, if not for much else.

Earl @ 47:

I didn't see anyone else answer this so I thought I would tell you what an English colleague told me last year. Take the following with a huge grain of salt.

The short answer is that it was a reference to the honorable act of providing the condemned a "last meal" before execution. Because the gunpoweder plot was seen as ultimately a Catholic act, the ultimate responsibility lay with the Pope.

Basically giving him the lowest common denominator of English foodstuffs at the time (a penny loaf and a farthing of cheese) and then executing him in pretty much the most horrific way kids could think up (burning him until his head exploded).

Because we all know he's not REALLY dead until he's GRUESOMELY dead.

If any of that is pure ballocks I fully expect any of the literally scores of people on this board who know better to correct me.

Shadowsong @ 81:

I LOVED "Revengers Tragedy" when I saw it at a film festival a few years back. As a serious Eddie Izzard fanatic it was a great surprise.

I'd have to say though, it would be a TON better on DVD...the combination of archaic dialog, strong accents and truly rapid-fire delivery made some of the intense sections difficult to follow. Pause and rewind are our friends.

MisterOregon @ 94: The accents (or Eccleston's, at least) weren't nearly as problematic as I would normally find them - I had just finished watching season 1 of the new Doctor Who all at once and was casting about trying to find more stuff with Eccleston, so I was used to the way he spoke by that point. Still, the subtitles that I'm almost certain were on my DVD were quite helpful. :)

The "more stuff with Eccleston" phase also turned up "The Second Coming", which is also (or perhaps more) Quite Strange. Written by New-Who show runner Russell T Davies.

"The Second Coming" frustrated me to almost no end. There were just SO MANY things I would have done differently and I kept finding myself yelling at the characters. So it draws a "meh" rating from me.

As for "Revengers Tragedy" it wasn't just the accents, but also the shear kinetic-ness of some of the scenes combined with really rapid delivery. I'm thinking particularly of a scene in a Barcelona nightclub. I could manage about three words in five; enough to follow but enough to be confused too.

The grand soliloquy here and there, no problem. Six guys with roughly similar accents and voice tones was just brutal. I could sort out Eccleston and Izzard most of the time, but the rest started getting really "soupy" for me.

Let it also be said to anyone who hasn't seen it, that it is by almost any standard, really really weird.

Hero's with dead people's heads weird. Reverse Oedipus Complex weird. Post-apocalypse Jacobian English weird.

And I thought the weird was good. Really really good.

shadowsong #95: If your anything-with-Eccleston phase is ongoing, and you're considering allowing it to extend to the Dark Is Rising movie, please do not. That movie is beyond awful, into some new realm of horrific badness for which no words exist. It is not just crappy, but a force of crappiness, which makes the viewer crappy for a time after watching it. It, however briefly, even makes Christopher Eccleston himself crappy. Don't let this happen to you.

When I was growing up in Sheffield, we saw Guys every November. Most of them were just old clothes stuffed with more old clothes, topped with a pair of tights stuffed with yet more old clothes and with features drawn on in lipstick or felt-tip pen, and rolled from house to house in an old pram. Some of them, though, were little works of art.
Since I moved down to London in the mid-80s, I don't recall ever having seen a Guy. Presumably, the kids get the money for fireworks elsewhere, or have lost interest in them altogether. And despite the hassle of having your door knocked on every couple of minutes by some spotty youth with an assemblage of old clothing in a wrecked old pram, I actually miss that. This November 5 (and I'll grant you we were away at NovaCon this weekend so we may have missed them) was entirely devoid of Guys again.

bryan@77: why not just clarify that it is the proper purpose of writers of fiction to produce morally edifying works

Oy. There's a distinction people use to categorize certain types of fiction. It's a category called "Mary Sue". It's useful for describing a piece of fiction when communicating with another person. That a story is a "Mary Sue" does not mean it's good or bad. It describes an aspect of the story. Like you might describe a shirt as being "blue", and blue is neither inherently good nor bad.

The idea of "war porn" is a similar thing. It is a category to describe some kinds of fiction. It isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just a descriptor.

Now, you might say you don't like a shirt because it's blue. Or you might say you don't like a story because it's war porn. But that doesnt mean you're also saying that the proper purpose of shirtmakers is to produce non-blue shirts. Nor does it mean that you're also saying that the proper purpose of fiction writers is to produce non-war-pr0n stories.

So, me telling you that I didn't like V For Vendetta because of the part where V tortures Evey, and because the result of that torture is that Evey is not broken, but rather that Evey is transformed into a fearless woman, and because that torture scene is somethign I would categorize as war porn, doesn't mean I'm demanding all fiction writers write "morally edifying works".

I'm describing how something subjective, a piece of fiction, occurred for me, and trying to point to why I didn't like it.

I think not just that you're wrong but your reaction to this fiction has been warped by the shocks of your current reality.

No. Saying "I didn't like this because it was war porn" is little different than saying "I didn't like that because it was a mary sue." Neither statement grants you license to psychoanalyze me.

I didn't like it. Here's why. Telling me I'm wrong for not liking it or for whatever reason I don't like it is missing what it means to be "subjective". I get to say what I do and do not like. You are free to have your own subjective experience. But you don't get to declare me wrong for mine.

As far as the argument that everybody breaks, well maybe.

Maybe? People who've suffered severe torture often have life long negative effects such as night terrors, panic attacks during the day, and so on. You can debate the statistics of what percentage are this and what percentage are that. But you can't hedge your bet on Evey's transformation on a "Well, maybe". There is nothing in real life to support the sort of transformation that Evey went through. It doesn't happen that way. Torture does not do that.

In real life, torture doesn't give you information to stop the ticking bomb. And you can't give a "well, maybe" to change that into some hypothetical, fictional scenario.

Watched "V" last night.

Was it the torture that we are supposed to believe Evey fearless, or was it Valerie's story and her exhortation not to give up . . . or both?

Soon Lee@91: Might I suggest that you read the comic book version if you already haven't already?

I have the comic book. I haven't read it yet. It's on my list.

There's a couple things at work for me. First, the torturing Evey was gratuitous as far as achieving the goal of making her courageous. V inspired a whole mob of people to stand up to the government on the fifth of november. They overcame their fear. And they didnt' get tortured.

Evey could have found her courage the same way they did. By standing up to the thing she feared.

The other thing was that it robbed the story of the impact of her torture. You are watching it and thinking she's going through this horrible thing, that she might be killed and dumped into a shallow grave at any moment.

But then you find out it was V doing it. That it was orchestrated from the beginning. That she was never in danger of being killed, because V wasn't trying to break her, V was trying to lift her up.

But then you find out it was V doing it. That it was orchestrated from the beginning. That she was never in danger of being killed, because V wasn't trying to break her, V was trying to lift her up.

Huh? You did miss the point. She was in immediate danger of being killed. If she had broken, V would have killed her rather than risk being compromised. How did you get that she was never in any danger?

Was it the torture that we are supposed to believe Evey fearless, or was it Valerie's story and her exhortation not to give up . . . or both?

Valerie's story, absolutely.

I've never actually seen anything burned on Guy Fawkes day, but I've seen a similar custom with (so far as I'm aware) a completely different origin. In Ecuador, they used to burn "old men" on midnight every New Year's Eve, as an out with the old year and in with the new sort of thing.

They'd make straw dummies dressed in old clothing, with plastic masks (often of politicians) that you could buy all over the place in the weeks beforehand. Some people would set up whole little stands with captions coming from the old men, as these 3-D political cartoons or just dirty jokes. (The big plastic naked breasts were almost as popular as the plastic politician masks.)

In the early evening--this was near the equator, so the sun didn't go down much earlier in December than the rest of the year--everyone would head out onto the streets and walk around looking at the displayed Old Men. The more elaborate setups would often have a donation box for dropping in some change if you were amused by the jokes. Then at midnight (or just after sunset, depending on the area), every member of the family would go beat up the Old Man, and then it would be set on fire. (Poorer families would usually strip the clothing back off the dummy before it was burned.) Subsequently, firecrackers, then the kids go to bed and all the adults went out drinking.

Now I feel a bit left out, that my cultural heritage has no dummy-burning yearly tradition. It was tremendous fun when I was a kid to see all of that done, and occasional New Year's fireworks just aren't the same as torching a straw man.

Cromwell isn't directly linked to Guy Fawkes, of course, so this isn't exactly comparing like with like. But "may he burn and burn" seems to pick out Guy Fawkes unduly, or else reveals a horror at the apparent anticipation of 9/11 while ignoring what would now be called state terror and war crimes on the other side.

You haven't denounced St. Bartholomew's Day! Papo-fascist!

"Maybe? People who've suffered severe torture often have life long negative effects such as..."

yes I believe I'm as familiar with the effects of torture in the long term as you are. I was under the impression that you were arguing that everybody breaks which is different than everybody suffers long lasting effects.

'There's a distinction people use to categorize certain types of fiction. It's a category called "Mary Sue".'
thanks, as a long time poster on MakingLight I have never ever heard of the concept before.

'The idea of "war porn" is a similar thing. It is a category to describe some kinds of fiction. It isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just a descriptor.'

I'm sorry but both war porn and Mary Sue are generally value laden terms, you really don't get to say I think this is a Mary Sue War Porn and then argue you never said it was bad.

"I didn't like it. Here's why. "
You've told me it was a Mary Sue War Porn which seems a little bit of a strange definition. The war porn thing i could nearly buy (although I believe it is another sort of porn altogether, that should have also been clear from my last post - but to say it plain the porn it is similar to is very refined S&M and the hero under torture narrative). I think though that if you assert it is a Mary Sue that seems a bit much and should require a bit of explanation. Which character do you think Moore is thinking of himself as, or is it the directors of the movie that are Mary Sue-ing here? And in what way.

'So, me telling you that I didn't like V For Vendetta because of the part where V tortures Evey, and because the result of that torture is that Evey i