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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Meet the new boss... same as the old boss.

A few folks have been posting this movie clip on the inter-tubes lately. I suppose they're showing solidarity with those kooky kids occupying Wall Street:



While I certainly agree with the sentiment of our hero, the nitpicker within me howls in pedantic rage. Why did Alan Moore choose the figure Guy Fawkes as the model for his erstwhile anarchist, V? Fawkes was not the democratic, anti-authoritarian martyr against tyranny. He wasn't seeking to liberate England from despotic rule. His Gunpowder Plot was a part of a long-term strategy to depose the Protestant-controlled monarchy and replace it with a Catholic one. And while one could argue that Catholics in British Isles got the shit end of the stick after the Tudors and Cromwell, anyone with a layman's knowledge of history could tell you that the rule by Holy Mother Church wouldn't be an improvement over the Anglican version.

Then again, trying to understand the mind of Alan Moore, a man who wanted nothing to do with the excellent film adaptation of Watchmen but approved of the cinematic abomination that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, is an exercise in futility and perhaps a descent into madness.

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