V as Revolutionary
In a post-9/11 America and a post-7/7 Britain it is almost blasphemous to suggest that terrorism can be used for good. This sentiment is perfectly understandable: millions of people witnessed on their television sets the horror of two jumbo jets being flown into New York City's Twin Towers in 2001, and then the bombing of London's busy subway system in 2005. After seeing the devastation and suffering that these attacks engendered, it is not surprising that terrorism should be viewed with such disgust by so many people. But is terrorism never justified? This is a question that is raised by the action-thriller V for Vendetta, a film based on a graphic novel of the same title. The story presents us with the protagonist V, who uses terrorist tactics to rebel against a fascist regime that has taken control of Britain sometime in the near future. A related question that naturally arises when viewing this film, especially in the light of Erich Fromm's essay Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem, is whether V is acting as a rebel or a revolutionary. Is V's disobedience emanating from “anger, disappointment, [and] resentment”, or is it “in the name of a conviction or principle”? This is tantamount to asking whether his acts of terrorism are justified or not. A careful analysis of the motivations behind V's disobedience reveals that it emanates from both sources. But since V's disobedience is always guided by a conviction to principle, one must count him as a revolutionary. It is certainly the case that V is a man possessed by anger and bitter resentment. And justifiably so. In the course of the film we learn that V had been held prisoner in a concentration camp where he and his fellow inmates were subject to medical experiments designed to find a vaccine to a deadly virus. Most of the prisoners died gruesome deaths as a result of the experiments. V was able to survive the experiments because of a rare genetic mutation that he alone...