RSS
Home
Is "V" for "Vendetta"?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg){kind=logo}
ABC's new television series "V"
ABC’s hit revamp of the NBC 1984 miniseries debuted last night as it competed for ratings with a constant torrent of election-night returns on the other networks painting an increasingly bleak picture for the Obama administration. The election results, we mean. Or do we?
The Chicago Tribune’s Glenn Garvin took notice in his piece “’V’ Aims at Obama”, in which he wrote:
Welcome to ABC's "V," the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it's also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president's supporters and delight his detractors.
In the 1980s, the original “V” miniseries was seen as an allegory of the threat posed by the evil communist empire, the Soviet Union, its brutal tyranny and its cult of personality. Today, interestingly (or rather frighteningly) it is seen by some as an allegory about ultra-left-wing statists right here at home, the unhealthy ways in which they exercise power, and a dangerous cult of personality.
One surprisingly overt swipe at Obamamania was the incorporation of terms such as “hope” and “change” by the visitors and those who trusted them.
“Hope” was touched on in the show's debut, when Erica Evans (played by Elizabeth Mitchell) confronts her teenage son Tyler (played by Logan Huffman) whom she discovers has become an obsessive groupie of the visitors. During her lecture, she castigates the deceptive promises of hope the visitors offer to their blind followers and challenges her son to look beyond the veneer and polish into what their real agenda might be.
As for “change” Anna, the evil alien visitors’ leader who, quite stunningly also promises “universal healthcare” to earthlings, also utters this surprisingly Obama-esque meme: "Embracing change is never easy, but the reward can be greater than you ever imagined". Indeed, the phrase itself sounds a bit like Obama perhaps because it is. In fact, during the final days of the Obama campaign, a South Carolina concert series was labeled just that: “Embrace the Change!” Another instance is found in a blog post on the Organizing for America website, titled, “Students Embracing Change for Obama”.
And in Mr. Obama’s own words:
So let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. Change will take time. There will be setbacks and false starts and sometimes we'll make mistakes.
But as hard as it may seem, we cannot lose hope, because there are people all across this great nation who are counting on us, who can't afford another four years without health care, that can't afford another four years without good schools, that can't afford another four years without decent wages because our leaders couldn't come together and get it done.
In fact, the show seemed to go so far out of its way to parallel Obamaworld, I wonder how it could be anything but intentional. Not that we in the loyal opposition are complaining, mind you; we’re just shocked. Shocked that ABC of all media outlets even allowed this. That such a show could slip past the censors, as it were, is indeed heartening.
The irony of course is that ABC’s news division behaves more like the hapless reporter in this first episode, even to the extent one imagines it could make a few ABC execs squirm. With the ABC “healthcare” special, which was aired directly from the White House with no hardball questions for the president and no opposition ad and rebuttal airtime allowed – and Charlie Gibson’s mia culpa of total ignorance of the ACORN scandals – fresh in our memories, one can’t help but wonder if the writers for this series drew material directly from their own network.
To say, however, that “V” is exclusively anti-Obama might not portray a complete understanding of “V” or the motivations of its creators any more than a belief that Star Trek was anti-war (at least on earth). In actuality, “V” historically could best be described as anti-authoritarian. During the 1980s its writers took aim at the Soviet Union; then there was the 2008 (Bush-era) novelization written by “V” producer Kenneth Johnson. In an interview early last year, Johnson explained:
I thought it became an interesting allegory for what's been going on today in the world, particularly since when we wrote the original "V" the Soviet Union and the United States were the superpowers and now we have only one hyper-power, led by a group of people who say, "We are your wise leaders, we know what's best for you, stay the course, don't ask questions and we'll do what we want, undermine the Constitution a little bit, but we'll take care of you."
Granted, “V” could just as easily serve as an even more dire warning of an alarmingly escalating Communist Chinese imperial power seen around the world and the danger it poses to human rights, decency, and modern civilization. But certainly domestic concerns are also legitimate. One question is whether a constant harping on domestic matters will grow wearisome or dated, particularly in light of that growing sino-threat looming all around us and perhaps more central in American thought during the next year or two.
All of that aside, a huge plus for the show in addition to its present grassroots appeal to the views of most Americans who are just a little creeped-out by a rather un-American banana-thugocracy cult-hero worship seen by fawning members of the media, academia, and thirty-something percent of the public – and intimidation tactics used against opposition media and protesters – is the show’s quality. As Garvin points out, this show suggests a great sci-fi series; one that, like its predecessor vis-à-vis the Cold War commissars at the Kremlin, will in all likelihood thrive in re-run land even after its deftly-snagged targets at 1600 Penn have long-retired from public life.
