I saw V for Vendetta last night with two libertarians buddies and really enjoyed it. One of my friends observed that the film would have been better had it shown the state engaging in day-to-day tyranny against average citizens. At first, I agreed but after thinking about it I think that by showing the state engaged in acts of violence against a few selected targets, instead of against the population as a whole, the film presented a more accurate view of life in a totalitarian country. Most people in a totalitarian country do not experience the “knock in the middle of the night,” because they learned from the examples of those who have have heard the knock what happens to anyone who gets on the state’s bad side. When enough people disappear, those who remain will come to believe that the state’s masters are truly all-powerful, capable of inflicting swift and harsh punishment if they step out of line for even an instant. Of course, many will also bow to the state because they believe that the state can protect them from all the bad things in the world. In either case, mass obedience rests not on the state’s day-to-day acts of oppression but the belief that the state has unlimited power to protect and punish.

Anything that undermines the people’s belief in the state’s omnipresence weakens the people’s acceptance of authoritarianism, and thus anything which causes the people to look at the state with less than awe must be suppressed. V for Vendetta makes this point by showing how the state regards humor at its expense as almost (equally?) as great a threat to its’ rule as V’s attacks. (I’d love to expand on the parallels between the revolutionaries and the satirists but I fear I’ve already given to much of the film away.)
I do think the film would have been improved had they shown us a bit more of the circumstances which lead to the loss of liberty and if the villains weren’t so one-dimensional. It would have been a better story if the villains actually believed that their actions where in the best interest of the people, and maybe if the story showed how the people willingly gave up their liberty in search of security.

My friend also observed that the movie looked at totalitarian societies from a traditional left-wing view and thus failed to examine the link between property rights and liberties. In fact, the film at some points does imply that a thriving, legal, free-market still exists in the mist of state tyranny, which is a logical impossibility.

Cross posted at The Free Liberal blog.