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From Manohla Dargis’s NY Times review of V for Vendetta:

The Wachowskis appear deeply enamored of the great (super) man theory of history, with mysterioso leaders who are intent on delivering the rest of us from false consciousness. Given this, it’s no surprise that the geopolitical terrain staked out in this film skews so last century: globalization having been given the jackboot, partly, one imagines, because multinational capitalism, with its total market value and shareholder wealth, doesn’t register as cool as all that shiny, shiny leather and crypto-Nazi styling.

Let’s see…

#1: The paragraph doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, from the first sentence to the second. They endorse great man history. Therefore, they go with an obsolete political situation, because it’s more aesthetically interesting. Huh? Happened in editing, I’m sure…

#2: Um, I’m pretty sure the Wachowskis covered multinational capitalist chic in a little-known movie they made a little ways back…

#3: (and most important): Um, does Dargis read the paper? (I don’t, of course, mean her own paper…) But sorry, when you say “so last century,” to me what registers is fin de siècle hypercapitalism, Clintonian rising tides, internet startups, Nasdaq, that sort of thing. But the twenty-first for me has been something dressed a little bit more like this:

Detention camps, check:

Charismatic leaders, check:

Government organizations with doublethink inspired names, check:

The penetration of government surveillance into everyday life, check:

And so on…

Anyway, William Gibson liked the movie…

Just back from V FOR VENDETTA. More thumbs up than a Chernobyl pianist. Superb. Splendid. Heartening. Go see.

I’d like to go see it. Anyone want to babysit?