We have received the following from a group calling itself A for Anarchy [1]:
V for Vendetta
A for Action!!!!
4/17: International A for Anarchy Action Day!
While V for Vendetta has been playing for a few weeks in the US, its only just premiered in Spain and a range of other for countries. The time is now here to ramp up this effort! We're calling for creating actions worldwide to educate moviegoers on the promise of anarchy and to take a parting shot at the corporations behind the film V for Vendetta film for eviscerating the anarchist politics of the original V for Vendetta graphic novel.
12:30-1:30PM Time Warner Center, 59th St and Columbus Circle
1:45-2:30PM DC Comics, 1700 Broadway between 53rd and 54th Streets
2:45-3:30PM AMC Empire 25, 234 West 42nd St. at 8th Avenue (this may change closer to date)
Come to leaflet, hold posters and banners, take pictures and video (bring your cameras) of the action!
Details on the NY Action
We'll perform street theater, leaflet, hold a banner promoting the A for Anarchy website (http://aforanarchy.com [1]), and hold posters —detournments of V for Vendetta movie posters courtesy of our creative comrades in Spain (visit their site at http://vdevendetta.info [2]).
To challenge the film's liberal politics, our street theater will feature a two-faced Clinton-Bush under the control of the ruling class and corporate power. The anarchist V will chase off these scoundrels and speak to the notion of a society without capitalism and the state.
We'll begin our action at the Time-Warner Center, home to the largest media conglomerate the world has ever seen [3] (Time-Warner, with revenues last year of $43 billion), creators of the V for Vendetta film. It's no surprise that an institution at the heart of global capitalism would never expose mass audiences to anarchist thought. We'll be visiting their office not to protest them, because we don't expect them to "reform" or to be "more open to our message", since we call for nothing short of the wholesale destruction of the entire economic system they dominate. Rather, we intend to use their presence as a backdrop to illustrate the real agenda of corporate films like V for Vendetta, which co-opt the style of subversion yet never provide the kind of substance that would fundamentally challenge their interests.
Next, we'll visit DC Comics, the creative robber barons who used tricks of intellectual property to retain ownership of V for Vendetta, allowing their corporate parent, Time Warner to create a film that fundamentally betrayed V for Vendetta graphic novel writer Alan Moore's original anarchist vision. DC has a long history of bilking creators and destroying anarchist heroes—they did much the same with the original anarchist comic book hero—Superman! That's right, Superman. In the first 2-3 years of Superman comic books and comic strips, the Man of Steel was a far cry from the character we know today. Described by co-creator Jerry Siegel as "a thorn in the side of the establishment", this Superman's tagline was not, "Truth, Justice, and the American Way," but rather "Champion of the Oppressed." Instead of super-villians and space aliens, he used direct action to fight slumlords, munitions manufacturers and their lackeys in government, warmongering heads of state, and the execution of innocent people. Within three years, DC had seized control of the character and began transforming him into the toothless symbol of status quo "justice" we've known for decades.
Finally, we'll take our message directly to the moviegoing public by performing our street theater in front of the exiting crowd of a V for Vendetta matinee screening, inspiring them to connect the insurrectionary action of the V movie with an explictly anti-statist and anti-capitalist politics, and to recognize that eliminating oppressive governments isn't just for the movies!
See our review [4] of V for Vendetta and our last post on real-life anarchists [5].
