V For Vendetta and The Establishment

Recently I was involved in a discussion about anti-establishment films, and which films sought to subvert the order in the most admirably artistic way. Admittedly, there were some great suggestions. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971) was brought up. If... (Lindsey Anderson, 1968). Guy Debord's films, too. Perhaps the most obscure was a Turkish film called Yol (Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören, 1982), a cruel indictment of the post-1980 coup Turkish prison system written by Güney whilst he himself was jailed (an "assimilated Kurd," he later escaped and finished the film in Switzerland). I had never heard of the film before, but as a supporter of a united Kurdistan, it definitely appeals.

There were, too, some ridiculous suggestions. Yes, V For Vendetta was brought up. I'm treading old ground here, but bear with me. It's vaguely terrifying that a film made by a major studio can today be seen as anti-establishment, but actually terrifying that it is in this case one so pro-establishment as this, a capitalist parable in which social liberation is withheld by a tangible political force and won, not by violence, but by docile submission. I need not remind you of what the revolting proles do when they amass in London, but I will anyway: they stand quietly transfixed by fireworks. Ironic, because this is exactly what the audience do, before going away contented by what they have seen rather than outraged at the real life government.

This is typical of a society that has been Prozaced to the point where "Orwellian" is a cliche term that clatters, useless and hollow on the ground, when someone spies a speed camera coming off the motorway. It seems that the imagination of the average cinema-goer only stretches as far as to see the symbols of V For Vendetta (the raised fists in the rain, victims dragged away in the night, the shaved heads of the prisoners, the giant red-and-black icons of fascism) as genuine subversive social criticism rather than cardboard cut-out relics of an early 20th century fear that can no longer hurt us. True irony rang unknowingly in the voices of the film's defenders as they criticised us for being elitist.

Perhaps this mirrors the political apathy in Britain, which can be laid square at the door of New Labour. Some in the 1970s and 80s, outraged at how far the UK could be privatised by Thatcher's Conservatives, foresaw political revolution. Surely this strike at the membrane of the welfare state could only result in a vicious recoil?

These people were hopelessly optimistic, and the government was allowed to continue castrating the unions and placing basic human needs such as gas in the hands of cynical corporations until, quite simply, nobody cared any more. When the Tories could no longer be controversial idealogically, they slipped into sleaze and irrelevance, to be replaced in the 90s by a cleaner, rebranded version of themselves: the Labour Party. Once a bastion of the British left-wing, Labour simply kept privitised Britain ticking over the way Thatcherites had intended. Again, I recall celebration by naive old socialists eleven years ago: if the Tories had not been overthrown, at least they had been replaced by a new, sensible centralist party. But what have been their most controversial and newsworthy policies? Tony Blair's legacy is to be found far from home, all the way in the Middle East, whilst a bill to reduce freedom of speech was not just a sideline issue but actually supported by hordes of university students who campaigned outside the Old Bailey for Nick Griffin to be imprisoned for speaking his mind more or less in private.

The irony is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have become so indistinguishable that the battle between them is no longer fought on ideology but on image. Just as Labour defeated Tory in 1997 due to the latter's sleazy image, David Cameron's party is poised to take over from Labour because of clever rebranding. No Conservative voter I have talked to has been able to name ten polices of theirs that differ from Labour's. After the credit crunch, the fall of the housing market, the loss of personal data and several other high-profile cock-ups by Labour, the general consensus among political commentators is that the Tories are going to win not on their own merits but simply because they aren't Labour. This is seen as the pinnacle of political stagnation. The truth is far more horrfying: the truth is that they are going to win because they are Labour, a new, shiner Labour, just as Blair's Labour was a new, shiny Conservative Party. The same fortnight tired Gordon Brown unwisely compared himself to Heathcliffe, David Cameron began his campaign against fat and poor people and a Tory front bencher used the word "nigger" in the House of Lords, and, a month or two later, one of Cameron's favourite think tanks came to the conclusion that Northern English cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool, which have successfully undergone major refurbishment in the past few years, were beyond hope and should be abandoned altogether. But which of these four stories made the front pages? Yep, the Heathcliffe comparison.

There is an opportunity for change, however. The fastest growing party in the UK resembles neither of the Big Two. It is the British National Party, once a stalwart of the National Front of the 1980s that believed Thatcher's Conservatives had the right idea but weren't nearly right-wing enough. To give you an insight into what they stand for, in Stoke, one of their high-ranking bullies has become a martyr for their cause after pushing his Muslim next door neighbour too far (reports indicate a campaign of racial abuse years long, including Mr Khan's son being beaten into unconsciousness) and being stabbed in response.

A return to Gladstonian liberalism now seems impossible. We've become so anaethetised politically and artistically that borderline fascism is now waiting in the wings to strike. This is the ultimate sad irony that escapes those that champion partisan wankery like V For Vendetta as a defender of our right to be subversive and to think and live outside the box.