Spoiler Alert -- Don't Read If You're Going to See V for Vendetta

Ok, I'm going to get flamed for this, but here goes.

Saw V for Vendetta on Monday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I find it really amusing, in an oh-you're-revealing-so-much-more-than-you-realize kind of way that America's right wing, which purports to be all about "freedom" and "democracy", knew instinctively that the movie was aimed at them. I've chuckled at their horror at the notion that a fictional character could be heroic BECAUSE he blew up a building. I don't remember hearing any of them disavow Howard Roark.

But over the past few days, something has started to bother me. Let me say first that I never read the book, so it's possible that the issue that's been tugging at my mind is explained more thoroughly in the book. All I have to go on is what happened in the movie. SPOILER ALERT: I'M ABOUT TO REVEAL MATERIAL FROM THE MOVIE.

In the movie, V saves Evey from rape -- pretty classic hero stuff. He then sweeps her off to a rooftop because he wants someone to witness what he's about to do: blow up a building. It's a normal human reaction, although it certainly places Evey in danger every bit as great as she was in even a few minutes ago when he saved her. The next day, she saves him and then he saves her, bringing her to his hideout. He tells her that she'll have to stay there for a year, until his plan to blow up Parliament has reached fruition. Evey manages to escape, only to get arrested by the fascist police force. V somehow rescues her, but she doesn't know that. She doesn't know it because she's in a jail where she's routinely physically and emotionally tortured.

Turns out, V was her torturer. But, he did it because he loves her. He wants to make her fearless, so he torturers her. In return, she falls in love with him and helps him save the world.

OK, it's fiction. And, maybe the movie had to collapse a lot of stuff into a short time and the book is different. I don't know. But the man who saves a woman from rape only to torture her (in one way or anther), for her own good, is a standard in quite a bit of fiction. And I've never heard that torture makes its victims fearless. PTSD is a much more frequent result of torture than fearlessness. But I will say that, for many women, falling in love with the torturer is a survival technique.

So the whole thing kept reminding me of something and then I finally realized what it reminded me of. It reminded me of Robin Morgan's The Demon Lover. Morgan realized, long before September 11th, that patriarchal society often finds terrorism sexy. As Beverly Miller noted in 1989, Morgan's book "raises questions other authors have avoided: Why are most terrorists men? Why do terrorist acts primarily victimize women and children? What is the relationship of terrorism to the patriarchal state, to the mythic hero, to messianic religion? To the economic and social policies of, among other nations, the United States?" Recently, Morgan has asked, "Is it possible that terrorism attracts so much attention today because men, as well as being its main perpetrators, are also among its victims?" She explained that, " If men are now afraid in daily circumstances, why then the situation must be taken seriously, attention must be paid.

Men of the State-that-is [the Establishment] and men of the State-that-would-be [“rebels” or “terrorists”] share a peculiar intoxication. It permits them to call up armies, attach electrodes to living flesh, justify the invention, testing, and stockpiling of world-destroying weapons; it also permits them to “kneecap” informers with electric drills, purge “incorrect” colleagues by literal crucifixion, and eventually to consider the political reasons for doing these things as secondary or irrelevant, the mere doing them as creative acts. Such men suffer from a lack of ambivalence. " Lack of ambivalence permits V to torture Evey "for her own good."

So, I liked the movie, appreciate the message that sometimes old symbols need to be destroyed, especially when fascists such as George Bush and Karl Rove use them to cloak their evil in order to pretend that they are for "freedom" and "democracy," when precisely the opposite is true. I enjoyed the special effects, Portman's sexy shaved head, and the film's appreciation for the role of the media in allowing religio-corporate fascists to gain control. I'm more than willing to believe that, at the very, very least, our government let September 11th happen on purpose.

But I'll take a pass on being tortured by my lover for my own good. And I'll take a pass on finding men who torture anyone so sexy that I long to kiss their Guy Fawkes' curved plastic lips.

Flame away.