"The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action."
Malcolm X
Freedom is a process of terrible pain, but necessary for us. Realizing how things really are is such a painful experience, but eventually liberates us from the invisible boundaries that can't makes us really self-empowered.
Before you continue reading this entry, I suggest you to watch this extract from Slavoj Zizek's "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology":
Of course we can go deeper with this extract and what is shown there, like the dictatorship within Democracy, a possible comparison between George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and so on. But this entry is specifically referring to the fact that you must have a sufferred to achieve Freedom.
This path from conformity to liberty, is, as shown in the video and the graphic novel, completely painful and full of negation. At first, it won't be tolerable that freedom may be imposed because that person would be living in complete conformity. And that's why I think some authors may be wrong about totalitarian imposition of certain beliefs: we, in a way are comfortable by following the current ideological structure. Thus, we will reject any attempt to makes us see the ugly truth.
If we take a closer look to Evey process into her time being imprisoned and tortured, we can see that she must accept this process in order to be compeletely free. To finally feel herself in total freedom and observe her environment beyond ideology.
Finally, I would say that V's mask acts like John Nada's sunglasses. What V did in the novel is to give/impose his mask in order to make us see how ideology really works and open our eyes, so in that way twe could react against what we possibly consider as true. People will never be awake by themselves, we must be forced to be free.
- Do you consider yourself as partially or fully awaken person? If so, why? Which circumstances made what you are in this moment?
- Do you consider violence as a way of liberation? Why?/Why not?
References:
- Fiennes, Sophie. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. United Kingdom: P. Guide Productions, 2012.
- Moore, Alan and Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: Vertigo, DC Comics, 1982.
- X, Malcolm, and George Breitman. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. Print.
I think that the fact of being a fully awaken person does not let you to keep on living the society/system/order from which you have awoken. I mean, it makes you contradict yourself if you try to keep on living as you were living before, therefore, it absolutely becomes neccesary to change everything and create a world/society/system in which you can live.But, as there is no place in the world for that, all your ideas and thoughts find a way out in a more violent way because maybe instinct we know that destruction is another just another form of creation and that by destroying something you are enable to built something new without a trace of what was already corrupted.
ResponderEliminarSo yes, in a way, violence is a expression of freedom because ironacally we evaluate violence with the moral standars of this sociaty.
And finally, I just what to share this Malcom X quote: "Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it."