80 Years

 

V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villian by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. (he carves a "V" into a sign) The only verdict is vengence; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. (giggles) Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Evey: Are you like a crazy person?

V: I'm quite sure they will say so.

(broadcasting from a captured TV station.)

V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. 

I enjoy them as much as any bloke. 

But in the spirit of Commemoration - whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday - I thought we could mark this November The Fifth, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are, of course, those who do not want Us to Speak. I suspect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while The Truncheon may be used in lieu of Conversation, Words will always retain their Power. 

Words offer the means to Meaning and for Those Who Will Listen, The Enunciation of Truth. 

And The Truth is, 

There is something terribly wrong with This Country, isn't there?

Cruelty and Injustice... Intolerance and Oppression. And where once you had the Freedom to Object, to Think and Speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. 

How did this happen? 

Who's to blame? 

Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, Truth be told...

if You're looking for The Guilty,

You need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got The Best of You and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you Order. He promised you Peace. 

And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient Consent.

Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I Destroyed The Old Bailey to remind This Country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. 

His hope was to remind The World that Fairness, Justice and Freedom are more than words - they are perspectives. 

So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. 

But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek... then I ask you to stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament -- And together, We shall give them a Fifth of November that shall never, ever, be forgot!

(disguised as William Rookwood, meeting with CID Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea).)

Rookwood : Our Story begins, as these stories often do, with a young up-and-coming politician. 

He's a deeply religious man and a member of the conservative party. He's completely single-minded and has no regard for the political process. 

The more Power he attains, the more obvious his zealotry and the more aggressive his supporters become. Eventually, his party launches a special project in the name of National Security. 

At first, it's believed to be a search for biological weapons and is pursued without regard to its cost. However, the true goal of this project is Power. Complete and total hegemonic domination. 

The Project, however, ends violently. 

But the efforts of those involved are not in vain, for a new ability to wage War is born from The Blood of The Victims. 

Imagine a Virus, the most terrifying virus you can, and then imagine that You and You alone have The Cure -- 

But if your ultimate goal is Power, 

How best to use such a weapon?

It is at this point in our story that along comes A Spider : 

He is a man seemingly without a conscience for whom the ends always justify the means, and it is he who suggests that their target should not be an enemy of the country, but rather the country itself. Three targets are chosen to maximize the effect of the attack: a school, a tube station, and a water treatment plant. Several hundred die within the first few weeks.

Fueled by the media, fear and panic spread quickly, fracturing and dividing the country until at last the true goal comes into view. Before the Saint Mary's crisis, no one would have predicted the results of the election that year, no one. And then not long after the election, lo and behold, a miracle! Some believed it was the work of God Himself, but it was a pharmaceutical company controlled by certain party members that made them all obscenely rich. A year later, several extremists are tried, found guilty and executed while a memorial is built to canonize their victims. But the end result, the true genius of the plan, was the fear. Fear became the ultimate tool of this government, and through it our politician was ultimately appointed to the newly created position of High Chancellor.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Finch: Can you prove any of this? V: Why do you think I'm still alive?

Jeremiah Smith

SCULLY:

Plan 9 From Outer Space?

MULDER:

Yeah. It's The Ed Wood Investigative Method.

"Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you.

You're not A Sportsman, Mr Bond.

Why did you break off the

encounter with My Pet Python?"

"I discovered he had a crush on me."

This movie is so profoundly bad 

in such a childlike way 

that it hypnotizes My Conscious Critical Mind 

and frees up My Right Brain 

to make associo-poetic leaps 

and I started flashing on 

Hoffman and O'Fallon. 

How there's this archetypal relationship like 

Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Judas 

or 

Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, 

or 

Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's St. Paul.

SCULLY: 

How about 

Hoffman's Roadrunner to O'Fallon's Wile E. Coyote?

(She grins and he laughs. On the screen, a body is rising out of the ground.)

SCULLY: 

Mulder...

MULDER: 

Yeah?

SCULLY: 

Do you think it's at all possible 

that Hoffman is really Jesus Christ?

MULDER: 

Are you making fun of me?

SCULLY: 

No.

MULDER: 

Well, no, I don't. 

But crazy people can be very persuasive.

SCULLY: 

Well, yes, I know that.

(They both smile as MULDER takes the hit.)

SCULLY: 

Maybe True Faith is really 

a form of insanity.

MULDER: 

Are you directing that at me?

SCULLY: 

(emphatically) 

No. I'm directing it at myself mostly, 

and at Ed Wood.

MULDER: 

Well, you know, even a broken clock is right 730 times a year.

“God is dead,” said Nietzsche. “God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. 

Who will wipe this blood off us?”

The central dogmas of the Western faith were no longer credible, according to Nietzsche, given what the Western mind now considered Truth. 

But it was his second attack — on the removal of the true moral burden of Christianity during the development of the Church — that was most devastating. 

The hammer-wielding philosopher mounted an assault on an early-established and then highly influential line of Christian thinking: that Christianity meant accepting the proposition that Christ’s sacrifice, and only that sacrifice, had redeemed humanity. 

This did not mean, absolutely, that A Christian who believed that Christ died on The Cross for The Salvation of Mankind was thereby freed from any and all personal moral obligation. But it did strongly imply that the primary responsibility for redemption had already been borne by The Saviour, and that nothing too important to do remained for all-too-fallen human individuals. 

Nietzsche believed that Paul, and later the Protestants following Luther, had removed moral responsibility from Christ’s followers. 

They had watered down the idea of The Imitation of Christ. This imitation was the sacred duty of The Believer not to adhere (or merely to mouth) a set of statements about abstract belief but instead to actually manifest The Spirit of The Saviour in the particular, specific conditions of his or her life — to realize or incarnate the archetype, as Jung had it; to clothe the eternal pattern in flesh. 

Nietzsche writes, “The Christians have never practiced the actions Jesus prescribed them; and the impudent garrulous talk about the ‘justification by faith’ and its supreme and sole significance is only the consequence of the Church’s lack of courage and will to profess the works Jesus demanded.”

Nietzsche was, indeed, a critic without parallel. Dogmatic belief in the central axioms of Christianity (that Christ’s crucifixion redeemed the world; that salvation was reserved for the hereafter; that salvation could not be achieved through works) had three mutually reinforcing consequences: 

First, devaluation of the significance of earthly life, as only the hereafter mattered. This also meant that it had become acceptable to overlook and shirk responsibility for the suffering that existed in the here-and-now; Second, passive acceptance of the status quo, because salvation could not be earned in any case through effort in this life (a consequence that Marx also derided, with his proposition that religion was the opiate of the masses); and, finally, third, the right of the believer to reject any real moral burden (outside of the stated belief in salvation through Christ), because the Son of God had already done all the important work. 

It was for such reasons that Dostoevsky, who was a great influence on Nietzsche, also criticized institutional Christianity (although he arguably managed it in a more ambiguous but also more sophisticated manner). 

In his masterwork, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has his atheist superman, Ivan, tell a little story, “The Grand Inquisitor.”

A brief review is in order. Ivan speaks to his brother Alyosha — whose pursuits as a monastic novitiate he holds in contempt — of Christ returning to Earth at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. 

The returning Savior makes quite a ruckus, as would be expected. 

He heals The Sick. 

He raises The Dead. 

His antics soon attract attention from the Grand Inquisitor himself, who promptly has Christ arrested and thrown into a prison cell. 

Later, the Inquisitor pays Him a visit. 

He informs Christ that he is no longer needed. 

His return is simply too great a threat to The Church. 

The Inquisitor tells Christ that the burden He laid on mankind — the burden of existence in Faith and Truth — was simply too great for mere mortals to bear. 

The Inquisitor claims that the Church, in its Mercy, diluted that message, lifting the demand for perfect Being from the shoulders of its followers, providing them instead with the simple and merciful escapes of faith and the afterlife. 

That work took centuries, says The Inquisitor, and the last thing the Church needs after all that effort is the return of the Man who insisted that people bear all the weight in the first place. 

Christ Listens in silence. 

Then, as the Inquisitor turns to leave, Christ embraces him, and kisses him on the lips. 

The Inquisitor turns white, in shock. 

Then he goes out, leaving the cell door open. 

The profundity of this story and the greatness of spirit necessary to produce it can hardly be exaggerated. Dostoevsky, one of the great literary geniuses of all time, confronted the most serious existential problems in all his great writings, and he did so courageously, headlong, and heedless of the consequences. 

Clearly Christian, he nonetheless adamantly refuses to make a straw man of his rationalist and atheistic opponents. 

Quite the contrary: In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, Dostoevsky’s atheist, Ivan, argues against the presuppositions of Christianity with unsurpassable clarity and passion. Alyosha, aligned with the Church by temperament and decision, cannot undermine a single one of his brother’s arguments (although his faith remains unshakeable). 

Dostoevsky knew and admitted that Christianity had been defeated by the rational faculty — by The Intellect, even — but (and this is of primary importance) he did not hide from that fact. 

He didn’t attempt through denial or deceit or even satire to weaken the position that opposed what he believed to be most true and valuable. 

He instead placed action above words, and addressed the problem successfully. 

By the novel’s end, Dostoevsky has the great embodied moral goodness of Alyosha — the novitiate’s courageous imitation of Christ — attain victory over the spectacular but ultimately nihilistic critical intelligence of Ivan. 

The Christian church described by the Grand Inquisitor is the same church pilloried by Nietzsche. Childish, sanctimonious, patriarchal, servant of the state, that church is everything rotten still objected to by modern critics of Christianity. 

Nietzsche, for all his brilliance, allows himself anger, but does not perhaps sufficiently temper it with judgement. This is where Dostoevsky truly transcends Nietzsche, in my estimation — where Dostoevsky’s great literature transcends Nietzsche’s mere philosophy. 

The Russian writer’s Inquisitor is the genuine article, in every sense. He is an opportunistic, cynical, manipulative and cruel interrogator, willing to persecute heretics — even to torture and kill them. 

He is the purveyor of a dogma he knows to be false. But Dostoevsky has Christ, the archetypal perfect man, kiss him anyway. 

Equally importantly, in the aftermath of the kiss, the Grand Inquisitor leaves the door ajar so Christ can escape his pending execution. 

Dostoevsky saw that the great, corrupt edifice of Christianity still managed to make room for The Spirit of its Founder. 

That’s the gratitude of a wise and profound soul for the enduring wisdom of the West, despite its faults. 

It’s not as if Nietzsche was unwilling to give the faith—and, more particularly, Catholicism—its due. Nietzsche believed that the long tradition of “unfreedom” characterizing dogmatic Christianity—its insistence that everything be explained within the confines of a single, coherent metaphysical theory — was a necessary precondition for the emergence of the disciplined but free modern mind. 

As he stated in Beyond Good and Evil: The long bondage of the spirit … the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God in every accident:—all this violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and execution. 

Dostoevsky saw that the great, corrupt unreasonableness, has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated and spoiled in the process. 

For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky alike, freedom — even the ability to act — requires constraint.

For this reason, they both recognized the vital necessity of the dogma of the Church. The Individual must be constrained, moulded—even brought close to destruction—by a restrictive, coherent disciplinary structure, before he or she can act freely and competently. 

Dostoevsky, with his great generosity of spirit, granted to the church, corrupt as it might be, a certain element of mercy, a certain pragmatism. He admitted that the spirit of Christ, the world-engendering Logos, had historically and might still find its resting place — even its sovereignty — within that dogmatic structure. 

If a father disciplines his son properly, he obviously interferes with his freedom, particularly in the here-and-now. He put limits on the voluntary expression of his son’s Being. forcing him to take his place as a socialized member of the world. Such a father requires that all that childish potential be funneled down a singly pathway. 

In placing such limitations on His Son, he might be considered a destructive force, acting as he does to replace the miraculous plurality of childhood with a single narrow actuality. 

But if The Father does not take such action, he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland. 

That is not a morally acceptable alternative. The dogma of The Church was undermined by The Spirit of Truth strongly developed by the Church itself.

The Ed Wood Investigative Method.

(MULDER's apartment. Late evening. MULDER is lying on his couch watching "Plan Nine From Outer Space" on TV, one of the first cheesy sci-fi films made. He speaks the lines along with the actors. He obviously knows the movie very well.)

MULDER AND TV: 

‘Well, as long as they can think 

we'll have our problems. 

But those whom we are using 

cannot think, they are The Dead 

brought to a simulated life by our electrode guns...’

(Someone knocks at the door.)

MULDER: 

It's open.

(SCULLY enters.)

MULDER AND TV: 

 You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider the earth people who can think... ...

(MULDER sits up and makes room for SCULLY to sit on the arm of the couch beside him. The movie continues.)

TV: 

... are so frightened by those who cannot be dead.

MULDER: 

Couldn't sleep either, huh?

SCULLY:

Plan 9 From Outer Space?

MULDER: 

Yeah. It's the Ed Wood investigative method. 

This movie is so profoundly bad in such a childlike way that it hypnotizes my conscious critical mind and frees up my right brain to make associo-poetic leaps and I started flashing on Hoffman and O'Fallon. 

How there's this archetypal relationship like Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Judas or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's St. Paul.

SCULLY: 

How about Hoffman's Roadrunner to O'Fallon's Wile E. Coyote?

(She grins and he laughs. On the screen, a body is rising out of the ground.)

SCULLY: 

Mulder...

MULDER: 

Yeah?

SCULLY: 

Do you think it's at all possible that Hoffman is really Jesus Christ?

MULDER: 

Are you making fun of me?

SCULLY: 

No.

MULDER: 

Well, no, I don't. 

But crazy people can be very persuasive.

SCULLY: 

Well, yes, I know that.

(They both smile as MULDER takes the hit.)

SCULLY: 

Maybe true faith is really a form of insanity.

MULDER: 

Are you directing that at me?

SCULLY: 

(emphatically) 

No. I'm directing it at myself and at Ed Wood.

MULDER: 

Well, you know, even a broken clock is right 730 times a year.




(They watch the movie. On the screen, a zombie woman walks toward the camera.)

SCULLY: 

How...?

MULDER: 

(answering the question before she asks) 

42.

SCULLY: 

You've seen this movie 42 times?

MULDER: 

Yes.

SCULLY: 

Doesn't that make you sad? 

It makes me sad.

(They sit quietly for a moment as the movie continues. Two men are looking at a map.)

ACTOR 1: 

You ever been to Hollywood?

ACTOR 2: 

Oh, a couple of times a few years ago.

ACTOR 1: 

You're going to be there in the morning. Just a few minutes from Hollywood in the town of San Fernando reports have come in of saucers flying so low...

MULDER: 

You know, Scully, we've got four weeks probation vacation and nothing to do and Wayne Federman's invited us out to L.A. to watch his movie being filmed and God knows I could use a little sunshine.

(She looks up at him. He smiles.)

MULDER: 

Scully...

(On the screen, a flying saucer wobbles by.)

SCULLY: (resigned) 

California, here we come.

The Ed Wood Investigative Method.

(MULDER's apartment. Late evening. MULDER is lying on his couch watching "Plan Nine From Outer Space" on TV, one of the first cheesy sci-fi films made. He speaks the lines along with the actors. He obviously knows the movie very well.)

MULDER AND TV: Well, as long as they can think we'll have our problems. But those whom we are using cannot think they are the dead brought to assimilated life by our electrode...

(Someone knocks at the door.)

MULDER: It's open.

(SCULLY enters.)

MULDER AND TV: You know, it's an interesting thing when you consider the earth people who can think... ...

(MULDER sits up and makes room for SCULLY to sit on the arm of the couch beside him. The movie continues.)

TV: ... are so frightened by those who cannot be dead.

MULDER: Couldn't sleep either, huh?

SCULLY: Plan 9 From Outer Space?

MULDER: Yeah. It's the Ed Wood investigative method. 

This movie is so profoundly bad in such a childlike way that it hypnotizes my conscious critical mind and frees up my right brain to make associo-poetic leaps and I started flashing on Hoffman and O'Fallon. 

How there's this archetypal relationship like Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Judas or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, or Hoffman's Jesus to O'Fallon's St. Paul.

SCULLY: How about Hoffman's Roadrunner to O'Fallon's Wile E. Coyote?

(She grins and he laughs. On the screen, a body is rising out of the ground.)

SCULLY: Mulder...

MULDER: Yeah?

SCULLY: Do you think it's at all possible that Hoffman is really Jesus Christ?

MULDER: Are you making fun of me?

SCULLY: No.

MULDER: Well, no, I don't. But crazy people can be very persuasive.

SCULLY: Well, yes, I know that.

(They both smile as MULDER takes the hit.)

SCULLY: Maybe true faith is really a form of insanity.

MULDER: Are you directing that at me?

SCULLY: (emphatically) No. I'm directing it at myself and at Ed Wood.

MULDER: Well, you know, even a broken clock is right 730 times a year.

(They watch the movie. On the screen, a zombie woman walks toward the camera.)

SCULLY: How...?

MULDER: (answering the question before she asks) 42.

SCULLY: You've seen this movie 42 times?

MULDER: Yes.

SCULLY: Doesn't that make you sad? It makes me sad.

(They sit quietly for a moment as the movie continues. Two men are looking at a map.)

ACTOR 1: You ever been to Hollywood?

ACTOR 2: Oh, a couple of times a few years ago.

ACTOR 1: You're going to be there in the morning. Just a few minutes from Hollywood in the town of San Fernando reports have come in of saucers flying so low...

MULDER: You know, Scully, we've got four weeks probation vacation and nothing to do and Wayne Federman's invited us out to L.A. to watch his movie being filmed and God knows I could use a little sunshine.

(She looks up at him. He smiles.)

MULDER: Scully...

(On the screen, a flying saucer wobbles by.)

SCULLY: (resigned) California, here we come.