Ya know those Guy Fawkes masks the OWS people have been wearing ? Well, the press finally noticed that the symbolism sucks, and they are not happy:
Yet whether the inspiration is the comic, the movie or the historical figure, the imagery — co-opted today by everyone from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the hacker group Anonymous — carries stronger connotations than some of the Occupy protesters seem to understand.
While Fawkes’ image has been romanticized over the past 400 years, he was a criminal who tried to blow up a government building. It would be hard to imagine Americans one day wearing Timothy McVeigh masks to protest the government or corporate greed.
Ouch.
Leave it to the left to let the theater overtake the message.
Well, the right has employed the V / Guy masks as well, and I’ve always just written it off as “not thinking things through very much.” People saw the final scene of the movie (which doesn’t occur in the comic book) where a throng of masked people peacefully overpowers the soldiers of the fascist state, and take the Fawkes mask as a happy symbol of popular will.
But on the other hand, the right isn’t too squeamish about adopting violent imagery. So the irony is less pronounced.
Well, the right has employed the V / Guy masks as well,
the symbolism wasn’t wasted on the critics then, either.
just seems wildly inappropriate, to me.
To be fair, the mask references the movie and presumably the comic book, but not so much Guy Fawkes the McVeigh-prototype (who for one thing had a much fuller beard).