E for Emo, M for My Space, V for Vendetta

So, like, emo is huge right now on the You Tube/My Space matrix. Is it the start of Huxley's Brave New World or a heartening insight into the creativity and humour of young people today? All I know is that when I see parkour, those kids on YT who totally shred the gee-tar, robot dance in a jaw-dropping manner, do ninja stunts and generally rip the piss out of themselves and the world, I'm sorry my adolescence took place before the Web, broadband and digital cameras. I'd like to see stats on how many YT videos have a single bed as the backdrop. Certainly, the teenage bedroom today is a forum very different to what it was when I was locked in there with my Squire Strat, 12 amp Peavey, Pixies albums, Jim Morrison haircut, mirror and well-thumbed copy of Catcher. TCAL points out this morning that You Tube is spending one million dollars on bandwidth per month, in essence underwriting the sea-change in Internet use which is currently taking place. The above is pretty cool too and reminds me that I won free tickets to V for Vendetta at the Irish Blog Awards. I mentioned it at the time and said I really enjoyed the flick, but never got around to doing a full review. James Wolcott correctly pointed out that the shrill insistence on the right that the film was "bad" indicated that its themes were cutting a little close to the bone. V works as art, genre flick and political polemic and is a top companion piece to Syriana, which I thought was subtly profound on the interconnectedness of things. One is reminded of the army of morons on the IMDB message boards who say things like "Sideways is a bad film because that guy drinks alcohol all the time and the other guy is unfaithful to his fiancé. And they were all divorced and everything." I guess I missed that day of Critical Theory 101. Still, you expect more from the New Yorker and the NY Times. My only issue with V for Vendetta really (apart from Miss Portman's typically inadequate performance) was that it unnecessarily has the gub'ment engineer with appalling cynicism the circumstances which allow it to introduce a totalitarian dispensation. It's a cop out. Depriving us of our freedoms and civil liberties because of security threats is just as wrong when those threats are genuine and external as when they're manufactured. In a free society, it's up the citizenry to suck it up to a certain extent whether they feel threatened by urban youths or implacable and deranged fundamentalists. And I've read Martin Rees. It's too easy for educated, middle-class conformists to make free and easy with the liberties of others by succumbing to hysteria in respect of their own particular interests. It doesn't cost them anything. I wonder where the You Tube kid got that mask...