In Battlestar Galactica, there is a delightful character in Tom Zarek who leads the convicts on the prison ship in the fleet. He wrote a book, a little treatise on violence and how it is the only way to change the world — positioned like an opposite-world Civil Disobedience. Or Lucian in Underworld— a truly scary narrative-directed terrorist set on changing the world. Though neither is the protagonist, they are not presented as antagonists either; just as sympathetic villains.
Beyond that, there is an absolute horde of Japanese revenge-focused characters who do absolutely disgusting, revolting, terrible things to get their revenge (Redo of Healer, Nidome no Yuusha).
Nothing is too much for these people, and no one can deny that they are terrifying figures — but the way the narrative handles them being horrid people… is to paint the world as a horrid place, and their targets of vengeance as even more horrid persons.
But there is a lack of specificity about terrorism-the-word in many of them, despite their goals being largely to terrorise their would-be-victims before they do the ultimate deed that ends them — these are usually depicted on a personal level, but despite that, there are heads put on spikes, people butchered in just the most miserable ways, and so much collateral… there is always so much collateral and blood and fire.
They aren’t serial killer archetypes, they are fighting a system like a freedom fighter does, but they don’t care about the freedom: only about directing their pain onto the world.
As such they are protagonists, but I don’t know if you can call such reads… terrorism.
Most coherently explicit terrorists are almost ways antagonists; what is the world-cleansing gentlefellow in Kingsman if not a very posh and well-to-do terrorist? Or the bloke in Psycho Pass who causes so very much pain upon the world with the simplicity that he can?
Antagonists have it easy. They don’t need us to like them. In fact… they are often better served if we should hate them. Terrorist bad guys are the best of the best… but even in movies there are those who slowly begin to resemble terrorists.
Falling Down is a wonderful movie. That first new Joker movie was a delight. The Interview (not about lil Kimmy) is about a serial killer, as Dexter… but I truly wonder what the distinction between a terrorist and a man who murders for the pleasure of it is.
Terrorism is almost defined by antagonism. Violence to achieve political aims…
But where do the personal aims end and the political aims start?
Man makes the system… if you kill a man? You killed one pillar of the system.
What is a mass murderer, if not a man deeply at odds with the system?
V for Vendetta is explicitly political theatre mixing both violence of terrorism with a bunch of silly civil disobedience — and people tend to like the movie despite the fact he makes Evy suffer terribly.
Is he a terrorist, or a freedom fighter? Is the distinction entirely based on whether we as an audience agree that the world they commit violence in is an evil place?
District 9 was an absolute delight to watch, and the protagonist is explicitly branded as and treated as a terrorist — but the system is awful, so… does the audience feel the protagonist is a terrorist?
Blomkamp seems interested in that very question — Elysium is not unlike D9 in this same respect.
Then we have another deep question:
Anarchy.
What could be more politically violent than the subversion of the bonds of statehood through physical means?
Hardcore Henry (amazing watch, absolutely love it) might be in it for himself and to win it… but my Barnaby Fritter: he causes SO much devastation in his wake; how is he anything but a terrorist?
Children of Men you might call terrorism or freedom fighters… but beyond even that there lies another, deeper question:
What of War?
The only distinction in that clash of political ideology and resource acquisition from terrorism or freedom fighters:
Is competence, and strength, and an institution. Why should the little guy against the big world be viewed any more as a terrorist than the big world against the little guy?
They both are set on terrorism — dependent on it, even predicated upon it! The function of larger societal violence is the very same as a terrorist or freedom fighter: violence to further their politics.
In that view, did not the Germans in the first half of the 20th century not *terrorise* all Romanis and Jews within their reach? Was the gunpowder treason and plot terrorism or simply an assassination attempt by a powerful foreign ideology?
And if war is just terrorism made widespread, it really draws me back to that core question:
Where does personal violence end, and political violence begin… if people are what makes the system tick.
