- (Jared) Hey Wisecrack. Timing can be weird. When we started working on this video about
V for Vendetta we really didn’t expect its release to feel so eerily timely.
The film is obviously not a perfect or even close metaphor for this moment. V, the leader
of the protest movement depicted in the film is extravagantly violent. In real life, overwhelmingly-peaceful
protests continue in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd by the police. We hope
that you’re making your voice heard - We also hope that you’re able to do so safely,
and that you take care of your mental health during this difficult time. Thanks guys.
(Electronic music)
- (Jared) Hey Wisecrack, Jared here. Today we’re talking about the vaudevillian veteran,
cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate – it’s V for
Vendetta.
The film, based on a graphic novel of the same name, was met with generally positive
reviews and relative box office success.
But the graphic novel’s curmudgeonly creator, Alan Moore was left unimpressed by Hollywood’s
translation of his work - describing the film as a “defanged” version of the original.
So is Alan Moore right, or just very grumpy at Detective Comics?
Let’s find out in this Wisecrack edition on V for Vendetta: Deep or Dumb? And of course,
spoilers ahead for the film and the graphic novel.
A quick recap: We start out with a news monologue delivered by the “Voice of London”, Lewis
Prothero, who explains the current state of affairs:
a mysterious plague has spread across the world, turning the United States into a “leper
colony”:
- (Prothero) And now 20 years later is what? The world’s biggest leper colony.
- (Jared) And provoking radical changes in Britain.
Led by dictator Adam Sutler, the far-right Norsefire party has transformed Britain into
a police state that runs on complete obedience and conformity.
While a combination of state propaganda and secret police manage to keep most of the country
compliant with Sutler’s authoritarian regime, one man rises up to oppose it - V. The film
follows V and his ward slash not-totally-consensual mentee, Evey Hammond, as V blows up symbols
of British law and assassinates party members who have wronged him. But V’s final masterpiece
is a revolution itself - as his very-calculated acts of terror inspire the masses to rise
up against their fascist leaders.
Let’s first start with what the film and graphic novel have in common: V’s fixation
on symbols. Whether he’s talking to Lady Justice, blowing up symbols of British authority,
or wearing a Guy Fawkes mask - the guy seems to see symbols as a key to cementing political
authority - rather than just the violence of jackbooted men. The antidote to those symbols
are counter-symbols, ideas, and art. As Evey reminds us:
- (Evey) Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth
up.
- (Jared) And his shadow gallery is basically a Noah’s Ark of outlawed ideas. The film
even takes some of this farther, as Evey’s friend Dietrich hides a Quran and protest
art. He also gets all Benny Hill in his mocking of Sutler.
- (Upbeat saxophone music plays, as audiences laugh)
- (Jared) Even as Dietrich is dragged away by the secret police and V dies, it’s clear
that their ideas will outlive them.
But while this conceit is plenty laudable, it’s not like Moore or the film have really
reinvented the wheel here. Maybe dramatized it well? This brings us to a small choice
in the film that ends up drastically altering its meaning: how the Norsefire party comes
to power.
In the movie, and like many a real-life authoritarian regime, Norsefire presents the idea of a glorious,
more homogenous past the country has lost by deviating from “traditional values.”
Britain once had a strong, proud national identity, they claim, but it has been diluted
and polluted by modernity, diversity and sin.
Using a swastika-like red and black symbol which includes the Christian cross, Norsefire
presents itself as the antidote to chaos.
Sutler’s motto is “Strength through unity, unity through faith”, Or “Strength through
purity, purity through faith” as its phrased in the graphic novel which also explicitly
links the motto to the Roman fasces - a bundle of wood that cannot be broken unless divided.
This simple, forceful slogan continually re-enforces the notion that the country is strong when
everyone lines up behind the leader and lives according to his rules. Consequently, anyone
who does not offer complete obedience is an enemy of the people. The pursuit of personal
freedom becomes an attack on the very fabric of society.
- (Sutler) Doubt will plunge this country back into chaos
- (Jared) At a glance, this anti-authoritarian tale seems like exactly what Alan Moore would
hope for from a cinematic adaptation of his work. So what’s his beef?
So much of Moore’s identity as an artist has revolved around interrogating the idea
of power and how it’s used. In particular, his work is largely about the dangers of any
one person wielding great power – whether they are naked blue superhumans like Dr Manhattan
or oppressive dictators like Sutler or Susan as he’s named in the book.
While director James McTeigue’s adaptation holds true to the rejection of authoritarianism,
the issue Moore found was that it makes it all too simple. The film’s world is separated
so clearly into evil tyrants and virtuous rebels that much of the graphic novel’s
nuance is lost. Moore’s V for Vendetta was not a clear-cut
case of good against evil but a battle between authoritarianism and anarchism. By contrast,
the movie is just “authoritarianism vs honest people.”
That brings us to Norsefire’s rise to power. In the graphic novel, a global nuclear war
between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 80’s has reduced much of the world
to an irradiated wasteland. Britain is spared by the war but finds itself in a state of
crisis afterwards when the resulting nuclear winter causes a famine. Out of the chaos that
follows, the Norsefire party rises to power. In the movie, however, a viral pandemic rather
than a nuclear war lays the groundwork. This new plague kills thousands in Britain and
is reported to have all but destroyed the US. As in the book, a crisis creates opportunity,
and the Norsefire party is able to seize control. At first glance, this might seem like a superficial
change. The point, in either case, is that a period of global turmoil creates widespread
panic and desperation, leading the British public to turn to a zealot like Sutler.
Fear, followed by apathy, has allowed the country to fall under the spell of a right-wing
strongman, as V explains.
- (V) Fear got the best of you and in your panic you turn to the now High Chancellor,
Adam Sutler.
- (Jared) However, it is later revealed that the virus which ravaged Britain was in fact
intentionally released by Sutler and his cronies to force the country into accepting their
leadership.
- (Man) Imagine a virus, the most terrifying virus you can. And then imagine that you and
you alone are the cure.
- (Jared) The point is that, in the film’s version of the story, the British people were
essentially duped. Norsefire didn’t rise to power by winning the honest support of
the masses, but by fooling them. Contrast that with the graphic novel, in which the
wars that devastated the world were real, many of the problems were real, and the public
was all too willing to turn towards fascism, racism, and homophobia.
V for Vendetta was born out of Moore’s own experiences of life under someone whom he
considered to be a hard-right zealot - Margaret Thatcher.
Having watched “The Iron Lady” win the support of his countrymen, Moore was under
no illusions as to how popular these politics could be.
The film, however, makes the populace significantly less blameworthy - the people are basically
good.
Turning a three-book graphic novel series into a two-hour movie was always going to
require some streamlining, so we can’t REALLY blame them for cutting out some of the fascist
propaganda or entire scenes. But far more concerning, the movie arguably loses the moral
ambiguity of the graphic novel.
In Moore’s telling, the government officials who send people to concentration camps are
also people with families, desires, ambitions, jealousies, etc - they’re three dimensional.
In contrast, the film reduces Norsefire to a cabal of cartoonish villains in a dark room
- simplifying the moral and political implications of the story. Fittingly, the movie shows Sutler
mostly as a Big-Brother-esque, ominous talking head, rendering him LITERALLY two-dimensional.
He’s no longer the complex weirdo who falls in love with a computer from Alan Moore’s
version. The film’s message becomes this: there’s
a small set of clear badmen amongst a sea of good people. All it takes is one brave
hero to help overthrow them, and things can be set right again.
In the graphic novel, the Norsefire members are, of course, still awful but they are at
least presented as fully-rounded human beings, ranging from true believers in Norsefire’s
xenophobic creed to those who are “just following orders”.
The graphic novel actually takes pains to show us the private lives of these Norsefire
members - people who go to church and raise families and goof around at work. The point
of course is not to say that there are “good people” within this fascist organization,
just that they ARE people.
Reducing them to comic book bad guys might be more comfortable for the viewer, but it
shies away from their reality. And just as the Norsefire leaders have been
exaggerated into one-note bad guys, V himself is noticeably softened and simplified for
the big screen.
In the movie, V is an egg-frying, slow-dancing charmer with a love of romantic movies and
Shakespearean plays. He kills in cold blood, it’s true, but his victims are so outlandishly
awful that this never seems like too much of a moral compromise. The movie may claim
that the monstrous things that were done to him turned V into a monster, but that’s
not really what we see.
In the graphic novel, however, V is considerably less dashing.
The mask he wears isn’t just to cover his scars, hide his identity or create a symbol
– the static, unfeeling face it presents is a representation of who V is trying to
become. And the Guy Fawkes grimace sneaks its way into panels of Norsefire members - suggesting
V’s method isn’t so far removed from the people he wants to destroy.
Because his victims aren’t all painted as cartoonish villains, we are forced to reckon
with the extreme cost of political violence. Like Sutler, he is ultimately a man so convinced
of his own ideology that he will do whatever it takes in pursuit of it.
So what we have is not a battle between the forces of pure good and pure evil, but between
a proponent of authoritarianism and an agent of anarchy. So let’s talk about anarchy
Perhaps the biggest change to V’s character lies in what he actually wants.
At the beginning of the movie, as the Old Bailey courthouse explodes, he delivers a
speech which outlines exactly what he hopes to achieve.
- (V) Wait! It is to Madam Justice that I dedicate this concerto, in honor of the holiday
she seems to have taken from these parts. And in recognition of the imposter who stands
in her stead.
- (Jared) V turns himself, and specifically, his mask, into a symbol of true, incorruptible
justice. In doing so, he hopes to remind people that such a thing can still exist, if they
come together and fight for it. He tips his hat to the statue of Lady Justice
as he does so, acknowledging both what she stands for and how those values have been
corrupted by Sutler’s brutal and dishonest regime.
Ultimately, he is pledging loyalty to the concept of justice itself.
The V of the graphic novel also has a conversation with Lady Justice, but it plays out quite
differently.
V begins by making a formal introduction between the two of them, while voicing both roles.
This might suggest that he is not quite so mentally composed as his on-screen counterpart.
From the start, their conversation is filled with odd sexual undertones, framing Lady Justice
as V’s childhood crush. Things then quickly turn nasty as V accuses her of cheating on
him with Norsefire’s leader. Painting himself as a jilted lover with a
score to settle, V is established here not as a noble freedom fighter coming to his nation’s
rescue but as a deeply damaged man with a thirst for vengeance that borders on the erotic.
Perhaps what is most telling about this scene is that it echoes an earlier moment in which
Norsefire’s leader outlines his “racially pure” vision for Britain’s future and
explains his belief in fascism. Just like with V’s conversation, what begins
as a statement of political ideology quickly descends into an angry personal diatribe with
an unsettling sexual undercurrent. After lamenting the fact that he has never
been with a woman in real life, Susan moves on to personifying his political ideal, “Fate”,
as a woman he is in love with - just as V does with Lady Justice.
While V and Sutler are polar opposites in the film, the novel uses these scenes to draw
an eerie parallel - both men are driven by personal grudges and primal desires.
What’s most significant though is how the conversation between V and Lady Justice ends
- with V cutting ties to Liberty and pledging allegiance to anarchy instead.
He talks about his dream of turning Britain into “The land of do as you please”, the
name taken from a children’s story by Enid Blyton. In his view, the complete obliteration
of government and law will allow everyone the freedom to live their lives however they
see fit. The dangers of anarchism are not lost on Moore,
however. With no government to enforce the laws that are in place, it’s also possible
that we enter a Darwinist state where those with the greatest capacity for violence rule
over those around them - although this isn’t exactly different than life under Norsefire.
V also has a term for this – “The land of take what you want.”
But, the chaos can give way to a kind of anarchic order, where people voluntarily submit to
the ideals that control their behavior. This argument is near and dear to Moore, a self-professed
anarchist. Moore’s V even invokes the german word for “order,” Ordnung, which evokes
the system of rules used by self-governing Amish communities. But in the film, any ideas
of anarchy ultimately disappear, except for a quick allusion to a misquote of the famous
anarchist, Emma Goldman:
- (V) Revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.
- (Jared) And a man yelling
- (Masked Man) Anarchy in the UK!
- (Jared) What’s important is that the graphic novel ends with no clear answer as to where
things will go from here – V is dead and, while he successfully blows up Number 10 Downing
Street in one last act of defiance, it is unclear what effect this gesture will have
on the nation at large. The film’s ending is much more of a crowd-pleaser.
While V still dies, his final act has clearly inspired the country around him.
The sea of Guy Fawkes masks watching on as Westminster burns are proof that the British
people have woken up to the true nature of the Norsefire party and are ready to take
back their country. The bad guys are dead, the good guys won.
[ ]
Authoritarianism, as the novel understands, is not something that arises because a small
group of evil-doers hatch a plan – it rises out of the country itself, championed by large
sections of the public. The movie sidesteps the difficulty of this
truth to provide a brighter, breezier version of good conquering evil.
Ultimately, the movie is considerably less deep than the source material but it still
has enough substance to save it from a full “dumb” verdict – it cleverly depicts
the way authoritarian governments control their citizens by manipulating the flow of
information, and offers some interesting thoughts about the power of symbols in our society.
So, pretty deep and maybe important formatively if you’re a teenage Jared.
In the end, we’re left with the same question which V poses to the people of the UK - do
we want an inspiring story about good triumphing over evil, or are we ready to take a harsh
look at where that evil comes from in the first place? Let us know what you think in
the comments. Big thanks to our awesome patrons for supporting us. Hit that subscribe button
and, as always, thanks for watching guys. Peace.