A Vendetta Held as a Votive, Not in Vain

A Vendetta Held as a Votive, Not in Vain
V For Vendetta
By David Glenn Cox


Bathed in our true beliefs and comforted by a beneficent hand, wrapped in our ignorance and cloaked in our denial, is our free society. A free society where art and ideas are stifled and stymied by the gatekeepers of the media. Only art and music that are approved can reach the airwaves.

In 1943 the Nazis, in an effort to show the superiority of “approved” Nazi art over the degenerate unapproved art, sponsored an art show in Berlin. The show would have been a raging success as the crowds lined up around the block, except that they only wanted to view the degenerate “free” art. The authorities quickly realized that it would turn into a public relations nightmare if the general public discovered that no one really cared very much for the state-approved art. The show was closed immediately and from then on only state-approved art was ever to be given a venue.

So it is that you can not be told scary stories, you can only be told scary fantasies about men with knives and torture. You get Freddie Kruger and Jason characters because it is better to titillate you than to educate you, to massage your organs but ignore your mind; a sort of steroids for the body and soma for the mind. But every once in a while something slips through, a story couched in fantasy for it must be couched in fantasy. Movies aren’t allowed to tell the truth or offend; the movie “Syriana,” about the politics behind an oil-rich kingdom on the edge of the Arabian Gulf, was not even allowed to speak the name Saudi Arabia.

But every once in a while one slips through; not one made in this country, of course. Hollywood concentrates on monster trucks coming to life or talking pigs or animated children’s films for the whole family. This fantasy of which I speak was made in 2005 in a German studio. It is about the rise of a fascist government in England after a terrorist biological attack, which killed tens of thousands.

The fascists were swept into power and miraculously discovered a cure for the virus. But the hero, or villain (self-proclaimed), is a man who was the victim of the fascist torture facilities and used as a guinea pig to test biological and chemical weapons. While hundreds of other political prisoners die, he develops super kinetics but has no recollection of his past.

An explosion and fire disfigures him and frees him from the laboratory and he begins to plan his vengeance, his vendetta. He lives secretly in the basement of an abandoned building and fills it with borrowed art and books from the Ministry of Objectionable Materials as he argues, “You cannot steal from a censor.” As the movie opens Lewis Prothero, "The Voice of London," (think Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh) is shouting into the microphone, “No one escapes their past; no one escapes judgment.”

The movie simply cannot be watched once; there are too many layers to understand it all in one sitting. As Prothero speaks the character V puts on his Guy Fawkes mask and prepares to go out on a mission to blow up the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court from 1674 to 1913. On his way he is interrupted by Fingermen (party police) about to gang rape a young woman out after curfew.

V rescues the woman and kills one of the policemen all while quoting Shakespeare. He introduces himself to the woman, Evey Hammond. “Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain 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 bygone 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. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive... not in vain.”

Evey answers, “Are you like a crazy person?”

“I’m quite sure they will say so.”

But V behind the mask becomes an idea more than a person. He successfully destroys the old Bailey, and the TV network BTN (think Fox news) reports it as a controlled demolition. Producers off stage ask, “Do you think that people will buy this?”

“Why not? This is the BTN; our job is to report the news, not fabricate it. That’s the government's job.”

The movie is subtle and stylish as V leads Chief Inspector Finch on the trail of murdered party officials, each with clues that lead one to suppose that the terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the government to cow the public into accepting fascism.

V attacks the BTN studios with a bomb and forces them to play his message to all of London.

“Good evening, London, allow me first to apologize for this intrusion. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of 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 for a little chat.

There are those, of course, those who do not want us to speak; I expect 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 suggesting your submission.

How did this happen? Who is 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 are 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 you of 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 Suttler. 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 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!”

Like "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451," "V" is about more than the ideas portrayed on the screen. It is a story about a man in a mask and his personal vendetta for what his government has done to him, but it is also about the masks we are all forced to wear and the things that our government has done to all of us.

The film is available on You Tube for the time being; good luck trying to find it in the stores. While you can find all the episodes of “Lost in Space” or “The Little Rascals,” a movie made in 2005 is strangely missing from America's capitalist shelves. It has become a cult classic on its way to becoming an epic. A movie for our times, a movie for our minds.

“People should not be afraid of their Governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxdOjNi8epw

The film of V For Vendetta is a pale immitation of the book. Don't misunderstand, that's not to say it's a bad film but it is to say that the grand sweep of teh book's themes and the complexity of it's characters are heavily reduced for the screen.

The book was written by Alan Moore over twenty years ago as a response to the rise of Thatcherism. At it's core, it's about the conflict between order and chaos. It's deliberately ambiguous throughout (Moore: "The central question is, is this guy right or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think of this?") and the reader is left with the impression that either one, allowed to run to extremes, will cause suffering.

V is not a hero, he is a terrorist and his choice of heros reflect that. Most Americans know the story of Guy Fawkes only from the film of V For Vendetta but Moore is British, as I am, and would have grown up with the cultural resonance of what Guy Fawkes tried to do. V gleefully rewrites history in telling the story of Fawkes but in reality, Fawkes wasn't an idealist or an anti-monarchist, he was a religious fanatic who attempted to destroy the government and monarch, not for well meaning motives but for the most selfish of reasons. Because it would benefit him. Because it would place a Catholic on the throne and enact the Catholic theocracy Fawkes craved (or so Fawkes believed). Fawkes wasn't Che Gueverra, he was al Queda and when we celebrate November 5th, we are celebrating the fact that his attempt failed.

The hero of the story is not V. Rather, it is Evey, who walked in both worlds and could lead with the strengths of both. Neither as tyrannical as Norsefire nor as whimsical as V, she could be what was needed where V could not. "All I have left now is the vendetta but Evey has more than that and when V embarks on his suicide run towards the end of the book, it is for that reason: If the only reason he lives is the vendetta then he dies when it does, he cannot lead beyond that. But Evey can, she can be what is needed, for a time at least and her understanding that the symbol of V is more important than the man (woman? Even Moore is unsure) behind the mask becomes important towards the end.

The story is a tragedy and unapologetically so. While it's easy to sympathise with V's ordeals, it's difficult to sympathise with the horrific acts he commits throughout. While Norsefire are brutal and tyrannical, we are privvy to their thoughts and understand that they do not act this way out of sheer perversity, they genuinely believe they are the country's only hope. They are as unrestrained in their vision of the greater good as V is in his. And always, balanced between the two, is Evey. Whether any of them is correct is deliberately left to the reader to decide.

The film strips out much of this complexity. No longer are Norsefire anything but evil, no longer are we asked to consider the inherent conflict between order and chaos. Instead, the film is a simple, good-guys-against-bad-guys action flick, the hero as obvious as the villains. I actually like the film. It's a good film but it's not the work that Alan Moore wrote over twenty years ago.

However the movie brings up to date the conflicts and points to and draw parallels that even the movie producers dare admit to, " Along comes a political candidate, a deeply religious man with no regard for political institutions. I wonder who that could be?

Although the movie could never be as indepth as the novel it is because the two genre work at different speeds. In the domino scene, the last domino to fall rrepresents Evey caught between her past and V i.e. her future.

As far as modern movies go it is far and away superior to anything else made as a political thriller and if it doesn't stand up to the book well, what film ever does? Books stimulate your imagination while movies paint you pictures.

Most of the complexity was stripped out of Moore's Watchmen on it's way to the screen as well.

Incidently, you can still get the film for about five quid in any DVD store here (England) and it was actually our country it was set in. If you can play Region 2 discs, it can be picked up on Amazon for four pounds (although they'll hammer you on import fees):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/V-Vendetta-DVD-Natalie-Portman/dp/B000B83Z4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1243614742&sr=1-1