The opinions expressed in The Lawrentian are those of the students, faculty and community members who wrote them. The Lawrentian does not endorse any opinions piece except for the staff editorial, which represents a majority of the editorial board. The Lawrentian welcomes everyone to submit their own opinions. For the full editorial policy and parameters for submitting articles, please refer to the About section.
“V for Vendetta” is a work of the recently popularized genre of dystopian media, originally written in the 1980s by British comic writer and anarchist Alan Moore. The masked, black-caped, sword-wielding V is the titular protagonist in a dark alternate-future Britain where he fights against a fascist government. However, despite his noble goals, his methods are just as inhumane as those of the people he fights against. Moore could have easily justified his various murders, bombings and even the torture of his friends as being “for the greater good,” but Moore opted to leave it ambiguous in his book. Was V right? Was his final goal against the Norsefire government justified?
Absolutely none of those questions are up for nuanced debate in the Wachowski sisters’ adaptation of the book. Over multiple rewatches, it becomes clear the film wasn’t even talking about anarchism versus fascism, nor the ambiguity and nuances of V’s actions. Rather, it paints a, “George Bush is literally a nat-zee!” and, “blow stuff up because it will magically coalesce to a democratic society,” narrative. Where the original serves as a cautionary tale and an inspiring story for anarchists seeking a change of authority, it is a distilled form of anti-establishmentarian propaganda. The film loses the premise’s focus rapidly as it attempts to shoehorn contemporary Bush-era politics to this fictional British fascist regime, with references to the 9/11-inside job conspiracy. Detention centers are set up for Muslims and other “impure” Britons in the orange jumpsuits and black-bagged heads of Guantanamo where the detention officers are dressed in SS-like uniforms from Nazi Germany. There is also a flaccid jab at the rhetoric of the post-9/11 era, when a side protagonist asks a former detention officer about what they were, to which he responds, “you must remember those were hard times, and if we didn’t do what we did there would have been chaos.”
None of this dialogue or subtext is featured in the comics, because Moore wasn’t writing about Thatcher’s Britain, he was writing on the future of someone more extreme than Thatcher. The film conflates contemporary political jabs with timeless commentary, something which other dystopias suffer from, capitalizing on the endless mobs of hypersensitive, overprivileged adults screaming, “I’m literally in 1984!” in a free society.
One scene that is often fondly remembered is V’s grandiose speeches about blowing up the Old Bailey and Parliament as “symbols of hope,” and its ending claims that through the termination of Norsefire’s leadership, Britain can move on from a totalitarian reign to one of democracy. Nice thought, but absolutely no country that has implemented democracy for the first time in decades has succeeded in the way the film seems to be hinting at: a perfect plurality where all peoples of all creeds, races, nations, ideas, etc. come together to vote for representatives to lead the country.
In the end, all is sunshine and fireworks as Norsefire magically crumbles, England is free and democracy and hope can once again bloom, with absolutely no awareness that for all its dunks on the Bush administration, its “bomb all for democracy” policy sounds oddly similar to the premise for the intervention in Iraq. Suppose V was a politician who led the move to invade a foreign dictatorship in order to implement his anti-establishmentarian, pluralist views — would that country automatically transform into the society he so wishes to see? “V for Vendetta” simply shrugs off these important, nuanced struggles of extremities and consequences with, “yeah, blow up British George Bush for freedom.” If the film was more realistic, all Britain would see instead of the happy society of hope would just be a different kind of Norsefire retaking the country, or perhaps a dictatorship established by various collectives seeking to carve up the country into its fiefdoms.
Overall, the film suffers from Dystopian Conclusion Syndrome where the post-overthrow future is seen as automatically bright and harmonious, while also suffering from a case of Irrelevant Contemporary Politics by shoehorning the Bush administration as a hypothetical British ultranationalist government. “V for Vendetta” is no longer about the story of a fascist government creating the very roots that would destroy them and whether the man who hands that destruction out is moral or not, but simply a movie that paints this rather myopic picture of a Fight the Power, Rage-against-the-Machine type story.