Zachary FenellV for Vendetta
February 17th 2009 20:08
V for Vendetta, 2005
But of all of these, the one that I'd like to talk to you about today is V for Vendetta.
V for Vendetta (the comic) was written by Alan Moore, who you will recall also wrote LXG and the Watchmen. So far, he has yet to “approve” of any movie adaptation of his work, but V came awfully close. It is the story of a world – or, more specifically, a country – that bought into the idea of fear so much that it became a police state, all for the sake of “peace”. (There is an adage that says you have have peace or you can have freedom, but you cannot have both indefinitely.) There are aggressive curfews, Islam and homosexuality are strictly illegal, and even accidentally possessing something of questionable character can make you a target for secret police action.
When I saw it, I feared that it was prophetic. In the U.S. especially, that scent of an impending police state was on the wind, and free-thinkers like myself were starting to get a little squirrelly. The pre-conditioning advertisement and news slant towards fear was in high gear and anyone “different” was already marked for the “just in case” scenario. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part that I believe that movies such as V for Vendetta gave the public a wake-up call, but I don't think I've ever been more proud of my country as I was the day we elected a new president that was definitely not going to buy into that culture of fear crap anymore.
Art imitates life, it's said, but art also impacts life. If it didn't, what would be the point? Movies like V for Vendetta give us a glimpse into the fearful “what ifs”, and we are faced with the dire responsibility of making a choice based on that glimpse. Are we going to let that happen? Are we going to tacitly permit an irresponsible governing body to drive us into that police state just by saying things like “it could never happen to us”?
If you'll recall the review of Children of Men, England gets the short end of the stick a lot in fiction with the whole police state thing. There's a reason for this: England is isolated in a comparatively small body of land, and control of a small island is far easier than control of a continent. It is the perfect experimental lab for these kinds of things, complete with pre-existing prejudices. For anyone in the rest of the non-British world, it's easy to get lulled into a false sense of “that could never happen here – it would take too many resources”... and that's a lie. First starts the conditioning, then starts the nipping away at personal liberties, the introduction of Things to Be Afraid Of, until one day you wake up and you can do only what they allow you to do... in the name of peace or protection.
Art impacts life, and popular art impacts more life. You can pick up reprints of the graphic novels at most comic book stores, or you can pay high premiums for first-prints on the webternet. Remember that it's the story that's important, and this story deserves to be told.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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...it was enjoyable, I thought, even though it washed away much of Moore's dense intellectualism, and replaced it with shiny comic imagery.
I enjoyed Hugo Weaving in that mask, though!
Comment by Michelle Sweeney
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