V For Vendetta
V For Vendetta
"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot."
"I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should Ever be Forgot!"
It is that time of the year again!
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I feel like the movie kind of missed the point of the book.
In what way?
... I'm trying to remember what my gripe was. It's not anarchist enough? Too much vendetta not enough revolution? Book V had a vision for the future, Movie V only had revenge?
Fuck me guess it's time to reread and rewatch and remind myself why I thought that.
I'd love to say that V isn't much of an anarchist because anarchists are supposed to act in solidarity with the people they are hoping to liberate (which includes themselves) and not unilaterally in the way that V does... but then I remember Alexander Berkman assassinating capitalist Henry Clay Frick without bothering to properly understand the position of the strikers Frick was repressing.
I'd say that the "super" genre is utterly incompatible with anarchist thought... the "super" genre is, after all, based on individualist power fantasy - something quite useless to someone viewing power relations through an anarchist lens.
So, there's that... and I lost all sympathy for V when he shoved Evey in a cell. That's some straight-up abusive shit right there.
She did ask to be free /s
Haha ok. Thanks for your explanation regardless.
@elbarto777 I felt the same way as @Xariphon . For me the book is anti fascism so it's a critique of the ideology of fascism but it's also nuanced and critical of aspects of the V character who is quite problematic.
The movie is more about "fascism we don't like" (with clear US political references) and V is made more unambiguously heroic and even romantic, with Evie falling in love with him and the crowds on his side (i.e crypto-democratic leader).
Alan Moore on the film:
[The movie] has been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. ... It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives – which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England.