Rough Trade Friday: V for Vendetta

The original is always best, don't you think? Some things are just classic. V for Vendetta is set in a future 1990's England after a limited nuclear war of the late 80's. V is an anarchist set to overthrow the facisit regime that has arisen in England after the war. Much of the early story is told in flashbacks after V resuces Evey, a sixteen-year-old prostitute who is being arrested and raped by the secret police, the Fingermen. At first grateful, Evey then begins to doubt her relationship with V, who at best has dubious morals. After finding herself complicit in the murder of a pedophile bishop, Anthony James Lilliman, Evey strikes out on her own, taking a lover whom is then killed and she is finally captured by the Fingermen. She is tortured almost to the point of breaking until she finds a letter hidden in her cell written by a lesbian about her first love and the rise of the fascist regime. It gives her the will to resist.

Meanwhile V continues his campaign of violence and destablization against the facists, blowing up the Old Bailey and hunting down his former torturers one by one and killing them in an a propos manner. Hence the "vendetta." V had spent time at the Larkhill Resettlement Camp, a torture facility set up by the facists to house those deemed dangerous to society (Jews, blacks, Muslims, homosexuals, etc.).

We never discover V's identity in the trade, the only clue is seeing the back of his head, so we know that he is white. Alan Moore the creator, purposely let V stand as an Everyman who rises to difficult situation. He is left very ambiguous, amoral, vicious and kind, an excercise in conflicted emotions, yet acting with absolute certitude. Personally, I see V as what happens when you piss off a queen.

After refusing to give in, V reveals to Evey that he has been torturing her, and Evey has a cartharsis, becoming a "V" herself. After V dies in Evey's arms, she takes up the mantle of V and mounts an issurection, culmination in Evey destroying 10 Downing Street. V thus reformed as an idea, the personal details far less important than the meme he/she represents.

There are notable difference in the film and the trade. So much so that Moore distanced himself from 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."

The Boy Blunder
Posted to Hot Stuff, Trade Paperback on 6 July 2007 · Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: Alan Moore, comics, Rough Trade Friday, V, V for Vendetta