V For Vendetta And Revolutionary Leader

Made famous thanks to the film of the same name in 2005, V is the emblematic protagonist of the comic V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The comic was first published in the 1980s in the British magazine Warrior , and then distributed by the well-known North American publishing house DC

The turning point in its distribution and the subsequent film adaptation allowed the work to reach a much higher number of people, although it was originally born not as a mainstream work but more as an outsider, therefore not for everyone. The handover to Warner Bros, the Hollywood titan, helped to adapt, lighten and make the work more “digestible”. All this angered Alan Moore who requested that his name be removed from the film’s credits.

V for Vendetta was conceived during the time the UK was under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, whose conservative political views contrasted profoundly with Alan Moore’s anarchist ideals and David Lloyd’s nonconformity. Both have been strongly influenced by the contemporary reality and by the social and political problems of their country. What would the world be like if totalitarian governments triumphed?

The dystopian future of V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta presents us with a dystopian future in which the most conservative and authoritarian fascism has come to power. Following a war, fear gripped English society which found itself supporting the leader Susan, giving up freedom and culture in exchange for protection and stability.

Works of art and books disappear, while any traces of the historical past of the country and of the survivors of the concentration camps are eliminated. Because a people without history is a people without points of reference, therefore easily manipulated.

This idea refers us to works like  Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451  or  George Orwell’s 1984 . Futures without freedom, futures without history in which the population seems to be asleep and does not realize that it has lost all its fundamental rights. Faced with oppression, V stands up as the hero / antagonist who will bring the UK back to life.

The similarities with our society are not few: control and manipulation of the mass media, conformity, fear of change, wealth and privileges reserved for the powerful… Why fight for our rights if we can buy a car?

This is the society that is shown in  V for Vendetta , a society that no longer remembers its past, which has lost its ideals and no longer knows equality.

V is a character whose past is unknown, it is not known who he was before he was locked up in the Larkhill concentration camp. We know instead that he survived all the experiments he was subjected to and that unlike the rest of the population he still remembers his ideals, history and art. He came to save them, to make the people react and forget the fear to fight for what is right.

V behind the mask

It is not possible to “unmask” V without revealing too much of the plot of the comic or the film, even if we will focus more on the former as it is the original work. Moore is used to demythologizing heroes and antagonists, as we see in Batman’s Joker  : The Killing Joke. V is seen as a terrorist, a villain at the beginning of the play who defines himself as “the black sheep”. But is he really a villain?

Perhaps it is for the government, for the false security and for all those who feel their power wobble, as happens to the bishop and the leader Susan. The means, entirely at the service of power, try to instill fear in the population, the same fear that led the fascists to conquer the United Kingdom.

V will be defined as a terrorist also in consideration of the fact that he uses violence to achieve his goal; Moore wants to show us that even those who have always been good are not really good at all.

If we think of the political and social revolutions that in the course of history have served to brutally interrupt an oppressive government, such as the French Revolution, we see how rarely the figure of the oppressor is opposed by a peaceful revolutionary force. V wants peace and equality, but to obtain them he must use violence. Laws and justice are at the service of power, and there is no other solution left to V than to take justice by himself and disobey.

AS Cohan is the author of the political theory study entitled  Theories of Revolution: An Introduction . The work collects a series of issues related to the concept of revolution showing how in most cases, it is necessarily linked to violence.

Other scholars, such as Hannah Arendt, argue instead that the revolution can be an obstacle in identifying a model that allows the revolutionary ideal to triumph. V for Vendetta presents the steps of the revolution but not its culmination. The ideal is so perfect that it is never portrayed in the Moore and Lloyd comics.

The legacy of V

Who is hiding behind the mask? Or rather, who does it belong to? The famous V mask is none other than the mask of Guy Fawkes, a historical figure who attempted to blow up the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1605.

Fawkes was a Catholic and, faced with the oppression of the Protestants, he decided to take justice on his own, without success. Moore and Lloyd redeemed his unconventionality and his desire to regain his freedom, giving V his face.

Guy Fawkes’s mask has become a contemporary myth, born of mass society itself, as Roland Barthes explains in his work  Mythologies. Today we see it exhibited in demonstrations, on social networks and as a common symbol of non-conformism. It is a mask that invites us to overcome fear, to fight for what we consider right.

Evey is the other side of the coin, Evey is like all of us. She is afraid, but V will strip her of it and set her free. Fear is one of the keys to the work, exploited by the government to manipulate the population. To keep his legacy alive, to ensure that the revolution is for everyone and for everyone, V makes sure that Evey overcomes the barrier of fear and becomes the one who, after V’s death, will free everyone.

The name Evey has biblical connotations, it reminds us of Eve, the first woman and mother of all. She will wear the mask after V’s farewell and become the new leader, the new Vendetta. Evey is the future of the UK.

The mass media divert us from reality, but their impact is so strong that, if exploited properly, they can be used to send a different message. V takes control of the television to get in touch with the population, taking possession of a symbol of power and oppression making it his own, thus reinforcing his message.

Although the film version is much lighter than the comic, it has reached such a large number of people that it has made an impact on mass society, unearthing a myth, a symbol of awakening.

V for Vendetta  invites us to get out of our comfort zone, not to let ourselves be manipulated, to overcome barriers to obtain a more just and egalitarian world.