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V for Vendetta: A for Anarchy
by Marion Schneider
March 29, 2006

Hollywood’s latest blockbuster V for Vendetta, another comic book adaptation, is the cause to commotion and ongoing discussions. Praised as an anti-authoritarian action film on the one hand, criticized for it’s recasting of current American politics on the other.

Originally a comic produced in the mid 1980s by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta is about a man who destroys the corrupt state he lives in, promoting Anarchy to the masses all the while.

Obviously, Hollywood twisted this core message so severely, that Alan Moore asked to be withdrawn from all media references and to have his name removed from the film's posters.

"One of the things I objected to in the recent film ... recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see."

Alan Moore started working on the novel around 1981, a time of severe political insecurity in Britain. Margret Thatcher had been in power for two years. There were riots all over the country and fascists groups, trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times.

“With the kind of Reagan/Thatcher axis that existed across the Atlantic, it looked like Western society was taking somewhat a turn for the worse.” For Alan Moore the two opposing poles were not Left Wing or Right Wing, but rather anarchy and fascism.

It so occurs, that in the graphic novel the main character V passionately states, that a free society is one where the people don't cede their power to government, where they don't let leaders run their lives.

He is neither fighting to overthrow one government to replace it with another, nor to reform the government, in order to make it better.

The movie is set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain in 2020. Evey, a young woman, who is about to be raped and murdered by the regime’s secret police for violating the government-imposed curfew, is rescued by mysterious masked man, named V.

As the story unfolds, Evey learns that V intends to kill the top officials of the regime, on November 5th, to mark Guy Fawkes’ failed Gunpowder Plot against the English Parliament in 1605.

The plot was an attempt to assassinate King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) and the members of both houses of the Parliament of England. To do this, Westminster Palace was to be blown up during the formal opening session of the 1605 Parliament. Activities were detected, however, before the plan's completion and Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason and attempted murder. Until this day, Britain remembers the Gunpowder Plot at Guy Fawkes Night on November 5th.

As Evey uncovers the truth about V's mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plot to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

Undoubtedly, V for Vendetta draws bold parallels to today’s social and political situation. It avoids the topic of anarchism though, by not displaying V’s opinions and intentions regarding the revolution.

Nonetheless, it is an exciting, captivating and visually impressive movie. The Wacholski Brothers, responsible for the screenplay, also worked on The Matrix Trilogy before.

V for Vendetta offers an air of revolution and animates viewers to resume over their own government, its policies and what is going on behind closed doors. This being more, than other supposedly political movies and programs accomplish.

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