V for Vendetta: ‘The Coalition of the Willing to Power’

Set in a fascist, futuristic Britain, V for Vendetta is the story of the eponymous “V” (Hugo

Weaving) and his so-called sidekick Evey (Natalie Portman). V is an anarchist vigilante

wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who seeks to bring about a revolution by the blowing up

buildings. The story begins by Evey’s rescue by V from several “Fingermen” (secret police)

and destroying the Old Bailey courts of justice (because Justice seems to have taken a

holiday) on November the fifth (Guy Fawkes Day). While the government seeks to hush

things up by portraying the act as a planned demolition, V goes on to take responsibility for

the attack on national television and to proclaim another attack on parliament in exactly a

year from then. Immediately labelled as a “terrorist”, the rest of the film enacts V’s vendetta,

his systematic killing of several top government officials as well as his efforts to awaken the

people from their stupor. Throughout the film, V acts as a free-floating signifier who is able

to take root in government structures in order to subvert them.1

In what follows, I examine the film as well as the original graphic novel on which it is based

in order to highlight the way the rhetoric of the film functions. I seek to underline the way the

film has been adapted to suit our times and the way in which it brings out an ethical argument

critiquing American post-9/11 terror policies. I do this by looking at the images used in the

graphic novel and particularly in the film. I suggest its likening to the Holocaust and Nazi

visual archives as a means to achieve the above function.

*

(See Slide 1)

Written and published in the 1980s, the graphic novel is about the imminent totalitarian threat

of the Thatcherist state. Yet, released in early 2006, these words in the clip – not present

anywhere in the graphic novel – acquire obvious 9/11 connotations. In an interview, director

James McTeigue states how the film was brought up to date to reflect on a post -9/11 world:

The boys [the Wachowsi brothers] had written a script before the whole 'Matrix' thing got going and so

we though[t] it might be good to dust it off and bring it up-to-date. We thought it would be a good film

to do in the current political climate, to hopefully say something about what's going on at the moment.

(Interview with Timeout.com, 2006)

This impulse to mirror a more contemporary political scenario is not lost on the many

reviewers and commentators of the film. Carretero-Gonzalez (2010) notes how:

...[the film is based] in a dystopian setting that bears striking similarities with our world at the

beginning of the 21st century, where fear of terror is impelling governments to take drastic measures to

increase safety, while jeopardising freedom, and on some occasions, even trespassing basic human

rights.

It has similarly been read as updated for the “War on Terror” and its aftermath (Keogh 2006);

as a parable for the Bush administration’s “manipulation of fear for political gain” (Schopp

2009); as a warning as early as in 2006 of the terror tactics of the government (Ott 2010); as a

“vehicle for reflection on the social panic that these traumatic tragedies [9/11, 7/7, 3/11] have

produced” as well as a reflection on “the reduction of individual liberties, the politics of the

fear of the Other and the feeling of insecurity” that ensued (Gomez 2009). Others similarly

see a subtext of a critique of American conservative politics, (Bulloch 2007; Call 2008;

Ebbrecht 2010; Macmillian 2009) and its need for a hyper surveillance legitimised with the

objective of the security of the population (Godamunne 2011)2

Moreover, the threat that is perceived to emerge from the figure of the Muslim in a post-9/11

world is made much more relevant in the film rather than in the graphic novel.3 Furthermore,

the frequent use of the word “terrorist” not found in the original graphic novel, leads to a

heightened awareness that what we are dealing with is the contemporary. The news report

after the takeover of the TV tower is pronounced in words reminiscent of the antics of Al

Qaeda leaders. Words such as “terrorist takeover at Jordan Tower”, harm inflicted on

“unarmed civilians”, to broadcast “a message of hate”4 achieve a heightened meaning all too

familiar to a post-9/11 theatre-going public.

However, these tactics of the fascist regime are sought to be critiqued in the film. Upon being

intimated of the news of the courtroom bombing, the Leader, Adam Sutler (John Hurt) voices

that he “wants this terrorist found... I want him to understand what terror really means...”

highlighting the terror inherent not in the actions of the so-called terrorist but of the state

which has a broader capacity for inducing terror.

This critique, and reflection of the legacy of 9/11, stretches beyond just mere uni-dimensional

references to terrorism.5 The aftermath of the same implicit in the phenomenon of

Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib is part of the visual sub-narrative of the film. When the

‘Voice of London’ Lewis Prothero comments on the presumed death of the terrorist “good

guys win, bad guys lose, and as always, England prevails”, he seems to be mouthing the

frequently heard diatribes from the Bush administration about how those locked up at

Guantanamo are “bad guys”. * The visual presented (Slide 2) of Prothero as a former military

commander at the Larkhill Detention Facility shows him subduing an prisoner in a

Guantanamo-like orange suit, hooded, bruised and battered, and arranged in a pose similar to

plenty of the Abu Ghraib photographs. Similarly, when Evey is presumably caught by the

Fingermen (Slide 3), transported to a detention facility and systematically tortured, we are

reminded once again of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Torture methods shown in the film

include water-boarding, sensory deprivation, the shaving of hair, isolation, etc.

(See slide 2 and 3)

Moreover, the effect of power on language, demonstrated by Kaplan (2003) when she states

that [s]ince September 11, new words have entered our everyday lexicon as though they

have always been there”, is best reflected in the Valerie flashback:

I remember how the meaning of words began to change...how unfamiliar words like “collateral” and

“rendition” became frightening, while things like “Norsefire” and the “Articles of Allegiance” became

powerful...I remember how “different” became “dangerous”.

All of the above is enacted by the use of Brechtian distancing. The use of fantastic elements,

a futuristic dystopian setting as well as the superhero comic narrative is utilised in order to

talk about the present. Evey in the film voices how “artists use lies to tell the truth, while

politicians use them to cover the truth up”. Here she is referring to the very function the film

itself performs: the use of lies (in the form of socially unrealistic, fantastic elements) in order

to tell the truth about the present.

Rodriguez (2010) remarks about most dystopias, which holds true for V for Vendetta as well:

Firstly, most of antiutopian novels place their characters in a different age from the author’s own

present. This device is used to make the readers contemplate the scenery shown as a distant reality, so

that we can judge its virtues unbiasedly. Secondly, it is common to find totalitarian regimes that control

every aspect of their citizens’ life. Sometimes there is also a semi-sacred leader heading the

government, as a substitute of religious worship. In the third place, the past is a feature to be erased,

depicted by the ruling power as a dark time prone to war and lacking morals. In fact, this past was, at

the time in which the works were published, the author’s and the readers’ own time, linking the

characters to the current socio-political context and creating empathy.

Similarly, Alan Moore in a YouTube video interview talks about the use of a futuristic setting

to provide a fantasy element for the graphic novel. In actuality, for Moore, it is clear that V’s

antics are about the contemporary. While this holds true for the Moore writing in the 1980s, it

holds true especially for the 2006 film as well. Yet how is this feeling of distancing and

dystopia achieved in the novel and especially in the film? What sort of rhetoric is made use of

in order to articulate the resonances with the contemporary world as, I suggested above, the

film successfully enacts? How, in other words, are we made to understand that the setting of

the film is dystopian?

This, I suggest, is done at the visual level by use of a repertoire of images already existing in

the collective imaginary. “Viewers,” Baron (2010) comments, “do not enter theatres as a

tabula rasa. Instead, they bring with them a mental storehouse of all the movies they have

seen”. Added to this can be stock images of atrocity pervasive on the television, newspapers,

and other visual social media. Central thus to the film, though only at the implicit level, is a

visual reservoir based on collective memory. And paramount to the same is the Holocaust

itself.

The Holocaust, I argue, permeates the world of V for Vendetta in multiple ways, albeit

differently in the graphic novel and in the film. This happens at four different levels. First, in

the graphic novel, through passing references to words which immediately conjure up the

Holocaust; second, in both the film and graphic novel, by organising the visual layout in a

particular way that recalls the Holocaust; third, by invoking early Allied liberation footage of

the concentration camps; and finally, by alluding to other famous, easily recallable Holocaust

films.

In the graphic novel, the Holocaust is steadily conjured up by the use of certain words. In

chapter 4, for instance, V says to the frightened and captive Prothero in what is a deliberate

slip of tongue, “Let’s go to work, shall we? The concentration camps...sorry...these

resettlement camps don’t run themselves, do they?”6 The word “concentration camp” is

enough, carrying with it a whole field of connotations of oppression. Similar references to

“gas chambers”7 as well as “Nuremberg”8 unleash a subtext of Nazi atrocities. So does a

similarity between the fictional name of the party, Norsefire, and Nazi. In the YouTube

interview, Moore mentions some of the characters being “ordinary Nazis”, echoing Hannah

Arendt’s (2003) famous proclamation of the “banality of evil”

But this is not limited to words alone. The visual layouts of the graphic novel, as well as the

set design in the film also help invoke the Holocaust. In the novel, this is done by the visuals

where Evey’s hair is shaved off and where Inspector Finch visits Larkhill and sees gory

bodies of inmates electrocuted while trying to escape the wired fences of the facility.9

In the script for the film, there is an explicit hand written note mentioning Dachau: “Larkhill

should be army barracks/ Concentration/ North Korea Detention Camp–Ref[erence]

Dachau”10 Indeed, the diary flashback of the doctor, Delia Surridge, does provide a

‘concentration camp-like feel’, activating in the mind of the viewer a past reference point

with which to gauge the current atrocity.

(See slide 4)

The third level on which the above occurs is by way of a direct mirroring of Allied liberation

footage from Bergen-Belsen. The pose of two people holding a dead emaciated body in their

hands to swing into the mass grave, in the clip above (slide 4), comes from Mauthausen and

Bergen-Belsen as does the photos of the mass grave itself. The same is also shown in the

early Allied propaganda films justifying the war effort, such as Death Mills (1945) and

Memory of the Camps (1985), as well.

(See slides 5, 6 and 7)

As Haggith (2006) observes, “Not only have these images ensured that the story of this

particular concentration camp [Bergen-Belsen] will never be forgotten, but they have been so

widely used in film and television programmes that they have become an icon not of just the

Holocaust, but of the evils of the Nazi regime as a whole.”

Finally, the Holocaust is reflected in terms of allusions to other Holocaust films. “The

extensive repository of Holocaust cinema furnishes audiences with iconic images of what

genocide looks like and influences the ways narratives of other genocides get constructed by

filmmakers”, notes Baron (2010). While this holds true, it is also relevant not just for

depicting genocide but any kind of atrocity. In the clip that follows, the TV show hosted by

Gordon Deitrich becomes meta-art: a show within a show, providing a strong parody of the

political situation in the film.

(See slide 8)

The point where the “terrorist” is suddenly revealed to be a double of the Chancellor himself,

the audience is quick to remember perhaps the greatest comedy and earliest film critique of

Adolf Hitler, The Great Dictator, where both the Jewish barber as well as Hitler are shown as

clones of each other.11

There is unease in some quarters about this use of Holocaust imagery that apparently uproots

it from its original context and “trivialis[es]” (Baron 2010) it in order to be used as a

“stereotype” (Ebbrecht 2010) for other atrocities. Ebbrecht remarks how “the Holocaust

exemplifies good and evil and provides a narrative template for political and military

cruelty...” Keilbach similarly notes how World War II atrocity photographs due to a loss of

contexualisation “become symbols of more generic abstraction like ‘evil’ or ‘the Holocaust.’”

Ebbrecht adds, “historical images we derived from the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath

are continuously dissociated from their historical origins. They are migrating into popular

culture as emblematic images ...” which serve to de-contextualise them.

Yet, does this impulse to comparison trivialise the Holocaust? Ebbrecht quotes Barbie Zelizer

(1998) to say that in the film “[t]he Holocaust and its iconography bec[o]me an ahistorical

symbol which expresses total evil.” However, he misreads Zelizer to suggest that V for

Vendetta exploits the Holocaust. Zelizer, in fact, argues for the opposite, “that Holocaust

photos have helped us remember the Holocaust so as to forget present atrocity.” It is this that

she calls “remembering to forget”. She adds, “[i]t may be that we have learned to use our

Holocaust memories so as to neglect our response to the atrocities of here and now.”

Does the comparison of the Holocaust to the “war on terror” then necessarily be a form of

remembrance that represses the contemporary? Or is it, as I argue, that the comparison

facilitates a form of critique for the contemporary? The Holocaust in collective memory has

formed around itself an aura such that any invocation of Nazi horrors necessarily conjures up

an array of ethico-political critiques. It is this aura that I suggest that can be utilised when

referring to contemporary atrocities.

In the graphic novel and more so in the film, equating Norsefire-run England with post-9/11

USA, and by likening Nazi policies to Norsefire politics, an implicit equation is created

between USA under the Bush administration and Hitler’s Germany. I end thus with a very apt

image found in the film in Deitrich’s cellar, showing a merger of the Union Jack, the Stars

and Stripes and the Nazi Swastika under the heading “THE COALITION OF THE

WILLING TO POWER”12. The image serves as early as in 2006 to serve as a warning and

powerful criticism of the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11 as well as a metaphor

for the argument made in this paper.

(See slide 9)

Notes

1. It is never revealed, as Paik (2005) points out, what social identity V occupies, making him an “empty

signifier”. This is much like the Madman in Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. (1987) V

exhibits similar anarchist tendencies. In fact, V’s symbol in the film and graphic novel is an inversion of

the anarchist symbol.

2. Both the graphic novel and the film utilise the slogan “For Your Protection” as the government’s move

to normalise surveillance machinery.

3. While the novel does include Muslims as threatening to the state, this is enhanced in the movie version

by showing how Gordon Deitrich (Stephen Fry) is killed for possession of a 14th century copy of the

Koran.

4. V for Vendetta, Dir James McTeigue, 2006

5. This is as opposed to what Bulloch (2007) remarks.

6. Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, 32

7. Ibid, 127

8. Ibid, 208

9. Ibid, 211

10. Spencer Lamm and Sharon Bray, eds., V for Vendetta: From Script to Film (New York: Universe

Publishing, 2006), p. 93.Quoted in Ebbrecht, “Migrating Images”, 100

11. This notion of the self and other being clones of each other bears similarity to the Wachowski’s earlier

Matrix trilogy as well.

12. This is also cited in Carreto-Gonzalez, “Sympathy for the Devil”, 202

Bibliography

Anderson, Daniel. "The Thematic Significance of Inter-textual Allusions in V for Vendetta." SITES. N.p., n.d.

Web. 15 June 2012. <http://siteslab.org/pitjournalv1/taxonomy/term/286>.

Arendt, Hannah. "Banality and Conscience: The Eichmann Trial and Its Implications." The Portable Hannah

Arendt. Trans. Peter Baehr. London: Penguin, 2003. 311-416. Print.

Baron, Lawrence. "Holocaust and Genocide Cinema: Crossing Disciplinary, Genre, and Geographical Borders:

Editor's Introduction." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28.4 (2010): 1-9. Web.

16 June 2012.

Bulloch, Douglas. "V Is for Vendetta: P Is for Power A Film Reading of V for Vendetta." Millennium - Journal

of International Studies 35.2 (2007): 431-34. Web. 15 June 2012.

<http://mil.sagepub.com/content/35/2/431.citation>.

Call, Lewis. "A Is for Anarchy, V Is for Vendetta: Images of Guy Fawkes and the Creation of Postmodern

Anarchism." Anarchist Studies 16.2 (2008): 154-72. Web. 16 June 2012.

<http://works.bepress.com/lcall/1/>.

Carretero-Gonzalez, Margarita. "Sympathy for the Devil: The Hero Is a Terrorist in V for Vendetta." Promoting

and Producing Evil. Ed. Nancy Billias. 2nd ed. N.p.: Rodopi, 2010. 199-210. Web.

Chen, Hui Jung S. "Vigilant Justice And Insurgent Freedom: A Post-9/11 Film Study." Diss. Baylor University,

2009. Web. 16 June 2012. <https://beardocs.baylor.edu/xmlui/handle/2104/5371>.

Death Mills. Dir. Billy Wilder. U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1945. DVD.

Eaglestone, Robert. "Madness or Modernity?: The Holocaust in Two Anglo-American Comics." Rethinking

History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 6.3 (2002): 319-30. Web. 16 June 2012.

Ebbrecht, Tobias. "Migrating Images: Iconic Images of the Holocaust and the Representation of War in Popular

Film." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28.4 (Summer 2010): 86-103. Web. 17

June 2012.

Ebert, Roger. "V for Vendetta." Rev. of V for Vendetta. n.d.: n. pag. Rogerebert.com. 16 Mar. 2006. Web. 15

June 2012. <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060316/REVIEWS/

60308005/1023>.

Fo, Dario. Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Trans. Gavin Richards. London: Methuen, 1987. Print.

Goddamunne, Vichitra V.S. "Biopolitics in Science Fiction Films: An Exploration of the Representation of

Contemporary Politicisation of Human Biological Life in Cinema." Diss. National University of

Singapore, 2011. 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 June 2012.

<http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/27921>.

Gomez, Raul Alvarez, and Ravenel Richardson. "Terrorism and Social Panic in British Fantastic Cinema." The

Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror. Ed. Leanne Franklin. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary, 2009.

3-12. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ebooks/the-many-

forms-of-fear-horror-and-terror/>.

Gray, Maggie. "‘A Fistful of Dead Roses…’. Comics as Cultural Resistance: Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V

for Vendetta." Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 1.1 (2010): 31-49. 3 June 2010. Web. 18 June

2012. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21504851003798579>.

The Great Dictator. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. United Artists, 1940. DVD.

Haggith, Toby. "Filming the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen." Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations

in Film and Television since 1933. Ed. Toby Haggith and Joanna Newman. London: Wallflower, 2005.

33-49. Print.

Haggith, Toby. "The Filming of the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen and Its Impact on the Understanding of the

Holocaust." Belsen 1945: New Historical Perspectives. Ed. Suzanne Bardgett and David Cesarani.

Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006. 89-122. Print.

Hassler-Forest, Dan A. "From Trauma Vicitm to Terrorist: Redefining Superheroes in Post-9/11 Hollywood."

Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International

Perspectives. Ed. Mark Berninger, Jochen Ecke, and Gideon Haberkorn. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &,

2010. 33-44. Web.

Kaplan, Amy. "Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space." Radical History Review 2003.85

(2003): 82-93. Web.

Keilbach, Judith. "Photographs, Symbolic Images, And The Holocaust: On The (Im)Possibility Of Depicting

Historical Truth." History and Theory 48.2 (2009): 54-76. Web.

Keogh, Peter. "Fawkes Populi?" Rev. of V for Vendetta. n.d.: n. pag. 16 Mar. 2006. Web. 15 June 2012.

<http://thephoenix.com/boston/movies/6570-v-for-vendetta/#ixzz1xqg6F7Vh>.

Kowalski, Dean A. "R for Revolution: Hobbes and Locke on Social Contracts and Scarlet Carsons." Homer

Simpson Goes to Washingtin: American Politics through Popular Culture. Ed. Joseph J. Foy.

Kentucky: University of Kentucky, 2008. 19-40. Web. 17 June 2012.

The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Warner Bros., 1999. DVD.

McMillian, Lance. "The Death of Law: A Cinematic Vision." University of Arkansas Little Rock Law Review

32.1 (Fall 2009): 1-32. Web. 18 June 2012. <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

abstract_id=1430595>.

"Memory of the Camps." Frontline. PBS. 1985.

Moore, Alan. "Alan Moore Talks - 01 - V for Vendetta." Interview. Video blog post. YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web.

19 June 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX7ehbE1vc0>.

Moore, Alan, and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: Vertigo, 2008. Print.

Moreira, Pedro. "Overthrowing Vengeance: The Role of Visual Elements in V for Vendetta." Spaces of Utopia:

An Electronic Journal 4 (Spring 2007): 106-12. Web. 15 June 2012. <http://ler.letras.up.pt>.

Ott, Brian L. "The Visceral Politics of V for Vendetta: On Political Affect in Cinema." Critical Studies in Media

Communication 27.1 (2010): 39-54. 3 Mar. 2010. Web. 16 June 2012.

Paik, Peter Y. "The Pessimist Rearmed: Zizek on Christianity and Revolution." Theory and Event 8.2 (2005): n.

pag. Web. 17 June 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v008/8.2paik.html>.

Rodriguez, Angel Galdon. "Starting to Hate the State: The Beginning of the Character’s Dissidence in

Dystopian Literature and Films." Other Modernities 3 (2010): n. pag. Web. 16 June 2012.

<http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/AMonline/article/view/521>.

Schopp, Andrew. "Interrogating the Manipulation of Fear: V for Vendetta, Batman Begins, Good Night, Good

Luck, and America's 'War on Terror'" War on Terror and American Popular Culture : September 11

and Beyond. Ed. Andrew Schopp and Matthew B. Hill. Madison, NJ, USA: Fairleigh Dickinson UP,

2009. 259-86. Print.

Sekula, Allan. "The Body and the Archive." October 39 (Winter 1986): 3-64. Web.

"'V for Vendetta' - James McTeigue Q&A." Interview. Timeout.com. N.p., 17 May 2006. Web. 21 June 2012.

<http://www.timeout.com/film/news/1009/v-for-vendetta-james-mcteigue-q-a.html>.

"'V for Vendetta' - James McTeigue Q&A." Interview. Timeout.com. N.p., 17 May 2006. Web. 21 June 2012.

<http://www.timeout.com/film/news/1009/v-for-vendetta-james-mcteigue-q-a.html>.

V for Vendetta. Dir. James McTeigue. Warner Home Video, 2006. DVD.

Zelizer, Barbie. Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye. Chicago: University of

Chicago, 1998. Print.