V for Vendetta and the Limits of Liberal Protest

V for Vendetta and the Limits of Liberal Protest

Does a Bush-era adaptation of a British anarchist comic have anything to say in 2020?

by Will Solomon

I would be lying if I said I didn’t still have a soft spot for V for Vendetta.

The 2005 film – an adaptation of the well-regarded 1982 comic series from Alan Moore, which follows V, a masked anarchist, and his sometimes-protege, Evey, as they struggle against a fascist British government in a post-war dystopia – reappeared on Netflix at the height of ongoing nationwide protests against police brutality, in what one can assume was either an entirely random coincidence or, just maybe, a sincere expression on Netflix’s part of its desire for revolution in this country.

I first saw the film when I was a teenager, and while its emotional resonance has certainly waned in the intervening decade and a half, I must admit that rewatching it was fun, even as revisiting it in 2020 left me asking: how meaningful is this film, now?

My chief takeaway is that V for Vendetta is inextricable from its creation in 2005; the film was fundamentally about that moment, its vision of dystopia one transfigured from the original graphic novel – a speculative commentary on British fascism – to a projection of America in the mid-aughts, centered specifically on the Bush administration.

V for Vendetta is inextricable from its creation in 2005 — the film was fundamentally about that moment.

Alan Moore recognized this in 2006, noting that the film had been “turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… 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.”

Here in 2020 (coincidentally, the year in which the film is set), Moore’s analysis is difficult to reject, and V for Vendetta’s vision of dystopian totalitarianism is indeed ultimately a reductionist one.

There are myriad parallels between the film and the present day that would be jarring if we weren’t so numbed to them: an isolated England, an imperialist America in civil war, a deadly viral outbreak, climate change, government surveillance and torture. The political climate of the film is aggressively anti-gay and anti-Muslim (though not explicitly white supremacist – an apparent dilution of Moore’s fascism in favor of 2000s-era neoconservatism).

And yet, the overt symbolism of Norsefire (the governing fascist party in the film and comic), the style of its strongmen, the government’s ability to thrive on an order vs. chaos message – all seem somehow antiquated in comparison with the buffoonish fascism of the present: the ruling fascist of the film, Chancellor Adam Sutler (what does that name sound like?) is far more reminiscent of a certain German fuhrer than Boris Johnson. Indeed, much of the horror of Johnson (and Trump, and Bolsonaro, et al) is found precisely in the juxtaposition of their vulgar and simplistic absurdity with the fanatically violent, nihilistic, and enormously complex webs of finance, social media, militarism, globalized labor exploitation, and so on in which they are embedded. This reduction of fascism in V for Vendetta to “totalitarian police state” thus makes any potential urgency in the film a little impotent, and outdated – more fantastical, I think, than relevant.

Moore is an anarchist (look no further than his wonderful interview with Chapo Trap House for more details on his personal politics) but the light in the film is not about anarchy; it is about liberalism. Indeed, the only real invocation of anarchy as concept in the movie is as embodiment of chaos in opposition to the government’s imposed order.

Possibly the one overt use of the word “anarchy” occurs after V sends Guy Fawkes masks to everyone in London and the city, full of V lookalikes, spirals out of control. In this sequence, we see a Fawkes-masked man rob a convenience store and shout “anarchy for the UK!” while shooting into the air. Absent any connection to the political ideals of anarchism, the moment seems to present itself as merely chaotic catalyst for government overreaction, a sort of necessary and temporary evil to crystallize the proper kind of uprising against the government. This is ultimately a reactionary and dismissive—though common, one might even say liberal—vision of anarchy, and is, in my mind, vaguely suggestive of the “good vs. bad protestors” narrative we’ve seen circulating over the past weeks: peaceful occupation is okay, but better hand those looters over to the police.

So what, then, is resistance in the world of V for Vendetta?

Based on V’s pirated speeches to the nation, and on the climactic final scene, one infers that it is essentially symbolic, not structural; that liberation consists mainly of freedom of speech, freedom to protest—probably, vaguely, a democratic process. In short, liberalism.

And this seems unmistakably of its time. The film’s politics are those of the period immediately post-9/11, an explicit indictment of liberal willingness to sacrifice civil liberties for a sense of security. In the final scene, when Inspector Finch asks Evey Hammond why she wants to destroy Parliament, she responds, “This country needs more than a building; it needs hope.” Funny choice of words, as “Hope” is what we got in 2008, and look where we are now.

I’m ultimately left feeling not that the film is bad, but that it’s mostly just silly. This itself is perhaps not a novel take, but the extent to which it’s silly because it is about a political situation that dominated fifteen years ago—one that was instrumental in paving the road to where we are today, yet is also now quite removed from the present—is worth considering.

And perhaps one element of that conclusion we ought to linger on is the simple fact that fascism has always been inseparable from liberalism; if the politics of the present (not to mention the 1930s) tell us anything, it is that liberalism is the symbiotic handmaiden of fascism, not its antithesis. As but one example, we should remember that it was the liberal press that largely legitimized the violent early excesses of the Bush administration—chiefly, the Iraq War—which serve as essential backdrop for this film.

It was the liberal press that legitimized the violent early excesses of the Bush administration—chiefly, the Iraq War—which serve as essential backdrop for this film.

All this said, I think it’s quite possible for V for Vendetta to remain what it was for me—basically, a gateway drug to deeper political consciousness. Its black and white, comic-book treatment of authoritarianism may be simplistic, but its lines are drawn sharply enough, and its authoritarianism sufficiently jarring, that for those whose political identities remained unformed, there will be something to take from the film.

Perhaps Netflix has revolutionary motives after all.