I saw
the film adaptation of V for Vendetta years
ago and have only just read the original graphic novel. It’s been long enough that I can’t clearly
remember the complete plot of the movie, but I’m pretty sure there are some
fairly big differences between the two.
While I thought the graphic novel was a good read, I recall enjoying the
film better (premise spoilers.)
In a
post-war-torn fascist England of the ‘90s (the future, at the time,) Evey
Hammond, a desperate teenage girl, is menaced by corrupt government spies when
she’s caught soliciting. She’s rescued
by V, an enigmatic masked man with a flair for theatrics, dramatic recitations,
and social upheaval. He has an intricate
long-game plan to dismantle the government through acts of terrorism, with what
appears to be some personal revenge thrown in.
Even as Evey is horrified by V’s actions and his dream of an anarchic
state, she can’t quite bring herself to leave him or defy him. Slowly, she’s drawn into his world and his
dark vision of change.
As in
the film, the best element of the graphic novel is V himself. He’s pretty much a perfect comic book
character: cuts a dashing and iconic
figure, has all the best lines, fights like a ninja, carries a mysterious past,
and is always four steps ahead of everyone.
Besides his extreme readability, his character poses interesting,
no-easy-answer questions about the line between a freedom fighter and a
terrorist. Although the world had a very
different relationship with terrorism when the book was written, my 2016 eyes
read it the only way they know how, and the notion of V’s ideas as grand,
almost romantic, amid all the turmoil and killing, is uncomfortable in a mostly
good way. It helps, of course, that the
government he’s trying to tear down is unapologetically fascist, and even then,
the story is careful to portray him as both light and dark, the balance tipping either way from time to time.
The
depiction of a fascist England is mostly interesting as well. I love me a good dystopian story, and I like
seeing the effects the war and the regime change have had on the country. The chapters that dig into the story’s past
and explore what happened in the prison camps are especially good. However, I’m unnerved by all the… let’s call
it “sexual survival”… in the story. In
addition to Evey turning in desperation to prostitution at the beginning, we
also have a woman forced into stripper work as a result of reduced
circumstances, a woman using sexual manipulation to get ahead, and multiple
instances of women offering their bodies to men in exchange for
protection/stability. I understand,
obviously, that women have had a long history of sexual oppression, and I get
that things like this would happen in a country that’s been ravaged by a war
and is currently being run by a pretty soulless government, but I hate that we
see these types of storylines for the female characters so repeatedly, the
one-two punch of a woman looking for a man to save her and offering sex to
obtain his protection. While I like
seeing Evey becoming stronger and surer under V’s tutelage, if this theme of
sexual survival was going to be so prominent in the book, I would’ve liked to
see a stronger rejection or defiance of it in the end.
Warnings
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