"We shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot."

Over a week ago, my friend Katie and I decided to partake in that social phenomenon, compounded in symbolism by the election, among the youth of our generation: watching V for Vendetta on the 5^th of November. I believe few films have had such a loud, perennial reverberation in contemporary culture. As we started the movie, I set out with a question: why has this film attracted so many die-hard devotees who plan V movie showings with the ceremonial zeal of holiday rituals,  appropriate V’s Guy Fawkes mask as their Facebook profile picture, or post “people should not fear the government, government should fear the people”-type statuses?

In typical dystopian fashion, V for Vendetta paints a bleak, futuristic society silently suffocating under a regime that mandates detrimentally blind obedience. Not surprisingly, it is a world in which arbitrary curfews abound, political satires guarantee a death sentence, and the Koran is relegated to underground existence. “V,” a victim of unspeakable government atrocities and, consequently, a justice-seeking vigilante, seeks to combat the coercive pacification generated by this social order.  In his circumstantial collision with Evey— who is at once a product of this sanctioned loyalty but also the daughter of rebels who died for social activist efforts—he opens her eyes to the sacrifice of waging war against fear while she expands his vengeance-driven tunnel vision.

In the film, Evey asks V if anything meaningful can come from blowing up a building; he tells her, “The building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Alone a symbol is meaningless. But with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.” In this quote, I realized V had partially answered my question. V himself— the self-proclaimed, “bullet-proof” idea, an abstraction in his proclamation and lack of concreteness (we never see the bone, the muscle, the skin of him), and enigmatic, but far from vacuous, in his humanity — is a symbol we moviegoers all respond to. And the film preserves his sophisticated aloofness and ethereal respectability— thereby preserving the integrity of the symbol— by never revealing the face under the mask. He is the “corpse we galvanize,” so to speak (see C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love), and invest with meaning powerful enough to resurrect him every 5^th of November-- especially during election season-- in a way quite opposite of how the British celebrate that day (they commend the thwarting of Fawkes, not his revolutionary resolve). We invest symbols with meaning according to our convictions and values. What is it that V represents?

It is quite possible that V offers parallels to any generic, sovereign deity, and even—though I’m wary of the Christ-figure as an often reductionist, interpretive projection— the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. V hints at sovereignty in his orchestration of “coincidences,” engineers circumstances by which Nina can be “purified” and strengthened through suffering, offers uncompromised wisdom epitomized by what he broadcasts on the telly, proves invincible for almost the entire film, and impartially champions truth. V is one of those characters who demands our awe— and secures it that moment he picks up the last standing domino. In what proves emblematic of V’s unwavering resolve, we again see the power of symbol. 

 C.S. Lewis’ idea of allegorical second meanings validates that there can be “a likeness permitted by God” in art “to that truth on which all depends”— that is, the truth in universal concepts or ideas, like justice or goodness, that prove consistent in their nature as they manifest in different artistic forms. Lewis says that Plato once asked us to imagine “a perfectly righteous man treated by all around him as a monster of wickedness. We must picture him, still perfect, while he is bound, scourged, and finally impaled (the Persian equivalent of crucifixion).” Lewis goes on to say, “Plato is talking, and knows he is talking, about the fate of goodness in a wicked and misunderstanding world. But that is not something simply other than the Passion of Christ. It is the very same thing of which that Passion is the supreme illustration.” A non-religious example can further clarify this concept of second meanings: “If a man who knew only England and had observed that, the higher a mountain was, the longer it retained the snow in early spring, were led on to suppose a mountain so high that it retained the snow all the year round, the similarity between his imagined mountain and the real Alps would not be merely a lucky accident. He might not know that there were any such mountains in reality; just as Plato probably did not know that the ideally perfect instance of crucified goodness which he had depicted would ever become actual and historical.”

                I want to extend Lewis’ allegorical second meanings to V, while reiterating that this very act is not an attempt to Christianize a film-- for in many ways, not the least of which includes his name, V is quite the opposite of a benevolent deity-- but to grapple with the presentation of a universal ideal, justice, as it coincides with a distinct audience reception. I would say that viewers are responsive to V as an allegory for both the justice and certainty inherent in any claims to absolute truth that we desire but have become so disillusioned with in a postmodern milieu.

I think of the verse when two men walk with the resurrected Jesus, and, after He tells them how all of the Scriptures are about Himself, they say to each other: “did not our hearts burn within us”? This line preemptively captures a sweeping, subconscious human sentiment: inside we all burn for Truth-- and certain artistic tropes, like V, will fuel this burning, especially because V dismantles institutional falsehoods. We certainly can’t ignore the Marxian and Foucauldian overtones by which V and the film attempt to dispel false consciousness disseminated by governmental propaganda. Just as V blows up the Bailey, a symbol of imprisonment, V attempts to release the masses from the bondage of false indoctrination. While media, warmongers, power-thirsty politicians, and religious bigots in the film all use lies to cover the truth, we viewers, seeing how the film itself functions, grasp how art uses lies to advance the truth. The fictional creation of a dystopia, the “lie,” conveys a truth: only destruction can result from unthinking loyalty to false ideologies that reinforce the status quo.  

Here the movie’s exploration of the value and function of words becomes important. The film offers a complex treatment of language by both reinforcing and deconstructing Baudrillard’s notion that, in today’s hyper-technological, identity-politics-driven, and media-soaked society, the “signified” (meaning/reality/truth) has been severed from the “signifier” (the word). The film affirms the idea that, on one hand, words from the government are all euphemisms severed from the reality of their implications and meant to preserve hegemonic power structures; the call for “complete compliance,” for example, offers the illusion of safety and unity, even though in reality it manipulates the masses to accept ideologies that are to their own detriment. Yet the film undermines this notion when V exalts the power of words; he can effectively apply archaic Shakespearean quotes to their current situation, implying those words embody universal meaning.

Indeed, the film uses V to present words as a double-edged sword, hinting at our responsibility as discerning human beings to do our best to attach signifiers to the right signified. Think of the television: it is both a weapon for propaganda and blind indoctrination, and yet a tool V hijacks to dispel false consciousness and, eventually, start a revolution. He makes people realize the double-edged nature of ideas, too, for ideas must boil down to individuals: Evey’s parents, her brother, Mr. Deitrich, the two women in love, are all faces, hearts, people, implicated into a disembodied, governmental power struggle. And, for as much as V embodies certain divine traits, religion in the film, critiqued for all the right reasons, proves hyperbolically irredeemable. (Yet does anyone else find ironic that, while V uses Fawkes to represent revolution against religious bigotry, the cause for which the historical Fawkes fought to the death was a specific, doctrinal version of Christianity he hoped would supplant King James’ “heretical” Protestantism?). “Faith” in the film has been co-opted by agenda-driven, religious zealots to lull the masses to unquestioning obedience to the prevailing regime.

But here I call on the discernment and critical thinking that the film itself urges. Can we allow our definition of faith to be inclusive of doubt (which the chancellor could not tolerate), nay, to necessitate doubt, so that we have a more textured, informed grappling over God— not motivated by fear, not prone to alienate those with differences, and not risking apathy that could quench our desire to find the source of that occasional burning in our hearts?

Katie jokingly accused me of liking this movie because of its Shakespearean references and the high value it sets on the arts. I can’t disagree, and I admit to being enthralled with that crisp, specific, and sophisticated British rhetoric that disarms me even with phrases like “avalanche of your inadequacies”  (curses upon me, I know; these words come from the Chancellor’s mouth!). And who can help but be disarmed by V’s monologue riddled with “v” alliterations that marshal powerful, abstract ideas?  Yes, for these reasons, I like this film. But I also value it because I, as much as the next V aficionado, am responsive— in that shivery, pining kind of way—to the artistic embodiment of universal truths, of freedom curbed by justice, that have yet to be fully actualized in a world parched for righteousness.