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Saturday, January 2, 2010

V For Vendetta




Haaa... lagi sekali... have all of u watch this movie? this the best ever movie i've ever watched... u all kene tengok citer nie... the ENGLISH is very good.. damn good....plot and the storyline is fantastic...

A masked anarchist who seeks to systematically kill the leaders of Norsefire, a fascist dictatorship ruling a post-apocalyptic United Kingdom. He is well-versed in the arts of explosives, subterfuge, and computer hacking, and has a vast literary, cultural and philosophical intelligence. V is the only survivor of an experiment in which four dozen prisoners were given injections of a pituarin/pinearin compound called "Batch 5." The compound caused vast cellular anomalies that eventually killed all of the subjects except V, to whom many people believe it granted enhanced strength, reflexes, endurance and pain tolerance, though there is no confirmation of this in the book; V maintains that he is just a man. Although Dr. Surridge believes V was driven insane by the injection, the possibility that he feigned insanity as the first step towards freedom is left open. Throughout the novel, V almost always wears his trademark Guy Fawkes mask, a shoulder-length wig of straight dark-brown hair and an outfit consisting of black gloves, tunic, trousers and boots. When not wearing the mask, his face is not shown. When outside the Shadow Gallery, he completes this ensemble with a circa-1600s conical hat and floor-length cloak. His weapons of choice include daggers, explosives and tear gas.
The book suggests that V took his name from the Roman numeral "V", the number of the room he was held in during the experiment. This is the main explanation of the origin of his name. However, other theories may explain his nom de guerre. For instance, there is a clear echo in his name of the rallying cry used by Winston Churchill in the struggle of the Allies in World War II to overcome the Axis Powers: "V for Victory!". Here it is simply transformed into "V for Vendetta". It should also be noted that the V within a circle is merely an upside-down anarchy sign without the slash marking an A symbol.
At the end of the book, V lets Chief Inspector Eric Finch shoot him, and dies in Evey's arms. Evey then assumes V's identity and gives the original V a Viking funeral by placing him inside a bomb-laden train whose eventual destination is Downing Street. V is the only character whose speech bubbles look "distorted and twisted", instead of being perfectly oval, possibly to show that the mask distorts his voice. In Watchmen, another work by Alan Moore, the character Rorschach also wears a mask and makes use of the same distorted speech bubbles whenever wearing it, and normal bubbles when not. Whenever V quotes another author, the quotation marks are perfectly visible.



Anarchism versus fascism

The two conflicting political viewpoints of anarchism and fascism permeate the story. [7] The Norsefire regime shares every facet of fascist ideology: it is highly xenophobic, rules the nation through both fear and force, and worships strong leadership (e.g. the Führerprinzip). As in most fascist regimes, there are several different types of state organisations which engage in power struggles with each other yet obey the same leader.
The fascist regime embraces total corporatism. An important aspect of corporatism involves the total identification of society with state, and thinking of society as a body where the different state institutions are organs. This is reflected by institutions named after parts of the body: the detective branch of the police is The Nose; the surveillance organizations are The Ear and The Eye; the uniform branch of the police is The Finger (and those who work for them are called Fingermen); and the state-controlled media is known as The Mouth.
In creating this system of control, Moore provocatively evokes classical English political thought, namely Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, which imagined the state as one vast corporate gestalt, with its legitimacy founded on the need to maintain order and prevent indiscriminate violence (as was hinted at in the Norsefire backstory). The sovereign formed the natural 'head' of the society, which perhaps explains the anatomical nomenclature of the various arms of state government.
To keep this body healthy, fascist ideology prescribes cleansing it of unhealthy elements (i.e. the motto Strength Through Purity), thus, the totalitarianism and concentration camps. In issue #5, Delia Surridge recounts the Milgram experiment as an explanation of why ordinary people, such as she, engage in such obedience. The connection to Anglican Christianity and Purity Through Faith is a typical feature of clerical fascism in Roman Catholic countries (i.e. southern France of the Vichy regime 1940-44, Spain under Francisco Franco 1939-75, the Independent State of Croatia under Ante Pavelić 1941-45, and Austria under Dollfuss and Schuschnigg 1933-38); such a form has taken hold specifically in England where, in reality, the Church of England (The Anglican Church) is 'established' with the Queen at its head and the state. This explains why, in story continuity, violent anti-Norsefire rebellion engulfs the non-Anglican parts of the United Kingdom (e.g. Scotland)[citation needed].
The anarchism proposed by V is classic and built specifically around the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, who is often associated with the idea that the old society has to be torn down before a new one can be built upon its ruins. In issue #2, V has a fictional dialogue with Madame Justice and concludes that anarchy has taught him that "justice is meaningless without freedom", a phrase which closely parallels similar statements by Bakunin:
Freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice and Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.[8]
Several anarchist (or similar) traits encountered are related to 1960s counterculture. V's tactic of humiliating and ridiculing the fascist regime to destabilize it is like the ideas of the Situationists. In issue #8, the phase between fascism and anarchy is called Verwirrung, a German word meaning "confusion", but used here as reference to The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Book One of the trilogy is so titled). It also may be a direct reference to Discordian philosophy in general, as many other aspects of the series (chaos, the creative arts, anarchism, and the obsession with the number "5") draw similar parallels. An aspect of 1960s counterculture was the idea that domestic partnership and its legal forms can constitute a power imbalance between two people where one controls and dominates the other. This is exemplified by the relationships of Mr. and Mrs. Almond as well as Mr. and Mrs. Heyer, but this aspect is not developed theoretically.



Identity

V himself remains something of an enigma whose history is only hinted at. The bulk of the story is told from the viewpoints of other characters: V's admirer and apprentice Evey, a sixteen-year-old factory worker; Eric Finch, a world-weary and pragmatic policeman who is hunting V; and several contenders for power within the fascist party. V's destructive acts are morally ambiguous, and a central theme of the series is the rationalisation of atrocities in the name of a higher goal, whether it is stability or freedom. The character is a mixture of an actual advocate of anarchism and the traditional stereotype of the anarchist as a terrorist.
Moore stated in an interview:
...the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history.[9]
Moore has never clarified who V supposedly was, beyond stating "that V isn't Evey's father, Whistler's mother, or Charley's aunt"; he does point out that V's identity is never revealed in the book. The ambiguity of the V character is a running theme through the work; it is left for the reader to determine for himself whether V is sane or psychotic, hero or villain. Before donning the Guy Fawkes mask herself, Evey comes to the conclusion that V's identity is unimportant compared to the role he plays, making his identity itself the idea he embodies.
This lack of personification through a fixed identity has also been construed[by whom?] as a way of creating an "Everyman" character, reinforcing the examples of personal responsibility taken throughout the book. This "Everyman" character is further illustrated through the use of Evey, a young, insecure, uneducated person, slowly changing into "V".






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