Journal sielwolf's Journal: Five-Four-Five 3
It's hard to be a hero these days. Especially when the Wachowski brother and sister decide to do their "magic" on your volume. It also doesn't help when a bunch of Salafi teenage jerk offs decide to kill folks in the London summer giving you some of the worst possible sort of PR. It's hard to be a terrorist. People use that word today like it means something.
Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (V4V) has a lot of forces at work around it before it even gets released, and not nearly just those of the current international climate. Literarily, it has the weight of Moore's own pedigree, which is both good and bad. Most are familiar with The Watchmen. It's held as the touchstone of comics becoming serious literature (see its inclusion as the only graphic novel in Time's top 100 books of the 20th century). The problem for comics is that Moore is mostly a genre to himself. Other than Frank Miller and maybe Grant Morrison, there aren't any other creators who work so boldly within the medium without a net. Moore's work is so stunning because it lacks any peers even as he spans crime fiction, horror, the supernatural, mysticism, futurism or gritty realism. Even the heady indie comics world, cast as an alternative to everything mainstream (read "superhero") comics are, are victim to their own tired conventions. Moore's approach is meta-literary as he references both classical and contemporary literature, genre, and poem, pushing relentlessly on the possibilities of the medium.
V4V is probably his second most admired work. It is the most like The Watchmen with its multi-perspective, interwoven plot. There's a whole odd history around it as V4V was published after and before The Watchmen. This whole period was a crucible for Moore as well, root to his own current standards of professional ethics. It's interesting, but in a gossipy sort of way. Though you might finally understand why you won't see "Alan Moore" anywhere in the credits for the film adaptation of V4V, it doesn't bring you anywhere closer to the material.
And so that's why I wrote this. The shadow of Moore's mythos is that all the movie adaptations of his work range from 'mediocre' to 'unbelievably incompetent'. From Hell was... ok. LXG was just shit. They made Swamp Thing twice after Moore's run... and the development hell of The Watchmen is one of the great golden calves of comicbookdom.
Combine the Wachowski's anointing their second-unit director to lead the forecast for V4V is somewhere between rotten and nonsensical. So before we all happen to see it, and then retroactively hold the source against it, I'd like us to have a few days here to reflect on the good times, the wonderful bounty that is V4V. Maybe this might intrigue those of you unfamiliar with it to possibly go and buy it, regardless of the movie. Throw on some Bauhaus and get lost on some sleet gray April night.
Though popular, V4V is also widely misread and poorly understood. Some will refer to Moore's quote to "initial clumsiness" or that this was just a place setting for The Watchmen. And I think that might have some credence as many of the same themes are explored there more thoroughly. The annoying thing is when all analyses out there appear to be absolutely superficial. The same sort of bland post-colonial/post-feminist lambastes of misogyny or homophobia. Or a rote recounting of all the references or symbols in the book (surprise: all the chapter headings start with V; V dresses like Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up Parliament on the Fifth of November; V was the man in Room Five; Evey is the fledgling that V takes under his wing; Victoria Cross station; there are four imagined demaskings at the end with Evey as the fifth *snoooorrrre*). It's that shit freshmen-level sociology paper dialogue that kind of spoils the whole enterprise. V4V is accepted as compelling, but other than the mood of the work and the cache it possesses, no one seems to explain why. This piece isn't going to do a track-by-track breakdown (you can find those elsewhere) and instead try to provide some discussion worthy of the source. There are spoilers for both V4V and The Watchmen here so just an FYI.
My V Sons
Superficial comparisons to The Watchmen at some point come to contrasting V with Rorschach. This is the easiest- and most banal. The reasons are simple: both are vigilantes, "play by their own rules", are extremely violent and wear masks. And that would be accurate if V4V ended after the third chapter or so. The same period that Moore labeled with "initial awkwardness" is uses as carte blanc for the entire series. And it's annoying and stupid in many ways. Primarily because Rorschach is the classic fanboy masturbatory aid. All the other characters in The Watchmen are rapists, baby murderers, homosexuals, adulterers, whores, impotent or bound by some pansy "ethics". Rorschach is a killer. He kills bad guys and is badass and cool (and to top it all off he wouldn't compromise for nobody and the fucking cowards KILLED HIM FOR IT! Hells JEAH!). Folks try to hate by calling him a Terrorist and an Assassin. The 'boys then try to extrapolate such a poor reading of that character to V. And that suits them just perfectly.
But V has as much in common with Nite Owl II as he does with Rorschach: both V and Nite Owl take on well known public figures (one RL, one that is historical only within the series) and fight their enemies with a huge Wayne Corp-esque lair of equipment and gadgets.
Or you could say that V is like the Comedian. Rorschach was a complete blank of personality. He was a literalist. His approach was always Okham's Razor. V held none of that: everything for him was presentation (destroying monuments to the 1812 Overture, presenting himself to the bishop to the Stone's "Sympathy for the Devil", the grandiose "Viking funeral"). More there was a pithiness to his slaughter. Killing was a venue like any other and it was to kill a man in spirit as well as in body, all like the Comedian's One Cruel Joke. It is a savage utility, where others are used as far as they are needed and then disposed of. A harsh survival instinct. The Comedian was described thusly:
"[The Comedian] is interesting. I have never met anyone so deliberately amoral. He suits the climate here: the madness, the pointless butchery... as I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such understanding. [The Comedian]'s different. He understand's perfectly... and he doesn't care."
Trade the Southeast Asian jungles for the slog through post-Norsefire London and the same nihilism falls into place in V. Unlike Rorschach's bitter moral absolutism, V and the Comedian allow for large reservoirs of collateral damage.
But V's view is more epic than the Comedian's. Where the Comedian was simply just an agent happy to churn up ground wherever the government saw fit to drop him, all of V's actions where part of an elaborate scheme. He might then be more like Ozymandias with his creeping moral equivalency, and ur-man megalomania. At no point is any of their schemes ever jeopardized by any of the agents in their respective stories. The governments aren't even adversaries but simple pawns following the bread crumbs to their own demise. And the principals, as they slowly unravel the plot, all play key roles in moving the plan forward. Never once is there the small slip or flub that forces either Machiavelli to fall back on contingency. Rorschach is the simple agent for helping to disseminate the "Mask Killer" myth. Edward Finch only kills V because V wants him too. Everyone dances on the end of the puppet strings. They even share a sense of diabolical timing:
"'Do it?' Dan, I'm not a republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago." - Ozymandias to Nite Owl
"Then... you are going to kill me"
"I killed you ten minutes ago. While you were asleep." - Dr Delia Surridge and V
And it must be remembered that V actually proceeded all the Watchmen characters. Their genealogy traces from him. In all likelihood, Moore probably felt a bit constrained with only a single character as vehicle for his thoughts. Expanded out to the longer format of The Watchmen, the aspects of V's personality could be illuminated more intensely. The characters, common in theme, share at most a framework, with the specifics detailed as needed. Character analysis then is probably best then at the same abstract layer and a few minutes spent on Dr Manhattan.
The components of V and Dr Manhattan's arcs are stunningly similar (stunning in that you would expect them to be an easy interpretation. Yet everyone gravitates to the Rorschach comparisons almost instantly...): both are average men who are transformed through scientific experimentation. This experiment are assumed lethal but instead provide an unforeseen transformation into something entirely superhuman. Not just in body but in perspective. They achieve a view that exceeds dominance to something greater:
"The Way he looks at things, like he can't remember what they are and doesn't particularly care... this world, the real world, to him it's like walking through mist, and all the people are like shadows" - Lauren talking about Dr Manhattan
"Strangely, he's developed one of those curious side effects which seem to afflict certain categories of schizophrenic: his personality has become totally magnetic. He says very little... but there's something about the way he looks at you. He looked at me today as if I were some sort of insect. He looked at me as if he felt sorry for me." - Dr Surridge on V
Both spend a significant part of the storyline interacting with a female protégé (Evey and Lauren) who acts as a human counterweight to their abstract a-humanity. Their companions will suffer deliberately (though in starkly different scales) but prove vital for their ability to sympathize where V and Dr Manhattan cannot.
VBL
The lack of humanity of each character is so vast that the climax of each story involves both of them "dying" and being reborn (V through inheritance and Dr Manhattan through his own godlike ability). The parallels between the two is sufficient that there must be some reason as to why the two are not usually linked.
This is probably due to V being positioned from the beginning of V4V (after a vignette involving law enforcement) as the protagonist (so is Rorschach. This might explain the desire to pair the two). It's the sort of delayed introduction Batman is usually given: spend a page or two defining a secondary character, imperil them, and then introduce our hero. Shit, his Guy Fawkes mask is on the fucking cover. His name is in the title. "Wait... he's not a good guy?" By the end, most readers will accept that V is not a Hero in the classic sense, or even in the Frank Castle/Rorschach/anti-hero way.
Closing on the last page of V4V, folks seem to have a "damn..." moment. A few moments processing and they come to the parable of "the ends justifying the means". And the utility of assassination and wide scale terrorism in achieving a goal. The plots in both V4V and The Watchmen succeed but in opposite ways. The Watchmen is more of a classic study, where the Act averts Armageddon. Though 4 million or so die gruesome fates, the bombs don't start dropping making The Watchmen a kind of a parlor game. Really, is there a choice between losing everything or just some? Though a bit distasteful and many would doubt their ability to carry out what amounts to mass murder to halt annihilation, there's no ambiguity. It's the same conundrum of a burglar putting a gun to your kid's head and saying either the kid or you will have to die. Really, it's a choice between no future and a future unknown. The only question is our ability to man up and carry it out.
V4V is harder to swallow. The book ends with the world in "The Land of Take-What-You-Want" with the possibility of a future "The Land of Do-As-You-Please". When Evey calls it anarchy, V corrects her and tells her it is only chaos. Tribalism, vandalism, violence and rape are what are left. The book closes with London burning.
The new world in The Watchmen still has its curator. The Ozymandias who killed half of New York is the same one who will usher the humanity into a new beginning while shouldering the guilt of the terrible act he committed. Meanwhile, the resources left at Evey's disposal don't seem near the task of building a new city on the hill. Guilt or sympathy don't appear to be much of the equation.
Now some tard out there flipped this for a shocker closing and said "would you accept V's actions if you removed his mask and found the face of Osama bin Laden underneath?"
DAMN yo! He just like- totally flipped that motherfucker!! I bet right after posting that he went onto IRC and told all of his buddies from the BBS days to totally read that bitch! W334rrrdd!!!
People have no skills of perception, leading them to trite fucking statements they take as profound philosophical insights. The simple binary ending of The Watchmen (either humanity lives or humanity dies) makes for easy reading. V4V, as shown above, isn't so simple. Something other than "we traced the call... its coming from somewhere downstairs! Get out of the house immediately" O'Henry bullshit is needed.
For one thing V4V has a cyclical plot. The in straight chronological order, the story begins with V "going under" (to borrow some of the Nietzsche talk that fuckos throw around freely when talking about superheroes), transcending, saving Evey, extinguishing himself to make way for her to take over the mantle. This after he ushers her through her own "going under". The book ends with Evey saving another though... well that's getting ahead of ourselves.
Stepping back, what we see is that Moore has created a wheel of destiny that, while there are synonyms from all over (Jakob Boehme, Oroboros, the Tao), the parallels fit most closely to the ruling triumvirate of Hindu gods: Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. V points to Detective Finch that he is not flesh and blood but an idea ("Ideas are bulletproof", pg 236). We understand what he means when V dies, only to have Evey take up the mantle and continue forward.
Basic reading would have this be like Dick Grayson taking over for Bruce Wayne: the character of Batman would continue on unbroken through generations. But it isn't that way.
Take for instance, their respective Goings Under. V is a prisoner, experimented on, makes a daring escape and then pushes Evey unknowingly through a similar experience. She is at a camp, like his, interrogated (we assume), like he was, and is revealed the same touching story of Valerie (the Woman in Room IV). On page 172, after it is all revealed as a sham, V says "I know. Five years ago I too came through a night like this, naked under a roaring sky. This night is yours."
But that is not exactly true. V escaped Larkhill concentration camp through a violent act of napalm, explosives and mustard gas. He never has to make the choice Evey did. He never had to choose between living and that one last inch. V controls his fate. Evey has choices laid out before her. Now you could say that V probably couldn't have set up the same situation as he had without tipping his hand or expecting too much of Evey. But then he expects her to replace him as "V". If he can't expect her to make napalm and mustard gas out of gardening supplies, why did he choose her?
The answer: she is not like him. He doesn't expect her to be.
V plucks roses and leaves them on his kills as calling cards. However, after Evey's going under, he takes Evey to his garden, explains its importance as a memorial to Valerie and says that there is a flower there for Alistair Harper. All Evey needs to do is pluck it and V will kill him for her. Evey tells him she'd rather let it grow (pg 176-177).
One might even go as far as to wonder what happened to Valerie on the night that V escaped Larkhill. We know that all three of the other patients died from Surridge's diary but we are never given a time where Valerie dies (though it is some time before Evey meets V as he makes clear that Valerie is long dead).
It is quite possible that in V's escape, Valerie is killed in the explosion. There are no panels showing the extent of the damage caused by V's escape, but the entire yard is filled with fire and smoke. Likewise, he blew a sizable hole in the side of the building holding him. Valerie, in room IV, was right next to his.
Consider then page 175: after V reveals his deception to Evey there are two sequential panel at the bottom. The first, showing a movie poster of Valeries with V's dialogue "She was the woman in room four." Followed by the panel showing a door with a number 4, the location given at the Kitty Kat Kellar. Inside that room is Rose, the woman through the course of events set out by V, will die while going through with the murder of the Leader. Rose is a sacrificial pawn, clear and deliberate, in V's plans (and one of the main reasons why the V4V's plot is more complex than the morality of The Watchmen). She is a humanized character: good, kind, and the victim of cruel fate... mostly V's. This good person is then easily sacrificed with none of Ozymandias' guilt, as a cog in the plan. This juxtaposition on page 175 (as well as Rose's name) illuminates V's own perspective on Valerie. We are given that of Evey, but Evey is not V's. Evey is a counterpoint to V, much as in the Hindu Trimurti, Brahma is the creator of life while Shiva consumes it. Using Valerie's story, having her die as collateral and returning as an integral part in Evey's going under seems to fit with the logic of V. It also makes sense that he would never tell this to Evey.
But V seems to understand that they are not the same but vastly different and yet he chooses Evey anyway. He realizes that history is larger than himself. That where he ushers in "The Land of Take-What-You-Want", he has no place in that world, the one he created. A world only of destruction is one that ends in annihilation, not "The Land of Do-As-You-Please". That is the task for someone of though similar godly objective perspective, a different temperament. It is the world Evey will give us. "V", the bulletproof idea, is then more than just the terrorist and assassin. "V" is the fate that guides humanity, each epoch ushered in by an avatar unique unto itself. Two scenes support this. First, when V appears to let Finch kill him he gives his quote about "Ideas are bulletproof." On the very next page (237) Finch finds the blood trail and declares "Flesh and blood after all". This obvious juxtaposition leads to the revelation that V and "V" are not the same (made literal when Evey takes on the Guy Fawkes mask). Second, it is revealed that Fate, the central computer used by the Leader to manage the country, has been tapped and controlled by V throughout the entire sequence of events. In short "Fate" is just a guise for the will of "V".
Do-As-You-Please
"V" then is composed of V destroying the old world, Evey as the builder of the new one, who then has the Vishnu role of sustaining it? The quick reply would be the police Evey saves from the riot at the end (after the destruction of Downing St). The set up is a repetition of that she experienced when first brought into the Shadow Gallery. But that might actually not be the while case.
In fact, Detective Finch might be the best candidate for builder of the Land of Do-As-You-Please. Like both V and Evey, he went under at a camp though his too was different than everyone else's. Unlike Evey he experiences (as he perceived it might be) V's escape from Larkhill. This comes after realizing his own self-determination. Finch is also a creation of the institution of the previous world (i.e. though he disagrees with it, he's honor bound to the Norsefire government and preserving its laws).
Ok ok. So no where is there any of the literature to support this idea. He isn't chosen by Evey to replace her as "V". But then like V not telling Evey he killed Valerie, the world might only come if Finch does not actually take up the Guy Fawkes mask literally. He's shown to stick with the job laid out before him no matter how much he hates the system or sympathizes with our protagonists. So fate might have a different path in store for him.
In the end though, the book would form a cycle: the world created before (the one Finch left before V came) would be reborn again (the one Finch would inherit from Evey). And this isn't a backtracking, but a new world created from atomized dust. Consider then the last two pages: Finch is offered by Helen (the manipulative harpy behind most of the Norsefire leadership) to restore the world as it was and he pushes her away (back into a horny throng of hobos... which I find to be funny for some reason). The last pane ends with Finch walking north, alone, into a new and unknown world. Finch and the other detective might then form the series of Vishnu avatars (like Krishna), available to preserve humanity from qlippoth to the new world. An unbroken line of officers each for their own era.
Here V4V returns to The Watchmen. Events and fate conspire yet thee is no finality to it. The equilibrium is just a constant of change: for the next great disaster humanity sets out before itself, the next great door that must be stepped through. When Dr Manhattan sees Ozymandias for the last time, he's asked if, in the end, all the plotting was all worth it:
"'In the End?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
Philistine Heathen (Score:2)
Feel free to lambaste me.
*I'm hip! I'm cool! Oh wait. No, I'm not.
Re:Philistine Heathen (Score:2)
I also got t
Re:Philistine Heathen (Score:1)
AS per usual, phone w