You Have No Spine. You Have No Pride. - V's Talk With Britain

[jlroberson]

I am, for reasons from the past couple of weeks I'm sure most of you know about, pretty angry and disillusioned with pretty much our entire government right now, but also what appears to be our utter powerlessness to control it. (As someone on the left, you can imagine I feel particularly marooned politically right now) So of course my mind goes straight to Alan Moore & David Lloyd.

So here's V's REAL speech from V FOR VENDETTA.(well, most of it; I applied some cuts but the important stuff is here) Which, unlike the one in the film, doesn't let you off the hook it hangs our leaders upon. Something I feel everyone should read.







All (c)DC Comics. I'd rather say it was (c) Moore & Lloyd, but there you are.

BRIEF PROMO BLURB: If you feel inclined, why not visit Bottomless Studio for some fine comics both print and free, and more besides?

Comments

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

When I'm in a "fuck the world and everyone in it" kind of mood I usually watch Get Carter with Michael Caine.

[jlroberson]

That's next. The library's getting it for me in a day.

[fifthie]

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighghghghghhgghghghghghghghghghghhgh

[tsunamiwombat]

This is a much ballsier speech than the one in the movie thats for sure.

[jlroberson]

Right? The one in the film basically poses him as their savior, nothing to worry about V will save them, it's those bad old leaders, nothing to do with you the people.

This is political science. The one in the film is something to make Americans feel better. I don't dislike the film of V--a lot of important stuff IS there and it's better than many Moore adaptations, and it has inspired activism worldwide, so fine. More good done than bad. But the speech in the film is a change I feel is a bad one. Many of the others aren't to substance. This is.

Living your own life

[blue_bolt]

V's speech makes me think of oh, so many songs:

1. Have a Nice Day - Bon Jovi
2. We're Not Going to Take it - Twisted Sister
and many many more.

Honestly, you can do three things when faced with a global situation that you dislike:
1. Complain
2. Change your values to enjoy/accept the situation
3. Change the situation to adhere to your values

1. Doesn't do anything.
2. Changes you, for good or ill.
3. Is the most proactive and the least common.

I say we blow Gadhafi to Kingdom Come (not the comic), stop producing internal combustion engine automobiles and switch to battery power and put battery swap stations across the developed world, bring back the 1980 UNICEF/WHO 3rd world vaccination programs and eradicate Polio, Malaria and TB, threaten Assad with military action if he doesn't stop killing his own citizens, declare Somalia a Mandate of the UN, revamp the UN so no non-democratic nations are allowed on the Security Council (i.e China), stop using corn for ethanol, legalize marijuana globally so it can be privatized and taxed, fine Merrill-Lynch, Goldman-Saachs and the rest of the criminal corporations several billion dollars for their flagrant perjury and attempted cover ups.

V's right that we have some major problems, but the solution isn't to eliminate government, but to deconstruct our current governments and rebuild them from the ground up - hopefully getting it right this time around.

[mrstatham]

This. The film works well enough on it's own merits, but changes too much about V if you're someone familiar with the book, for me. The film sets it up so that V essentially replaces the Norsefire government as a figurehead and has him save the day by killing the stupidly renamed Sutler.

The book presents V as someone who just sets the example, opening Britain up to the Land of Do As You Please that he talks about. I also find it quite telling that he isn't the one who kills Susan, and doesn't even touch any of the prominent party figures - they all kill themselves, effectively. To me, I disliked that the most.

[jlroberson]

Susan's death, at the hands of the widow Almond ("And you don't even, you don't even know my NAME!") is the best and most poignant, in so many ways.

First of all, she is what makes V the complex book it is. She's the representative of the collateral damage his revenge causes. Who is forgotten, who suffers, who you feel for. She's the reason V is not simply to be seen as a hero, but...something else. It's Moore not giving the reader the easy way out, feeling compassion for someone most might simply forget. It's a precursor to the likes of "Last Man Fall."

And it brings together these threads of love and loss. Her of her abusive husband--who was still all she had--and Susan of Fate, which, essentially, V has been fucking right in front of him, another aspect to the book the film is poorer without: the leader and Fate.

He tries to find new love, among his people. And the first time he touches someone ("So nice...just to shake hands with someone...")--

BANG.

Such amazing craft in this book, so early on. A far superior work over time to WATCHMEN, and I think--along with FROM HELL--approaches literature far more than WATCHMEN(as great as it is, in its very genre way) will after superheroes stop being pop-trendy. It'll make sense still anyway.

Re: Living your own life

[jlroberson]

I don't think it can be taken only as an endorsement of anarchy--that's more the speech to the statue on the roof, though I really like that bit. It's about personal responsibility. It's actually saying the same things you are. But in the world V is in, mere "activism" doesn't do it. The speech, as far as it goes, is still all quite true.

[20thcenturyvole]

Despite all criticisms of the movie, I will forever hear V's dialogue in Hugo Weaving's voice.

[jlroberson]

Which works fine. It's certainly not the CASTING in the film I have any problem with. It's some of the screenwriting choices. It's that they turn the whole thing into something personal when the book tries hard to avoid this. Things like that. And others I mentioned. The film I think skews toward a "savior" narrative that the book does not.

Kind of a syndrome in Moore adaptations. Like making FROM HELL(which is AWFUL) a mystery, which violates the whole point of the book right off the bat till we get to the other fuckery.

By the way: if the Brits had done the film, it'd have been goddamn Robbie Coltrane as Abberline, as God intended.

[mrstatham]

One thing amongst many that disliked about the film was the way it changed the sequencing of events. The film's version of this comes near the beginning and effectively lays down V's mission statement early on.

Whereas with the book, it's an absolutely magnificent oh-crap moment because as Finch assumes, everything beforehand was just the setup.

[jlroberson]

An interesting thought: like many Moore works, there is a BEAUTY AND THE BEAST subplot in V--V & Evey. If you look at lots of his works, you'll find that recur. SWAMP THING, NEONOMICON, and more. Even Hyde & Mina, or Silk Spectre & Dr. Manhattan. It's a prominent motif in at LEAST half his works, I'd say. He even wrote a screenplay(unproduced) for Malcolm McLaren called FASHION BEAST which dealt with the story itself.

It'd be interesting if someone examined that thread running through his work.

[jlroberson]

And it's issue 5.

[mrstatham]

This, absolutely this. I think Watchmen gets more recognition because it deals directly with heroes, but V is much more compelling and feels like a more personal work for Moore, somehow. But then, I've always enjoyed other bits of his work over Watchmen anyway.

And I do find it interesting that Moore actually manages to make Susan somewhat sympathetic, too. He seems quite lost and miserable throughout most of the book, and especially after the revelations with Fate.

PS

[jlroberson]

And if I'd directed it, both Mrs. Almond & Susan would have had their own romantic lietmotif music that would be brought together at the assassination moment. Not suspenseful. Romantic.

[jlroberson]

WATCHMEN is a great work about comics that only truly makes sense in that context. It can stand alongside SUPERFOLKS, which is plenty worthy as it is. I would say it's even a comics equivalent of perhaps GILES GOAT-BOY(which is mindblowingly complex, but treats world history in many ways along the same lines as Moore in a literature way), but not Pynchon as Moore would want.

V on the other hand can stand alongside WE, 1984, BRAVE NEW WORLD, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I'd say it wins.

[biod]

The message remains the same in the film, the blame and responsibillity is of the people, but while this speech is threatening in tone and builds up V to be something not human, the movie speech takes a turn for the inspirational and it's V asking them to stand WITH him. Both have their merits. I for one like the inspirational tone of the movie, but prefer V to be what he claims to be, an idea behind a mask, not a man.

[endis_ni]

Promethea and Jack Faust as well, of course.

[espanolbot]

Weaving was a smashing Abberline in the Wolfman though. :)

[espanolbot]

And Mina/Mr Hyde.

[arilou_skiff]

That's rather the point though, think. Ideas are cold things, brutal and efficient and quite inhuman. While people are messy and confusing and not easily categorized.

[riddler13]

Always wondered who is the would-be tyrant at the bottom left corner on the 18th panel. Of course, Adolf, Josef and Benito are easily recognizable.

I like V for Vendetta, and have never (oh noes!) seen the film. But I'd still take Watchmen over it any day.

[cypherfdp]

Man, I look at this, and all I can see is fucking Chanology.

[icon_uk]

I got about halfway through that movie before the sheer dullness of it drove me away. I don't think anyone came out of it well.

[biod]

You should watch it sometime. IMO it's a very good movie, one of my favorites even.

[don1138]

Methinks it's Nixon, carefully cropped to avoid inflaming delicate sensibilities. I believe he was still alive at the time this was written.

[cleome45]

It's a great comic. Still one of my favorites.

Sadly, IRL, "All you had to say was 'No'" is not actually how it works.

[riddler13]

Yep! Definetely, they're Dick's eyes! Thanks! :)

Re: Living your own life

[cleome45]

I think your dream list works at cross-purposes here. Global interventionism and humanitarian values particularly at home work at cross-purposes.

So long as we constantly squander our own resources, both human and monetary, to play world policeman, I don't think there's any way that the United States can operate in a humane fashion-- either at home or anywhere else.

Which is why I can't stand anyone in charge. All they do is bicker about how much money they can steal from us and how many more people they can kill (soldiers and civilians alike) in order to bolster multinational corporations-- who are their real bosses. We most certainly are not.

The idea that perhaps the war machine could be dialed down; that we might consider cleaning up our own house before pointing guns at the rest of the world and telling them how to behave... somehow those ideas are never part of the discussion.

[cleome45]

It would have been better as a series anyway. I don't know how in blazes a story of that length could be effectively compressed into a standard-length film in the first place. :/

[btravage]

He thinks he's ugly and not deserving of the hot chicks he's slept with and there for justifies it to himself in his work. Armchair Literary Criticism: Done.

[btravage]

I know, right. Fuck them for co-opting this.

[jlroberson]

"Hot chicks he's slept with?" Not necessarily---Clearly you never saw his ex-wife. Or her girlfriend.

[jlroberson]

Not his widow's peak though. Which is distinctive in that it's Norman OSborn's hair. I'm not seeing that.

[proteus_lives]

"Sadly, IRL, "All you had to say was 'No'" is not actually how it works"

You're right, that is very naive.

[mrstatham]

You should've stayed to LOL at the sight of teddy-bear Anthony Hopkins. So bad.

[mrstatham]

I don't think this version of the speech is necessarily threatening, but it's certainly not mollycoddling. And this and the film's speech are distinctly different. V of the book needs no-one to stand with him save Evey. In fact, the film misses the point quite severely. V isn't looking to be a new figurehead for people, since that's just replacing one ruler with another. He wants them to make their own choices, and whilst he gives them the means to do so, he isn't going to guide then by the hand, as I feel he does in the film.

[mrstatham]

True, but in the circumstances the book presents, it would've averted a lot of pain and misery if people had said no.

[mrstatham]

And, with V partly being a response to Thatcherite England, I think Moore was expressing his frustration over that, since it took us over a decade to be shot of her, and even then, it wasn't our voices that did it.

[jlroberson]

Out of curiosity, where is your avatar from?

[jlroberson]

I always thought Lloyd's atmosphere recalled Brit TV crime-suspense drama. TOUCHING EVIL, PRIME SUSPECT, that kind of look.

[mrstatham]

It's the member image for Dr Strangelove in the assignment section of Peace Walker, the Metal Gear game.

[kenwyn89]

This, so much. The funny thing about the current government is that, unlike Thatcher no one voted with the current cabinet in mind as it's a coalition. At least people still haven't forgiven them enough to vote a majority in. Problem is labour voters are disillusioned. (Why can't we have an actually left wing party? I'm not a crazy socialist, but I voted for lib dems on the basis they were a good centre-left alternative until that rubbish with Clegg). My Mum who is now facing redundancy in the public sector adult ed for the second time in a year, thinks the cuts are even worse than under thatcher.

[mrstatham]

From what I know of Thatcher - I was born in 86 after what seems to be the worst of her years in power, and could only really laugh at Major, given my age, I'd be inclined to agree.

Despite the fact that Maggie probably has bigger balls than Cameron, Clegg and Osborne combined, she never fucked with the NHS, after all.

And, as a Labour voter personally.. It's very difficult to be encouraged by them at the moment. Milliband must actually be code for wet lettuce, Tony Blair was a secret Tory, frankly, and poor Gordon seemed decent enough but got positively crucified in the wake of a crisis that wasn't entirely his fault.

[kenwyn89]

The only thing that amuses me is the amount of U turns they've done- on selling the forests (wtf?), rehauling the NHS, now this phone hacking thing- I remember them demoting Vince Cable for bad mouthing Murdoch, now look what's happened...

As a history student I have to ask where have the ballsy politicians gone? (unless they decided not to enter politics these days). Even the miners unions agreed she stuck to her guns- even if they do consider what she did pretty evil really. Sigh.