V for Vendetta is a dystopian story about society ruled by its totalitarian government rather than the government being the voice of the people. This movie encompasses aspects of surveillance, discipline and power with the story revolving around the characters of Evey and V. Evey is a young media worker paralyzed by her fear of the world around her until she meets V. V is the freedom fighter/ terrorist and protagonist of the piece, whose plan is to blow up the House of the Parliament on the 5th of November as a symbol depicting the state of the country. The rest of the film centers on the police investigation into V; the relationship between Evey and V; and Evey’s eventual abjection of the fear that thus far crippled her life. As one of the main actors states, the film is “A meditation on what happens when a government pushes people too far.”
In this essay I’ll be using Foucalt’s theory on Power and Knowledge and Resistance. Firstly, the traditional ideas of power began with Francis Bacon who quoted “Knowledge is Power.” However, Foucault linked power and knowledge as being one and the same and believed that power was achieved through discourse. “In a society such as ours… there are manifold relations of power that permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse.” Foucault argues that power is achieved through discourse, and through social structures. “Without knowing it, we group distinguishable objects into unities and thus constitute our objects.” In the most basic terms, discourse works through repetition of a statement, which said often enough, becomes true. “Discourse is not just a way of speaking or writing, but the whole “mental set” and ideology which encloses the thinking of all members of a given society.” There are numerous elements of discourse in V For Vendetta, most notably through the character of Lewis Prothero, the “Voice of London”. Prothero preaches one phrase above all, “Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith”. He suggests that the present government is on a par with God, and “godlessness” will destroy the country. “The word “power” has a two fold meaning. One is the possession of power over somebody, the ability to dominate him; the other meaning is the possession of power to do something, to be able, to be potent. The latter has nothing to do with domination; it expresses mastery in the sense of ability.” This is seen very clearly in V For Vendetta. The government has a dominating power over its people, but V and the rest of the people have the power to stop this. They have the power to resist.
Foucault, however argues that one of the most important aspects of power is resistance. According to Foucault, there are no relations of power without the existence of resistance. He believed that power was far more complex and insidious than the power of ideology or brute economic oppression and that without resistance, all instances of power fade. V believes that there is something very wrong with the country and appeals to the people to join him exactly a year later for the blowing up of the parliament. As V states:
“People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of the people.” and “We must make allowance for the concept’s complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.” This is seen in the film as we see V read his “manifesto” to the people, when he appeals to their sense of morality not to allow the misdeeds of the government to go unnoticed or unpunished. “His (Guy Fawkes) hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked.” It is in this instance that we see discourse working as a hindrance to its original perpetrator. V speaks in the language of the people. He appeals to their sense of morality and rather than order them to act, causes them to question themselves. In his work “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” Foucault identified how there had been a shift in the use of power from pre-modern to post-modern societies. There was a new reliance on self-discipline as opposed to punishment as a means of social control. The citizens of the film have slipped into a system of self-discipline as a manner of control.
The biggest aspect of Foucault’s theories that we see in V For Vendetta is the Surveillance and Control. Surveillance, in Foucault’s thinking is an important means of controlling people and practices. The “gaze” is an expression of power, and the idea has been dwelt in many different areas, for example, George Orwell’s “1984”, from which the iconic phrase “Big Brother is watching” originated from. This idea is dwelt in V For Vendetta. The Chancellor (a term we would most commonly associate with Adolf Hitler.) Adam Sutler is seen only on a large TV screen as a powerful, forceful individual, until the end of the film when we meet him for the first and last time in the flesh, as a terrified, weeping little man. One of the main questions regarding surveillance is the line between safety and privacy. What are security CCTV camera’s intended to achieve? The answer to this question is control. Foucault viewed the body as a centre point for social control. In V For Vendetta, the Government is run in sections, with different names assigned to different aspects of policing. The Finger consists of a Gestapo like force that polices the streets, and issues immoral punishments as we see at the beginning when the two men attempt to rape Evey. The other sections are made up of the Ear, which is sound surveillance; the Eye, visual surveillance; and the mouth, which is the TV Company that partakes in pro-government propaganda. Foucault views institutions such as prisons, armies, schools, hospitals, etc, as institutions through which control can be implemented. The aim of these institutions is the production of Docile and Useful bodies. These institutions therefore, acted as tools for shaping the identity of a person. There was a shift from bodily domination and control to patterns of self-regulation and discipline. In the film, we learn of testing that is taking place on the patients. This is where the vendetta story begins. We learn that the patient in Cell Number Five, i.e. – V in Roman numerals, is not responding to any of the tests, while many others have died. From V’s blood, a virus is extracted, and a cure developed. This virus is later used by the government to inflict fear in the people of the country. The cure is “miraculously” discovered after the Norsefire government comes into power.
One of the most interesting aspects of this film is the interpretation of identity. Evey begins the film as a media worker trying to live beneath the radar, not drawing attention to herself. We learn that her parents were killed during riots before Norsefire and she believes that her parents chose their political activism over her. She is afraid to speak out because she claims that every time she has seen the world change it has always been for the worse. We could go as far as to say that Evey is abjecting the idea of freedom at the beginning of the film. Evey’s “self” is one of fear, and the “other” is the idea of freedom. This is an interesting idea because we can also see aspects of Orientalism in the film, as we look at the people who are imprisoned in the detention/concentration camps. It is only after Evey meets V and faces her death that she loses her fear, and becomes free. It is a role reversal from the beginning of the film. When Evey pulls the lever at the end of the film, she is abjecting fear and embracing freedom.
To conclude this essay, V For Vendetta was created for us as a warning as it shows a bleak outlook of a totalitarian future that is not too distant and some may feel that that future is already upon us. It also conveys not to blindly put your faith in powers whose true intentions you do not know.
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