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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
V for Vendetta: Deep Thoughts About Fascism, Feminism, and Pop Culture Revolution
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You cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it. Ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love...
The (relatively) recent news that Stephen Colbert's show was cancelled put Emily in mind of the fate of Stephen Fry's character Gordon Dietrich in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is why she decided to revisit this pop culture mashup that took Alan Moore's graphic novel response to 1980s Thatcherism and updated it with early 2000s American angst over Bush-era government overreach.
The result, written by the Wachowski sisters and directed by their protege, James McTeigue, in his directorial debut, offers hope through beautiful storytelling, empowering feminism (even if the film doesn't exactly pass the Bechdel Test), and a partial breakdown of the psychology of fascism. Moore, who famously hates every adaptation of his work, specifically hates this film because it makes the fascist Norse Fire government look stable, when part of his cultural commentary in the original graphic novel was pointing out the inherent instability of authoritarianism. Rewatching this classic film in the current social environment did reinforce Moore's point to Emily, considering how generally competent everyone in the government appears to be in this movie.
Still, the message of hope and resilience in V for Vendetta is a welcome one, even if the pop culture revolution isn't exactly like the real world.
Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so why not throw on your headphones and listen to the episode?
Content warning: Mentions of torture, attempted sexual assault, and pedophilia
Mentioned in this episode:
Dominic Noble Lost in Adaptation V for Vendetta
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.
We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.
Because what is done to her is monstrous and she says that to him, because he says what was done to me was monstrous. And she said and they made you a monster. And it's this very interesting dichotomy Because what is done to her is monstrous and it makes her more human.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 1:I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be sharing my deep thoughts about the 2005 film V for Vendetta with my sister, tracy Guy-Decker, and with you, let's dive in. So, tracy, I don't know if you've seen this film. It came out when we were adults, so it's not part of our childhood. Tell me what you know about it.
Speaker 2:I have seen it and actually I read the graphic novel first. So in my 20s, after college, I went through a very rabid sort of graphic novel phase and I read a lot of the classics. I started with Gaiman's Sandman Fuck Neil Gaiman, or don't in fact actually Right, actually avoid it at all costs and I went on from there and V for Vendetta and the Watchmen. So Alan Moore was one of the auteurs that I followed that I consumed voraciously in that time period and I loved it. I loved V for Vendetta at the time when I read it as a graphic novel and so when it came out as a movie I didn't remember whether it was 05, but in the early 2000s I was pretty excited.
Speaker 2:It was not that long after right, it was actually probably right around the same time because I'm thinking I was in Chicago when this was happening. So it was sometime between 2000 and 2007 that I was kind of in this voracious graphic novel phase. So anyway, it was like serendipitous that I was like super into graphic novels and then this movie came out. So I remember loving it and like, and not a lot else. Honestly, I remember the story because I read the graphic novel, though I read it so fast that what I do remember is very much snapshots and vignettes. You know different finger men and the hand and the sort of ways that that metaphor of control and the way that it extended, and I really enjoyed that and the both ands, the emotions that were scary and also fun, like holding that both and felt really important.
Speaker 2:So that's. There are other little like snapshots that are completely disjointed, so I'm just gonna leave them and ask you, why are we talking about v for vendetta today? So specifically.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about it because of the recent cancellation of Stephen Colbert's late night show, which we don't know for sure, but it's clear that it happened two days after he made fun of the big fat bribe of the CBS merger and the payments to the Trump administration, which all of it is just ugly corruption. I like late night comedians. I don't watch them at night. I don't stay up that late, so part of my morning routine is I drink my coffee, I do my word games on my phone and I watch the late night comedians on YouTube. And Colbert has never been my favorite, but I do watch him regularly and I have always liked his sense of humor, I like the way that he does things, and so I was shocked that he was canceled, because he is the most popular of the late night hosts, even if he is not my favorite. So that reminded me of what happens to Stephen Fry's Gordon Dietrich character, where he makes fun of the high chancellor, Adam Sutler, who then immediately has him arrested and disappeared and killed in the middle of the night, which obviously is not nearly what is happening. I mean, that is not what's happening to Stephen Colbert, but Stephen Colbert. There were immediate consequences, and so that's why I wanted to talk about it now.
Speaker 1:When the film came out, I was not familiar with the graphic novel originally, but just seeing the trailers it resonated in the midst of the Bush era for me and I was like I got to go see that movie and I loved it and it felt very of the moment and important, and in some ways even more so now, although there are aspects that I feel like I can understand why Alan Moore disavows this film, although he disavows every single film interpretation of his work and when I tried to read the graphic novel I couldn't get through it for reasons I'll get to. But that was the very specific motivator for wanting to talk about it now and then. Also in this moment, I think that it is important to talk about this film. Where we are in America right now and in the world where we're seeing a rise of right-wing populism, I think that it's important to revisit this film and talk about it, and talk about the messages of this film, what it gets right and what it gets wrong about fascism.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, since my recollection is very disjointed, why don't you remind us all of the plot?
Speaker 1:So it is set in 2020.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Wow. So we begin with a voiceover from Natalie Portman's Evie Hammond. She's reminding of the gunpowder plot, which was the 5th of November in 1605. The original plan was for the movie to come out the 5th of November 2005. So 400 years later, saying that you can't kill an idea, saying that you can't kill an idea but you also can't kiss an idea or love an idea.
Speaker 1:And we see Guy Fawkes, who was the figurehead he was not the instigator, but the figurehead of the gunpowder plot being executed and a woman crying. And then we see Evie getting ready for a date. And it's this lovely parallel. We also see V getting ready, putting on his Guy Fawkes mask and a wig, and she's putting on high heels, he's putting on his boots and she is out past curfew. You see loudspeakers saying curfew is in effect. She runs into fingermen which are like the secret police and so she says I'm sorry, it was a mistake, I'll go home, and it's clear that they are going to sexually assault her. That she'll be sorry. V comes and rescues her and uses, like this kind of amazing martial arts to possibly kill them. Definitely, stop them.
Speaker 1:Introduces himself as V using this amazing language. He uses the V words like 47 times in 30 seconds and says do you like music? I would like you to see a concert I'm putting on. And he takes her up to the roof of a building this is in London, by the way and he plays the 1812 orchestra and blows up the Old Bailey, which has Lady Justice on top. The Old Bailey is, I believe, the old prison in London. You know London better than I do.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the Old Bailey is, though.
Speaker 1:So the next morning Evie goes to work, Turns out she is a low-level employee at the BTN, which is the British Television Network, and we find out that her assignation had been with her boss, Gordon Dietrich, played by Stephen Fry. He is a Stephen Colbert-type person. He is the host of a very popular television show and he says I've never been stood up by a more attractive young woman. And she explains they were fingermen. I got, says I've never been stood up by a more attractive young woman, and she explains they were fingermen. I got nervous. I went back home and the newscasters are saying that oh, the Old Bailey was scheduled for demolition and the demolition was scheduled.
Speaker 1:The crew decided to have some cheeky fun with it and so they did fireworks and music and as something that happens throughout the film, you see people watching television, which is clearly part of the control of the Norse fire party. So people watching television going, that's bollocks. You don't believe that. No one, that's not true. So there's a sense that people don't entirely believe what they're being told. So in the course of the day Evie gets a delivery of boxes that says that it's supposed to go into a particular studio in the tv station. So this delivery goes into a particular tv station, she sees someone open it up and there's a guy fox mask in there and evie is a little freaked out. She's like, oh, something bad is about to happen. And she grabs her stuff and starts to leave because she's like something bad is coming.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, the higher up in the London police, who we also know is one of the top five or six advisors to the chancellor Finch is his name. Inspector Finch has been trying to find V and Evie. They have images of them because there's cameras all around London. They've got nothing on V because he's wearing a mask, but Evie they've been able to try to find her. They've already been to her apartment and they figured out where she works. So they're coming to find her. So she is trying to leave, coming to find her, so she is trying to leave. At the same time, Finch and his second-in-command, who's named Dominic, played by Rupert Grint, who goes on to play Lestrade on Sherlock Just who I know you have fond feelings for.
Speaker 2:I love him.
Speaker 1:So Finch is played by Stephen Ray, also a very, very good actor. So things are starting to happen. Evie comes out, she sees the police coming and she, like, turns and hides, finds a like a room and is able to evade the police. When v comes in, takes over the broadcast and it's an emergency broadcast system and locks everyone out and puts some like concrete or something in the door so they can't get through the door and tells everyone on this like emergency broadcast that cannot be cut into, that he is starting a revolution and everyone needs to join him on. Invites everyone to join him one year from today, on the 5th of November, because there's something wrong with this country and people should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. And the police eventually are able to break through the door he has, like sent through the smoke machines and they the police start shooting at AV coming through towards them and it turns out that he has the masks were to dress everyone up as him and so they are like obviously confused. V is able to get away in the chaos, but Dominic gets, gets to him and has a gun on him. While Evie, dominic is, dominic is Rupert Gr, while Evie, dominic is the cop, dominic is Rupert Grint, yeah, dominic is Lestrade. Okay, evie comes upon them and we already know that she has mace because she threatened the fingerman with it. And so at this point, like there's nothing V can do, he's cornered and Dominic doesn't realize there's anyone behind him. So Evie comes behind him, taps him on the shoulder and maces the cop. He, like, without even really thinking, like, knocks her out with his gun, like you know, cold cocks, her Pistol, whips, her surveillance, with Finch and Dominic looking at it. V is like standing over her, like clearly unclear what to do, and Finch says he's trying to decide, like he doesn't know what to do. And Dominic is saying like he's a terrorist, why should? Like he can't think like you or me? And Finch says well, he's still human.
Speaker 1:So Evie wakes up in V's home, which he calls the shadow gallery, which is underground, and he says I didn't know what to do. If I had left you, they would have arrested you, they would have black bagged you, which is what they do. They put a black bag over your head, which sounds really familiar, and you would have been tortured and killed. I'm sorry, I had to bring you with me. It was the only thing I could think to do. You have to stay with me for a year until I've completed my plans. Evie freaks out Like you mean, I have to stay with you for a year, you should have just left me alone. She then apologizes later and they end up kind of bonding a little bit. They watch a movie together and chat a little bit.
Speaker 1:V then uses her work ID to get into the home of Louis Prothero, who is known as the Voice of London, who is kind of like a Sean Hannity character. He just screams at the television every night and is such a narcissistic jerk he has no idea who V is, even though he was instrumental in creating him. V kills him using some sort of poison, but it seems like a violent death, and then leaves a rose on him and so they cover up his death and they say that he died of a heart attack at the office because he was a workaholic office because he was a workaholic. And V and Evie are watching TV and Evie says oh, the news presenter is lying. And V says how do you know she's like well, she blinks a lot when she lies and the way that V reacts. Evie says did you have something to do with it? And he says do you want to lie or do you want the truth? And so Evie ends up understanding that V is killing people and will kill more people and she freaks out. So she makes a plan to get herself out.
Speaker 1:She had told V that she wanted to be an actress. So she tells him her backstory. Her brother died in the St Mary's tragedy, which was three terrorists had released a bioweapon at St Mary's School which killed her brother, a free water treatment plant and the London Underground, and so the terrorists confessed and were executed. Her parents became political agitators and they were blackbagged out of her home when she was 12. Holy shit. And she saw it happen. Her mother came into her room and said Evie, hide. And she hid under the bed and were killed, and so she has never been as strong as her parents were.
Speaker 1:But now she wants to help the revolution. So is there anything she can do? So a few days later he comes to her and says actually there is something you can do. I need your acting skills. So he has her dress up in this very Lolita costume so that she can pretend to be a child sex worker for a pedophile priest who it's gross who was also instrumental in creating V. So when she gets there she tries to tell the priest what's going on and the priest thinks it's all part of an act and he's still trying to do what he does and so she ends up hitting him and he immediately becomes abusive and violent.
Speaker 1:V comes in and attacks him and starts and injects the poison and she runs away saying like I'm sorry, I had to do this. And she runs to Gordon's house because she still has his address. Gordon brings her in and she apologizes profusely I know I'm putting you in danger. And he says you're the least of my worries and shows her that he has a secret room where he has a Koran.
Speaker 1:He has a artwork called God Save the Queen, which is a picture of Adam Suttler in drag and it was something that was supposedly destroyed when he took office and then also some homoerotic imagery because he is gay and he had invited her to his home because that's part of his mask. And he says you wear the mask so long you forget who you are underneath. And so he brings her in, protects her he's very kind to her and because of her story and what's going on with V. He throws out the censor-approved script and has a show where he brings in an Adam Suttler stand-in and has him have pratfalls and the official story is that the terrorist is what they call. V is dead because they had shot one of the people wearing the and so they claimed that was him they shot a bystander who happened to be wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and they claimed that they got the guy.
Speaker 1:So in this non-censor-proof show they have someone else wearing a Guy Fawkes mask with the Benny Hill theme, like tying Adam Suttler's shoelaces together and then giving him a cigar that blows up and like it's very, it's Benny Hill.
Speaker 2:It's silly.
Speaker 1:And then at the end, when they have them, face each other, he's like remove this man's mask. And he takes off the Guy Fawkes mask and it's Adam Suttler, so there's two of them there. And then, like the fingermen show up and he's like this man is an imposter. No, this man is an imposter. And they shoot both of them and fall over. And it's silly, it's fun, it's funny.
Speaker 1:And we see, like again in every home across the nation, people laughing and Gordon is completely unbothered. He's on the phone with his agent. He's like this is why you're my agent. I know what's going to happen. I'll have to do a charity thing, I'll have to apologize on air. It's not a big deal. And Evie's like you're mad, it's going to be fine that night. She's asleep in his guest room and there's like the sound of a door being forced open. And then Gordon comes into her room and it is a complete repeat of the worst thing that happened to her when her mother came in and said Evie, hide. He comes in, closes the doors and says Evie, hide. And she hides under the bed just like she did when she was a girl, and they come in.
Speaker 2:So it's the exact parallel.
Speaker 1:Once he's taken away, she gets out through the window and runs away and as she's getting out through the gate, someone puts a bag overhead, says gotcha, and she is taken to a facility where her head is shaved and she's told this can stop if you just tell us anything about the whereabouts or identity of V and she says no, she is thrown into a cell and over the next weeks she is completely isolated. She's tortured, her head is put in water. But there is a little strip of paper is pushed through the hole in the wall and you see her reading it and it is a woman named Valerie Page, who had been an actress, who was a lesbian, who had been thrown out. When she came out to her parents In 2015, she was in a and remember, 2015 was the future. When this came out, she was in the most important movie of her life. Not because the movie was that important, because she met her wife, ruth. It was a movie called the Salt Flats, and so for three years they had a beautiful life together. They grew a castle, something roses, which is an important through line as well.
Speaker 1:But then Norse Fire Party came into power and Ruth was taken away because they put concentration camps for undesirables, including homosexuals. Ruth was taken away while she was out camps for undesirables, including homosexuals. Ruth was taken away while she was out getting food and she'd never cried so much in her life. They came for her and we see it, we see all these moments. They came for her and she just was sitting in the couch and they're coming through and she just let them. We have already seen some background and we know that she was in the same facility that v was in.
Speaker 1:So even though we don't really know what's going on with evie, so over and over again during interrogations of evie, they make it clear we're going to kill you if you don't tell us anything. One thing valerie says in in her autobiography, written on toilet paper, is there's one thing they can't take away from you. There's this one last inch of your humanity, and that is your integrity. You have that and they can never take that away from you. And so someone comes and says tell us what you know about V, or we're going to take you behind the chemical sheds and shoot you. Just tell them. Just tell them that. And she says thank you, but I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds. And the interrogator says, well then, you're finally free. And then leaves and leaves the door open and she like just sits there for a while going what the heck is going on, and like wanders out and the guard at the end is just a mannequin and as she goes out she's in v's home, because it was me the whole time her.
Speaker 1:I remember that now and she starts having a breakdown and he says I, I didn't know how else to do this. You know, you said you wanted to live without fear. And she, she's like hyperventilating. She's like I need air. I need air. Now. One of the things that Valerie said was her grandmother had a farm and her grandmother had always said God is in the rain. And so he's like I'll take you up, I'll take you up outside, and outside it's raining. And she stands up in the rain and she says God is in the rain.
Speaker 1:And we had seen V when he had came out of his experience in the concentration camp. He had set a fire that destroyed everything. And he is standing the same way in the fire. She's standing that way. There's a mirror in the rain. So it's this very beautiful mirroring as well. So she comes back, she's calm, she says I'm leaving. She comes back, she's calm, she says I'm leaving. And V says one thing I would very much like is to see you at least one time before November the 5th. And she says okay, and she says I'm leaving. He says do you know where you go? She says no, that would have scared me once. But no, I don't know where I'll go and I'll figure it out. And so we see his plan starting to come together. We see Finch starting to like doing the investigation, starting to realize that the three terrorists, who religious extremists, who claimed responsibility for the deaths, for the bioweapon he's like, what if they weren't responsible? What if our government did it? Because the doctor who had been doing the experiments on V and the others, including Valerie, who had actually been the cell, had the cell right next to V's and that was actually the toilet paper that she'd passed to V, and he's doing this to get revenge for her. They created this bioweapon and they created the antidote, and so they did this so they could take power, and then they made thousands upon thousands of millions of pounds of money by marketing the pharmaceutical as the antidote to this bioweapon. Then V sends out the masks and the costume basically to everyone across the country and there's a little girl we've seen regularly who has glasses, and so we see her wearing it and like kind of just playing wearing it and one of the fingermen shoots her. The community comes and like confronts him and like starts beating him because he's killed a little girl, and the chancellor is like trying to rule with an iron fist and his advisors are saying what do we do if he actually manages to? Because his plan is to blow up Parliament.
Speaker 1:The 5th of November arrives. V has spoken to Creedy, who is the amoral head of the Fingermen, who is the one who planned all of this, and has said if you give me Suttler, you can have me. And so Evie comes to V, they dance and V gives her the train because he has opened up all of the underground tracks full of explosives and says it is up to you whether or not the explosives will go. She says you don't have to do this, like we can go away somewhere. And he says no, I can't do this. She actually kisses his mask and he goes off to meet Creedy, who has brought him Suttler. Creedy kills Suttler, like V doesn't do it. And then Creedy says all right, now we're going to kill you. And he's like well, you can try, because Creedy has nearly a dozen soldiers with him. And he's like well, we've got guns. He's like no, what you have are bullets and you're going to try to reload before I have a chance to. So they unload all of their bullets on him and he keeps standing and he's like all right, now my turn. And he's's clearly injured, but he's not dead. And so he uses knives and kills all of them with creedy, going like how are you not dead? And then he like barely, makes it back to evie and she says I she's like we have to stop the bleeding, I don't want you to die. He says it's done, I'm gone. He says I fell in love with you, evie. You changed things. You made me realize that I could do things differently.
Speaker 1:Up above, the people have shown up wearing the Guy Fawkes masks and overwhelming the military.
Speaker 1:And because the High Chancellor is dead, creedy is dead, inspector Finch is trying to find V in the underground.
Speaker 1:There is no one to tell the military what to do. So they stand down and are overwhelmed by the Guy Fawkes mask wearers. And Finch comes upon Evie just as she has put V on the train and is about to press the lever to have it go, and Finch tells her to stop and she says no. And after they have a conversation and she sends it along, she makes him realize you cannot stop this revolution. They leave and go up above to watch the destruction and he says who was he? She says he was my father, he was my brother, he was my mother, he was me, he was you, he was all of us. And we see as the destruction goes, which includes fireworks and there's music playing, everyone taking off their masks, and you see people we know are dead, including the little girl with glasses and Gordon. And we see Dominic Rupert Grint Lestrade, who we know is not there. We see Valerie, so reiterating the idea that V is all of us and V continues and that is where the film ends.
Speaker 2:Wow, so where do we start?
Speaker 1:So let me start with why Alan Moore hates this adaptation, and not just because he doesn't like any adaptation of his work. So I'm going to include a link in the show notes to a video by. There's a YouTuber I like, dominic Noble. He does Lost in Adaptation, which where he looks at books and the movies that were made from them, the adaptations. So now I'll explain why I couldn't read the graphic novel, like I think 16.
Speaker 1:She's very young and she is trying to become a sex worker and she approaches the fingermen asking them to like if they want to party, basically, and she has no idea what she's doing and I just I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it from there Because it was so different from the Evie in the film who I loved and I just like I couldn't get past that scene and I have no idea where the story was going to go from there. But based on what Dominic Noble said, it just it felt like I was not going to enjoy the portrayal of Evie. Portrayal of Evie because what he said in his video was it sounded like she became like obsessed with V in a kind of which makes sense character-wise, based on how young she is, but I really appreciate Evie as a like frightened but independent adult woman yeah, and fundamentally a good person.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure alan moore believes there are is exactly as a fundamentally good person.
Speaker 1:So and she's someone who lost everyone and it even the like she didn't feel smart to me in that first scene that I was reading she felt like and that that might be unfair of me, but just like, oh honey, don't approach them right like that is not how you get started with that and so like, and I don't, like, I don't know anything about alan moore.
Speaker 1:I don't. I've read the watchman but I've read much of anything else of his, but I just didn't feel like he had much of a high opinion of teen girls, of women, yeah, yeah, but even the Watchman isn't part of why I say I'm not sure he believes there's any such thing as a truly good human being. So I just wanted to put that out there to start. I totally comprehend Evie in the film, and so I could not get past that first scene of Evie in the book, and that's why I never read it.
Speaker 2:And why do you think Alan Moore hates?
Speaker 1:this. So the way that Dominic Noble put it and I think that this is reasonable and smart it and I think that this is reasonable and smart, the way that the film puts it is that V is working specifically to dismantle this fascist state because he believes that there is something better, whereas Alan Moore was trying to show like fascism and anarchy and not drawing any conclusions about which one is good, which one is, that either are good things. Yeah, that jibes with without, and that's, I think, what I understand. Yeah, and the other thing that really struck me about what Dominic Noble said, and that is like I can totally comprehend Alan Moore having a problem with, is that, by characterizing V the way they did in the film, the fascism in the film is set up to look stable, it has a certain stability to it until V comes along, whereas part of Alan Moore's point is that fascism is inherently unstable, unstable, excuse me, inherently unstable, and which I think is a very important point and is actually something that we do need to recognize, because the thing that I had a harder time with this time around is the level of incompetence in our current reality, and there was a lot of incompetence during the brochure, and like there was, I felt a lot of embarrassment at the time. And there is certainly incompetence in V for Vendetta, the film version.
Speaker 1:Incompetence in V for Vendetta, the film version, but it's much bigger and broader in the book, based on what Dominic Noble talks about. Adam Susan is the name in the book. They changed it to Adam Sutler because it sounds like Adolf Hitler. But Adam Susan is in love with an AI girlfriend because Alan Moore is very prescient and the AI girlfriend is hacked and he's manipulated that way. Which boy does that sound like something that could happen in our current reality? It really does.
Speaker 1:So there are some aspects of incompetence within the film version. I think I remember the first time I saw it in the theater, you only ever see Suttler on a screen where he's enormous and then the first time you see him in person he looks tiny and I remember thinking that was really surprising and an important moment, because that is part of what fascism tries to do is give you this sense of hugeness and that was what Gordon Dietrich was doing is like showing the clay feet by making fun. Making fun right. But overall in the film and I think alan moore was right to be upset about this. It does feel like the norse fire controlled england is working pretty well and insofar as the trains are yes, insofar as things are.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can see why that would be upsetting, yeah, but I also think that this film would not be nearly as hopeful Like. I don't think there's a way of making this film.
Speaker 2:Well, you can't make it hopeful. That's probably part of what Alan Moore doesn't like. He doesn't actually believe in hope. He's very bleak.
Speaker 1:As I read his work, he doesn't see much cause for hope. Britain Now, because Moore wrote the book in response to Thatcherism in the early 80s. The film was written by the Wachowskis in the early 2000s in response to Bush.
Speaker 2:Right, the Wachowski sisters of the.
Speaker 1:Matrix theme and that was another aspect that Dominic Noble, who is also british, although he lives in america now he says that the amount of guns in the film feels very weird to him in england. Now it is right opium future and it's very american. It is very american and there are even some imagery that are reminiscent of abu grabe, because that was very topical at the time.
Speaker 2:The uh that was the prison in iraq where american military were torturing and yeah, images surfaced at the time of american military like gloating over tortured iraq yes, so.
Speaker 1:so this is a like this film is a weird amalgam. So this film is a weird amalgam because it is set in Britain, it is a British film using Guy Fawkes and the 1605 gunpowder plots, and yet you know, it was adapted by American writers. I believe James McTeague is an American director. So it's a very strange amalgam. And so, and I think, the hopefulness is also very American. Like we're can do attitudes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely, and we like it in our movies?
Speaker 1:Yes, we do, but I also think that it is, I think it's kind of necessary In that, like when we talked about with titanic, so that we don't just have a well, that's a thing that happens right well, the way that americans understand our movie, our storytelling.
Speaker 2:There has to be some sort of insight at the end, other otherwise, yeah, I mean that's, but that is a convention, it's a cultural, cultural convention. It's not like yeah, yeah. So we're running a little short on time and I want to make sure you get to the analysis that you wanted to get listeners as a reminder does it have at least two female characters with names.
Speaker 1:Do they talk to each other about something other than a man or a boy? Because so we have Evie, we have Valerie Page, who they never actually meet each other in person. We have Delia Suttridge, I think, who is one of the doctors or the doctor who makes V what he is. So those are named female characters, but I don't think they ever actually interact with each other. However, each of them have voiceovers and tell the story of this revolution from their own point of view. So it doesn't exactly pass Bechtel, it doesn't exactly pass Bechtel, but the story is from the point of view of these women, which I think is really important, because Evie starts the film in a voiceover and ends it basically in a voiceover, but talking to Finch Delia Sutridge. Her journals, which we hear in a voiceover, explain how V became what he is and explain how this horrible plot came together.
Speaker 1:And Valerie Page explains what happened to an individual person and the humanity of the people who were treated as inhuman. And so Evie as a protagonist is, I feel, like this really interesting characterization of a normal person who becomes a revolutionary. And she describes V as the most important thing in her life and I think it's interesting. Oh, she says thing. She says thing, you are the most important thing in my life and I know nothing about you. And because what is done to her is monstrous, and she says that to him, because he says what was done to me it was monstrous, and she said and they made you a monster. And it's this very interesting dichotomy because what is done to her is monstrous and it makes her more human, she becomes more compassionate and we see that in the parallel of her standing in the rain compared to the parallel of him standing in the fire that he started, compared to the parallel of him standing in the fire that he started and her going.
Speaker 1:God is in the rain and him going, I'm going to get vengeance, and so I think it's very significant. She kisses his mask and she says we could go away together. I don't want you to die, I don't want you to die. But he says I fell in love with you and she never says those words. She cares for him and he is important to her, and meeting him has changed her life and has helped her to learn not to fear, but she never at any point says she loves him.
Speaker 1:But she has been changed by him, and I think that is really important because what he has done to her is monstrous, right, but it has allowed her to access a level of humanity that I don't know if she would have known how to access. So, before we hit record, you told me that two of the things you wanted to talk about were violence, the role of violence in revolution and the role of compassion in revolution. So part because without this level of violence, the people would not have woken up, Right and in part because of that poor little girl's death.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that violence was in some ways necessary, which is horrifying to me, you know, and horrifying Like Gordon, dietrich is a gentle, lovely man, who means no one any harm, who is simply, you know, wants to live his life. That little girl is just playing, and so the idea that violence is necessary for revolution is horrifying to me, but I cannot see how it would be possible without it. In the terms of the story, at least On the other side of it, the compassion that Evie shows, not only to V but just in general throughout, like the compassion she shows to Gordon, the compassion she runs into the little girl with glasses at one point who is, like, frightened of her, and like the compassion she shows there, just and in general, she is a compassionate person who because of her compassion she saves V from Dominic Right, and so the revolution would have ended there if she hadn't shown compassion.
Speaker 1:I mean, I feel like it's also the case that compassion and empathy for the other people as a result of the violence is actually what caused revolution, Because the opposite of compassion is apathy right, yes yes, so there are two sides of the same, yeah, and the in terms of starting the revolution, yeah because and it's because of v has an entire wing of his like, of his home, dedicated to valerie page. Because, when she realizes that it was all a trick, she thought that v had written he made her up and he's like no, let me show you, she really existed, and so it's important that we see that this is true he also, has he also has compassion for valerie so you know, thinking about this like compassion as a as an essential ingredient, I think like the reason that you wanted to talk about this film right now was because of this comedian, and I feel like compassion and humor.
Speaker 2:they're not the same, obviously, but they're sort of on the same side of the if there's a spectrum, right, they're on the same side of the midline between the violence and the other side. So let's talk about the humor and Stephen Fry's character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think, like the people who have, who are the funniest are the ones who have experienced pain, Like Elon Musk. That's an interesting hypothesis. Yeah, well because Elon Musk badly wants to be funny and he is not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think it's because he's never experienced any kind of real setback or pain in his life. Stephen Colbert when he was a child he lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash. He is one of like 10 siblings, something like that. He's from a very traditional Catholic family and he has talked about how he considers that pain a gift, because that is. It gives him compassion. It allows him to see people Like there are stereotypes about, like marginalized communities are humorous in part because, there's like.
Speaker 2:It's a coping mechanism for trauma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, generational trauma leads to humor. So that is why, like, I think compassion and humor go together. That's nice, and why there's this like a consistent thing about how you don't see right-wing comedians who are particularly funny, and it's because punching down isn't funny. That's not to say people don't make jokes at the expense of marginalized communities. They do consistently and people will laugh at it. And I want to be. I want to name this and be fair about this. Stephen Colbert, as much as I like him and respect him for many years, would make jokes at the expense of trans folks because he didn't know better. Now that he knows better, he's doing better. But when he was on the Colbert Report and this was not as part of his persona he didn't know better. He's doing better now. But Stephen Fry's character and the like, that entire scene it's ridiculous. The that that bit in the middle the Benny Hill one.
Speaker 1:It's. It's ridiculous and I I honestly don't really know much about like British late night talk show, like culture, if that's a, if that's how they do what they do. I know Benny Hill is British Slapstick I mean there's plenty of slapstick in British humor and it is funny. It's not my kind of funny and it's also gentle. It's punching up, but it's not punching up that hard, honestly. And we see, just from the like, the side, we see the back of his chair, and we see Suttler is holding a glass of champagne and he like squeezes it until it shatters.
Speaker 1:Watching it, which, you know, it feels like we could see Trump doing that, except it wouldn't be champagne, it would be, you know, because he doesn't drink alcohol. I don't know, it would be chicken leg from KFC Big Mac are being joked about because they don't have compassion and because they cannot comprehend being like that kind of vulnerable where you can poke fun at yourself. It just I mean I know it's the insecurity, it's the like you know. Know I have to be a strong man, I have to like there are no weaknesses, never show power hoarders don't show vulnerability, which doesn't mean that vulnerable people can't be powerful, but power hoarders specifically.
Speaker 1:Well, and I would argue that, like showing vulnerability is a kind of power. I.
Speaker 2:I completely agree. I completely agree, but the people who are powerful in that way are not power hoarders.
Speaker 1:And that is what the Trumps and the Elon Musks of the world will never understand and why they will constantly be reaching for something that they can't get, and why they're constantly jealous of Barack Obama and Jon Stewart. Because I don't get it. What do they have? Why aren't they, why can't I have it? And why are people making fun of me and not them? Right? And it's because you can't be funny if you don't have compassion yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:All right, well, we are running very short on time, so is there anything that you haven't talked about that you wanted to make sure that you share with our listeners?
Speaker 1:DC or whoever it is who owns this Vertigo, who owns this film, and it just feels very ironic. Yeah, like I just like, and it has it's come to be like a symbol of a specific like the anonymous, like hackers, and I like this is one of those things that I find really and I like this is one of those things that I find really fascinating that if you live long enough, things come to take the opposite meaning of what they were intended.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like the word yes.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's not what that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and well, like it's fascinating to see how this happens. But like it's fascinating to see how this happens and I feel like if you could live 500 years, you'd get really annoying people like who are just like well, actually that originally meant like promiscuous used to meant like a bunch of different things all together. So like that's a promiscuous grouping of things because you've got an orange and a pen and like a wrench. Yeah, it's a promiscuous grouping of things because you've got an orange and a pen and like a wrench?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a promiscuous grouping. That's not what we mean anymore.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and so I just I find that fascinating, kind of ironic and like, and yet the people who are wearing them are thinking that it's and it's just so weird, it's just so weird.
Speaker 2:Well, they see the anti-fascist yeah message in this movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the anonymous well, but at the same time, a lot of the anti-fascists think that the liberals are the fascists. I was at the state fair the other day and there was a booth of like t-shirts and they were all like very right wing. And then there was one that said, like you know, if the government is tyrannical, you need to rise up against it. And I was just like right on and then I was reading more on the t-shirt. I was like, oh, they don't think they don't mean what they think they mean. I was like they're talking about like nancy pelosi, they're not talking about what that's funny.
Speaker 2:Let me see if I can reflect back to you what you shared with me about v for vendetta so well. We were talking about it today specifically because of stephen colbert getting canceled after just two days after he made fun of the supreme leader and the fact that happens to stephen fry's character, gordon Dietrich, who suffers much worse consequences than just having his show canceled. And I think it's worth naming, right after that, the fact that one of the things that Alan Moore dislikes Alan Moore, the original writer of the graphic novel, dislikes about this adaptation, is the sense from this adaptation, this film, that the fascist government is somehow stable, and Alan Moore very much wanted us to understand that fascism is inherently unstable, though he also, moore, refrains from judging what system of government is better. He seems to think none are actually good, they're just Well when comparing fascism and anarchy specifically.
Speaker 2:Right Different forms of poison one way or another.
Speaker 2:One of the things that you note from this film that feels hard is the necessity of violence in revolution, that, at least in the container of this story, it seems as though violence was absolutely essential to the revolution, and this is important.
Speaker 2:So is compassion. So Evie and V become foils for one another, become yin and yang for one another in that in many ways, but in the sense of violence and compassion as well. And we see it over and over again, where the people would not have risen up without V's violence but there wouldn't have been a chance without Evie's compassion and without the people's own compassion. And we see it symbolically, with him standing in the fire that he set and naming himself V for Vendetta, and Evie standing in the rain and saying God is in the rain. So we see this over and over again, this sort of violence and compassion. You also spent some time really thinking about this sort of cultural mashup here, where this film that was written by a brit set in britain using four century old british history and myth as its sort of core mythos and inspired by thatcherism and inspired by thatcherism, thank you. And yet it feels so very american, both resonant with contemporary america, but also like very specific allusions that the Wachowski sisters and the director.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Inserted with references, visual references, to Abu Ghraib and to the Bush administration and now super resonance with the second Trump administration, so that sort of mashup of the cultures, oh, and the prevalence of guns as well, which makes it feel very American. So that was something that you spent some time on. You noted that this is a feminist film, that it doesn't pass Bechdel in the traditional sense, and yet we have these three female characters who actually are our narrators and give us the point of view of this revolution, which feels very important, and they give it to us at multi-levels, sort of historical kind of ideological and human, like grassroots level, which does feel very feminist to have those female voices driving. You started to talk about Evie as protagonist and I'm not sure you finished that thought.
Speaker 1:She's the one who has a character arc that changes. She's the one who changes and grows and becomes a different version of herself, and a version of herself she feels better about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, by the end. Yeah, and we have said on Deep Thought thoughts that we believe that change in character, that growth, is what defines a protagonist. So, and it's. I think it's worth noting also that one of the things that you pointed out is that you love this evie in this film and that when you went back to read the source material, the much younger evie, who was much more naive and made choices that weren't so savvy, you couldn't even read past the first introductory scene of her. So I think that's worth noting.
Speaker 2:That this Evie, specifically in this film that the Wachowski sisters and McLeish, mcleish, mcteague, mcteague Sorry, sorry, mr McTeague that they gave us, that these filmmakers gave us, is very strong and independent and afraid, but she grows Her interaction with V. This feels important to me as well. You were careful to make the discernment that Evie names V as the most important thing in her life, as her having been changed by having met him. She even offers to run away with him and she kisses the mask. She never uses the word love, though he does about her. So that seems also really important and interesting when holding on to her independence. So I think, oh, and then the last thing that you pointed out is the irony of this trademarked Guy Fawkes mask which is now making Vertigo money. They're defending their intellectual property over Guy Fawkes image, which feels like ironic and interesting and fascinating in the way that things tend to come to mean the exact opposite of what they originally meant over time.
Speaker 1:What I forget just my belief that, in order to be humorous, you need to have felt pain.
Speaker 2:Yes, so compassion is essential to real humor. That is an Emily Guy-Burken original analysis, so thank you for that. Okay, so my life is very lifey right now, so you have so graciously agreed to double up. Sit in the hot seat again next week when you are going to bring me your deep thoughts about the golden girls. Oh, very, very different mood change. I cannot wait. I love those girls so much.
Speaker 2:I know I can't wait to talk about them, see you, then this show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?