November 16, 2020 • 60 mins
Though we are a little late for November 5th — Guy Fawkes Day — we unfortunately seem to be right on time for the impending threat of totalitarianism. This week we begin our discussion of V For Vendetta, the graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, and adapted for film in 2005.
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Still ahead, we'll start in on book two of V For Vendetta!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. I'm Danish Forwards,
joined as always by Melissa Hunter, Jennifer Wright, Tan Tran
and Karamadanqua. And this week we are a little bit
late for the fifth of November, but unfortunately right in
time for the impending threat of totalitarianism. And we are
talking V four Vendetta, the graphic novel written by Alan Moore,
(00:26):
illustrated by David Lloyd. Uh yeah, it's sort of rolled
off the tongue. It's the book. The graphic novel is
divided into three parts, so we're gonna do each episode
part by part. So today we're just talking book one,
which is like subheaded Europe after the Rain, before we
(00:50):
dive in, I'm just clear ari e I g oh yeah,
Ray like the rain on me, like gay. So before
we start, I'm curious because V for Vendetta has had
such like a big part, like a big footprint in
(01:12):
popular culture where even if you haven't like read it
or seen it, you know, like the guy Fox mask
has become like the anonymous symbol. So, Jennifer, what has
been your relationship with V for Vendetta before this this podcast?
Book reading? Okay, well, I love V for Vendetta. But
what I find fascinating is periodically I get like really
(01:35):
hardcore Trump supporters who messaged me on Twitter, and I'm
shocked by the number of them that have the V
for Vendetta mask as their profile picture. Because if you
read V for Vendetta, I think the first thing that
happens is V beats up some corrupt cops who are
going to break a woman to um. So it's surprising
(01:57):
to me that a group of very far right people
have read this book and thought, yeah, this guy fighting
against a fascist government where the police are an unbelievably
corrupt force. Speaks to you to assume they read the book,
(02:17):
did they watch the movie, because like it's still basically
the same. I mean, those are the same people that
like misuse red pill in Blue Pill. Also the Punisher logo,
Oh yeah, they love punish our people with white trumps,
love punish, punish our decals, And you're like, what do
you think that's communicating? So yeah, I love this book
(02:37):
because I think it has Overfelming like good social and
moral values and is a dystopia about fascism in such
a such a wonderfully realized way, and boy, people on
the far right not picking up on that. It's also
very funny to me because Guy Fox was an extreme Catholic,
So that in end and of itself is like interesting
(03:00):
that he was like, yeah, Catholicism, I don't like your Protestantism.
That people who now adopt the Guy Fox mask are
not like religious zealots. And again it's an unambiguously anarchist symbol.
So now that Donald Trump is like the incumbent leader
and they're defending their like, oh, the anarchy in Portland,
(03:23):
it's like, no, now you should specifically be in favor
of that quote unquote anarchy. Yeah, well no, it's just
I never thought about how even just in the past
several years, I mean, since Trump became elected in his
now a fucking loser, um, you know, them to enjoy
(03:45):
that together. I do have to say, wouldn't it suck
if we had to be like a politically neutral podcast
like obviously feeling let's say you excite stuff Because I
these this first book uh before the election, and it
(04:06):
made me feel really uncomfortable because it's I mean it's
so immediately uh reflective of the Trump era of like
make Britain great again is on page two and uh.
And then I reread it last night or the two
(04:27):
nights ago to like refresh my memory, and I just
felt like a different this is like right after Biden
has gotten elected. And I just was able to read
and be like, yes, that old thing, even though I
know not everything is over, but it made me just
feel so much better reading it post post election. You know,
I didn't want to bring up the political allegory too soon,
(04:49):
but and not to get into the movie yet, but
now that we're sort of there, I think that I
always found interesting was that Ellen Moore famously hates all
adaptations of his work because he's like a crashy old wizard,
like that's just who he is. But he let people
adapt it because he because he likes houses, but he
doesn't like them. He's like, you can do what you want,
(05:11):
but I'm not gonna like it. I'm telling us fair
and um. And he also don't take that stance too
in my future works and then be like do you
like it? And I also think he doesn't take money.
I'm pretty sure he says. He just says like I
don't want the money. I'm gonna check. I didn't mean
(05:35):
to No, No, he's a he's like a weird wizard
of the word. Does he know that he could give
it away too good causes instead of flooding movie studios
keep it? I mean, not that they're not in a
way a good cost, Like he could he could give
it to like housing projects and stuff. Yeah, like movies.
(05:55):
I'm just saying movie studios are not the thing that
I would first think of when I hear a it, Cause, yeah,
well you figure it out. I mean, I'm gonna look
up about whether he takes the money. But the point
is he hated the Viva Vendettatte movie, which we'll all
watch and talk about. But he thought that they made
it to American and he's like, this is about England.
(06:17):
It's not a metaphor about him, because it was happening
during the Bush Era, and he thought that some like
American Bush era politics crept into the movie. And he
was like, Nope, it's about Britain and England specifically, and
like yeah, it's like and like he's like, and it's
about anarchy and specifically anarchy. And if it's not about
anarchy in Britain, it's not my book. But I do
(06:39):
think Melissa, your point is well made that this applies
to a lot of situations and a lot of totalitarian
governments in a way that maybe Alan Moore doesn't appreciate it,
but I think we can't. Yeah, it reminds me of
Bon June Hoo when he was talking about Paris Site
and how he wrote it specifically for Korean audience and
(07:01):
then it became so wildly popular, and he's like, I
guess we all live in the same same country of capitalism. Like,
so he gets it. Yeah, I mean that's what's amazing
about Elmore's work like this and Watchman, that you know,
it's so relevant unfortunately, you know, probably for decades and
(07:22):
decades to come in all countries that are kind of
resemble each other in certain ways. You know. Karama, what
was your v for Vendetta experience before the book Club? Well,
I hadn't read it before, but I had seen the
film many, many, many, many many times. One of my
really good friends, Jose shout out to Jose loves Natalie Portman.
(07:44):
So we watched a lot of Natalie Portman movies together
and this is one of them, and this is the
one that I liked the most. So she can have
a fully pulled head and still just be the most
beautiful angel woman you have ever seen. She is fat
special though. I think there are a lot of people
who look good with bald heads, but not maybe a
(08:04):
lot of white people. That's true, that's true, and as
I'm allowed to say that, not a lot of Jewish people.
It's very rare that jew looks very good bald. We
have weird egg shaped heads. Anyway, what was your experience
with me for Vandetta? You know, I had never seen
the films, and I only know you know that that
(08:28):
famous scene where she shaves her head and like um
and all the mask wearing. I remember I did sketch
comedy in Chicago at at a place called Second City,
and when we heard of it, have you heard of it?
On one of those stages, we took over a show
and the show before us had an opening that was
(08:49):
very like themes of anarchy, themes of questioning authority, and
the opening was them wearing these guy fox masks and
and like right before the scene changes, you have to
like take them off and put them in a paper bag.
So my experience with guy fox masks is trying to
dance in the dark with this and then like clumsy
(09:11):
lee fumbling like trying to like put it in the
bag before the lights come up, and you're like caught
as the audience sees you like trying to stuff in
a Guy Fox bag into a paper bag while the
scene is changing. So that is my experience with Guy
Fox masks and via fur Vendetta. That's a pretty thorough Yeah,
what would you sort of I feel like before we
(09:32):
do dive into the actual text, it is worth exploring
that Guy Fox mask in popular culture. How would you
describe the place that the Guy Fox mask has in
popular culture? Anonymous? Yeah, but I but I feel like
we we had that good point with Trump where it's like,
but now it's sort of like the counter culture. It's
(09:54):
always like the counterculture thing that's like trolling but almost
just being a bad person on per us because I
feel like some people think anarchy is quoted by like
literally holding up the status quo in the most obnoxious
of ways. Is what I think that this mask some
(10:15):
people have like like taken that as a symbol of like,
you know what everyone's talking about feminism, I'm going to
be an asshole. My anarchy statement is to like push
back on that system and the government. Yes exactly. Yeah,
I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna hurt a lot of people
(10:37):
because they to protect this statue of my oppressor, my
experience with the Guy Fox mask. And I'm very embarrassed
to say this. When I was in college, we put
on a production of Sweeney Todd at the main stage
of Brown University. And it was not just a production
of Sweeney Todd. It was uh an Occupy Wall Street
(10:59):
themed production of Sweeney Todd, which is the most I
feel like every liberal state, every stereotype that like Tucker
Carlson has about Brown University. It's like, oh, they're like
there was a giant McDonald's billboard as the backdrop and
someone spray painted over it, Eat the rich, Like that
was like subtext us that was subject and during like
(11:21):
the subtext and during like the you get it because
in Sweeney Todd they yeah. And then during the masquerade scene,
which is like a flashback of Sweeney Todd's wife, there's
a masked ball and all all of us in the
ensembles dancers were wearing Guy Fox masks and then she
(11:44):
gets raped. Dana. Is that that's what they wanted? To
project off to that that well, we were we were
the the we were the idea was that we the
students were occupying the theater putting on a production of
Sweenets putting great. That's what everybody production of Sweeney Todd
(12:05):
And you just have to have those masks that they're
ready effort to use during the masquerade scene. I feel
like that's a perfect college production story. Like I feel
like every single one of us has one of those
that we were right, this is going to absolutely blow
everyone's money. Hit the nail on the head. It reminded
me I did in college at Northwestern a production of
(12:29):
Brett Caucasian Chalk Circle, and uh, you know, it's very meta.
And the director decided is going to be in a
circus tent, and she spent all of her money to
put it in a circus tent on like Norris Lawn,
which is right by the water, and it's because like
society is a circus, you know, And and all of
(12:51):
the budget went into that. And on the first night
it was in May, there was a classic May Chicago
thunderstorm and we were in a circus tent with lights
and metal bleachers, and I was like, am I going
to die for a production of Caucasian Chalk Circle. Um,
(13:12):
and everyone in the audience was looking like are we
going to die watching the student production of Chalk Circle?
And then thankfully like someone called it called the dean's
office or something, and it was shutdown and we had
to do it in a in a conference room the
rest of the time with carpet. Oh. Anyway, the complete
(13:40):
aside that Mike, if you want to cut out, you
can't keep please keep it in keeping well. I feel
like theatricality is a big theme which brings us to
book one, in which we meet our two protagonists e
V and v UM. Okay, I'm gonna take a breather
(14:06):
and prepare an elaborate set if you're listening and have
read it or seen the movie, I'm going to give
(14:26):
us to remind you, because we sort of have, you know,
read all of them, what the beginning and the end
of Act one is, so we can just sort of
dive in so we all know the beginning is obviously
at the beginning of the book, e V is a
young woman working in this new post apocalyptic London, and
she goes out to work her first night as a
prostitute when she's accosted by Fingerman who are like the
(14:47):
secret police. Um, we're going to get to the plot.
But she meets V, who's like an anarchist revolutionary Uh
bone V vaunt if you will, um and sort. The
end of book one is we find out that V
had been a inmate at like a concentration camp testing
(15:09):
facility called lark Hill, and that the series of murders
that he had done in book one are all people
who were in authority there. So the investigating detective who's
sort of maybe like the third main character we have
like V E V. And then Creedy, who's is it Creed?
No Finch? Sorry again, I made a cheat sheet of
(15:31):
all the white guys because I kept running music trackoman names.
The third maybe like of this triumvirant triumvirate is the
head of the nose of this Norse fire party. Who's
a guy named Finch who's a detective trying to figure
out who this terrorist is. And at the end of
book one, Book one, Finch finds out that these murders
(15:51):
are all people who were at Larkhill and that maybe
V is doing a vendetta, but maybe is vendetta is
bigger than just larcale and and and it extends beyond.
And that's just to cover up. Yeah, I that just
to skip to the unreal quick of this book. I
feel like I was really enjoying it. And I'm not
(16:12):
someone who reads I don't read a lot of graphic novels,
so this is like it's almost retraining my brain to
to read this way. And it was kind of hard
at first, I would say, but then I got really
into it, and then I I just love that final
page of like, well he might have been, you know,
carrying out this vendetta on all these people, which is
(16:33):
the optimistic theory, and I'm like, oh, ship, and it's
like he's clearing the playing field to like set up
some real ship. And I was like, oh, this is
but that is right. It's a it's very optimistic to think, oh, well,
he's only attacking these few people unless he's laying the groundwork. Yeah,
it seems more likely that he's eliminated all of those people.
(16:55):
He doesn't kill Lewis Breathroe, he renders him incurably insane. Oh,
in a way that is so much scarier. Yeah. Um,
but that means that none of the people who knew
him in his previous identity are able to identify him anymore.
(17:17):
I thought that rendering louis prothero who is the voice
of Fate, who's the guy who does like the announcements
for England on like a megaphone speaker through the town.
So V knows he collects rare dolls, and he like
renders him insane using putting on like a little vaudeville
performance with these creepy inmate dolls. Um such a good
(17:39):
use of the medium of a graphic novel, which is
like using pictures and like creepy dolls are creepy, and
so it's it's always interesting to me to see like
what translates really well to a graphic novel. And I
feel like that really was effectively scary to me. Oh yeah.
And also seeing him like back at the police police
(18:02):
precinct or wherever he was like returned to just saying Mama,
Mama over again was very very jarring and scary and
also felt exactly, yeah, yeah, it's that it's that scary
thing where because we don't know what he sees, we
(18:23):
can always we can just fill in whatever's creepiest to us.
M hmm, yeah, I found I you know, each way
that V decides to dispatch these different people were it
was also very interesting, especially Delia's Dr Delia's I was
I thought that was just a great way to not
(18:46):
so gently be like, even though you might be a
good person, you were complicit in watching these terrible things
happen and you didn't do anything about it. And he
participants participant to Yeah, it wasn't just that she was
like a citizen of the country who knew bad things
were going on. She was giving people at a concentration
(19:08):
camp medical scientific disease that caused most of them to
die horribly, so she could work on a cure. But
I do I do like that it gives V that
moment of like killing her in a merciful way, and
they sort of have that moment as peers, which is
like almost as chilling to me as any of the murders.
(19:28):
He just sort of like we see like that he
has um a code a code of ethics in his
own crazy mind, you know, like, yeah, he's not like
a joker, he's not like out doing things because he's crazy.
He's like very methodical and like he knows that she's
like kind of a could have been a good person,
(19:49):
she could do something. She was going about it in
a horrifying way. Thank you. Yeah, I think Complicity was up.
I think like that she had a she is it she?
Also I think maybe had like a hint of a
morse more so than say Presso as if that was
his name. Yeah, he fucking sucks. He so like off
(20:12):
with him. Can. I know you haven't seen the movie,
but I'm so excited for you to see the movie. Like,
I'm just so excited for you to see the movie.
I mean I I also don't read graphic novels. This
is my I think this is my first Yeah, for
sure first one ever. So like Melissa had said, I
had to like kind of train my brain to the
style of it, and I've been missing out. They are right. Yeah, Um,
(20:38):
Alan Moore is just really great too, Like just really,
I'm not a huge graphic novel person, but I really
like cal Off Alan wors graphic novels. My slight, Um,
I am a big graphic novel person. I'm a big
comic book person. My slight difficulty with this book at first,
and it just took me a while and I got
(20:58):
used to it. It was like a lot of a
middle aged white dude looked the same to me, and
I just wanted them all to be wearing name name
tex when I'm also on that level. I just kind
of accepted early on that I'm never going to know
who's who, and I can use context clues to kind
of figure out some of them, and that's okay with me.
(21:18):
They don't need me to know who they are. They're
not real people, um And it's fine, It's fine. That's
kind of the point. I feel like, I feel like
it was intentional that they were all drawn very similarly,
because they're all kind of the same. They're all kind
of very just like shadowy bad guy in Shadowy Bad Government,
and I feel like that's kind of the reason that
(21:40):
they are like that they're all sort of cogs in
this like in this um. One thing that was really
interesting to me that I I don't again want to
compare it to the movie yet, but we do sort
of get the like weird humanizing of these weird bureaucrats
and we find out they're like boring lives and they're
shitty marriages, which is almost scarier than just when bad
(22:01):
guys are like like you know, Voldemort or just some
like big bad to like know that these people doing
an upholding horrific systems are just like shitty dumb dudes.
They're just normal dudes. I'm sorry, competent dudes. Indeed we
are mass me feel a little better. Kind of like
(22:22):
to see Almond, who if I remember correctly, not to
compare it to the movie, but was not in the movie,
but like it was kind of really shitty in the book.
To see him, like not to see him beating his wife,
that makes me feel better, But seeing him die after
seeing him beat his wife, I'm kind of like, maybe
this vse guys onto something. I feel like he's not wrong.
(22:44):
He's not necessarily right, but he's not wrong. He is
very Another thing that Alan Moore criticized movie for is
he's like v V isn't just about overthrowing to a
totalitarian government. He is in favor of anarchy. That is
the system of government that he wants. I Dani Schwartz, Um,
(23:05):
if I was, you know, picking a government system, wouldn't
go anarchy. But I think that V as a character
is incredibly interesting and compelling. Yeah. I haven't seen the
movie yet, Um, but I know, it's very exciting. It's
so good. This is one one movie where again we'll
get to it. Personally, I feel like it makes effective
(23:27):
changes to work as a movie and really works as
a movie. And seeing it kind of in reverse reading
this for the first time after having seen the movie
so many times and like, oh, I like, no disrespect
to Alan Moore, but this is actually a pretty decent adaptation.
You gotta tighten, you gotta make it be like where
where's the two Hours? But there are some characters that
(23:48):
are clearly cut out of the movie that I had
basically forgotten about and I loved revisiting. Um I, Mary
is obviously like a lovely woman, very sympathetic in this book.
Um I'm obsessed with Helen Higher. Just to pass talking
about Mary for a second. Helen Hire, who seemingly only
wears a fur coat and has like platinum white ice
(24:12):
queen hair, and introduces herself by being an unbelievable bitch
to her husband. And then when when Mary's like, oh,
she's quite hard on him, isn't she, her husband turns
to her and it's like, you'll never be as cool
as her? Never, wait, Mary, you mean love Rosemary right, Oh, yes,
(24:32):
Rosemar Sorry, yeah, she watans Rosemary. I'm Rosemary. She rose
by her husband. And Rosemary is a major character in
the graphic novel who's cut out of the film. She
is straight gone, straight gone, which I think is effective
(24:53):
because the movie is making different points. But in the
novel to trace uh Rosemary's journey, she is the wife
of Almond, who's the head of the Finger Policeman, and
he's really abusive to her, and she's kind of like
meek and like, Okay, this sucks. And then again, jumping forward,
(25:13):
I'm losing track a little bit because we're just talking
about book one now, but jumping forward a little bit, Um,
Almond is murdered she in book one, and being a
widow without very many options, she uh starts dating uh
the head of the Mouth Dascomb, Roger Dascomb, who's like
(25:34):
the propaganda guy. Um, and then she'll sort of continue
on a downward spiral, sort of like you know, a
symbol for a lot of things. But Helen Hare get
into we'll get into them more in book two, and
Helen Hair we're going to get way more into in
book three because that's when we figure out who she
is I can't waited. I like the level of different
(25:57):
experiences that we have with this one. I feel like
it's like a nice milange. You know. Well, let's let's
jump In book one, we're introduced to Evie, who's starting
as a prostitute on her first night. What do we
have the senior old prostitute in sixteen year old prostitute Chromazheimer.
What do you make of a first time or eving? Uh, well,
(26:21):
I think that she's a really great like what's the
word I'm looking for, surrogate for the reader. She because
she seems very innocent. She has experience with the world
that we're in, and she's not, um, she's not unaware
of what the system is, but she's still so young
(26:43):
and kind of naive that it feels like it makes
sense for people to explain things at her and to
see things through her eyes, and like, obviously we get
different perspectives from this, but I think that Evie is
a great intro to the world. And we see the
finger police and um, that's how we meet v Also,
(27:03):
because she is so naive and like very bad at prostituting,
that she's kind of like sex and he's like you're
not great at this and she's like, um, sixteen, it's
my first time. She I felt very relatable in that moment.
I like, I two would be very bad at like
(27:24):
a street walking type deal, and she's like crying. It's like,
it's not it's it's hard, it's embarrassing. It's awkward to
be like, would you want to you know, pay? And
I also have sex with me. It's hard enough to
ask a guy if they want to have sex with you,
and not if they want to pay. But of course
(27:46):
this is the moment that she's very bad. She's very
bad at being approtesct it because she propositions a secret
undercover cop and she's rescued by the very theatrical v
who visually you know you in a graphic novel. Visually,
it's very interesting because as we see uh Evie getting ready,
the very next panel is sort of be getting ready
(28:09):
in his mirror and he's putting on his mask and
hair and hat. We assume before he gave a lot
a lot of props and costumes for a anarchist. I'm
just thinking in terms of like logistics, movement, fighting ability,
a lot of planning, really nice pre fascism. He definitely
(28:31):
was a theater major act. And oh yeah, I have
more thoughts about that next week when we talk about
book too. Um, but I'll get into that book we
can talk about he loves like a flash bomb. And
then he built the entire scale model of large even
know is like what, what's where's all this budget production
(28:54):
budget coming from? Like with with the all the different mass,
all the dolls, all the I mean they're he took
the Endowment for the Arts. That's where all their My
thinking is maybe v when they were in theater when
he wasn't there, school was like stage manner producing, stage
manager production, because that's everything. It's like the back of UCB,
(29:16):
Like that's where he is. Maybe he's at the u
c B of their world. Maybe that is the where
the hideout is. He could have taken to be very
disappointed that we're making this so American. My logistical question
is he's growing fancy roses and his his hideout, his underground.
(29:37):
How do you how do you grow roses underground? Where sunlamp?
Where is he getting all these sunlamps? That's where he's
getting scale models of concentration camps like easier to get
a sun lamp. But he's scale models, I mean concentration
camp that no one knows existing. He's definitely on some
kind of sound stage. It's gotta be with that scale,
(29:58):
with that, and he's got good lighting. He likes. He's
got a couple uh stage hands for sure, like putting, putting,
follow the follow spot on him. You know, I think
it's it's very funny to me to imagine the six
weeks that went into him building and sewing the costumes alone,
like sweating before we see just the end results. But there.
(30:23):
I would love a book zero that's just him doing
all the prep and all and running his line. Yes, nope,
I need a line. Um, it's it's anti fascism. Thank you,
thank you, Carl. Yeah. I got to keep going, gotta
work through it. He's got so much prep. Every single
(30:47):
part of his like presentation, the way he kills, the
way he moves about. There's just so much prep to it.
He's like an anime villain. He just like loves the drama.
The part that I was like, wow, he prepped this
because this is just for him, is he gives that
speech to Lady Justice the statue and he gives us
(31:08):
me that he definitely a monologue that he definitely wrote
and then he delivered. He plays both parts and then
he like karaoke Nelly for Tomo Timberland, promiscuous girl to
marry me. And then he deposits his bomb at her
(31:29):
feet and it's a shaped like a box of chocolate.
He doesn't know that we're watching a graphic novel of him.
He thinks that he he made this. He made this
box bomb and it's tied the bow and cut it
and made it look nice, just for it to blow
up for no one, just him. He's not posting it
to his anarchy Instagram. The c s I people come
and analyze it later it's blown out, not going to
(31:51):
see it. They're like ribbon, where could he have bought
this ribbon? Like have you never seen c s I.
I don't maybe a watch a lot of fear. I'm sorry.
I don't want to show as someone who now feels
like I have the weird chip in my brain that
anytime I do something, I need to like take a
picture of it and posted on social media to prove
(32:13):
that I exist. Where it's like there is something very
sweet about him, just like doing all this for him
no one's gonna see it, no one's gonna appreciate it.
He just cares about the work. I feel like you
should try that. To me, it feels like he has
a lot of time on his hands, but people are
going to see it. I mean it blew up like
but not not the speech, not the details, the beautiful
(32:35):
little box of chocolates that he put the bomb in.
It feels like nobody has this much time. And I
think it placed into the kind of magic of the
because there's like a Martha Stewart element to all of
these actions. There's a lot of preparation going into everything
that I don't think you would have if you also
(32:56):
had to dismantle a fascist government. Yeah. I could see
a cooking video of the making the Communion host with cyanide,
just like a beautiful YouTube. Crackers is hard, It's hard.
What's about this is that this was the eighties, So
(33:16):
how did he know how to do everything? He had
to just know the library book he stole. He stole
all these books, right, and and he was in when
he was in his room five, he stole a bunch
of books and it was just reading up on how
to cook communion wafers. You don't have the right books,
(33:37):
is he do? We think he's limited by the books
that he had when he was I think I think
that's it. I think all of it is based on, well,
I have these eight I have these eight skills. One
of them is making communion wafers, Like, how do I
make it work in my vendetta? I think that's that's
exactly it. He got these specific books and then built
(33:57):
his vendetta only around the things on how eat does
want to make a communion waper? I'm googling communion waper?
But it's also gotten pretty easy. I mean there's Catholics
eat so many of those every week. You know, Yes,
they're manufactured for sure. And it doesn't have to taste good.
(34:18):
I mean they tastes like nothing. I've never had it.
It tastes like it truly tastes like less than nothing. Yeah,
it's kind of weird that it tastes less than nothing.
I feel like it's rude to not make Jesus taste good,
Like does that is that sacrilegious to say? Like you're
gonna stick pins in your mouth? I feel like it
(34:39):
should taste like, hey, yeah, Jesus and then I feel like,
if you really believe in transubstantiation and you really believe
that it's Jesus's body, you don't want to think about
it that much. You want to associate like chocolate chip
cookies Jesus, you know, like have like meat. You don't
want it to be too literal. You don't need it
to be like me. And but I'm not religious. If
(35:03):
you get in different lines, you can get different like, um,
hold on a second, I'm just really quick on to
google some recipes for church wafers. After v rescues e
(35:30):
V from the rape fingerman who we're going to rape
and murder her because this metalitarian government. But also I
think important violence against women is also an indicator of
a lot of extremist ideology, so that at least felt
felt unfortunately anchored. But v rescues her and brings her
(35:52):
down to his hideaway, and uh she tells him sort
of her story, which we'll get to, which is some
like exposition about this world, and he asks her to help,
and one of the ways that she helps him is
by dressing up as a child prostitute to sleep with. Uh,
the Bishop Anthony Lilliman, who's like the Westminster Bishop. Uh,
(36:16):
and she's going to mean open the window for me
to come in and kill him in a dramatic way.
It visually made me made me think of killing Eve,
which is funny because it's Evy. If if V and
Evy were one person, it would be a killing Eve scene,
Like how she's in this very elaborate costume and and
(36:38):
just like like going out of her way to kill
him in a creative way. But then he does it,
and she's actually terrified. V is a theater major who
takes one policy class, that's what, and philosophy one, and
all the straight girls on this pud or have had
(37:01):
sex with him and regretted it as well. Yeah, yeah,
I as someone maybe as someone who maybe as someone
who um is not Christian in any way, but I'm
like very fascinated by like Christian symbolism and like idea,
(37:23):
Like it's very like beautiful and spooky to me, and
I kind of like I love that imagery, so like
I loved and was very spooked by like the juxtaposition
of like V sneaking into this abbey with like the
text was like we ask in the name of the
father and son or like whatever, like which might be
very mundane to someone who is Catholic, but like to
(37:44):
me as someone those are those are still spooky words.
I'm just like the whole like as I walk through
the valley of the Yeah, it is very speaky. I
mean scary. It's scary sanity. It's like on the cross
and every church there's a Jesus like bleeding from it,
dying on a freaking crucifix. You know. That is very
dark and very theatrical on the church. Don't scare me
(38:07):
as much as the fact that people wear it on necklaces.
For me, is a mind warp where you're just like,
wait a second, there's like a dead dude on your neck.
You realize that it's that's also like usually kind of
cut to Jesus, like have abs while he's dying, which
(38:27):
is just can I say, come gutters in relation to Jesus.
I don't. I thought it, but I was like, I'm
not gonna say it because it's gonna make people angry.
Please don't it. Oh my god, I did not know
that is what that is called. It's another thing. Thank
(38:47):
god my parents don't listen to this podcast. My dad
just said he was going to start listening. Sorry Dad, Sorry, wait,
I'm sorry, wait, I have to step back now, come gutters,
because it's it would it's no logical reasons in the
last week and it doesn't make are you know, because
(39:08):
if becomes it's erect and then it rips down cutters.
Don't make me explain that. I just said it. I
didn't explain it. But like all out also in relation
to Jesus, it's just the best part of it. Thanks Daana.
(39:29):
I just want to make sure it's a clarify that
was data. Data definitely said that. Okay, well, now let
me let me redeem myself really fast by then making
and then by just making it. A very smart point
that I'm gonna make is that theatricality historically was a
major power of the Catholic Church, and that was authority
(39:51):
over the people. Like the Catholic Church was all about
imagery and really striking stained glass and portraits and the
Latin Mass and song and the smell hangy smells. Um.
I'm so sorry. No, no, sorry, I'm such a shitty person. Rolla, No,
(40:12):
it wasn't. It was the hand motion what I'm talking about.
The thing we know exactly what you're talking about And
I think that's the point is that first I was
a theater major in college, and most of my performance
theory class we talked about Christianity and how theater, theatricality
and performance developed in the Catholic Church and um, like
(40:36):
Christmas Mummer plays and Corpus Christie's and how they would
travel around because there were so many people that wanted
to see the elevation of the hope that they had
to take it out of the church because people would
like go church hopping to see as many elevations as
possible because they're like, that's how I'm getting into heaven.
Which I don't think that's how it works. I think
you have to also like the more you see in heaven,
but why not head your bets? But um, what I
(41:00):
was gonna say the other thing is, uh, this is
so dumb, and it's not as bad as the thing
that Dana said, which is also a very environment smart point. Um.
But in the beginning of the music video for Helena
by My Chemical Romance, they sort of open it up
with the hangy smelly thing and like that level of
(41:22):
theatricality and the attraction of like the church and the uh,
they're like very strong, powerful symbols, and I like the
way that in this fascist society they use that. And
they have this like lecture that the priest, that's the
word priest is giving and he's talking about how it's
(41:47):
sort of like the priest and the voice of Fate
work in tandem and they together tell everybody how to
make Britain great and keep Britain great and how they
should work together. And I think it's interesting that Britain
and specific which I think is to Alan Moore's point,
is that they have not a separation of church and
state the way that we do in the United State,
(42:09):
the way that we say we do you create the
way that we claim we do. That is a very
smart and important point. But like they're not even pretending
they have the Anglican Church. The whole thing with the
Royal family is that they have been chosen by God.
They're the head of the church. Yeah, And so I
think it's really interesting how that works and how it's
(42:30):
sort of like using their tools against them, the theatricality
that v uses too then overthrow them. He also sort
of does the thing like a like a Batman villain,
where he like leaves clues on purpose, like he specifically
breeds these rare roses that can if someone is smart,
can trace this rare breed back to lark Hill where
(42:51):
he was, and he specifically then leaves the diary visible
with Delia, who's the doctor. That's why it's so chilling
at the end that like um uh, Finch is like,
well maybe you know this. We hope this is just
as Vendetta, but maybe the Vendetta is covering up something bigger,
like he is doing the Batman villain thing of like, yeah,
(43:13):
I'm the Riddler. I'm leaving you the fucking clues of
who I am and what I'm doing, because the theatricality
is part of his power. He wants to like thrill
and excite the people of England with like him as
a symbol. He wants to turn himself into a symbol.
One of the things that I thought was fascinating is
(43:33):
that there's an offhand mentioned on the radio that the
royal family still exists. The princesses out and she's wearing
a lovely salmon colored frock. Um. And I think that
is part of the theatricality of England, that it's something
we don't have here that you have these people that
kind of performatively try to embody the English spirit and
(43:57):
what where where are they? What are they doing? How?
How how do they live in this completely fascist country? Now?
What is the season of the Crown? Like in before Vendetta?
You know, I I hate to do the Hitler comparison,
but Hitler comparison. I also do this history podcast called
(44:19):
Noble Blood Shoutout, and I did an episode about Crown
Prince Wilhelm, who was the son of the last Kaiser
Kaiser Wilhelm the first, And when Hitler was building a
fascist government and claiming power, it was really important for
him to have Crown Prince Wilhelm like by his side
wearing a Nazi uniform to like legitimize the government. So
(44:42):
this is like, this is Germany, this is our government.
That's it's a continuation of power. So it totally makes
sense in a historical way that maybe even Alan Moore
was um going forward that like a fascist government would
be like. And yes, the British royal family continues. This
is just a continuation of Britain being made great. We
(45:03):
are not a separate thing that overthrew Britain. We are
Brittain well and it is. Sorry Ellen Moore, I'm gonna
compare it to modern day America. Um, it is so funny.
That was so funny to me about Donald Trump, like
pre election, is that he was so desperately trying to
(45:24):
find celebrities that would be like on his side or
like come up, and it would end up being like
a little pump I think was the last one before
the the end, and like it just felt like a
fascist I wanna be fascist dictator was trying to do that.
But in America, most celebrities hate you. They are and
(45:48):
they are real. They are royalty. Oh yeah. As soon
as Jen was talking about the royal family, I was like,
what do you mean, we don't have a royal family.
One thing is the Queen. I once in an airport
when I was going through customs coming uh back from London.
(46:10):
It was in l A. I was behind this couple
with two little kids and it was like a like
an eight year old and a girl and a six
year old boy. And the girl said, do you know
this is where Queen Beyonce lives? Oh god, okay, that's awesome. Yeah,
And I was like, you're right, that is more Queen Beyond.
(46:32):
I'm gonna say slightly back to uh be for Vendetta,
Good for Alan Moore for breaking the stereotype that priests
are gay pedophiles and just making the priests just a
regular pedophile. It seems important about all of the people
that we see really up close, is they're supposed to
(46:54):
represent this hyper masculine religion is a classic conservative model,
and none of them do. Like prothero is the voice
of the nation, and he is obsessed with dolls, which
nothing dolls, but it's not like a hobby I think
(47:15):
John Wayne probably had, but absolutely, yeah, no, I think
it's the same. I think you can see that a
lot with Donald Trump as well, that I do not
think of him as being particularly masculine. He wears makeup
and is very obsessed with his appearance. Um, he's very
(47:37):
worried about like people criticizing him, or lies about his weight,
like a lot of things that I just don't think
of hyper masculine people is doing or worrying about. And
we see that with all of these characters in this book,
like they love dolls or um, or they're like a
(47:58):
pedophile pedophile or um. Derek Almond I guess it's completely
enthrall to Helen Hair. My favorite moment of the book
where he just talks about how his wife will never
be as cool as her because she's such a mean fish.
Shut out a Rosemary, you were, Helen Hair, I mean, Dana,
(48:20):
you have the cheat sheet? Who was the female doctor?
What's her name? Her name is? I loved that whole
sequence because I felt like, you know, you see all
the other ones, and they're all fighting, and they're they're
all very all of them are equally culpable, particularly Delia.
But I loved seeing one of the characters like she
(48:43):
has been eaten away by guilt and fear and shame
and it's just ready to die, like because she felt
like this was always coming, whether out of her own
guilt or just out of like knowledge of consequences. Um.
And I thought that was the best scene, Like in
(49:04):
the build up that that was the last kill was
really a powerful scene. She also seemed smart in the
way that the men that v kills didn't, that she
understood what was happening. She is she's liked you, I
I know what's happening. I yes, good, Like I was
gonna say something along similar lines where I think it's
(49:26):
interesting that the only person who feels any level of
remorse that we at least get to see shown is
also the only person who's like, of course this is
going to come back to get me, and is also
a woman. And I think that that's uh, I think
that it's I'm not saying all women in government are good.
I mean, Margaret Thatcher right off the bat, not necessarily
(49:47):
my idol as a hashtag strong woman, but um, I
think it's interesting to see the empathy in this story
at the very least comes through mostly from the women
in power. Yeah. I know that many, Yeah, but then
it is interesting, like, I mean that you can you
can be this woman with empathy, this person with empathy,
(50:10):
and still get sucked into wanting to be in a
position of power, being close to power, and using it
against other people. So I think, I mean, I love
all of the complexities of that and Delian particular, and
especially because with the people that they are subjugating in
this camp. Like a lot of conversations are being had
(50:31):
right now about like the percentage of white women that
continue to vote for Trump and how white women benefit
more from white supremacy than they do from intersectional feminism,
and part of that is that, like you attach yourself,
if you have multiple privileged identities, you attach yourself to
the one they give you the most privilege, and in
this case, it's whiteness. And um, it's really interesting to
(50:53):
see that she is a straight white woman and they
are subjugating people of color and queer people at these camps.
So she's like, well, you know, yeah, I'm a woman
and I have empathy, but also like, we don't need
these undesirable Well, I do think I do think she
does justify to herself. Not that I think she again
not to defend her because she's like an indefensible member
(51:15):
of the fatalitarian party, but I think she thinks, uh,
it is bad that the government is locking up queer
people and people of color, but they are can't help it,
going to use this to my advantage and do some
medical tests that I'm curious about. I shout out to
another podcast, um that Dana turned me onto You're wrong about,
(51:38):
which you were also on There was a several parts
on the Tuskegee Syphilist study and that may end Yeah,
and that made me think of this, and I wonder
if that was a an inspiration for it because it
is all of these justifications, Melissa, that took place in America.
(51:59):
This is a I was gonna say nothing. Britain can't
a lot of ideas from from America that might have
been like life imitating art imitating life. I don't know,
Like but maybe maybe because I'm sure that people had
their own ship, that they probably Indian people or something,
because they did a whole bunch of shitty stuff the Indians. Yeah,
(52:21):
maybe the scientists wrote at the Tuskegee experiment like, oh,
these Brits had a great one is actually perfect example
of that. Can you explain that? Yeah? During the Boord War, um,
a lot of people were put into concentration camps, and
the Britain's decided that rather than contain any diseases that
(52:45):
were ravaging through those camps, they would just let the
diseases explode unchecked. Um. And it wouldn't lower the morale
of the soldiers because they wouldn't have to kill them
up close. They just put them in really really close quarters. Um.
And they just let everyone who got sick stay with
everyone else. And um, it's considered a very notable instance
(53:08):
of genocide. Like that's still genocide if you make or
allow people that you have control over to remain sick
and they die as a result. That's that's I mean,
that's also a lazy genocide. Like if you're going to
kill people, kill them. Not saying we should kill people,
but I'm just saying, like it's so rude to be like, yeah,
(53:30):
I'm just gonna let you die. You're not going to
at least to have the v for Vendetta thing and
come up with like an elaborate and fun, dramatic way
to kill someone. If we're going to kill someone, you
have to come up with it a whole theme. Yeah,
I already regret saying that, But what I mean is
(53:52):
it feels like there's something that these people are saying,
you're not even worth the effort of actually exterminating you,
and that is adding insult to injury in my eyes.
Like I'm not saying anyone should kill people, but I
do feel like it's almost more offensive to me that
it's like we're just gonna let them hang out together
and get sick off each other and we'll just see
(54:15):
what happened. I mean, that was what I think it's showed,
Like I'm not the only thing, but an element of
what was so awful about like the Tuskegee experiment, where
it was just this idea like, well they have symphilis anyway,
they probably aren't going to get treatmental let's whatever tell
them that they symphilist, but also in that it was bad.
(54:37):
It was lazy science too, and that like they didn't
take down they like lost track of some of the
people they were doing this horrible thing too, and like whoops,
we lost a few, and like just they did the science.
There was no science there. It was super lazy. It's
like most people who are evil are also lazy. It
(54:57):
just shows like a complete disregard of human and life
and like that white supremacy, that racism of just like
well whatever, well, because I think it's also yeah, exactly,
it's rooted in like the white supremacy and the thinking
of like biological superiority. So like it's like you're letting
these people they're getting sick on their own accord because
(55:18):
they're just not strong. Yeah. I think they're just not
strong enough to fight it off. So, and to go
back to the book, Delia Is, she comes in and
says that in her diary She says that like she starts,
she starts looking at people and like seeing people of
color and creeer people. She's like, oh, I started to
(55:39):
be like disgusted by them. Like mm, she's a bit yeah.
If she doesn't go in there, incredibly racist, She is
incredibly racist. Those systems are also designed to dehumanize the people,
and like totalitarian government and racism, says, systems work by
(56:02):
you know, indoctrinating the people. And so it's like it's
what's that that thing cognitive dissonance where it's like she
has to treat these people in a certain way, so
your brain is like, well, yeah, then they're disgusting. I
will say, um, I think it's interesting that what ends
up being their downfall is there sort of infantilization of
(56:24):
these patients and they're like so cute. How the gyron
room five has a little piles ye, little piles of
bomb stuff? Why why the little piles of like chemicals?
Did no one see that? I would have immediately been
like I would have been like, wait, no, there's a
plan here. And she even says, I think there's like
(56:46):
a little method to his madness. He's so sweet, he's
so fun and like treating him like a child or
a pet, where it's like, oh this is cute. Um,
it ends up being the thing that gets their ship
blown up, like they underestimated. I mean, I think they
have oppressed these people so much that they've forgotten that
these people are capable of hating them. That if you
(57:08):
have a system where people are not allowed to look
you with the eyes or talk to you, and then
there's one who can like grow flowers, yeah you've at
that point. You've forgotten that is a very dangerous human
being who probably hates you. Can I ask before we
close out, what do you make of E V and
V in their relationship and how they interact with each
other and how he interacts with her. I was going
(57:30):
to say, I really do like like the way that
Delia is like a nuanced female character. Alan Moore is
obviously a man. He wrote this in I think that
the eighties I don't love like the daddy issues stuff
with Oh yeah, he's obviously her dad. It's like, all right,
that's whatever. I mean. I think that she is more
(57:52):
of a conduit to the story than a character, and
so I find it a little uncomfortable when they like
I don't know, are like lazy when they're like, oh,
the sixteen year old has daddy issues because her dad,
the socialist was murdered by the fact normal dad normal
issues because of that, look, I think if we can
accept that the second missister Winter wanted a murder daddy,
(58:15):
we could also accept that they all love murder daddy's.
She wants a murder daddy, but she does not herself
want to murder. And I do think that that is
something that's interesting. Your insistent that she's like, I don't
want to be a part of this. I have no
desire to inflict pain on others, even though I've been
(58:38):
in a shitty situation because of this government, like they
almost killed her. And even with that, she was like,
you used me to kill somebody and you didn't tell me.
And it brings up a really interesting thing about consent.
She didn't consent to be in this government system, but
she also didn't consent to overthrow it in this way,
and I thought that was really interesting. That's really well said. Well,
I think on that note, and one more thing I
(58:59):
wanted to add. Another problem that Alan Moore had with
the film adaptation was that he didn't think that they
um went far enough in on the themes of white
supremacy and racism within totalitarian regimes, and I think, yeah,
that is a theme that was very important to him
and I think definitely comes out very quickly in a
(59:21):
book two called The Vicious Cabaret. So on that note, Well,
hearing you next week, or you'll hear us next week.
Jesus Christ, we can hear you, guys. You want to
tell you the baby. That's our show for the week.
(59:43):
Thank you so much for listening. I'm Danish Schwartz and
you can find me on Twitter at Danish Schwartz with
three z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at Jen
Ashley Right, Karama Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter
is at Melissa f t W and Tan Tran is
smart enough to have gotten off Twitter, but she is
on Insta at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher
(01:00:05):
Hesiodes were produced and edited by Mike John's Special thanks
to David Wasserman. Next week, we continue our November discussion
of V four Vendetta, the graphic Novel, with book two.
This Vicious Cabaret Popcorn Book Club is a production of
I heart radio,
Hi, Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. I'm Danish Forwards,
joined as always by Melissa Hunter, Jennifer Wright, Tan Tran
and Karamadanqua. And this week we are a little bit
late for the fifth of November, but unfortunately right in
time for the impending threat of totalitarianism. And we are
talking V four Vendetta, the graphic novel written by Alan Moore,
(00:26):
illustrated by David Lloyd. Uh yeah, it's sort of rolled
off the tongue. It's the book. The graphic novel is
divided into three parts, so we're gonna do each episode
part by part. So today we're just talking book one,
which is like subheaded Europe after the Rain, before we
(00:50):
dive in, I'm just clear ari e I g oh yeah,
Ray like the rain on me, like gay. So before
we start, I'm curious because V for Vendetta has had
such like a big part, like a big footprint in
(01:12):
popular culture where even if you haven't like read it
or seen it, you know, like the guy Fox mask
has become like the anonymous symbol. So, Jennifer, what has
been your relationship with V for Vendetta before this this podcast?
Book reading? Okay, well, I love V for Vendetta. But
what I find fascinating is periodically I get like really
(01:35):
hardcore Trump supporters who messaged me on Twitter, and I'm
shocked by the number of them that have the V
for Vendetta mask as their profile picture. Because if you
read V for Vendetta, I think the first thing that
happens is V beats up some corrupt cops who are
going to break a woman to um. So it's surprising
(01:57):
to me that a group of very far right people
have read this book and thought, yeah, this guy fighting
against a fascist government where the police are an unbelievably
corrupt force. Speaks to you to assume they read the book,
(02:17):
did they watch the movie, because like it's still basically
the same. I mean, those are the same people that
like misuse red pill in Blue Pill. Also the Punisher logo,
Oh yeah, they love punish our people with white trumps,
love punish, punish our decals, And you're like, what do
you think that's communicating? So yeah, I love this book
(02:37):
because I think it has Overfelming like good social and
moral values and is a dystopia about fascism in such
a such a wonderfully realized way, and boy, people on
the far right not picking up on that. It's also
very funny to me because Guy Fox was an extreme Catholic,
So that in end and of itself is like interesting
(03:00):
that he was like, yeah, Catholicism, I don't like your Protestantism.
That people who now adopt the Guy Fox mask are
not like religious zealots. And again it's an unambiguously anarchist symbol.
So now that Donald Trump is like the incumbent leader
and they're defending their like, oh, the anarchy in Portland,
(03:23):
it's like, no, now you should specifically be in favor
of that quote unquote anarchy. Yeah, well no, it's just
I never thought about how even just in the past
several years, I mean, since Trump became elected in his
now a fucking loser, um, you know, them to enjoy
(03:45):
that together. I do have to say, wouldn't it suck
if we had to be like a politically neutral podcast
like obviously feeling let's say you excite stuff Because I
these this first book uh before the election, and it
(04:06):
made me feel really uncomfortable because it's I mean it's
so immediately uh reflective of the Trump era of like
make Britain great again is on page two and uh.
And then I reread it last night or the two
(04:27):
nights ago to like refresh my memory, and I just
felt like a different this is like right after Biden
has gotten elected. And I just was able to read
and be like, yes, that old thing, even though I
know not everything is over, but it made me just
feel so much better reading it post post election. You know,
I didn't want to bring up the political allegory too soon,
(04:49):
but and not to get into the movie yet, but
now that we're sort of there, I think that I
always found interesting was that Ellen Moore famously hates all
adaptations of his work because he's like a crashy old wizard,
like that's just who he is. But he let people
adapt it because he because he likes houses, but he
doesn't like them. He's like, you can do what you want,
(05:11):
but I'm not gonna like it. I'm telling us fair
and um. And he also don't take that stance too
in my future works and then be like do you
like it? And I also think he doesn't take money.
I'm pretty sure he says. He just says like I
don't want the money. I'm gonna check. I didn't mean
(05:35):
to No, No, he's a he's like a weird wizard
of the word. Does he know that he could give
it away too good causes instead of flooding movie studios
keep it? I mean, not that they're not in a
way a good cost, Like he could he could give
it to like housing projects and stuff. Yeah, like movies.
(05:55):
I'm just saying movie studios are not the thing that
I would first think of when I hear a it, Cause, yeah,
well you figure it out. I mean, I'm gonna look
up about whether he takes the money. But the point
is he hated the Viva Vendettatte movie, which we'll all
watch and talk about. But he thought that they made
it to American and he's like, this is about England.
(06:17):
It's not a metaphor about him, because it was happening
during the Bush Era, and he thought that some like
American Bush era politics crept into the movie. And he
was like, Nope, it's about Britain and England specifically, and
like yeah, it's like and like he's like, and it's
about anarchy and specifically anarchy. And if it's not about
anarchy in Britain, it's not my book. But I do
(06:39):
think Melissa, your point is well made that this applies
to a lot of situations and a lot of totalitarian
governments in a way that maybe Alan Moore doesn't appreciate it,
but I think we can't. Yeah, it reminds me of
Bon June Hoo when he was talking about Paris Site
and how he wrote it specifically for Korean audience and
(07:01):
then it became so wildly popular, and he's like, I
guess we all live in the same same country of capitalism. Like,
so he gets it. Yeah, I mean that's what's amazing
about Elmore's work like this and Watchman, that you know,
it's so relevant unfortunately, you know, probably for decades and
(07:22):
decades to come in all countries that are kind of
resemble each other in certain ways. You know. Karama, what
was your v for Vendetta experience before the book Club? Well,
I hadn't read it before, but I had seen the
film many, many, many, many many times. One of my
really good friends, Jose shout out to Jose loves Natalie Portman.
(07:44):
So we watched a lot of Natalie Portman movies together
and this is one of them, and this is the
one that I liked the most. So she can have
a fully pulled head and still just be the most
beautiful angel woman you have ever seen. She is fat
special though. I think there are a lot of people
who look good with bald heads, but not maybe a
(08:04):
lot of white people. That's true, that's true, and as
I'm allowed to say that, not a lot of Jewish people.
It's very rare that jew looks very good bald. We
have weird egg shaped heads. Anyway, what was your experience
with me for Vandetta? You know, I had never seen
the films, and I only know you know that that
(08:28):
famous scene where she shaves her head and like um
and all the mask wearing. I remember I did sketch
comedy in Chicago at at a place called Second City,
and when we heard of it, have you heard of it?
On one of those stages, we took over a show
and the show before us had an opening that was
(08:49):
very like themes of anarchy, themes of questioning authority, and
the opening was them wearing these guy fox masks and
and like right before the scene changes, you have to
like take them off and put them in a paper bag.
So my experience with guy fox masks is trying to
dance in the dark with this and then like clumsy
(09:11):
lee fumbling like trying to like put it in the
bag before the lights come up, and you're like caught
as the audience sees you like trying to stuff in
a Guy Fox bag into a paper bag while the
scene is changing. So that is my experience with Guy
Fox masks and via fur Vendetta. That's a pretty thorough Yeah,
what would you sort of I feel like before we
(09:32):
do dive into the actual text, it is worth exploring
that Guy Fox mask in popular culture. How would you
describe the place that the Guy Fox mask has in
popular culture? Anonymous? Yeah, but I but I feel like
we we had that good point with Trump where it's like,
but now it's sort of like the counter culture. It's
(09:54):
always like the counterculture thing that's like trolling but almost
just being a bad person on per us because I
feel like some people think anarchy is quoted by like
literally holding up the status quo in the most obnoxious
of ways. Is what I think that this mask some
(10:15):
people have like like taken that as a symbol of like,
you know what everyone's talking about feminism, I'm going to
be an asshole. My anarchy statement is to like push
back on that system and the government. Yes exactly. Yeah,
I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna hurt a lot of people
(10:37):
because they to protect this statue of my oppressor, my
experience with the Guy Fox mask. And I'm very embarrassed
to say this. When I was in college, we put
on a production of Sweeney Todd at the main stage
of Brown University. And it was not just a production
of Sweeney Todd. It was uh an Occupy Wall Street
(10:59):
themed production of Sweeney Todd, which is the most I
feel like every liberal state, every stereotype that like Tucker
Carlson has about Brown University. It's like, oh, they're like
there was a giant McDonald's billboard as the backdrop and
someone spray painted over it, Eat the rich, Like that
was like subtext us that was subject and during like
(11:21):
the subtext and during like the you get it because
in Sweeney Todd they yeah. And then during the masquerade scene,
which is like a flashback of Sweeney Todd's wife, there's
a masked ball and all all of us in the
ensembles dancers were wearing Guy Fox masks and then she
(11:44):
gets raped. Dana. Is that that's what they wanted? To
project off to that that well, we were we were
the the we were the idea was that we the
students were occupying the theater putting on a production of
Sweenets putting great. That's what everybody production of Sweeney Todd
(12:05):
And you just have to have those masks that they're
ready effort to use during the masquerade scene. I feel
like that's a perfect college production story. Like I feel
like every single one of us has one of those
that we were right, this is going to absolutely blow
everyone's money. Hit the nail on the head. It reminded
me I did in college at Northwestern a production of
(12:29):
Brett Caucasian Chalk Circle, and uh, you know, it's very meta.
And the director decided is going to be in a
circus tent, and she spent all of her money to
put it in a circus tent on like Norris Lawn,
which is right by the water, and it's because like
society is a circus, you know, And and all of
(12:51):
the budget went into that. And on the first night
it was in May, there was a classic May Chicago
thunderstorm and we were in a circus tent with lights
and metal bleachers, and I was like, am I going
to die for a production of Caucasian Chalk Circle. Um,
(13:12):
and everyone in the audience was looking like are we
going to die watching the student production of Chalk Circle?
And then thankfully like someone called it called the dean's
office or something, and it was shutdown and we had
to do it in a in a conference room the
rest of the time with carpet. Oh. Anyway, the complete
(13:40):
aside that Mike, if you want to cut out, you
can't keep please keep it in keeping well. I feel
like theatricality is a big theme which brings us to
book one, in which we meet our two protagonists e
V and v UM. Okay, I'm gonna take a breather
(14:06):
and prepare an elaborate set if you're listening and have
read it or seen the movie, I'm going to give
(14:26):
us to remind you, because we sort of have, you know,
read all of them, what the beginning and the end
of Act one is, so we can just sort of
dive in so we all know the beginning is obviously
at the beginning of the book, e V is a
young woman working in this new post apocalyptic London, and
she goes out to work her first night as a
prostitute when she's accosted by Fingerman who are like the
(14:47):
secret police. Um, we're going to get to the plot.
But she meets V, who's like an anarchist revolutionary Uh
bone V vaunt if you will, um and sort. The
end of book one is we find out that V
had been a inmate at like a concentration camp testing
(15:09):
facility called lark Hill, and that the series of murders
that he had done in book one are all people
who were in authority there. So the investigating detective who's
sort of maybe like the third main character we have
like V E V. And then Creedy, who's is it Creed?
No Finch? Sorry again, I made a cheat sheet of
(15:31):
all the white guys because I kept running music trackoman names.
The third maybe like of this triumvirant triumvirate is the
head of the nose of this Norse fire party. Who's
a guy named Finch who's a detective trying to figure
out who this terrorist is. And at the end of
book one, Book one, Finch finds out that these murders
(15:51):
are all people who were at Larkhill and that maybe
V is doing a vendetta, but maybe is vendetta is
bigger than just larcale and and and it extends beyond.
And that's just to cover up. Yeah, I that just
to skip to the unreal quick of this book. I
feel like I was really enjoying it. And I'm not
(16:12):
someone who reads I don't read a lot of graphic novels,
so this is like it's almost retraining my brain to
to read this way. And it was kind of hard
at first, I would say, but then I got really
into it, and then I I just love that final
page of like, well he might have been, you know,
carrying out this vendetta on all these people, which is
(16:33):
the optimistic theory, and I'm like, oh, ship, and it's
like he's clearing the playing field to like set up
some real ship. And I was like, oh, this is
but that is right. It's a it's very optimistic to think, oh, well,
he's only attacking these few people unless he's laying the groundwork. Yeah,
it seems more likely that he's eliminated all of those people.
(16:55):
He doesn't kill Lewis Breathroe, he renders him incurably insane. Oh,
in a way that is so much scarier. Yeah. Um,
but that means that none of the people who knew
him in his previous identity are able to identify him anymore.
(17:17):
I thought that rendering louis prothero who is the voice
of Fate, who's the guy who does like the announcements
for England on like a megaphone speaker through the town.
So V knows he collects rare dolls, and he like
renders him insane using putting on like a little vaudeville
performance with these creepy inmate dolls. Um such a good
(17:39):
use of the medium of a graphic novel, which is
like using pictures and like creepy dolls are creepy, and
so it's it's always interesting to me to see like
what translates really well to a graphic novel. And I
feel like that really was effectively scary to me. Oh yeah.
And also seeing him like back at the police police
(18:02):
precinct or wherever he was like returned to just saying Mama,
Mama over again was very very jarring and scary and
also felt exactly, yeah, yeah, it's that it's that scary
thing where because we don't know what he sees, we
(18:23):
can always we can just fill in whatever's creepiest to us.
M hmm, yeah, I found I you know, each way
that V decides to dispatch these different people were it
was also very interesting, especially Delia's Dr Delia's I was
I thought that was just a great way to not
(18:46):
so gently be like, even though you might be a
good person, you were complicit in watching these terrible things
happen and you didn't do anything about it. And he
participants participant to Yeah, it wasn't just that she was
like a citizen of the country who knew bad things
were going on. She was giving people at a concentration
(19:08):
camp medical scientific disease that caused most of them to
die horribly, so she could work on a cure. But
I do I do like that it gives V that
moment of like killing her in a merciful way, and
they sort of have that moment as peers, which is
like almost as chilling to me as any of the murders.
(19:28):
He just sort of like we see like that he
has um a code a code of ethics in his
own crazy mind, you know, like, yeah, he's not like
a joker, he's not like out doing things because he's crazy.
He's like very methodical and like he knows that she's
like kind of a could have been a good person,
(19:49):
she could do something. She was going about it in
a horrifying way. Thank you. Yeah, I think Complicity was up.
I think like that she had a she is it she?
Also I think maybe had like a hint of a
morse more so than say Presso as if that was
his name. Yeah, he fucking sucks. He so like off
(20:12):
with him. Can. I know you haven't seen the movie,
but I'm so excited for you to see the movie. Like,
I'm just so excited for you to see the movie.
I mean I I also don't read graphic novels. This
is my I think this is my first Yeah, for
sure first one ever. So like Melissa had said, I
had to like kind of train my brain to the
style of it, and I've been missing out. They are right. Yeah, Um,
(20:38):
Alan Moore is just really great too, Like just really,
I'm not a huge graphic novel person, but I really
like cal Off Alan wors graphic novels. My slight, Um,
I am a big graphic novel person. I'm a big
comic book person. My slight difficulty with this book at first,
and it just took me a while and I got
(20:58):
used to it. It was like a lot of a
middle aged white dude looked the same to me, and
I just wanted them all to be wearing name name
tex when I'm also on that level. I just kind
of accepted early on that I'm never going to know
who's who, and I can use context clues to kind
of figure out some of them, and that's okay with me.
(21:18):
They don't need me to know who they are. They're
not real people, um And it's fine, It's fine. That's
kind of the point. I feel like, I feel like
it was intentional that they were all drawn very similarly,
because they're all kind of the same. They're all kind
of very just like shadowy bad guy in Shadowy Bad Government,
and I feel like that's kind of the reason that
(21:40):
they are like that they're all sort of cogs in
this like in this um. One thing that was really
interesting to me that I I don't again want to
compare it to the movie yet, but we do sort
of get the like weird humanizing of these weird bureaucrats
and we find out they're like boring lives and they're
shitty marriages, which is almost scarier than just when bad
(22:01):
guys are like like you know, Voldemort or just some
like big bad to like know that these people doing
an upholding horrific systems are just like shitty dumb dudes.
They're just normal dudes. I'm sorry, competent dudes. Indeed we
are mass me feel a little better. Kind of like
(22:22):
to see Almond, who if I remember correctly, not to
compare it to the movie, but was not in the movie,
but like it was kind of really shitty in the book.
To see him, like not to see him beating his wife,
that makes me feel better, But seeing him die after
seeing him beat his wife, I'm kind of like, maybe
this vse guys onto something. I feel like he's not wrong.
(22:44):
He's not necessarily right, but he's not wrong. He is
very Another thing that Alan Moore criticized movie for is
he's like v V isn't just about overthrowing to a
totalitarian government. He is in favor of anarchy. That is
the system of government that he wants. I Dani Schwartz, Um,
(23:05):
if I was, you know, picking a government system, wouldn't
go anarchy. But I think that V as a character
is incredibly interesting and compelling. Yeah. I haven't seen the
movie yet, Um, but I know, it's very exciting. It's
so good. This is one one movie where again we'll
get to it. Personally, I feel like it makes effective
(23:27):
changes to work as a movie and really works as
a movie. And seeing it kind of in reverse reading
this for the first time after having seen the movie
so many times and like, oh, I like, no disrespect
to Alan Moore, but this is actually a pretty decent adaptation.
You gotta tighten, you gotta make it be like where
where's the two Hours? But there are some characters that
(23:48):
are clearly cut out of the movie that I had
basically forgotten about and I loved revisiting. Um I, Mary
is obviously like a lovely woman, very sympathetic in this book.
Um I'm obsessed with Helen Higher. Just to pass talking
about Mary for a second. Helen Hire, who seemingly only
wears a fur coat and has like platinum white ice
(24:12):
queen hair, and introduces herself by being an unbelievable bitch
to her husband. And then when when Mary's like, oh,
she's quite hard on him, isn't she, her husband turns
to her and it's like, you'll never be as cool
as her? Never, wait, Mary, you mean love Rosemary right, Oh, yes,
(24:32):
Rosemar Sorry, yeah, she watans Rosemary. I'm Rosemary. She rose
by her husband. And Rosemary is a major character in
the graphic novel who's cut out of the film. She
is straight gone, straight gone, which I think is effective
(24:53):
because the movie is making different points. But in the
novel to trace uh Rosemary's journey, she is the wife
of Almond, who's the head of the Finger Policeman, and
he's really abusive to her, and she's kind of like
meek and like, Okay, this sucks. And then again, jumping forward,
(25:13):
I'm losing track a little bit because we're just talking
about book one now, but jumping forward a little bit, Um,
Almond is murdered she in book one, and being a
widow without very many options, she uh starts dating uh
the head of the Mouth Dascomb, Roger Dascomb, who's like
(25:34):
the propaganda guy. Um, and then she'll sort of continue
on a downward spiral, sort of like you know, a
symbol for a lot of things. But Helen Hare get
into we'll get into them more in book two, and
Helen Hair we're going to get way more into in
book three because that's when we figure out who she
is I can't waited. I like the level of different
(25:57):
experiences that we have with this one. I feel like
it's like a nice milange. You know. Well, let's let's
jump In book one, we're introduced to Evie, who's starting
as a prostitute on her first night. What do we
have the senior old prostitute in sixteen year old prostitute Chromazheimer.
What do you make of a first time or eving? Uh, well,
(26:21):
I think that she's a really great like what's the
word I'm looking for, surrogate for the reader. She because
she seems very innocent. She has experience with the world
that we're in, and she's not, um, she's not unaware
of what the system is, but she's still so young
(26:43):
and kind of naive that it feels like it makes
sense for people to explain things at her and to
see things through her eyes, and like, obviously we get
different perspectives from this, but I think that Evie is
a great intro to the world. And we see the
finger police and um, that's how we meet v Also,
(27:03):
because she is so naive and like very bad at prostituting,
that she's kind of like sex and he's like you're
not great at this and she's like, um, sixteen, it's
my first time. She I felt very relatable in that moment.
I like, I two would be very bad at like
(27:24):
a street walking type deal, and she's like crying. It's like,
it's not it's it's hard, it's embarrassing. It's awkward to
be like, would you want to you know, pay? And
I also have sex with me. It's hard enough to
ask a guy if they want to have sex with you,
and not if they want to pay. But of course
(27:46):
this is the moment that she's very bad. She's very
bad at being approtesct it because she propositions a secret
undercover cop and she's rescued by the very theatrical v
who visually you know you in a graphic novel. Visually,
it's very interesting because as we see uh Evie getting ready,
the very next panel is sort of be getting ready
(28:09):
in his mirror and he's putting on his mask and
hair and hat. We assume before he gave a lot
a lot of props and costumes for a anarchist. I'm
just thinking in terms of like logistics, movement, fighting ability,
a lot of planning, really nice pre fascism. He definitely
(28:31):
was a theater major act. And oh yeah, I have
more thoughts about that next week when we talk about
book too. Um, but I'll get into that book we
can talk about he loves like a flash bomb. And
then he built the entire scale model of large even
know is like what, what's where's all this budget production
(28:54):
budget coming from? Like with with the all the different mass,
all the dolls, all the I mean they're he took
the Endowment for the Arts. That's where all their My
thinking is maybe v when they were in theater when
he wasn't there, school was like stage manner producing, stage
manager production, because that's everything. It's like the back of UCB,
(29:16):
Like that's where he is. Maybe he's at the u
c B of their world. Maybe that is the where
the hideout is. He could have taken to be very
disappointed that we're making this so American. My logistical question
is he's growing fancy roses and his his hideout, his underground.
(29:37):
How do you how do you grow roses underground? Where sunlamp?
Where is he getting all these sunlamps? That's where he's
getting scale models of concentration camps like easier to get
a sun lamp. But he's scale models, I mean concentration
camp that no one knows existing. He's definitely on some
kind of sound stage. It's gotta be with that scale,
(29:58):
with that, and he's got good lighting. He likes. He's
got a couple uh stage hands for sure, like putting, putting,
follow the follow spot on him. You know, I think
it's it's very funny to me to imagine the six
weeks that went into him building and sewing the costumes alone,
like sweating before we see just the end results. But there.
(30:23):
I would love a book zero that's just him doing
all the prep and all and running his line. Yes, nope,
I need a line. Um, it's it's anti fascism. Thank you,
thank you, Carl. Yeah. I got to keep going, gotta
work through it. He's got so much prep. Every single
(30:47):
part of his like presentation, the way he kills, the
way he moves about. There's just so much prep to it.
He's like an anime villain. He just like loves the drama.
The part that I was like, wow, he prepped this
because this is just for him, is he gives that
speech to Lady Justice the statue and he gives us
(31:08):
me that he definitely a monologue that he definitely wrote
and then he delivered. He plays both parts and then
he like karaoke Nelly for Tomo Timberland, promiscuous girl to
marry me. And then he deposits his bomb at her
(31:29):
feet and it's a shaped like a box of chocolate.
He doesn't know that we're watching a graphic novel of him.
He thinks that he he made this. He made this
box bomb and it's tied the bow and cut it
and made it look nice, just for it to blow
up for no one, just him. He's not posting it
to his anarchy Instagram. The c s I people come
and analyze it later it's blown out, not going to
(31:51):
see it. They're like ribbon, where could he have bought
this ribbon? Like have you never seen c s I.
I don't maybe a watch a lot of fear. I'm sorry.
I don't want to show as someone who now feels
like I have the weird chip in my brain that
anytime I do something, I need to like take a
picture of it and posted on social media to prove
(32:13):
that I exist. Where it's like there is something very
sweet about him, just like doing all this for him
no one's gonna see it, no one's gonna appreciate it.
He just cares about the work. I feel like you
should try that. To me, it feels like he has
a lot of time on his hands, but people are
going to see it. I mean it blew up like
but not not the speech, not the details, the beautiful
(32:35):
little box of chocolates that he put the bomb in.
It feels like nobody has this much time. And I
think it placed into the kind of magic of the
because there's like a Martha Stewart element to all of
these actions. There's a lot of preparation going into everything
that I don't think you would have if you also
(32:56):
had to dismantle a fascist government. Yeah. I could see
a cooking video of the making the Communion host with cyanide,
just like a beautiful YouTube. Crackers is hard, It's hard.
What's about this is that this was the eighties, So
(33:16):
how did he know how to do everything? He had
to just know the library book he stole. He stole
all these books, right, and and he was in when
he was in his room five, he stole a bunch
of books and it was just reading up on how
to cook communion wafers. You don't have the right books,
(33:37):
is he do? We think he's limited by the books
that he had when he was I think I think
that's it. I think all of it is based on, well,
I have these eight I have these eight skills. One
of them is making communion wafers, Like, how do I
make it work in my vendetta? I think that's that's
exactly it. He got these specific books and then built
(33:57):
his vendetta only around the things on how eat does
want to make a communion waper? I'm googling communion waper?
But it's also gotten pretty easy. I mean there's Catholics
eat so many of those every week. You know, Yes,
they're manufactured for sure. And it doesn't have to taste good.
(34:18):
I mean they tastes like nothing. I've never had it.
It tastes like it truly tastes like less than nothing. Yeah,
it's kind of weird that it tastes less than nothing.
I feel like it's rude to not make Jesus taste good,
Like does that is that sacrilegious to say? Like you're
gonna stick pins in your mouth? I feel like it
(34:39):
should taste like, hey, yeah, Jesus and then I feel like,
if you really believe in transubstantiation and you really believe
that it's Jesus's body, you don't want to think about
it that much. You want to associate like chocolate chip
cookies Jesus, you know, like have like meat. You don't
want it to be too literal. You don't need it
to be like me. And but I'm not religious. If
(35:03):
you get in different lines, you can get different like, um,
hold on a second, I'm just really quick on to
google some recipes for church wafers. After v rescues e
(35:30):
V from the rape fingerman who we're going to rape
and murder her because this metalitarian government. But also I
think important violence against women is also an indicator of
a lot of extremist ideology, so that at least felt
felt unfortunately anchored. But v rescues her and brings her
(35:52):
down to his hideaway, and uh she tells him sort
of her story, which we'll get to, which is some
like exposition about this world, and he asks her to help,
and one of the ways that she helps him is
by dressing up as a child prostitute to sleep with. Uh,
the Bishop Anthony Lilliman, who's like the Westminster Bishop. Uh,
(36:16):
and she's going to mean open the window for me
to come in and kill him in a dramatic way.
It visually made me made me think of killing Eve,
which is funny because it's Evy. If if V and
Evy were one person, it would be a killing Eve scene,
Like how she's in this very elaborate costume and and
(36:38):
just like like going out of her way to kill
him in a creative way. But then he does it,
and she's actually terrified. V is a theater major who
takes one policy class, that's what, and philosophy one, and
all the straight girls on this pud or have had
(37:01):
sex with him and regretted it as well. Yeah, yeah,
I as someone maybe as someone who maybe as someone
who um is not Christian in any way, but I'm
like very fascinated by like Christian symbolism and like idea,
(37:23):
Like it's very like beautiful and spooky to me, and
I kind of like I love that imagery, so like
I loved and was very spooked by like the juxtaposition
of like V sneaking into this abbey with like the
text was like we ask in the name of the
father and son or like whatever, like which might be
very mundane to someone who is Catholic, but like to
(37:44):
me as someone those are those are still spooky words.
I'm just like the whole like as I walk through
the valley of the Yeah, it is very speaky. I
mean scary. It's scary sanity. It's like on the cross
and every church there's a Jesus like bleeding from it,
dying on a freaking crucifix. You know. That is very
dark and very theatrical on the church. Don't scare me
(38:07):
as much as the fact that people wear it on necklaces.
For me, is a mind warp where you're just like,
wait a second, there's like a dead dude on your neck.
You realize that it's that's also like usually kind of
cut to Jesus, like have abs while he's dying, which
(38:27):
is just can I say, come gutters in relation to Jesus.
I don't. I thought it, but I was like, I'm
not gonna say it because it's gonna make people angry.
Please don't it. Oh my god, I did not know
that is what that is called. It's another thing. Thank
(38:47):
god my parents don't listen to this podcast. My dad
just said he was going to start listening. Sorry Dad, Sorry, wait,
I'm sorry, wait, I have to step back now, come gutters,
because it's it would it's no logical reasons in the
last week and it doesn't make are you know, because
(39:08):
if becomes it's erect and then it rips down cutters.
Don't make me explain that. I just said it. I
didn't explain it. But like all out also in relation
to Jesus, it's just the best part of it. Thanks Daana.
(39:29):
I just want to make sure it's a clarify that
was data. Data definitely said that. Okay, well, now let
me let me redeem myself really fast by then making
and then by just making it. A very smart point
that I'm gonna make is that theatricality historically was a
major power of the Catholic Church, and that was authority
(39:51):
over the people. Like the Catholic Church was all about
imagery and really striking stained glass and portraits and the
Latin Mass and song and the smell hangy smells. Um.
I'm so sorry. No, no, sorry, I'm such a shitty person. Rolla, No,
(40:12):
it wasn't. It was the hand motion what I'm talking about.
The thing we know exactly what you're talking about And
I think that's the point is that first I was
a theater major in college, and most of my performance
theory class we talked about Christianity and how theater, theatricality
and performance developed in the Catholic Church and um, like
(40:36):
Christmas Mummer plays and Corpus Christie's and how they would
travel around because there were so many people that wanted
to see the elevation of the hope that they had
to take it out of the church because people would
like go church hopping to see as many elevations as
possible because they're like, that's how I'm getting into heaven.
Which I don't think that's how it works. I think
you have to also like the more you see in heaven,
but why not head your bets? But um, what I
(41:00):
was gonna say the other thing is, uh, this is
so dumb, and it's not as bad as the thing
that Dana said, which is also a very environment smart point. Um.
But in the beginning of the music video for Helena
by My Chemical Romance, they sort of open it up
with the hangy smelly thing and like that level of
(41:22):
theatricality and the attraction of like the church and the uh,
they're like very strong, powerful symbols, and I like the
way that in this fascist society they use that. And
they have this like lecture that the priest, that's the
word priest is giving and he's talking about how it's
(41:47):
sort of like the priest and the voice of Fate
work in tandem and they together tell everybody how to
make Britain great and keep Britain great and how they
should work together. And I think it's interesting that Britain
and specific which I think is to Alan Moore's point,
is that they have not a separation of church and
state the way that we do in the United State,
(42:09):
the way that we say we do you create the
way that we claim we do. That is a very
smart and important point. But like they're not even pretending
they have the Anglican Church. The whole thing with the
Royal family is that they have been chosen by God.
They're the head of the church. Yeah, And so I
think it's really interesting how that works and how it's
(42:30):
sort of like using their tools against them, the theatricality
that v uses too then overthrow them. He also sort
of does the thing like a like a Batman villain,
where he like leaves clues on purpose, like he specifically
breeds these rare roses that can if someone is smart,
can trace this rare breed back to lark Hill where
(42:51):
he was, and he specifically then leaves the diary visible
with Delia, who's the doctor. That's why it's so chilling
at the end that like um uh, Finch is like,
well maybe you know this. We hope this is just
as Vendetta, but maybe the Vendetta is covering up something bigger,
like he is doing the Batman villain thing of like, yeah,
(43:13):
I'm the Riddler. I'm leaving you the fucking clues of
who I am and what I'm doing, because the theatricality
is part of his power. He wants to like thrill
and excite the people of England with like him as
a symbol. He wants to turn himself into a symbol.
One of the things that I thought was fascinating is
(43:33):
that there's an offhand mentioned on the radio that the
royal family still exists. The princesses out and she's wearing
a lovely salmon colored frock. Um. And I think that
is part of the theatricality of England, that it's something
we don't have here that you have these people that
kind of performatively try to embody the English spirit and
(43:57):
what where where are they? What are they doing? How?
How how do they live in this completely fascist country? Now?
What is the season of the Crown? Like in before Vendetta?
You know, I I hate to do the Hitler comparison,
but Hitler comparison. I also do this history podcast called
(44:19):
Noble Blood Shoutout, and I did an episode about Crown
Prince Wilhelm, who was the son of the last Kaiser
Kaiser Wilhelm the first, And when Hitler was building a
fascist government and claiming power, it was really important for
him to have Crown Prince Wilhelm like by his side
wearing a Nazi uniform to like legitimize the government. So
(44:42):
this is like, this is Germany, this is our government.
That's it's a continuation of power. So it totally makes
sense in a historical way that maybe even Alan Moore
was um going forward that like a fascist government would
be like. And yes, the British royal family continues. This
is just a continuation of Britain being made great. We
(45:03):
are not a separate thing that overthrew Britain. We are
Brittain well and it is. Sorry Ellen Moore, I'm gonna
compare it to modern day America. Um, it is so funny.
That was so funny to me about Donald Trump, like
pre election, is that he was so desperately trying to
(45:24):
find celebrities that would be like on his side or
like come up, and it would end up being like
a little pump I think was the last one before
the the end, and like it just felt like a
fascist I wanna be fascist dictator was trying to do that.
But in America, most celebrities hate you. They are and
(45:48):
they are real. They are royalty. Oh yeah. As soon
as Jen was talking about the royal family, I was like,
what do you mean, we don't have a royal family.
One thing is the Queen. I once in an airport
when I was going through customs coming uh back from London.
(46:10):
It was in l A. I was behind this couple
with two little kids and it was like a like
an eight year old and a girl and a six
year old boy. And the girl said, do you know
this is where Queen Beyonce lives? Oh god, okay, that's awesome. Yeah,
And I was like, you're right, that is more Queen Beyond.
(46:32):
I'm gonna say slightly back to uh be for Vendetta,
Good for Alan Moore for breaking the stereotype that priests
are gay pedophiles and just making the priests just a
regular pedophile. It seems important about all of the people
that we see really up close, is they're supposed to
(46:54):
represent this hyper masculine religion is a classic conservative model,
and none of them do. Like prothero is the voice
of the nation, and he is obsessed with dolls, which
nothing dolls, but it's not like a hobby I think
(47:15):
John Wayne probably had, but absolutely, yeah, no, I think
it's the same. I think you can see that a
lot with Donald Trump as well, that I do not
think of him as being particularly masculine. He wears makeup
and is very obsessed with his appearance. Um, he's very
(47:37):
worried about like people criticizing him, or lies about his weight,
like a lot of things that I just don't think
of hyper masculine people is doing or worrying about. And
we see that with all of these characters in this book,
like they love dolls or um, or they're like a
(47:58):
pedophile pedophile or um. Derek Almond I guess it's completely
enthrall to Helen Hair. My favorite moment of the book
where he just talks about how his wife will never
be as cool as her because she's such a mean fish.
Shut out a Rosemary, you were, Helen Hair, I mean, Dana,
(48:20):
you have the cheat sheet? Who was the female doctor?
What's her name? Her name is? I loved that whole
sequence because I felt like, you know, you see all
the other ones, and they're all fighting, and they're they're
all very all of them are equally culpable, particularly Delia.
But I loved seeing one of the characters like she
(48:43):
has been eaten away by guilt and fear and shame
and it's just ready to die, like because she felt
like this was always coming, whether out of her own
guilt or just out of like knowledge of consequences. Um.
And I thought that was the best scene, Like in
(49:04):
the build up that that was the last kill was
really a powerful scene. She also seemed smart in the
way that the men that v kills didn't, that she
understood what was happening. She is she's liked you, I
I know what's happening. I yes, good, Like I was
gonna say something along similar lines where I think it's
(49:26):
interesting that the only person who feels any level of
remorse that we at least get to see shown is
also the only person who's like, of course this is
going to come back to get me, and is also
a woman. And I think that that's uh, I think
that it's I'm not saying all women in government are good.
I mean, Margaret Thatcher right off the bat, not necessarily
(49:47):
my idol as a hashtag strong woman, but um, I
think it's interesting to see the empathy in this story
at the very least comes through mostly from the women
in power. Yeah. I know that many, Yeah, but then
it is interesting, like, I mean that you can you
can be this woman with empathy, this person with empathy,
(50:10):
and still get sucked into wanting to be in a
position of power, being close to power, and using it
against other people. So I think, I mean, I love
all of the complexities of that and Delian particular, and
especially because with the people that they are subjugating in
this camp. Like a lot of conversations are being had
(50:31):
right now about like the percentage of white women that
continue to vote for Trump and how white women benefit
more from white supremacy than they do from intersectional feminism,
and part of that is that, like you attach yourself,
if you have multiple privileged identities, you attach yourself to
the one they give you the most privilege, and in
this case, it's whiteness. And um, it's really interesting to
(50:53):
see that she is a straight white woman and they
are subjugating people of color and queer people at these camps.
So she's like, well, you know, yeah, I'm a woman
and I have empathy, but also like, we don't need
these undesirable Well, I do think I do think she
does justify to herself. Not that I think she again
not to defend her because she's like an indefensible member
(51:15):
of the fatalitarian party, but I think she thinks, uh,
it is bad that the government is locking up queer
people and people of color, but they are can't help it,
going to use this to my advantage and do some
medical tests that I'm curious about. I shout out to
another podcast, um that Dana turned me onto You're wrong about,
(51:38):
which you were also on There was a several parts
on the Tuskegee Syphilist study and that may end Yeah,
and that made me think of this, and I wonder
if that was a an inspiration for it because it
is all of these justifications, Melissa, that took place in America.
(51:59):
This is a I was gonna say nothing. Britain can't
a lot of ideas from from America that might have
been like life imitating art imitating life. I don't know,
Like but maybe maybe because I'm sure that people had
their own ship, that they probably Indian people or something,
because they did a whole bunch of shitty stuff the Indians. Yeah,
(52:21):
maybe the scientists wrote at the Tuskegee experiment like, oh,
these Brits had a great one is actually perfect example
of that. Can you explain that? Yeah? During the Boord War, um,
a lot of people were put into concentration camps, and
the Britain's decided that rather than contain any diseases that
(52:45):
were ravaging through those camps, they would just let the
diseases explode unchecked. Um. And it wouldn't lower the morale
of the soldiers because they wouldn't have to kill them
up close. They just put them in really really close quarters. Um.
And they just let everyone who got sick stay with
everyone else. And um, it's considered a very notable instance
(53:08):
of genocide. Like that's still genocide if you make or
allow people that you have control over to remain sick
and they die as a result. That's that's I mean,
that's also a lazy genocide. Like if you're going to
kill people, kill them. Not saying we should kill people,
but I'm just saying, like it's so rude to be like, yeah,
(53:30):
I'm just gonna let you die. You're not going to
at least to have the v for Vendetta thing and
come up with like an elaborate and fun, dramatic way
to kill someone. If we're going to kill someone, you
have to come up with it a whole theme. Yeah,
I already regret saying that, But what I mean is
(53:52):
it feels like there's something that these people are saying,
you're not even worth the effort of actually exterminating you,
and that is adding insult to injury in my eyes.
Like I'm not saying anyone should kill people, but I
do feel like it's almost more offensive to me that
it's like we're just gonna let them hang out together
and get sick off each other and we'll just see
(54:15):
what happened. I mean, that was what I think it's showed,
Like I'm not the only thing, but an element of
what was so awful about like the Tuskegee experiment, where
it was just this idea like, well they have symphilis anyway,
they probably aren't going to get treatmental let's whatever tell
them that they symphilist, but also in that it was bad.
(54:37):
It was lazy science too, and that like they didn't
take down they like lost track of some of the
people they were doing this horrible thing too, and like whoops,
we lost a few, and like just they did the science.
There was no science there. It was super lazy. It's
like most people who are evil are also lazy. It
(54:57):
just shows like a complete disregard of human and life
and like that white supremacy, that racism of just like
well whatever, well, because I think it's also yeah, exactly,
it's rooted in like the white supremacy and the thinking
of like biological superiority. So like it's like you're letting
these people they're getting sick on their own accord because
(55:18):
they're just not strong. Yeah. I think they're just not
strong enough to fight it off. So, and to go
back to the book, Delia Is, she comes in and
says that in her diary She says that like she starts,
she starts looking at people and like seeing people of
color and creeer people. She's like, oh, I started to
(55:39):
be like disgusted by them. Like mm, she's a bit yeah.
If she doesn't go in there, incredibly racist, She is
incredibly racist. Those systems are also designed to dehumanize the people,
and like totalitarian government and racism, says, systems work by
(56:02):
you know, indoctrinating the people. And so it's like it's
what's that that thing cognitive dissonance where it's like she
has to treat these people in a certain way, so
your brain is like, well, yeah, then they're disgusting. I
will say, um, I think it's interesting that what ends
up being their downfall is there sort of infantilization of
(56:24):
these patients and they're like so cute. How the gyron
room five has a little piles ye, little piles of
bomb stuff? Why why the little piles of like chemicals?
Did no one see that? I would have immediately been
like I would have been like, wait, no, there's a
plan here. And she even says, I think there's like
(56:46):
a little method to his madness. He's so sweet, he's
so fun and like treating him like a child or
a pet, where it's like, oh this is cute. Um,
it ends up being the thing that gets their ship
blown up, like they underestimated. I mean, I think they
have oppressed these people so much that they've forgotten that
these people are capable of hating them. That if you
(57:08):
have a system where people are not allowed to look
you with the eyes or talk to you, and then
there's one who can like grow flowers, yeah you've at
that point. You've forgotten that is a very dangerous human
being who probably hates you. Can I ask before we
close out, what do you make of E V and
V in their relationship and how they interact with each
other and how he interacts with her. I was going
(57:30):
to say, I really do like like the way that
Delia is like a nuanced female character. Alan Moore is
obviously a man. He wrote this in I think that
the eighties I don't love like the daddy issues stuff
with Oh yeah, he's obviously her dad. It's like, all right,
that's whatever. I mean. I think that she is more
(57:52):
of a conduit to the story than a character, and
so I find it a little uncomfortable when they like
I don't know, are like lazy when they're like, oh,
the sixteen year old has daddy issues because her dad,
the socialist was murdered by the fact normal dad normal
issues because of that, look, I think if we can
accept that the second missister Winter wanted a murder daddy,
(58:15):
we could also accept that they all love murder daddy's.
She wants a murder daddy, but she does not herself
want to murder. And I do think that that is
something that's interesting. Your insistent that she's like, I don't
want to be a part of this. I have no
desire to inflict pain on others, even though I've been
(58:38):
in a shitty situation because of this government, like they
almost killed her. And even with that, she was like,
you used me to kill somebody and you didn't tell me.
And it brings up a really interesting thing about consent.
She didn't consent to be in this government system, but
she also didn't consent to overthrow it in this way,
and I thought that was really interesting. That's really well said. Well,
I think on that note, and one more thing I
(58:59):
wanted to add. Another problem that Alan Moore had with
the film adaptation was that he didn't think that they
um went far enough in on the themes of white
supremacy and racism within totalitarian regimes, and I think, yeah,
that is a theme that was very important to him
and I think definitely comes out very quickly in a
(59:21):
book two called The Vicious Cabaret. So on that note, Well,
hearing you next week, or you'll hear us next week.
Jesus Christ, we can hear you, guys. You want to
tell you the baby. That's our show for the week.
(59:43):
Thank you so much for listening. I'm Danish Schwartz and
you can find me on Twitter at Danish Schwartz with
three z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at Jen
Ashley Right, Karama Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter
is at Melissa f t W and Tan Tran is
smart enough to have gotten off Twitter, but she is
on Insta at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher
(01:00:05):
Hesiodes were produced and edited by Mike John's Special thanks
to David Wasserman. Next week, we continue our November discussion
of V four Vendetta, the graphic Novel, with book two.
This Vicious Cabaret Popcorn Book Club is a production of
I heart radio,
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