November 30, 2020 • 55 mins
It still being November, just a little bit, we are still talking V For Vendetta. We have made it to Book Three, the final part of the graphic novel, and this week, we'll hash out our issues with the ending and discuss the allowances and issues with art-as-manifesto.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. It's still being November
just a little bit. We are still talking V four
Vendetta the graphic novel. We have made it to book three,
the final part of the graphic novel by Alan Moore
and illustrated by David Lloyd. Uh. The most dramatic, and
I will say, at some moments insane. Uh. And also
(00:26):
I also think we're it departs the most from the movie,
which will describe next week. Uh. So Book three, which
is called The Land of Do As You Please, Uh,
begins with the symphony of the blowing up Jordan's Tower,
which uh, I think that we'll get into the timeline
(00:49):
of the movie, which I think is a little cleaner.
But yeah, I really liked it. I really like the
timeline of the movie. But in this we also have
this on November. He blows up jordan Tower on November five,
and then November six, sort of the Land of Do
as You Please anarchy stuff sort of begins. So well,
(01:10):
it wasn't anarchy, it was chaos, chaos which he hopes
will become anarchy. But I thought it was really important
that they made that distinction because I think a lot
of people don't fully understand what anarchy is as a philosophy,
as opposed to just like colloquial usage of the word
anarchy anarchy were like, no one's in charge, it's anarchy,
(01:31):
and that's not the same thing. Yes, I don't know.
Just do you have a good understanding of what anarchy is,
because I'm not actually sure I know what it looks
like in practice. I don't think I know what it
looks like in practice, and I think I did not
have a very good understanding of it prior to reading
this book, because my idea of anarchy came from like
(01:52):
a meme that I saw on my Space, like two
thousand five. It was like, anarchy is bad because it's
people running around, and you know what happens when everybody
is running around scraped knee. I was like, Oh, that
sounds terrible. I just think about the purge like it's like, oh,
it's one day of anarchy, no rules, and this is
a bunch of murder, murder. Daddy's everywhere, murder, daddy's murder,
(02:15):
mommy's murder, murder uncle. I will say, by the by
the end of this book, things do not appear to
be getting better unless we all felt the Catharsis, and
I guess ellen Bore wanted us to feel by watching
a wealthy woman get raped by a group of homelessman
A very weird ending to a book, but okay, I
(02:40):
guess that is what ellen Moore wanted to end on.
I think Alan Moore is very bad on women, and
I want to talk about that a little later and
the full thing. But I also want to say one
thing that I think is um starkly different from both
the film and sort of how the character of the
has been portrayed. He's not like a great guy, He's
(03:00):
not like the hero. He's like he has no charm
about him whatsoever. Like for me in the book, he's
like stop what the monologues dude? And you note but
deeply weird in a good way. There's a lot of
guy in your m f A under coming from ving.
(03:21):
There's this point at which Evie was like, can you
just say what you mean? And I would like, thank you,
thank you for actually saying that, But like, I think
this is a really good point where I've been seeing
a lot of stuff like on TikTok because I'm super
cool and young, and on TikTok about how um media
literacy means that you don't necessarily just because somebody is
(03:43):
the main character, have to identify with them, And just
because somebody's the main character does not mean that they
are correct. And I think that V as a flawed person.
I think we can all agree that VA is a
deeply flawed person and he's not always correct, And this
monologueing at ev and not answering any questions directly is
(04:05):
just frankly infuriating. He also guess letter in the most
horrifying way I can imagine anybody being gas. I mean,
he plays games with her in ways that I think
the movie tries to make justifiable, and like in the
grand scheme of things, I would argue that like symbolically
they succeed. In the book, he comes off as much
(04:26):
less charming, much more insane, with a far less like
consistent ideology. And I think that Evie becomes spoiler like
becoming V at the end makes more sense if V
is like a deeply imperfect symbol and unlikable character, right.
And it also has to do with the idea that
anarchy has two sides, destruction and creation, and he was
(04:50):
destruction and she was creation, and next week always talked
about the movie. I have more things I don't want
to say about that. So the thing that I wanted
to focus on first about three is a character that's
not in the movie, Rosemary, who goes through a journey
a brief recap. Rosemary is in an abusive marriage with
(05:12):
that of the ear who listens into all the phone tapping.
He dies, and then she starts sleeping with Roger Dascombe,
who's the head of the visual Jordan Tower at the
mouth thank you. Uh. He also dies. People think she's
deeply cursed because the last two dudes she slept with died.
She is miserable at the Sad Cabaret. Uh. She is
(05:35):
forced to work as a a burlesque dancer, a dancer
non consensually in the sense that she does not want
to do and she's doing it only for money that
she desperately needs. Uh. And then she's driven to murdering
to going full taxi driver and murdering Adam Susan in
(05:57):
the street in what this chore and in a way
that then talking about taxi driving in a way that
v then seems to argue that he orchestrated the whole thing.
Because she is the last rose he cultivated. What did
you guys make of this subplot? I mean, she's what
(06:21):
a sad, sad character to like to have that be
her kind of whole arc of like, you know, being
subjugated to like the intense violent patriarchy of this particular society,
having her husband killed, but being sad about that loss,
(06:41):
to to like sit with that loss of this person
who was like deeply abusive to her as well, and
then to like go and just straight I mean just
straight up, point blank shoot that man. And the worst
the worst part for me is she doesn't even have
any like um agency in this because then they frame
(07:02):
it as the fact that she was all just part
of v scheme that he puppet mastered, this miserable woman,
and they also felt like not just no agency, but
like her character just really doesn't have any It doesn't
have any like full three dimensional like depth or I
don't know who she is outside of the horrible men
(07:24):
that she has been with, or like the horrible man
she kills at the end, like it like EVI, at
least you understand who she is and and she like you.
You kind of have this three sixty view of her,
but Rosemary just feels like this sad abuse lady who
then is up I guess upon and VI's whole chess game.
(07:48):
But I don't quite understand how he did that. I
don't get that either. Yeah, neither. It didn't make any sense,
like there were there were plot holes you could drive
a mac dress true, especially bensidering, like I get that then,
or that the chaos is a part of these plan,
Like that makes sense, But then you can't say, yes,
I plan for chaos, but then within this chaos, I
(08:10):
plan for this woman to specifically go up to the
leader of the country and shoot him point blank, you know,
and it's gonna work perfectly. They're gonna they're gonna let
her through. We're planning that creedy. We know that Creedy
sort of wants to sabotage Adam, and so he'll sabotage
him by putting him out in public when maybe a
(08:32):
lady could assassinate him. Like all of these pieces are
do not fit together. Either the plan is chaos or
the plan is a plan, Like you can't have it
both ways. Yes, it's very joker, we're jokers. Things were
all very thought through in Dark Knight dark Knight. Oh yeah,
you get to plant a lot of bombs in advance
of his cattle work. Yeah. Yeah, it was almost it's
(08:56):
too neat, like the level of chaos that he's trying
to invoke, and then for that to be Like as
she was walking through the crowd, I was like, even
that's a little too far fetched just to let one
lady walk through the crowd in this public moment. I'm like,
this is a little like her, Like, get her out
(09:16):
of the way, keep away from the man. They'll die
if they get too you know, I'm thinking of myself
if I was in that society, and I would fully
be like stay away from her, Like I would be
one of the people pushing that Laura about her as well.
She's she's car don't go and don't sleep with her.
And then there's the other wife of a top party
(09:37):
member who is deeply fascinating and Jennifer, I know, I'm
getting obsessed with Helen Hair. She's not a good person,
but I am extremely interested. Like she's bad but also
she's kind of bad. Yeah, she's bad in a fun way,
and we meet her really in in book three, Jennifer,
(09:57):
will you describe her for maybe people who have a
read it. So Helen Hair is just enthusiastically sexually dominating
every man who comes into her proximity. Um, I think
the first time we see her, the first time we
see her, she's selling at her husband like always. The
next time we see her, her husband just like kneeling
(10:18):
before her um and towlding her off as she everges
from the bath, and then he tries to go down
on him and she like kicks him away. So um,
it's it's very interesting that in this society every man
and she goes on to half an affair with what's
his name, Ali Ali Creedy creating the same as Ali. No.
(10:43):
Creedy is the head of the Finger who's the evil
policeman and Ali Ali and Creedy um have an alliance.
Creedy sort of wants that you said Ali Creedy, and
I was like, I'm so confused. Now, both Creedy and
Hair and want a need to use Allie's gang powers
and then to get the chaos power. So Helen Hair
(11:08):
wants to be a vita um and you know what,
it almost works out for her. She's having an affair
with Ali so she can use his brute force to
help elevate her husband to the position of High Chancellor,
and uh they end up killing each other in a
lover's quarrel. Oh for Helen, Uh so it doesn't happen,
(11:30):
and she is pretty mad at her husband for fucking
things out that way. I love the negotiation of price
that she has with Ali for his services, where she's like, well,
how much are you getting paid by Creedy right now?
And he was like, oh, like five hundred a week
when it's four hundred a week, And then she's like, wow,
I really would have thought he wouldn't pay you more
than four hundred hundred. Yeah, where where are you coming
(11:54):
at this? Cos I want to Lady Lady Macbeth and
her regional theater production. Definitely I got very lady m
vibes from her, because like, how did she get her
power in this society of just being she's the only one,
the only one. She's really interesting as a woman in
(12:15):
the society. She's obviously a terrible person, but it just
feels so unlikely that any woman would have this capacity
to dominate people, have you, especially the ear Yeah, And
and then of course he becomes the v uses like
the voyeuristic thing of the cameras to uh to cause
(12:37):
the chaos smart doubt smarter in his perfect like puppet
master way, which seems like a sort of like a
line from like a Bob Dylan or like a folk
song like Oh and the Voyeurs on the CCTV. It's
like that the classic idea that like I will be
like he uses their their tools of mass surveillance against
them and we're all pervert seeing it. Bob Dylan. Now, Um,
(13:03):
what I was gonna say was her level of power
as a woman in this society where women are just
like massively disempowered kind of reminds me of Serena Joy
in uh, The Handmaid Sale, but like the adaptation of
The Handmaid Sale, not the book The Handmaids Tale, because
I feel like Serena Joy has a lot more power
(13:23):
in the screen adaptation versus the book, but she's still
thing about Serena Joy. She at least has to have
the effect of being like a dutiful wife that she
feels honored to have this home. In this husband to follow,
Helven Hair so clearly doesn't think have that pretense at all,
Like the first time he's see her, she's being really
shitty to her husband, and Roseberry is like, she's kind
(13:45):
of a mean lady, and Roseberry's husband says, fucky, he
is awesome, and we all like her. Her level of
like sexual manipulation isn't even understated. It is so outrageously
in it's just crank. Yeah, it's crank to eleven. There's
no there's no pussy footing around about it. It's just
(14:09):
like I didn't even need to say that. I'm embarrassed. Sometimes. Also,
these comic book women are drawn in a way where
I'm like, David Lloyd, you had a day drawing those boobs,
didn't you? Oh my god, just massive watermelons, just enormous boobs.
(14:29):
Oh yeah, when she's like, look what you're missing. Had
a day drawing the like cabaret ladies with their asses,
like out to the stages. Eighties comic book artists loved
drawing at boobs and butts. It's their favorite thing. Dana
and I wrote for she Hulk, and so we spent
a lot of time with those she Whole comics, and
(14:50):
my god, they are so horny for she Hulk, Like
it's just like the way their boobs with like like
grip two sure in a way that was like, oh,
there gripped like under the boob and to the side
of the boob, and it's just like a blouse in
a way. I look like, that's not how That's not
how gravity works. The clothes are like painted painted on,
(15:13):
but only for part of it. And then there's like
a little bit of a blouse for you know, demure
for because if we don't do that, I was saying,
if we if we didn't see the line of the boob,
how would we know she has boobed adjacent to that too?
Just to touch on like how this particular you know
(15:35):
illustrator is uh portraying women every time e V screams,
I'm like, this is a grotesque portrayal of this woman's
face that like towards the end, I was like, this
is this is a different person I had that not
like she is I think like fifteen different women in
this book. At the beginning, she's like a little scared
(16:00):
Lolita esque drawing, and then she becomes a like a
like a when she's with that nice guy you know,
lives with him. She's like a like a seventies sitcom lady.
And then she turns and she goes and is tortured,
(16:21):
and she looks like a hundred and five years old
in this chapter, like I had it open to this page.
She looks like like a like sort of like Jennifer Gray.
She looks kind of like an X man. She looks
(16:42):
like she looks like a gargoyle off the side of
a building. That also is like the gutter that's brays water.
But then yes, this what's that? That's like? This is
all very great for any Chloris leech Man. I'm gonna
(17:04):
be back real quick. I'm just gonna write a manifesto,
be back into gym. I did want to make one
more point about Helen Hair before we move on to women. No,
(17:28):
this is essential. Have any of you read or seen
the film The Wife. Yeah, it's it's a different dynamic.
It's not like a sexually dominant dynamic. But the titch
I'm gonna spoil the Wife, but it's not a spoiler.
You know it the whole thing and it's just whatever
the titular wife. And the Wife is a wonderful writer,
(17:48):
but it's like in America, and she knows that her
books will never get the attention or acclaim that they'll
get under her name as they would under her husband's name.
So she like makes the decision out, like you're gonna
publish my books and we're going to have this partnership
and we're both in on it and this is our relationship. Um,
And that a little bit feels like a muted version
(18:10):
of the Helen Hair thing of like I can't be
the face of the who's in charge, so I am
going to use you, my husband, as the man puppet
for me to get my agenda across. I feel like
though I don't think her husband was as in on it,
and I don't think it was I feel like it
was like a Rebecca type deal where she got married
(18:31):
to him and she was like, great, we're not going
to have sex. I'm gonna like withhold sex from you,
and you're gonna be in charge of the ear and
I'm going to make sure or was he the ear
or the mouth? He he was the No, he was
the eye because he had the cameras right, Oh yeah,
he liked watch the propagateda the visual thing before you're
without the seeing. But so she's like, you're gonna be
(18:54):
in charge of the eye because I say so, and
that's how I'm going to get to the top like
it was hardcore lady m energy. You don't think that
it's a consensual b D s M relationship. I think
it's pretty into it. Um like makes it clear at
the very end that she's going to have sex with
them because she's going to be in a good mood.
(19:15):
I do. I don't think it's kind of likes it. Yeah,
I don't think it. I think he gets off on it.
I think he likes for sure. I know. I don't.
I don't get that sense, just because of that scene
where she's with Ali, she's like the cameras are off
because they had that sort of blackout of surveillance, and
(19:35):
then she's got her like eighties tich and she's and
she's like pointing him at the camera, which she thinks
isn't recording anything, and she's like, hey, look what you're missing.
And then later he flies into like furious rage and
that's why he ends up killing Oh, you're right. I
think he's curious because his wife's sleeping with another. Yeah,
(19:56):
that's what I that's what I gathered from that change.
I mean, I think it's both. I gathered that he's
sorry when she was in the top like he was
townling her off. He clearly sees her tits on a
regular basis, right, but I don't think he gets to
touch them on a regular I mean I was reading it,
I was like, what a cook? Indeed he quite literally,
(20:19):
yeah he really is. So that's where what did you
think of the ending? We got to go back to
part of the north. I guess, well, that's not good sleep.
But well it's sad that he said with his wife
(20:43):
and she's sleeping with another, but they're all bad. Yeah, yeah,
he'sac to say. I got a lot of ship for
saying that the cabaret seemed like a place I would
want to hang out. I think we should give Jen
just a little bit more ship for feeling bad. Both
equal and fascist sympathize. That's instant of his life. Seems okay,
(21:04):
But Colin Hair deeply sucks. Yes, yeah, um okay, so
with Helen Hair, I don't believe that rapists an appropriate
punishment for everyone and for anyone and for everyone for anyone. Um.
I really don't care for that end. And it also
(21:24):
was just such a weird tag, Like what a choice
to end on that, Like it's hard enough the choice
in it of itself is like, oh, she's going to
be raped, that's her punishment is rough. But it's like
and also, that's going to be the ending of V
for Vandetta. It's like we can all feel happy about
Helen Hair getting raped as opposed to like I was like, wait,
(21:47):
I turned the page, being like, that's not that can't
be the end of it though, that's the tone he
wants to end on, that the sexually manipulative woman is
going to be in a forced Island sexual submission. That
I think in my mind I had transposed the two
parts of the ending, and after I read it, I
(22:08):
immediately was like, oh, she had the bad thing happened.
But then we had Evie bringing that guy into the
shadow gallery and like she's going to be the next
vat that is the end of In my brain I
made that the end. I was like this, well that
would be better. That's that's a way better ending because
it's almost like a little optimistic and hope for the future.
(22:32):
And then it's like, wait, one more page, we forgot
to rape. Believe. Look, I also just don't believe that
Helen Hair is going to be kept down for long,
Like that woman seems remarkably indomitable. I am saying metaphorically right,
not no, she's She's obviously going to be raped terrifically,
(22:53):
and Alamor seems psyched about that, and it's a note
he wanted to end on. But look, I'm not saying
I want a sequel. That's just Helen Hair once again
taking over society in a ruthless way. But if it existed,
I would read it. You know what, Jennifer, there are
more than enough stories about like awful men rising through
(23:15):
the ranks of power and how and why they do it.
It would be interesting to see one about it Helen
Hair's rest to power like Wicked. Sure, yeah, let's actually,
you know what, I wanted to be a musical just
like Vida. I wanted Madnna to play Helen Higher. I
(23:39):
literally meant the book Wicked, though, I just want to
make that very clear. I also think that this sort
of goes into like why Alan Moore is bad at
women one because he sees them all as sexual objects
and like all of their problems are like sex based.
Like there's Helen Hair, who again is just like a
cardboard cutout of a dominatrix, then gets what she deserves
(24:01):
in his opinion, not in my opinion, um Evie with
her like weird daddy issues that he goes way too
much into. And then Rosemary, who again it's like her
relationships with men put her in this very like sexually
vulnerable position, and then she is not even a person
who makes decisions. She's just a pawn in the plan,
(24:22):
like every woman has some deeply weird sexual thing with her.
Oh she's cool, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, VAL's on that
chapter is like genuinely so sweet and nuanced, and yet
we don't get that with anyone else. It is. The
(24:44):
unfortunate thing is that it's the same issue of like
queer people always dying in literature. Yes, and Delia also
now has to be in a relationship with Finch, which
she didn't have to. Yeah that's oh yeah, that was
weird that they threw that in there. They're just like
and we're sleeping together, by the way, Well, I think
(25:06):
it's interesting that to your point, Dana, I think the
one thing that is I think an interesting challenge about
these kind of like authoritarian dystop dystopias is that they're
usually like patriarchies, and so these women are so reliant
on men for survival that like, even when Evie is
(25:29):
kicked out, she does have to like go find shelter
with this man. And I think that's why Handmaid's Tale
is so interesting. I mean I've not read it, I've
only seen the adaptation, but you know in a Woman's
Hands that this that that you can find like stories
that are separate from men. But I think that is
(25:52):
a challenge to do in like a patriarchal, authoritarian regime
that you're setting your story. And I guess I have
less of an issue with like e with Evie being
like reliant on men, and more of an issue that
like I don't know, the daddy issue stuff and the
issues I just was trying to see, Like, I think
(26:14):
it is a challenge, and then if you don't have
that perspective, you're going to just kind of fall back
on tropes and I And I also think in Alan
Moore's defense, I think so much of the for Vendetta
is meant to be like making a larger political point,
so like characters fall by the wayside because he's trying
to make his argument in a in a in a
(26:37):
way that comes across. Yeah, it's a manifesto as much
as it is a piece of art. I think the
tiny glimmer of like him potentially being more thoughtful about
it is that like the one little girl in the
book with the glasses is the one that like one
of the first outside characters that like takes up you know,
(26:59):
graffiti v um onto the street, which to me is
like you know, in Lesser Hands would have gone to
like a little boy, you know, like and I think
that is like an interesting an interesting choice in a
small detail that I loved and loved seeing we'll talk
about it later, but loved seeing in the movie as well,
(27:20):
like that tiny little moment. Yeah, some of the stuff
in the movie we were talking about it a little
off off Mike that we'll talk to in our movie episode,
but like little easter eggs that are directly from the
graphic novel that I think make it more satisfying. Mm hmmm.
I want to talk about faith. Oh yeah, Karama bring
(27:44):
us up to speed with faith. So faith, as we've
talked about, and I think chapter not Chapter two, but
Book two was the like supercomputer that tells Susan what
to do and he's like kind of creepy in love
with it, says I Love You near the end of
the book two, and then in book Flree it's heavily
implied that he sleeps with the computer. Right. It wasn't
(28:08):
just me right, they have a sexual it's an x
mack in a situation. Yeah, I mean I was like,
he found a drive and I just went to down
like that's the way I read it, m bloppy drive.
It was the eighties they use floppy does excuse you?
(28:29):
So yeah, Then you find out that v has access
to Fate in his in the basement of his shadow
gallery home that has like eight levels and an elevator. Apparently, um,
how is no again a block hole that you could
drive a mack truck through? But again, manifesto more than
(28:52):
not more than art, but as much as it is art.
So yeah, I thought it was interesting too. For me
was frustrating because if he had access to this supercomputer
and could then give messages to the government directly, Uh,
it was just sort of like, why don't you make
things better for some of the people while you're doing
(29:14):
your scheme. I really liked it because it's like, this
is the best episode of MTVS Catfish I've ever seen life,
just like the like just thinking about the spending all
that time flirting with uh, what's his name, Adam Susan
(29:36):
through the computer. It's so it's so fun to think
about just like him back at the in his eight
story elevator home, just like sending sex through the fate
computer to Susan. It's it's great. It's just very funny
because what this was written in like the eighties, right
(29:58):
that it is very like early Hackers, that kind of
style stuff where it's like you can't really like these days.
Of course v is has hacked into the supercomputer, like
that is the first thing a terror or not a terror,
you know what I mean? And what v would do
and uh, and it just it's very funny. It's like
(30:20):
it's so simple that like, oh, I'm just gonna like
log into the supercomputer and just and just talked and
that that's all I can do is just talk to him,
just like send messages on like a black and green screen. Um. Yeah, yeah,
it's like ten years before the movie Hackers. So he
(30:42):
was really looking far ahead, I think, and I mean
very he again a historical catfish, and also very funny
that with this power he couldn't like disarmed bombs or
like do anything tangible for his plan, forget like helping
people having Adam Susan fall in love with him the
(31:03):
via computer like doesn't really affect his plan other than
like he doesn't really need to do it again. It's
so he does these things for himself, and that one
feels that one feels like a personal pet project that
he like dislikes this high Chancellor so much that like
the best revenge is like, yeah, make him funk this computer. Yeah,
(31:28):
it does seem like it undermines uh sus insanity the
guys of other people, Helen hair points so that they
shouldn't have him to a parade to restore confidence because
he's insane. Yeah, um, I think that, though he does
use it for concrete things at times, like he uses
(31:49):
it to send all those the mail that male things
Oh yeah yeah, like poems in the mail. I'm just like,
I don't know if he knows what he's doing. Yeah,
I wouldn't if I got a poem in the mail,
I would think it was just a direct marketing stunt.
I wouldn't think it was a call to anarchy, yeah,
(32:10):
especially because it was not like anarchist poetry. It was
just like flowers. It's also weird you've seen a bird? Yes,
he has the foresight and like mental acumen to like
manipulate every act of Rosemary's life and and drive her
to homicide. And yet he doesn't really know how to
(32:35):
how to put that organization skill into any other aspect
of his plan. Yeah, the best thing you can do
is like a postcards campaign like the last election. That's
my point. He has an opportunity to do so much good,
and he sends people weird cryptic poetry in the mail
(32:55):
and then makes the dude sleep with a computer. Do
you remember, like six months ago when a bunch of
people just got seeds in the mail? Yes, what is
this like us in this year? Hundreds of people maybe thousands,
I'm not sure, but a lot of people got mysterious
(33:15):
seeds in the mail, and then the government was like,
please don't plant Oh no, I'm curious. Did they ever
find out who sent them and what were they didn't
want to test the seeds? Some people planted them before
they That feels this, It feels like how a little
shop of horrors gets started. Oh that sounds fun though,
(33:39):
like just a little fun, like a little carnivorous plan
I was gonna say, in terms of anarchy destruction, I
would argue that Tyler Dirtan does something much better by
destroying the records of credit card debt. Yeah. Fight Club,
that's a love fight Club so much I'm gonna make
I'm gonna make a point and I want both for
(34:00):
Vendetta and fight Club are rare cases of the movies
better than the book. Yes, I would say that I
read and seen Fighting book is Chuck Palinak. Chuck Palinak
was like the movie has a much better ending the
(34:21):
book movie poster in way too many dorm rooms that
here's the thing about fight Club, and then we can
move away from it. But um, fight Club is another
instance of you are not supposed to identify with the
main character. And it's also one of those instances of
people misreading the point, like it's an indictment of toxic masculinity,
and people are like, you don't want to fight and
(34:42):
I want to make soap and I want to have insomnia,
and like that's not the point. Their lives suck and
you shouldn't want to do what they do. It's the
sad cabaret, but with men and soap, can I also
say something deeply embarrassing about be for Vendetta. I didn't.
I didn't realize that the circle and the V was
an upside down anarchy symbol until like a few days ago.
(35:06):
I didn't realize until you just told me that me neither.
I was driving in l A and I saw an
anarchy symbol, and for a second, I was like, it's
a V for Vandetta thing. And then I was like, oh, Jennifer,
and I knew Jennifer, and I also knew that all
the chapters started with V. I'm just saying, you guys
have to pick up on these clues. Okay, Alan is
(35:27):
dropping them, and pick them up. We're all going to
print out all of these poems and we're going to
figure out the messages. So he's getting to us. So
if someone mailed you an anonymous poem in the mail,
you wouldn't the government something They did that a while
ago for some comics. UM, I don't know, some maker
(35:51):
of comic books, comic publishers. Um, they sent this weird
random letter in the mail to like various comic people's
houses and Dana as you know, as somebody who has
written comic books. Comic fans are insane, said death threats
(36:12):
on like a regular basis. Um. So we found out
that this was viral marketing, fortunately very quickly, because otherwise
we were going to call the police. Um. It was
not reassuring to know that a crazy person had air address. Yeah,
Jack Horsemen where they do the viral marketing for the
show that he's on, that has like it looks like
a ransom note like somebody else what idea was exactly
(36:35):
like that? It was like cutout letters, centuary indication. Yeah,
I'm going to be back in just a minute. I
got a bunch of poems in the mail. So a
(36:58):
brief full circle. Now back to be for Vendetta of
plans that don't really make any any sense. Finch. He
was the detective on the case of trying to find out.
I know, I'm really bringing this back. Finch, there's the
detective for the Scotland Yard. His plan, to understand be
to get inside the terrorist's mind is to go to
Larkhill and drop acid. Oh my god, that that scene
(37:23):
because first of all, yes, dropping acid at a concentration camp,
weird choice. I'm gonna go on the record and say
don't do don't don't go to concentration camps and drop acid.
I think we can stand for that as a podcast.
But the second thing is when he was tripping because
like they killed all the black people in the society,
he has this like hallucination that they're black people, and
(37:44):
he's like, Oh, I forgot how cool your skin? Like
a big yikes. It was a huge yikes. I will say,
of all the things that we've read thus far as
a book club, it took the longest to get to
the weird racism in this one. They really bury the
lead in this one because all this Costley was like boom,
(38:07):
page three saying some weird stuff about negro egg. But
this one was a slow burn and I knew that
it was racist as a society because they killed all
the black people. But like that was where I was like, oh,
I rooted for you before, and this was weird. You
didn't need to do that. He was he was. It's
almost it's like well meaning racism where he thought he
(38:27):
was really doing something. M yeah. Well, he also makes
it clear that he was on the side of killing
all those people, like he misses them now. But oh yeah,
fish sucks. And also Finch, I meant well meaning racism
on the part of Alan Moore, who was, yeah, that
that is what I read what you said as he
was like, yeah, I'm trying to make a statement that
(38:49):
he is like weird and racist and like that's not
you didn't know he tried. But then Finch, who else
who sucks? He's the one in the book who spoiler alert,
kills me and he's excited about it. What did you
guys make of that? Yeah, he was like too excited.
I was kind of honestly sad that Finch was the
(39:10):
one that took me down, like for for everything that
V stands for, and like, you know, as far as
adversaries goes, like adversaries go, um, Finch is sad and
weird and pathetic and like shouldn't have been the one
to take down this idea of V. In my opinion,
(39:32):
it's just like you're telling me, he drops acid and
kills the main character, Like come on, And he also
felt like I like the idea that he figures out
where he's where he is, like the station and stuff,
I think, but the fact that he also he not
only he like bests him also physically and mentally feels
(39:58):
strange and also I think like and then we can
talking about the all time of the movie next week.
But it's like he's always catching up, but he's always late, right,
And that's what it feels like, is the proper level
of like he's smarter than the rest of these idiots, spine,
but he's not as smart as B. And I like
(40:19):
the idea that the is like, uh a part, like
a part of his plan is his death and I
get jumping to the movie, but it feels like not
having v B a little bit more responsible for his
own death field. It also felt very weird to me
that the the arc that they're asking us to go
(40:42):
on with Finch is that he goes to lark Hill
and understand he drops his ascid to understand the and
then his next immediate move is to be like, ha
I killed him, my god, Like he didn't go through
that ascid at the concentration camp, did nothing, and then
like pasted a woman, push a woman back in getting raped,
and then it's like he's the final frame of the story,
(41:04):
which is very strange to me with his pipe with
this pipe, like like to go back to those last
two pages that are so terrible, Like I couldn't understand
Alan Moore's reasoning of putting like chaos in the last
two pages of like oh look this like best laid
(41:25):
plans or whatever, like it's still going to be bad,
but to a specify it as rape for this one character,
and also ended with like Finch walking down the road
being like, man, what a journey. I'm like he wasn't
He's not poor rot, Like it's not like what are
we doing here? He's the grizzled hero. He dropped as
(41:48):
ad a concentration camp and murdered me and now on
he walks, you know, Kelen hair backing being I think
you're right to of like asking v to be more
responsible or more careful, like he literally has, you know,
taken um responsibility for the very precise killing of Adam
(42:13):
Susan in the parade with Helen higher like why would
he let Finch just like pop him one in the subway?
Like it doesn't make any sense to me. I think
he wants to die. I think he's ready. I think
he knows that it's time that the mantle gets passed
on to a new person, and that person is going
to be efy do it in a cooler way totally agreed.
(42:34):
You organize all this, You're he's so theatrical. He loves theatrics.
You're gonna die just by like a crazy guy with
by the clock shadows, shooting biking burial, like he's going
to be sent off. Even monologue, he could go with
a cooler death. I mean, he got a little bit.
He said the thing about the ideas or bulletproof. This
is my thesis and the whole riddle of like take
(42:57):
off my mask but don't see my face, blah blah blah.
But how am I to remember at that point, she's
sixteen years old. She's like, how do I see your
face if I take off that I'm not supposed to,
but I am okay uh. I read that later. I
(43:18):
read that late at night, and the panels were like
she we think that she's taking off the mask. Each
time I was like, that was, oh wait a minute.
Also like today, I did not like that the panels.
I know it's not real, but that the panels showed
a face at all, Like I thought that was a
weird choice to me because I thought the whole point
(43:41):
is you never see his face, and it's like, so
now we're seeing the imagined face that Ev. It just
felt like it takes away a little bit of me.
It's like seeing a dame named Rebecca. You think, then
you don't bringing it back the circle. Yeah, So I
(44:03):
will say I was unsatisfied by the ending. It just
didn't hit emotionally for me. When I think that the
world is so theatrical and I wanted a big emotional hit.
It felt very Yeah, it felt very lackluster. At the
end book three, I found myself very angry and very
confused for a lot of time, especially because like there's
(44:27):
I don't think we should see everything, like I don't
think it needs to be like every single thing they
do needs to be in panels. But also like there's
this point where V quotes some dude Alistair somebody I
can't remember the yeah, yea, thank you um, But like
remember before Eve doesn't know much about things, and then
(44:49):
she's like, don't you quote Alistair Crowley. I mean, I'm like, wait,
when did she become like she has a lot of
books educational but we don't see that. But it felt
and then they mentioned it on the next page. I
was like, Okay, I'm caught up, but it felt very weird.
At first, because that wasn't who this character was. Yeah,
(45:10):
but they did show her, okay, so there was a
specific like they did show her working out and like
getting ripped because at the end I was like, how
did she pick up the and put him onto this
like Viking burial? And I was like, because she worked out,
so Karma, I see, I see your point. I see
your point. We should have seen some reading from her, yeah,
(45:35):
just a little montage of her like reading, I like
doing co ups, you know, yeah, I think, yeah, that's good.
The panel that was helen hair getting riped could have
been EVI reading a book. Just push everything back one panel. Sure.
I tried to think about what it ended would be
(45:56):
like that I would have liked more, and I had
a very difficult time coming up without nothing though. I
think the idea that e VI becomes fee is really nice.
I don't know if I wanted Helen to meet up
with Finch and him to be like, that's a great plan, Helen,
You're right, let's take over the world. Were the villains
now to protect the world from devastation? Yeah, I do
(46:23):
it is I think satisfying that she puts on the mask.
That felt inevitable, but it didn't have like comics can
have a big emotional impact, you know, like a full
splash page or like, I don't know something about it
didn't feel like it's almost like I think some artists
and writers think that, like, sometimes things are cliche so
(46:45):
they don't do them, But sometimes things are cliche because
they work, and it's like, well, don't take those tools
out of your toolbox because they work. So I kind
of think that maybe Allan Moore was consciously like, I'm
not going to give you like the big, clean, thartic
third act reveal that you want when it's like, well, yeah,
maybe that's like a classic structure, but it's classic because
(47:06):
it it's sort of proven and audience is like that right,
and you're gonna screw something into a wall, you're probably
going to need to use like a Phillips had screwdriver. Sorry,
that's just what you want to get that job done,
and if you want to satisfying ending, there are some
tools that you will need to rely on. Okay, very
butch metaphor love it, love it. But maybe maybe as
(47:30):
as you've said before that this is like manifesto art,
like maybe he wanted it to be unsatisfying, because you know,
revolution anarchy and trying to overthrow some sort of fascist
government isn't like a one and done catharsis ending, And
it's like a kind of how we feel which is
(47:50):
this like in overthrowing the government isn't like a c
W what are you talking about? But I mean, you know,
maybe that's what he was trying to go for. It's
like all of this chaos has happened, and like some
people will move forward and walk off into the distance
like Finch and not turn back. But like, no one's
going to get a satisfying ending from this. But I
(48:13):
guess my I totally agree with you that I think
that that's what Alan Moore is going with. But I
think that some things are so neat, like like V
being like uh my last rose that I cultivated with Rosemary,
and then some things are so messy where I'm like
one or the other. I think that the idea that
V has been formulating this plan for twenty years and
(48:36):
it is like a perfectly orchestrated plan like that is
very satisfying to me, and so I wish that like
carried through to the structure of the end of the book,
and I think to me, that didn't like I agree.
I think that's what Allan Moore was trying to do
with the ending, And I feel like it didn't land
for me because they personalized it with this character of
(48:58):
Helen Higher, which feels like still these plans are working
that because she's a part of the system and Finch,
you know, bested v and he's walking off. Like if
it were I think it would be more anonymous, like
seeing the chaos and seeing the you know, people being
killed or raped or assaulted like as and it's like,
(49:21):
oh and the system and it like continues to be
good and bad or happening at the same time. But
when you personalize it with this woman that like she's
getting hers you know, it just feels like, oh and
you know, you don't see that much good happening. Would
Would it be nicer if some people were growing a
community guarding Yes, I love that because like that's the
(49:45):
thing you can do with your neighbors. It doesn't require
organized leadership. Um, like you could help your neighbors and
that would be nice and that would show us that like,
while we may not be returning to the fascist system
of government they had before, there can still be communal
projects that people working together. And I think you should
write a Purge that's just about community. I said that,
(50:07):
I said, if you were the Purge, thought like, that's
the dystopia. I would want to live in no rules?
What are you going to plan one day? One day
you're doing crazy good like it's a great day, canceled
student loans? Yeah, what would instead of the Purge? What
would you call it? Then? Well, I mean it's still
(50:28):
the Purge, like you could rules just right? But are
you copyrighting it and making it does right? W No? No,
I no, I'm giving it to the people. I'm giving
it to the people who've got to grow a command
And now I imagine with w r U L Yes,
(50:50):
no rules, no rule right, just right. It's also weird.
But if this is Alan Moore's manifesto, he doesn't leave.
He doesn't make the end feel like outful or exciting,
like you want to join. Uh these I'm like this
looks bad. It seems scary and bad, and it seems
sort of like the people who have the avatars on
(51:13):
bad internet forums. I'm like, oh, I start to get
it now. Maybe it's so scary and bad to you
all because you're stuck in the happiness prison. Happiness is
a per prison get out. But he did nothing but
(51:34):
treat himself like a nineteenth century super wealthy aristocrat. He's
surrounded by books and priceless oil paintings. Um, he's always
eating like fine foods. He's lording his superior already for
women who live in his house, um, and then being
contemptuous of him. I'm sorry. V to me does not
(51:57):
read as like a forward thinking individual, and he reads
as the most entitled rich man knife And he's not
a proletariat. He's not like out working in the fields,
like the means of production. He is, yeah, listening to
his jukebox and again reading Shakespeare. He's not going to
share any of those paintings with people. Those are kings.
(52:18):
And now there she got jan Herod his house. This
supports my belief that V is gay and that he's
not like a political dissent person that they threw in
the camps. He's not. I don't think he's a person
of color, like just in terms of the people that
they were trying to exterminate in that camp and that
they were experimenting on the Only thing is like assists
(52:41):
like white gay dude. That makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think so. I think that's also a good transition
for next week because I think the V that we
see in the movie is I think he reads very
gay to me, and I think he's very theatrical, and
I like the way that character comes across from comes across.
(53:04):
I mean, I get spoiler alert that they try to
make him fall in love with e V. I don't
buy it. I don't buy it. Are there any final
notes on on the book that you guys want to
make before we close out? I think I'll say I
think we've been like ripping apart the third book, but rightfully,
(53:26):
but I really loved reading this book, and I think,
you know, it is so compelling and is someone This
is my first graphic novel I've ever read, and I
think it is It brings you into a world so
quickly and that feels so razor sharp and obviously much
(53:47):
to Allen Moore's uh chagrin, extremely universal and extremely timeless
and could be about any any current uh cool closing
and fascist society that I M really enjoyed it really well, said, yeah,
very well said. I don't know if I can top that.
(54:09):
So I'm gonna say something stupid, but I think that
more books should have weird dudes that want to sleep
with a computer that's in love with more ink. Yeah,
you know, women sleeping with tech. I'm just gonna say
that out yeah, yeah, okay, making an opportunity. Yeah, I
(54:31):
feel like it would work better that way. Okay, cool,
I guess we'll write that. Well. On that note, I
think they have to end this year. Thanks for listening.
We'll catch you next week when we talk about Before
Vendetta the film. That's our show for the week. Thank
(54:51):
you so much for listening. I'm Danis Schwartz and you
can find me on Twitter at Danish Schwartz with three
z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at jen Ashle
right Karama, Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter is
at Melissa f tw and Tan Tran is smart enough
to have gotten off Twitter, but she is on Insta
at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher Hessiotes and
(55:14):
were produced and edited by Mike Johns. Special thanks to
David Wasserman. Popcorn Book Club is a production of I
Heart Radio
Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. It's still being November
just a little bit. We are still talking V four
Vendetta the graphic novel. We have made it to book three,
the final part of the graphic novel by Alan Moore
and illustrated by David Lloyd. Uh. The most dramatic, and
I will say, at some moments insane. Uh. And also
(00:26):
I also think we're it departs the most from the movie,
which will describe next week. Uh. So Book three, which
is called The Land of Do As You Please, Uh,
begins with the symphony of the blowing up Jordan's Tower,
which uh, I think that we'll get into the timeline
(00:49):
of the movie, which I think is a little cleaner.
But yeah, I really liked it. I really like the
timeline of the movie. But in this we also have
this on November. He blows up jordan Tower on November five,
and then November six, sort of the Land of Do
as You Please anarchy stuff sort of begins. So well,
(01:10):
it wasn't anarchy, it was chaos, chaos which he hopes
will become anarchy. But I thought it was really important
that they made that distinction because I think a lot
of people don't fully understand what anarchy is as a philosophy,
as opposed to just like colloquial usage of the word
anarchy anarchy were like, no one's in charge, it's anarchy,
(01:31):
and that's not the same thing. Yes, I don't know.
Just do you have a good understanding of what anarchy is,
because I'm not actually sure I know what it looks
like in practice. I don't think I know what it
looks like in practice, and I think I did not
have a very good understanding of it prior to reading
this book, because my idea of anarchy came from like
(01:52):
a meme that I saw on my Space, like two
thousand five. It was like, anarchy is bad because it's
people running around, and you know what happens when everybody
is running around scraped knee. I was like, Oh, that
sounds terrible. I just think about the purge like it's like, oh,
it's one day of anarchy, no rules, and this is
a bunch of murder, murder. Daddy's everywhere, murder, daddy's murder,
(02:15):
mommy's murder, murder uncle. I will say, by the by
the end of this book, things do not appear to
be getting better unless we all felt the Catharsis, and
I guess ellen Bore wanted us to feel by watching
a wealthy woman get raped by a group of homelessman
A very weird ending to a book, but okay, I
(02:40):
guess that is what ellen Moore wanted to end on.
I think Alan Moore is very bad on women, and
I want to talk about that a little later and
the full thing. But I also want to say one
thing that I think is um starkly different from both
the film and sort of how the character of the
has been portrayed. He's not like a great guy, He's
(03:00):
not like the hero. He's like he has no charm
about him whatsoever. Like for me in the book, he's
like stop what the monologues dude? And you note but
deeply weird in a good way. There's a lot of
guy in your m f A under coming from ving.
(03:21):
There's this point at which Evie was like, can you
just say what you mean? And I would like, thank you,
thank you for actually saying that, But like, I think
this is a really good point where I've been seeing
a lot of stuff like on TikTok because I'm super
cool and young, and on TikTok about how um media
literacy means that you don't necessarily just because somebody is
(03:43):
the main character, have to identify with them, And just
because somebody's the main character does not mean that they
are correct. And I think that V as a flawed person.
I think we can all agree that VA is a
deeply flawed person and he's not always correct, And this
monologueing at ev and not answering any questions directly is
(04:05):
just frankly infuriating. He also guess letter in the most
horrifying way I can imagine anybody being gas. I mean,
he plays games with her in ways that I think
the movie tries to make justifiable, and like in the
grand scheme of things, I would argue that like symbolically
they succeed. In the book, he comes off as much
(04:26):
less charming, much more insane, with a far less like
consistent ideology. And I think that Evie becomes spoiler like
becoming V at the end makes more sense if V
is like a deeply imperfect symbol and unlikable character, right.
And it also has to do with the idea that
anarchy has two sides, destruction and creation, and he was
(04:50):
destruction and she was creation, and next week always talked
about the movie. I have more things I don't want
to say about that. So the thing that I wanted
to focus on first about three is a character that's
not in the movie, Rosemary, who goes through a journey
a brief recap. Rosemary is in an abusive marriage with
(05:12):
that of the ear who listens into all the phone tapping.
He dies, and then she starts sleeping with Roger Dascombe,
who's the head of the visual Jordan Tower at the
mouth thank you. Uh. He also dies. People think she's
deeply cursed because the last two dudes she slept with died.
She is miserable at the Sad Cabaret. Uh. She is
(05:35):
forced to work as a a burlesque dancer, a dancer
non consensually in the sense that she does not want
to do and she's doing it only for money that
she desperately needs. Uh. And then she's driven to murdering
to going full taxi driver and murdering Adam Susan in
(05:57):
the street in what this chore and in a way
that then talking about taxi driving in a way that
v then seems to argue that he orchestrated the whole thing.
Because she is the last rose he cultivated. What did
you guys make of this subplot? I mean, she's what
(06:21):
a sad, sad character to like to have that be
her kind of whole arc of like, you know, being
subjugated to like the intense violent patriarchy of this particular society,
having her husband killed, but being sad about that loss,
(06:41):
to to like sit with that loss of this person
who was like deeply abusive to her as well, and
then to like go and just straight I mean just
straight up, point blank shoot that man. And the worst
the worst part for me is she doesn't even have
any like um agency in this because then they frame
(07:02):
it as the fact that she was all just part
of v scheme that he puppet mastered, this miserable woman,
and they also felt like not just no agency, but
like her character just really doesn't have any It doesn't
have any like full three dimensional like depth or I
don't know who she is outside of the horrible men
(07:24):
that she has been with, or like the horrible man
she kills at the end, like it like EVI, at
least you understand who she is and and she like you.
You kind of have this three sixty view of her,
but Rosemary just feels like this sad abuse lady who
then is up I guess upon and VI's whole chess game.
(07:48):
But I don't quite understand how he did that. I
don't get that either. Yeah, neither. It didn't make any sense,
like there were there were plot holes you could drive
a mac dress true, especially bensidering, like I get that then,
or that the chaos is a part of these plan,
Like that makes sense, But then you can't say, yes,
I plan for chaos, but then within this chaos, I
(08:10):
plan for this woman to specifically go up to the
leader of the country and shoot him point blank, you know,
and it's gonna work perfectly. They're gonna they're gonna let
her through. We're planning that creedy. We know that Creedy
sort of wants to sabotage Adam, and so he'll sabotage
him by putting him out in public when maybe a
(08:32):
lady could assassinate him. Like all of these pieces are
do not fit together. Either the plan is chaos or
the plan is a plan, Like you can't have it
both ways. Yes, it's very joker, we're jokers. Things were
all very thought through in Dark Knight dark Knight. Oh yeah,
you get to plant a lot of bombs in advance
of his cattle work. Yeah. Yeah, it was almost it's
(08:56):
too neat, like the level of chaos that he's trying
to invoke, and then for that to be Like as
she was walking through the crowd, I was like, even
that's a little too far fetched just to let one
lady walk through the crowd in this public moment. I'm like,
this is a little like her, Like, get her out
(09:16):
of the way, keep away from the man. They'll die
if they get too you know, I'm thinking of myself
if I was in that society, and I would fully
be like stay away from her, Like I would be
one of the people pushing that Laura about her as well.
She's she's car don't go and don't sleep with her.
And then there's the other wife of a top party
(09:37):
member who is deeply fascinating and Jennifer, I know, I'm
getting obsessed with Helen Hair. She's not a good person,
but I am extremely interested. Like she's bad but also
she's kind of bad. Yeah, she's bad in a fun way,
and we meet her really in in book three, Jennifer,
(09:57):
will you describe her for maybe people who have a
read it. So Helen Hair is just enthusiastically sexually dominating
every man who comes into her proximity. Um, I think
the first time we see her, the first time we
see her, she's selling at her husband like always. The
next time we see her, her husband just like kneeling
(10:18):
before her um and towlding her off as she everges
from the bath, and then he tries to go down
on him and she like kicks him away. So um,
it's it's very interesting that in this society every man
and she goes on to half an affair with what's
his name, Ali Ali Creedy creating the same as Ali. No.
(10:43):
Creedy is the head of the Finger who's the evil
policeman and Ali Ali and Creedy um have an alliance.
Creedy sort of wants that you said Ali Creedy, and
I was like, I'm so confused. Now, both Creedy and
Hair and want a need to use Allie's gang powers
and then to get the chaos power. So Helen Hair
(11:08):
wants to be a vita um and you know what,
it almost works out for her. She's having an affair
with Ali so she can use his brute force to
help elevate her husband to the position of High Chancellor,
and uh they end up killing each other in a
lover's quarrel. Oh for Helen, Uh so it doesn't happen,
(11:30):
and she is pretty mad at her husband for fucking
things out that way. I love the negotiation of price
that she has with Ali for his services, where she's like, well,
how much are you getting paid by Creedy right now?
And he was like, oh, like five hundred a week
when it's four hundred a week, And then she's like, wow,
I really would have thought he wouldn't pay you more
than four hundred hundred. Yeah, where where are you coming
(11:54):
at this? Cos I want to Lady Lady Macbeth and
her regional theater production. Definitely I got very lady m
vibes from her, because like, how did she get her
power in this society of just being she's the only one,
the only one. She's really interesting as a woman in
(12:15):
the society. She's obviously a terrible person, but it just
feels so unlikely that any woman would have this capacity
to dominate people, have you, especially the ear Yeah, And
and then of course he becomes the v uses like
the voyeuristic thing of the cameras to uh to cause
(12:37):
the chaos smart doubt smarter in his perfect like puppet
master way, which seems like a sort of like a
line from like a Bob Dylan or like a folk
song like Oh and the Voyeurs on the CCTV. It's
like that the classic idea that like I will be
like he uses their their tools of mass surveillance against
them and we're all pervert seeing it. Bob Dylan. Now, Um,
(13:03):
what I was gonna say was her level of power
as a woman in this society where women are just
like massively disempowered kind of reminds me of Serena Joy
in uh, The Handmaid Sale, but like the adaptation of
The Handmaid Sale, not the book The Handmaids Tale, because
I feel like Serena Joy has a lot more power
(13:23):
in the screen adaptation versus the book, but she's still
thing about Serena Joy. She at least has to have
the effect of being like a dutiful wife that she
feels honored to have this home. In this husband to follow,
Helven Hair so clearly doesn't think have that pretense at all,
Like the first time he's see her, she's being really
shitty to her husband, and Roseberry is like, she's kind
(13:45):
of a mean lady, and Roseberry's husband says, fucky, he
is awesome, and we all like her. Her level of
like sexual manipulation isn't even understated. It is so outrageously
in it's just crank. Yeah, it's crank to eleven. There's
no there's no pussy footing around about it. It's just
(14:09):
like I didn't even need to say that. I'm embarrassed. Sometimes. Also,
these comic book women are drawn in a way where
I'm like, David Lloyd, you had a day drawing those boobs,
didn't you? Oh my god, just massive watermelons, just enormous boobs.
(14:29):
Oh yeah, when she's like, look what you're missing. Had
a day drawing the like cabaret ladies with their asses,
like out to the stages. Eighties comic book artists loved
drawing at boobs and butts. It's their favorite thing. Dana
and I wrote for she Hulk, and so we spent
a lot of time with those she Whole comics, and
(14:50):
my god, they are so horny for she Hulk, Like
it's just like the way their boobs with like like
grip two sure in a way that was like, oh,
there gripped like under the boob and to the side
of the boob, and it's just like a blouse in
a way. I look like, that's not how That's not
how gravity works. The clothes are like painted painted on,
(15:13):
but only for part of it. And then there's like
a little bit of a blouse for you know, demure
for because if we don't do that, I was saying,
if we if we didn't see the line of the boob,
how would we know she has boobed adjacent to that too?
Just to touch on like how this particular you know
(15:35):
illustrator is uh portraying women every time e V screams,
I'm like, this is a grotesque portrayal of this woman's
face that like towards the end, I was like, this
is this is a different person I had that not
like she is I think like fifteen different women in
this book. At the beginning, she's like a little scared
(16:00):
Lolita esque drawing, and then she becomes a like a
like a when she's with that nice guy you know,
lives with him. She's like a like a seventies sitcom lady.
And then she turns and she goes and is tortured,
(16:21):
and she looks like a hundred and five years old
in this chapter, like I had it open to this page.
She looks like like a like sort of like Jennifer Gray.
She looks kind of like an X man. She looks
(16:42):
like she looks like a gargoyle off the side of
a building. That also is like the gutter that's brays water.
But then yes, this what's that? That's like? This is
all very great for any Chloris leech Man. I'm gonna
(17:04):
be back real quick. I'm just gonna write a manifesto,
be back into gym. I did want to make one
more point about Helen Hair before we move on to women. No,
(17:28):
this is essential. Have any of you read or seen
the film The Wife. Yeah, it's it's a different dynamic.
It's not like a sexually dominant dynamic. But the titch
I'm gonna spoil the Wife, but it's not a spoiler.
You know it the whole thing and it's just whatever
the titular wife. And the Wife is a wonderful writer,
(17:48):
but it's like in America, and she knows that her
books will never get the attention or acclaim that they'll
get under her name as they would under her husband's name.
So she like makes the decision out, like you're gonna
publish my books and we're going to have this partnership
and we're both in on it and this is our relationship. Um,
And that a little bit feels like a muted version
(18:10):
of the Helen Hair thing of like I can't be
the face of the who's in charge, so I am
going to use you, my husband, as the man puppet
for me to get my agenda across. I feel like
though I don't think her husband was as in on it,
and I don't think it was I feel like it
was like a Rebecca type deal where she got married
(18:31):
to him and she was like, great, we're not going
to have sex. I'm gonna like withhold sex from you,
and you're gonna be in charge of the ear and
I'm going to make sure or was he the ear
or the mouth? He he was the No, he was
the eye because he had the cameras right, Oh yeah,
he liked watch the propagateda the visual thing before you're
without the seeing. But so she's like, you're gonna be
(18:54):
in charge of the eye because I say so, and
that's how I'm going to get to the top like
it was hardcore lady m energy. You don't think that
it's a consensual b D s M relationship. I think
it's pretty into it. Um like makes it clear at
the very end that she's going to have sex with
them because she's going to be in a good mood.
(19:15):
I do. I don't think it's kind of likes it. Yeah,
I don't think it. I think he gets off on it.
I think he likes for sure. I know. I don't.
I don't get that sense, just because of that scene
where she's with Ali, she's like the cameras are off
because they had that sort of blackout of surveillance, and
(19:35):
then she's got her like eighties tich and she's and
she's like pointing him at the camera, which she thinks
isn't recording anything, and she's like, hey, look what you're missing.
And then later he flies into like furious rage and
that's why he ends up killing Oh, you're right. I
think he's curious because his wife's sleeping with another. Yeah,
(19:56):
that's what I that's what I gathered from that change.
I mean, I think it's both. I gathered that he's
sorry when she was in the top like he was
townling her off. He clearly sees her tits on a
regular basis, right, but I don't think he gets to
touch them on a regular I mean I was reading it,
I was like, what a cook? Indeed he quite literally,
(20:19):
yeah he really is. So that's where what did you
think of the ending? We got to go back to
part of the north. I guess, well, that's not good sleep.
But well it's sad that he said with his wife
(20:43):
and she's sleeping with another, but they're all bad. Yeah, yeah,
he'sac to say. I got a lot of ship for
saying that the cabaret seemed like a place I would
want to hang out. I think we should give Jen
just a little bit more ship for feeling bad. Both
equal and fascist sympathize. That's instant of his life. Seems okay,
(21:04):
But Colin Hair deeply sucks. Yes, yeah, um okay, so
with Helen Hair, I don't believe that rapists an appropriate
punishment for everyone and for anyone and for everyone for anyone. Um.
I really don't care for that end. And it also
(21:24):
was just such a weird tag, Like what a choice
to end on that, Like it's hard enough the choice
in it of itself is like, oh, she's going to
be raped, that's her punishment is rough. But it's like
and also, that's going to be the ending of V
for Vandetta. It's like we can all feel happy about
Helen Hair getting raped as opposed to like I was like, wait,
(21:47):
I turned the page, being like, that's not that can't
be the end of it though, that's the tone he
wants to end on, that the sexually manipulative woman is
going to be in a forced Island sexual submission. That
I think in my mind I had transposed the two
parts of the ending, and after I read it, I
(22:08):
immediately was like, oh, she had the bad thing happened.
But then we had Evie bringing that guy into the
shadow gallery and like she's going to be the next
vat that is the end of In my brain I
made that the end. I was like this, well that
would be better. That's that's a way better ending because
it's almost like a little optimistic and hope for the future.
(22:32):
And then it's like, wait, one more page, we forgot
to rape. Believe. Look, I also just don't believe that
Helen Hair is going to be kept down for long,
Like that woman seems remarkably indomitable. I am saying metaphorically right,
not no, she's She's obviously going to be raped terrifically,
(22:53):
and Alamor seems psyched about that, and it's a note
he wanted to end on. But look, I'm not saying
I want a sequel. That's just Helen Hair once again
taking over society in a ruthless way. But if it existed,
I would read it. You know what, Jennifer, there are
more than enough stories about like awful men rising through
(23:15):
the ranks of power and how and why they do it.
It would be interesting to see one about it Helen
Hair's rest to power like Wicked. Sure, yeah, let's actually,
you know what, I wanted to be a musical just
like Vida. I wanted Madnna to play Helen Higher. I
(23:39):
literally meant the book Wicked, though, I just want to
make that very clear. I also think that this sort
of goes into like why Alan Moore is bad at
women one because he sees them all as sexual objects
and like all of their problems are like sex based.
Like there's Helen Hair, who again is just like a
cardboard cutout of a dominatrix, then gets what she deserves
(24:01):
in his opinion, not in my opinion, um Evie with
her like weird daddy issues that he goes way too
much into. And then Rosemary, who again it's like her
relationships with men put her in this very like sexually
vulnerable position, and then she is not even a person
who makes decisions. She's just a pawn in the plan,
(24:22):
like every woman has some deeply weird sexual thing with her.
Oh she's cool, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, VAL's on that
chapter is like genuinely so sweet and nuanced, and yet
we don't get that with anyone else. It is. The
(24:44):
unfortunate thing is that it's the same issue of like
queer people always dying in literature. Yes, and Delia also
now has to be in a relationship with Finch, which
she didn't have to. Yeah that's oh yeah, that was
weird that they threw that in there. They're just like
and we're sleeping together, by the way, Well, I think
(25:06):
it's interesting that to your point, Dana, I think the
one thing that is I think an interesting challenge about
these kind of like authoritarian dystop dystopias is that they're
usually like patriarchies, and so these women are so reliant
on men for survival that like, even when Evie is
(25:29):
kicked out, she does have to like go find shelter
with this man. And I think that's why Handmaid's Tale
is so interesting. I mean I've not read it, I've
only seen the adaptation, but you know in a Woman's
Hands that this that that you can find like stories
that are separate from men. But I think that is
(25:52):
a challenge to do in like a patriarchal, authoritarian regime
that you're setting your story. And I guess I have
less of an issue with like e with Evie being
like reliant on men, and more of an issue that
like I don't know, the daddy issue stuff and the
issues I just was trying to see, Like, I think
(26:14):
it is a challenge, and then if you don't have
that perspective, you're going to just kind of fall back
on tropes and I And I also think in Alan
Moore's defense, I think so much of the for Vendetta
is meant to be like making a larger political point,
so like characters fall by the wayside because he's trying
to make his argument in a in a in a
(26:37):
way that comes across. Yeah, it's a manifesto as much
as it is a piece of art. I think the
tiny glimmer of like him potentially being more thoughtful about
it is that like the one little girl in the
book with the glasses is the one that like one
of the first outside characters that like takes up you know,
(26:59):
graffiti v um onto the street, which to me is
like you know, in Lesser Hands would have gone to
like a little boy, you know, like and I think
that is like an interesting an interesting choice in a
small detail that I loved and loved seeing we'll talk
about it later, but loved seeing in the movie as well,
(27:20):
like that tiny little moment. Yeah, some of the stuff
in the movie we were talking about it a little
off off Mike that we'll talk to in our movie episode,
but like little easter eggs that are directly from the
graphic novel that I think make it more satisfying. Mm hmmm.
I want to talk about faith. Oh yeah, Karama bring
(27:44):
us up to speed with faith. So faith, as we've
talked about, and I think chapter not Chapter two, but
Book two was the like supercomputer that tells Susan what
to do and he's like kind of creepy in love
with it, says I Love You near the end of
the book two, and then in book Flree it's heavily
implied that he sleeps with the computer. Right. It wasn't
(28:08):
just me right, they have a sexual it's an x
mack in a situation. Yeah, I mean I was like,
he found a drive and I just went to down
like that's the way I read it, m bloppy drive.
It was the eighties they use floppy does excuse you?
(28:29):
So yeah, Then you find out that v has access
to Fate in his in the basement of his shadow
gallery home that has like eight levels and an elevator. Apparently, um,
how is no again a block hole that you could
drive a mack truck through? But again, manifesto more than
(28:52):
not more than art, but as much as it is art.
So yeah, I thought it was interesting too. For me
was frustrating because if he had access to this supercomputer
and could then give messages to the government directly, Uh,
it was just sort of like, why don't you make
things better for some of the people while you're doing
(29:14):
your scheme. I really liked it because it's like, this
is the best episode of MTVS Catfish I've ever seen life,
just like the like just thinking about the spending all
that time flirting with uh, what's his name, Adam Susan
(29:36):
through the computer. It's so it's so fun to think
about just like him back at the in his eight
story elevator home, just like sending sex through the fate
computer to Susan. It's it's great. It's just very funny
because what this was written in like the eighties, right
(29:58):
that it is very like early Hackers, that kind of
style stuff where it's like you can't really like these days.
Of course v is has hacked into the supercomputer, like
that is the first thing a terror or not a terror,
you know what I mean? And what v would do
and uh, and it just it's very funny. It's like
(30:20):
it's so simple that like, oh, I'm just gonna like
log into the supercomputer and just and just talked and
that that's all I can do is just talk to him,
just like send messages on like a black and green screen. Um. Yeah, yeah,
it's like ten years before the movie Hackers. So he
(30:42):
was really looking far ahead, I think, and I mean
very he again a historical catfish, and also very funny
that with this power he couldn't like disarmed bombs or
like do anything tangible for his plan, forget like helping
people having Adam Susan fall in love with him the
(31:03):
via computer like doesn't really affect his plan other than
like he doesn't really need to do it again. It's
so he does these things for himself, and that one
feels that one feels like a personal pet project that
he like dislikes this high Chancellor so much that like
the best revenge is like, yeah, make him funk this computer. Yeah,
(31:28):
it does seem like it undermines uh sus insanity the
guys of other people, Helen hair points so that they
shouldn't have him to a parade to restore confidence because
he's insane. Yeah, um, I think that, though he does
use it for concrete things at times, like he uses
(31:49):
it to send all those the mail that male things
Oh yeah yeah, like poems in the mail. I'm just like,
I don't know if he knows what he's doing. Yeah,
I wouldn't if I got a poem in the mail,
I would think it was just a direct marketing stunt.
I wouldn't think it was a call to anarchy, yeah,
(32:10):
especially because it was not like anarchist poetry. It was
just like flowers. It's also weird you've seen a bird? Yes,
he has the foresight and like mental acumen to like
manipulate every act of Rosemary's life and and drive her
to homicide. And yet he doesn't really know how to
(32:35):
how to put that organization skill into any other aspect
of his plan. Yeah, the best thing you can do
is like a postcards campaign like the last election. That's
my point. He has an opportunity to do so much good,
and he sends people weird cryptic poetry in the mail
(32:55):
and then makes the dude sleep with a computer. Do
you remember, like six months ago when a bunch of
people just got seeds in the mail? Yes, what is
this like us in this year? Hundreds of people maybe thousands,
I'm not sure, but a lot of people got mysterious
(33:15):
seeds in the mail, and then the government was like,
please don't plant Oh no, I'm curious. Did they ever
find out who sent them and what were they didn't
want to test the seeds? Some people planted them before
they That feels this, It feels like how a little
shop of horrors gets started. Oh that sounds fun though,
(33:39):
like just a little fun, like a little carnivorous plan
I was gonna say, in terms of anarchy destruction, I
would argue that Tyler Dirtan does something much better by
destroying the records of credit card debt. Yeah. Fight Club,
that's a love fight Club so much I'm gonna make
I'm gonna make a point and I want both for
(34:00):
Vendetta and fight Club are rare cases of the movies
better than the book. Yes, I would say that I
read and seen Fighting book is Chuck Palinak. Chuck Palinak
was like the movie has a much better ending the
(34:21):
book movie poster in way too many dorm rooms that
here's the thing about fight Club, and then we can
move away from it. But um, fight Club is another
instance of you are not supposed to identify with the
main character. And it's also one of those instances of
people misreading the point, like it's an indictment of toxic masculinity,
and people are like, you don't want to fight and
(34:42):
I want to make soap and I want to have insomnia,
and like that's not the point. Their lives suck and
you shouldn't want to do what they do. It's the
sad cabaret, but with men and soap, can I also
say something deeply embarrassing about be for Vendetta. I didn't.
I didn't realize that the circle and the V was
an upside down anarchy symbol until like a few days ago.
(35:06):
I didn't realize until you just told me that me neither.
I was driving in l A and I saw an
anarchy symbol, and for a second, I was like, it's
a V for Vandetta thing. And then I was like, oh, Jennifer,
and I knew Jennifer, and I also knew that all
the chapters started with V. I'm just saying, you guys
have to pick up on these clues. Okay, Alan is
(35:27):
dropping them, and pick them up. We're all going to
print out all of these poems and we're going to
figure out the messages. So he's getting to us. So
if someone mailed you an anonymous poem in the mail,
you wouldn't the government something They did that a while
ago for some comics. UM, I don't know, some maker
(35:51):
of comic books, comic publishers. Um, they sent this weird
random letter in the mail to like various comic people's
houses and Dana as you know, as somebody who has
written comic books. Comic fans are insane, said death threats
(36:12):
on like a regular basis. Um. So we found out
that this was viral marketing, fortunately very quickly, because otherwise
we were going to call the police. Um. It was
not reassuring to know that a crazy person had air address. Yeah,
Jack Horsemen where they do the viral marketing for the
show that he's on, that has like it looks like
a ransom note like somebody else what idea was exactly
(36:35):
like that? It was like cutout letters, centuary indication. Yeah,
I'm going to be back in just a minute. I
got a bunch of poems in the mail. So a
(36:58):
brief full circle. Now back to be for Vendetta of
plans that don't really make any any sense. Finch. He
was the detective on the case of trying to find out.
I know, I'm really bringing this back. Finch, there's the
detective for the Scotland Yard. His plan, to understand be
to get inside the terrorist's mind is to go to
Larkhill and drop acid. Oh my god, that that scene
(37:23):
because first of all, yes, dropping acid at a concentration camp,
weird choice. I'm gonna go on the record and say
don't do don't don't go to concentration camps and drop acid.
I think we can stand for that as a podcast.
But the second thing is when he was tripping because
like they killed all the black people in the society,
he has this like hallucination that they're black people, and
(37:44):
he's like, Oh, I forgot how cool your skin? Like
a big yikes. It was a huge yikes. I will say,
of all the things that we've read thus far as
a book club, it took the longest to get to
the weird racism in this one. They really bury the
lead in this one because all this Costley was like boom,
(38:07):
page three saying some weird stuff about negro egg. But
this one was a slow burn and I knew that
it was racist as a society because they killed all
the black people. But like that was where I was like, oh,
I rooted for you before, and this was weird. You
didn't need to do that. He was he was. It's
almost it's like well meaning racism where he thought he
(38:27):
was really doing something. M yeah. Well, he also makes
it clear that he was on the side of killing
all those people, like he misses them now. But oh yeah,
fish sucks. And also Finch, I meant well meaning racism
on the part of Alan Moore, who was, yeah, that
that is what I read what you said as he
was like, yeah, I'm trying to make a statement that
(38:49):
he is like weird and racist and like that's not
you didn't know he tried. But then Finch, who else
who sucks? He's the one in the book who spoiler alert,
kills me and he's excited about it. What did you
guys make of that? Yeah, he was like too excited.
I was kind of honestly sad that Finch was the
(39:10):
one that took me down, like for for everything that
V stands for, and like, you know, as far as
adversaries goes, like adversaries go, um, Finch is sad and
weird and pathetic and like shouldn't have been the one
to take down this idea of V. In my opinion,
(39:32):
it's just like you're telling me, he drops acid and
kills the main character, Like come on, And he also
felt like I like the idea that he figures out
where he's where he is, like the station and stuff,
I think, but the fact that he also he not
only he like bests him also physically and mentally feels
(39:58):
strange and also I think like and then we can
talking about the all time of the movie next week.
But it's like he's always catching up, but he's always late, right,
And that's what it feels like, is the proper level
of like he's smarter than the rest of these idiots, spine,
but he's not as smart as B. And I like
(40:19):
the idea that the is like, uh a part, like
a part of his plan is his death and I
get jumping to the movie, but it feels like not
having v B a little bit more responsible for his
own death field. It also felt very weird to me
that the the arc that they're asking us to go
(40:42):
on with Finch is that he goes to lark Hill
and understand he drops his ascid to understand the and
then his next immediate move is to be like, ha
I killed him, my god, Like he didn't go through
that ascid at the concentration camp, did nothing, and then
like pasted a woman, push a woman back in getting raped,
and then it's like he's the final frame of the story,
(41:04):
which is very strange to me with his pipe with
this pipe, like like to go back to those last
two pages that are so terrible, Like I couldn't understand
Alan Moore's reasoning of putting like chaos in the last
two pages of like oh look this like best laid
(41:25):
plans or whatever, like it's still going to be bad,
but to a specify it as rape for this one character,
and also ended with like Finch walking down the road
being like, man, what a journey. I'm like he wasn't
He's not poor rot, Like it's not like what are
we doing here? He's the grizzled hero. He dropped as
(41:48):
ad a concentration camp and murdered me and now on
he walks, you know, Kelen hair backing being I think
you're right to of like asking v to be more
responsible or more careful, like he literally has, you know,
taken um responsibility for the very precise killing of Adam
(42:13):
Susan in the parade with Helen higher like why would
he let Finch just like pop him one in the subway?
Like it doesn't make any sense to me. I think
he wants to die. I think he's ready. I think
he knows that it's time that the mantle gets passed
on to a new person, and that person is going
to be efy do it in a cooler way totally agreed.
(42:34):
You organize all this, You're he's so theatrical. He loves theatrics.
You're gonna die just by like a crazy guy with
by the clock shadows, shooting biking burial, like he's going
to be sent off. Even monologue, he could go with
a cooler death. I mean, he got a little bit.
He said the thing about the ideas or bulletproof. This
is my thesis and the whole riddle of like take
(42:57):
off my mask but don't see my face, blah blah blah.
But how am I to remember at that point, she's
sixteen years old. She's like, how do I see your
face if I take off that I'm not supposed to,
but I am okay uh. I read that later. I
(43:18):
read that late at night, and the panels were like
she we think that she's taking off the mask. Each
time I was like, that was, oh wait a minute.
Also like today, I did not like that the panels.
I know it's not real, but that the panels showed
a face at all, Like I thought that was a
weird choice to me because I thought the whole point
(43:41):
is you never see his face, and it's like, so
now we're seeing the imagined face that Ev. It just
felt like it takes away a little bit of me.
It's like seeing a dame named Rebecca. You think, then
you don't bringing it back the circle. Yeah, So I
(44:03):
will say I was unsatisfied by the ending. It just
didn't hit emotionally for me. When I think that the
world is so theatrical and I wanted a big emotional hit.
It felt very Yeah, it felt very lackluster. At the
end book three, I found myself very angry and very
confused for a lot of time, especially because like there's
(44:27):
I don't think we should see everything, like I don't
think it needs to be like every single thing they
do needs to be in panels. But also like there's
this point where V quotes some dude Alistair somebody I
can't remember the yeah, yea, thank you um, But like
remember before Eve doesn't know much about things, and then
(44:49):
she's like, don't you quote Alistair Crowley. I mean, I'm like, wait,
when did she become like she has a lot of
books educational but we don't see that. But it felt
and then they mentioned it on the next page. I
was like, Okay, I'm caught up, but it felt very weird.
At first, because that wasn't who this character was. Yeah,
(45:10):
but they did show her, okay, so there was a
specific like they did show her working out and like
getting ripped because at the end I was like, how
did she pick up the and put him onto this
like Viking burial? And I was like, because she worked out,
so Karma, I see, I see your point. I see
your point. We should have seen some reading from her, yeah,
(45:35):
just a little montage of her like reading, I like
doing co ups, you know, yeah, I think, yeah, that's good.
The panel that was helen hair getting riped could have
been EVI reading a book. Just push everything back one panel. Sure.
I tried to think about what it ended would be
(45:56):
like that I would have liked more, and I had
a very difficult time coming up without nothing though. I
think the idea that e VI becomes fee is really nice.
I don't know if I wanted Helen to meet up
with Finch and him to be like, that's a great plan, Helen,
You're right, let's take over the world. Were the villains
now to protect the world from devastation? Yeah, I do
(46:23):
it is I think satisfying that she puts on the mask.
That felt inevitable, but it didn't have like comics can
have a big emotional impact, you know, like a full
splash page or like, I don't know something about it
didn't feel like it's almost like I think some artists
and writers think that, like, sometimes things are cliche so
(46:45):
they don't do them, But sometimes things are cliche because
they work, and it's like, well, don't take those tools
out of your toolbox because they work. So I kind
of think that maybe Allan Moore was consciously like, I'm
not going to give you like the big, clean, thartic
third act reveal that you want when it's like, well, yeah,
maybe that's like a classic structure, but it's classic because
(47:06):
it it's sort of proven and audience is like that right,
and you're gonna screw something into a wall, you're probably
going to need to use like a Phillips had screwdriver. Sorry,
that's just what you want to get that job done,
and if you want to satisfying ending, there are some
tools that you will need to rely on. Okay, very
butch metaphor love it, love it. But maybe maybe as
(47:30):
as you've said before that this is like manifesto art,
like maybe he wanted it to be unsatisfying, because you know,
revolution anarchy and trying to overthrow some sort of fascist
government isn't like a one and done catharsis ending, And
it's like a kind of how we feel which is
(47:50):
this like in overthrowing the government isn't like a c
W what are you talking about? But I mean, you know,
maybe that's what he was trying to go for. It's
like all of this chaos has happened, and like some
people will move forward and walk off into the distance
like Finch and not turn back. But like, no one's
going to get a satisfying ending from this. But I
(48:13):
guess my I totally agree with you that I think
that that's what Alan Moore is going with. But I
think that some things are so neat, like like V
being like uh my last rose that I cultivated with Rosemary,
and then some things are so messy where I'm like
one or the other. I think that the idea that
V has been formulating this plan for twenty years and
(48:36):
it is like a perfectly orchestrated plan like that is
very satisfying to me, and so I wish that like
carried through to the structure of the end of the book,
and I think to me, that didn't like I agree.
I think that's what Allan Moore was trying to do
with the ending, And I feel like it didn't land
for me because they personalized it with this character of
(48:58):
Helen Higher, which feels like still these plans are working
that because she's a part of the system and Finch,
you know, bested v and he's walking off. Like if
it were I think it would be more anonymous, like
seeing the chaos and seeing the you know, people being
killed or raped or assaulted like as and it's like,
(49:21):
oh and the system and it like continues to be
good and bad or happening at the same time. But
when you personalize it with this woman that like she's
getting hers you know, it just feels like, oh and
you know, you don't see that much good happening. Would
Would it be nicer if some people were growing a
community guarding Yes, I love that because like that's the
(49:45):
thing you can do with your neighbors. It doesn't require
organized leadership. Um, like you could help your neighbors and
that would be nice and that would show us that like,
while we may not be returning to the fascist system
of government they had before, there can still be communal
projects that people working together. And I think you should
write a Purge that's just about community. I said that,
(50:07):
I said, if you were the Purge, thought like, that's
the dystopia. I would want to live in no rules?
What are you going to plan one day? One day
you're doing crazy good like it's a great day, canceled
student loans? Yeah, what would instead of the Purge? What
would you call it? Then? Well, I mean it's still
(50:28):
the Purge, like you could rules just right? But are
you copyrighting it and making it does right? W No? No,
I no, I'm giving it to the people. I'm giving
it to the people who've got to grow a command
And now I imagine with w r U L Yes,
(50:50):
no rules, no rule right, just right. It's also weird.
But if this is Alan Moore's manifesto, he doesn't leave.
He doesn't make the end feel like outful or exciting,
like you want to join. Uh these I'm like this
looks bad. It seems scary and bad, and it seems
sort of like the people who have the avatars on
(51:13):
bad internet forums. I'm like, oh, I start to get
it now. Maybe it's so scary and bad to you
all because you're stuck in the happiness prison. Happiness is
a per prison get out. But he did nothing but
(51:34):
treat himself like a nineteenth century super wealthy aristocrat. He's
surrounded by books and priceless oil paintings. Um, he's always
eating like fine foods. He's lording his superior already for
women who live in his house, um, and then being
contemptuous of him. I'm sorry. V to me does not
(51:57):
read as like a forward thinking individual, and he reads
as the most entitled rich man knife And he's not
a proletariat. He's not like out working in the fields,
like the means of production. He is, yeah, listening to
his jukebox and again reading Shakespeare. He's not going to
share any of those paintings with people. Those are kings.
(52:18):
And now there she got jan Herod his house. This
supports my belief that V is gay and that he's
not like a political dissent person that they threw in
the camps. He's not. I don't think he's a person
of color, like just in terms of the people that
they were trying to exterminate in that camp and that
they were experimenting on the Only thing is like assists
(52:41):
like white gay dude. That makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think so. I think that's also a good transition
for next week because I think the V that we
see in the movie is I think he reads very
gay to me, and I think he's very theatrical, and
I like the way that character comes across from comes across.
(53:04):
I mean, I get spoiler alert that they try to
make him fall in love with e V. I don't
buy it. I don't buy it. Are there any final
notes on on the book that you guys want to
make before we close out? I think I'll say I
think we've been like ripping apart the third book, but rightfully,
(53:26):
but I really loved reading this book, and I think,
you know, it is so compelling and is someone This
is my first graphic novel I've ever read, and I
think it is It brings you into a world so
quickly and that feels so razor sharp and obviously much
(53:47):
to Allen Moore's uh chagrin, extremely universal and extremely timeless
and could be about any any current uh cool closing
and fascist society that I M really enjoyed it really well, said, yeah,
very well said. I don't know if I can top that.
(54:09):
So I'm gonna say something stupid, but I think that
more books should have weird dudes that want to sleep
with a computer that's in love with more ink. Yeah,
you know, women sleeping with tech. I'm just gonna say
that out yeah, yeah, okay, making an opportunity. Yeah, I
(54:31):
feel like it would work better that way. Okay, cool,
I guess we'll write that. Well. On that note, I
think they have to end this year. Thanks for listening.
We'll catch you next week when we talk about Before
Vendetta the film. That's our show for the week. Thank
(54:51):
you so much for listening. I'm Danis Schwartz and you
can find me on Twitter at Danish Schwartz with three
z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at jen Ashle
right Karama, Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter is
at Melissa f tw and Tan Tran is smart enough
to have gotten off Twitter, but she is on Insta
at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher Hessiotes and
(55:14):
were produced and edited by Mike Johns. Special thanks to
David Wasserman. Popcorn Book Club is a production of I
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