This essay analyses the film V for Vendetta in connection with concepts explained in the textbook Politics: The Basics by Stephen Tansey and Nigel Jackson. These details will also be from the novel Animal Plantation by George Orwell. Reference will be produced to the concepts of totalitarianism, communal democracies and liberalism, although this may well not always be explained directly. The essay's goal is to illustrate these concepts, rather than to use rigid terminology to explain them. Some immediate definitions may be made, however, to contextualise the quarrels presented. Firstly, short summaries of the film and novel to be reviewed: V for Vendetta takes place in England in the near future where a single party - Norsefire - is led by the tyrant who uses dread and propaganda to regulate and oppress the country's citizens. A independence fighter then emerges to encourage the citizens to reduce their fears and challenge the machine. Animal Farm is an allegory about family pets that rebel against oppressive real human farmers in a quest to make a new democratic system. However, the smarter family pets become mad with electricity and eventually come to resemble the humans they first offered. In Many ways, these two texts relate to each other, especially when evaluating the ideologies and politics concepts they signify, as explained below.
V for Vendetta: Strength through Liberty (an research)
Much of the film handles what happens once democracy has been ruined and a totalitarian talk about has considered its place. There exists, however, the significant monologue in field 24 where it is discussed just how this had become: the fascist political group Norsefire, led by the tyrannical Chancellor uses worries of the mysterious and the general public ignorance to get power, including the use of troops to enforce the law and the advertising as a propaganda medium that depicts frightful infections and uses fake reporting to set-up fear within the hearts of the citizens. These individuals then seek comfort in a apparently benevolent leader who's an excellent loudspeaker and a new political party that appeared to offer them desire and courage which previous parties could not, as Valerie explained in her first and last autobiography in scene 19.
These same ways of gaining power can be found in Animal Farm. However, following the rebellion from the humans, there first been around some sort of social democracy (there are a few traces of leftist, socialist beliefs such as distributed wealth and the state of hawaii as powerful, but decisions were not made without first listening to opposing views and then voting on your choice) as can be seen on webpage 29 in the booklet: "It acquired come to be accepted that the pigs, who have been manifestly cleverer that the other animals, should decide all questions of plantation plan, though their decisions needed to be ratified by a majority vote. " Later, however, the pigs became corrupt with this new-found electric power and the plantation began to resemble the totalitarianist status one considers in the movie.
It is common to refer to a totalitarian world as one which is dominated by an individual tyrant (often with a small group or committee - the 'get together customers' - who are in charge of dispersing and/or enforcing his ideas) who manipulates all the resources of the united states and works on the guilt and concern with ordinary people so as to gratify his sense of power. The tyrant is the most privileged member of contemporary society, enjoying privileges and materials comforts denied to standard men. This is the sort of innovator High Chancellor Adam Sutler is. For example, he is the only person in the united states who is allowed to eat butter, a straightforward luxury that normal people aren't allowed to enjoy, as the dialogue between V and Evey in field 8 illustrates: "I haven't got real butter since I had been a little female. Where'd you get it?" "A federal government supply train coming to Chancellor Sutler".
This can be likened to George Orwell's now popular idiom on webpage 83 in Canine Plantation: "All pets or animals are equal however, many animals tend to be equal than others. " The pigs have a much more comfortable lifestyle than the "lower animals": they live in a house, rest in beds, consume alcohol, kill other animals, wear clothes and walk on two hip and legs.
Every part of national life becomes a subject of talk about, making the tyrant's carry over his people more secure and his personal life nicer; the state becomes no more than the extension of his own vanity and he regulates and absorbs the energies of the individuals by keeping the country mobilised as if for perpetual and total warfare. This is the inescapable end of the totalitarian status, the state where only one narrow set of beliefs is tolerated.
Liberalism, as observed in the film, fits the style of the liberal democrats. This ideology mainly includes centre to centre-right ideals. However, in countries such as the United Kingdom and america of America, proponents of this view, see themselves as on the still left side of the politics variety, bordering almost on socialist. This comes "with the expectation that they favour such causes as internationalism, civil rights and increased government treatment and spending for public welfare" (Tansey and Jackson, 2008, p. 90). The emphasis is put on the united states being run not by the federal government, but by the governed. Quite simply, government officials are merely servants of the people of their population and decisions are created not by them automatically, but by almost all vote and privileges of most individuals. Liberals have a feeling of flexibility and believe that it is every individual's to freely point out his/her own views and moral ideals without being avoided by censors or other devices that stifle independence of speech. Matching to liberalism, a person should also be permitted to make his/her own life alternatives, whether it be selections over sexuality, religion etc.
Freedom is the primary theme of the film V for Vendetta and the characterisation is used to depict this and other liberal ideals mentioned previously. Consider, for example the character types of Valerie and Gordon Deitrich.
Valerie, who we realize only as a ghostly narrator of her own autobiography in picture 19 was a lesbian. Despite what she had been taught in college and the general behaviour of culture towards her sexuality, she did not hide the actual fact that she fell in love with another woman and sustained to live in an open relationship until they were both taken by the security power. She later passed on at Larkhill Detention Centre, but wrote down her life report and the want a modern culture quite different from that envisioned by Sutler and Norsefire. She published: "I hope that the entire world changes and things progress. "
Gordon Dietrich, on the other palm, experiences life as a dominant person within the system. He is a host on a humor show and seems to be profiting from the " new world ". However, he has a top secret: he, too, is gay. He is not as wide open about it as Valerie, for he fears that he may lose the lavish lifestyle he is becoming familiar with and besides he has resided a rest for so long that he no longer has any sense of rebellion remaining, as he talks about in landscape 13: "Unfortunately a guy in my own position is likely to entertain young and attractive females like yourself, because nowadays if I were to ask who I desired, I'd unquestionably find myself with out a home, aside from a tv show. " "The simple truth is after so many years you begin to reduce more than just your urge for food. You wear a mask for so long, you ignore who you were beneath it. " A whole lot worse than his intimate orientation, Gordon is the owner of a Kuran which does not mean he's Muslim, but means that he disobeys the guidelines of their state by being affiliated with an opposing faith. Later, he makes a decision that he will no more comply with the conventions and guidelines of population and uses his position in the marketing to help help the trend. The role of the press in the totalitarian point out will be elaborated on later.
The main protagonist, who wears a Guy Fawkes face mask, is shown by the advertising and administration as a terrorist and known only as V, expresses the democratic basis of liberalism in a brief statement in scene 8: "People should not be scared of their government authorities; governments should be afraid of their people. " V uses his communication of freedom to be able to gain support from the oppressed citizens and justify his use of violence in obtaining this goal. This may, however be seen as making him no better than the oppressive federal he tries to abolish as their method of getting support also consists of violence.
Not much is brought up about liberal views and independence fighting in Pet Farm. Continuous guide was created to the Rebellion up against the humans mentioned in the first two chapters of the reserve, mostly as arguments for why the pigs shouldn't be compared ("Surely, comrades, you don't want Jones returning"). Once the pigs' rule was established almost all of the other pets didn't oppose it. Those who did, were performed and made examples of, much like Deitrich and Evey's parents in V for Vendetta. It can be argued that the other family pets never compared the pigs because these were too stupid to realize that that they had become slaves of new experts, but possibly the more logical reason for them conforming to Napoleon and his underlings is the fear that they had for the pups who had been constantly patrolling the plantation and threatened to eliminate them if they showed any symptoms of disobedience.
Violence and the security equipment is one of the visible reasons why most fascist or totalitarianist governments remain in electric power. Consider the Fingermen and soldiers of the Norsefire routine. Similar to the dogs in Canine Farm, the thought police in Orwell's later book 1984 or the Gestapo of Nazi Germany, the Fingermen play the 'secret law enforcement officials' role. They are really led by Mr Creedy, Chancellor Sutler's most dependable party member and are seen to be distinct from the general, more formal and typical police service which Inspector Finch is in control. Generally thugs and perverts, the Fingermen ensure that federal government curfews and other regulations are obeyed when you are allowed to exercise their own "judicial digression" meaning that they may shoot on sight or even rape women without being opposed, just as world 2. The military also is important in furthering Chancellor Sutler's goals, for they are used not only as methods to gain power initially (as explained earlier), but also as a desperate move to stay in power by the end of the film, scene 32. However, they are not allowed to work without requests and are thus unable to stop the march of the masses in Guy Fawkes masks.
The media is depicted in the film as a propaganda mechanism. There is only one condition run network called the English Television set Network or BTN. Headed by a celebration member called Mr Dascombe (and nicknamed 'the Mouth area' in the visual novel upon that your film is based), the press is told what things to record by Chancellor Sutler in the news and also other content. Its function - definately not being the liberal watchdog - is to work towards the government by, for example, rotating the storyline of the demolition of the Old Bailey as not being a statement by a freedom fighter, but instead a cheerful and creative way of doing a supposedly prepared demolition, in scene 4. There also exists an 'disaster channel' which can be used to spout politics propaganda anytime the Chancellor considers fit and which cannot not be switched off or changed. This however backfires when V uses it to transmit his concept of freedom to all British Individuals in arena 5.
Besides the news headlines there are two popular shows on the BTN, Lewis Prothero: the Speech of London and Deitrich's Hour. Prothero uses his strong words and engaging talk to argue towards Norsefire insurance policies and ideals, such as all who will vary should be hated and that whatever the government says is right. Although this personality does indeed this not live long, he makes proclamations which obviously show the government's state of mind, even in his very first appearance in field 2. Of the United States of America, he says: "Here was a country that got everything, absolutely everything and today twenty years later is what? The world's biggest leper colony. Why? Godlessness. Let me say that again; Godlessness! It wasn't the conflict they started, it wasn't the plague they created; it was judgement. No-one escapes their past, no-one escapes judgement. You think He's not up there? You imagine He's not observing over this country? How else can you describe it? He tested us, but we came up through. We do what we had to do. Islington, Henfield; I had been there, I observed everything: Immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, terrorists, disease ridden degenerates. That they had to go. Durability through unity! Unity through faith!"
Much of the concept of 'the press as propaganda mechanism' may also be seen in Orwell's work. Although much less obvious as in his later book 1984 or in the film V for Vendetta, Pet Farm uses the type of Squealer as a metaphor for this concept. Squealer, a pig who spoke well and made convincing quarrels, can be pared with Lewis Prothero as 'The Speech' in cases like this of the pigs. He goes around the farm, revealing the animals is in what Napoleon's true motives are. He will this so well that even though it is openly clear that Boxer is being taken to the knacker's and thus cruelly and unfairly delivered to his fatality on web page 77, Squealer is able to spin this story in a positive manner, much like the BTN in V for Vendetta.
In contrast for the Tone of London, Deitrich's Hour is a humor show, usually highly censored. However in world 17, Gordon Deitrich decides he is tired of his independence of manifestation being stifled by censorships and airs an event which places the 'terrorist situation' in a satiral light and mocks the High Chancellor. He's later killed because of this transgression at an mysterious time after scene 17 when he and Evey are seen to be captured by Fingermen. However, in his last professional choice, he perhaps helped to get support for V's cause. Regardless, when the Chancellor's direct address to the residents is transmit in arena 29, no-one is still left listening and therefore the media is no longer useful in assisting his cause. Perhaps, this is excatly why he was killed, because the people observed him for what he truly was and were no more afraid to stand up to him and fight for V's idealistic views of freedom.
Conclusion
As is seen from the points above, there is no doubt that on earth depicted in V for Vendetta there exists a totalitarian state. That is characterised by the next traits, as identified by Crick (2000) in Tansey and Jackson (2008, p. 137): "Government defines public interest that is all-inclusive. Politics opposition is treason. No private sphere - good citizens take part enthusiastically in rebuilding population. Official ideology identifies delight. " The film shows the hazardous, even frightening results that could come up if such a state ever truly existed and warns its viewers to prevent any such thing from ever going on. George Orwell also will try to do this in Animal Farm. Both text messages show that there can't ever exist any such thing as the 'perfect' society or politics system since those in electric power - regardless of how they received there - will always abuse their electric power and think themselves more advanced than others, thus never created a really 'free' and 'similar' world where there is no such thing as differentiation of category or mistrust of the 'other'.
