Bass
Nexus of the World
V for Vendetta is visual literature.
Written more than 20 years ago by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Lloyd, V for Vendetta is of human society, its flaws and failures, its accomplishments and future, its secrets and its unconscious horrors, its sibling communities and its truths, its violence and bigotry, its beauty and compassion; it is society as an abbatoir - and as a garden of roses.
Though set in 1997 and 1998, and having been produced in the 1980s, V for Vendetta touches an ethereal future of misery, with the hopeful promise of a new dawn. After a small nuclear war, leaving parts of the planet uninhabitable, we are in for a vicious cabaret of totalitarian fascism, for the voice of fate tolls throughout the London streets, telling us all we need know: that we are safe. There are no threats that the fingers of fate cannot eliminate. Not terrorists, not homosexuals, not blacks, pakis, or chinks, and not even the weather. The voice of fate loves and cares for us. And if we don't agree, we can go to a concentration camp for our terrible sedition.
But the mouth, the ear, the nose, the fingers, and the voice of fate, and its leader and servants, are unprepared for a single man, in a cloak and large pointed hat, wearing a painted smile, a man with no name, save for the letter 'V', a man who has ditched Lady Justice for a better mistress; Lady Anarchy.
His shadow gallery, with all its culture and hypnoses, revealed, in part, only to us, we are let in to the grand muscial chess game of this man and his will against the state of London, of England.
For in this murky and grimly illustrated work, in the angles of its shadows, is the bright primary colours, hidden in places where we've always known them to be, peeking out onto the page. In darkness the most little of colour shines. Illustrated with the aesthetic of a dream, the unconcious thoughts of creation and of destruction, pictures and words playing with our thoughts, and feeling far too real to step back from.
It's all this and yet, it is much more than this. Like V himself, if I were to call it one thing such a label becomes a tragedy, for it would become smaller than we had thought; we could only see it in terms of what it can no longer be.
It's a visual poem for human society, twisting and turning in shadows. You should read it.
England prevails.
Written more than 20 years ago by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Lloyd, V for Vendetta is of human society, its flaws and failures, its accomplishments and future, its secrets and its unconscious horrors, its sibling communities and its truths, its violence and bigotry, its beauty and compassion; it is society as an abbatoir - and as a garden of roses.
Though set in 1997 and 1998, and having been produced in the 1980s, V for Vendetta touches an ethereal future of misery, with the hopeful promise of a new dawn. After a small nuclear war, leaving parts of the planet uninhabitable, we are in for a vicious cabaret of totalitarian fascism, for the voice of fate tolls throughout the London streets, telling us all we need know: that we are safe. There are no threats that the fingers of fate cannot eliminate. Not terrorists, not homosexuals, not blacks, pakis, or chinks, and not even the weather. The voice of fate loves and cares for us. And if we don't agree, we can go to a concentration camp for our terrible sedition.
But the mouth, the ear, the nose, the fingers, and the voice of fate, and its leader and servants, are unprepared for a single man, in a cloak and large pointed hat, wearing a painted smile, a man with no name, save for the letter 'V', a man who has ditched Lady Justice for a better mistress; Lady Anarchy.
His shadow gallery, with all its culture and hypnoses, revealed, in part, only to us, we are let in to the grand muscial chess game of this man and his will against the state of London, of England.
For in this murky and grimly illustrated work, in the angles of its shadows, is the bright primary colours, hidden in places where we've always known them to be, peeking out onto the page. In darkness the most little of colour shines. Illustrated with the aesthetic of a dream, the unconcious thoughts of creation and of destruction, pictures and words playing with our thoughts, and feeling far too real to step back from.
It's all this and yet, it is much more than this. Like V himself, if I were to call it one thing such a label becomes a tragedy, for it would become smaller than we had thought; we could only see it in terms of what it can no longer be.
It's a visual poem for human society, twisting and turning in shadows. You should read it.
England prevails.
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