Doctor Delia
VEEK
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Registered: 06-2006
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Re: Resurrection
How did I miss this thread?
pwsull, have you been lurking all this time?
Well, welcome back, stranger! 
But, I'm not going to let you get off the hook so easily, doc. So stick around a little while cause I've got a few questions for you:
How can we possibly determine whether V IS gay or not? Presumably he has been celibate for the past 20 years, so as many have said, the question is kind of moot.
As to whether V WAS gay, that's another question.
Is V the same person who was imprisoned at Larkhill? We are told that the man in room five can no longer remember who he is. So again the question is moot.
Is it possible that he could be suffering some kind of dissociative disorder as a result of the trauma he suffered during his detention?
Is V just one personality among many or is V his main personality? Is V just an assumed disguise of some deeper personality that lives behind the mask, or is V all that there is, the other characters (William Rookwood, for example) just disguises.
I think the objection I have to pinning some kind of specific identity on V is that it weakens his power. It weakens our ability and desire to identify with him. He then becomes just another costumed superhero with a presumably secret and therefore identifiable identity.
The more specific question of whether V is one of the two gay men we see in the movie narrows down our choices even further. Either he's the white one or he's the black one. Well, we see his hands, so that narrows it down even further, doesn't it? (Unless you postulate that the burns were so deep as to destroy all pigment cells in his skin.) I can't believe that the Wachowski's would be that specific.
No, I think that those guys are merely to show who ends up at Larkhill, and to highlight the cruelty, bigotry, and invasiveness of Norsefire. You might argue that Valerie and Ruth were provocative actresses who made a film in direct opposition to Norsefire's "values," whereas these two guys are just average Joes sleeping peacefully at home. So the fact that private citizens were being arrested merely for being privately gay confirms that the members of Norsefire are just viscious bigots.
If V isn't gay, then what's he doing at Larkhill? I think this presents some interesting possibilities in plot and character development as well as parallels with Edmund Dantes who is tried for a political act that he didn't commit.
But I have to admit that over time, I too have softened in my hard-line stance that V is hetero. Frankly, I don't really care anymore what V is. I love him unconditionally (in a Platonic way of course.)
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4/17/2009, 3:40 pm
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Voracious Voyeur
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Registered: 03-2009
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Re: Resurrection
Same goes as to not caring, for me..I feel the same way.
It's just a thought that always pokes at the back of my mind when I see the movie. I guess I'd like to know whether the W. bros. meant the scene that way or as Dr. D. suggests, just to showcase the mindless hateful bigotry of Norsefire. I kind of like the way you laid it out and it does make good sense. I think the GN was a bit more suggestive of V being gay or that everyone at Larkhill was, that may strongly influence my thinking too.
You brought up another similar back of the mind kind of issue, does he really not remember his past? It's another thing I wondered about and ultimately decided didn't matter (to me). I kind of came to the conclusion somewhere that he'd deliberately dissociated himself from his past life in order to become something/someone else, consciously severing all ties and closing the door on his former identity. I can't say why it seems more 'right' to me that it be a choice rather than a side effect of experimentation mistreatment and abuse, some kind of mental self-preservation thing. Maybe it makes him more powerful that way. Well I'm not trying to derail the current convo by bringing up that little ponderable, just another of those synapses firing.
Multiple personalities, if you will, is one of my favorite V-fic places to play.
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4/23/2009, 2:58 pm
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