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Doctor Delia
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Re: A New Book About V
Let me back up and go over this book in more detail. I've been avoiding discussing the introduction because it's just too complicated! Professor Keller starts off with a very wordy academic discussion of why he wrote this book in the first place, but he kind of gets bogged down in endless, confusing metaphors.
In his own words:
"Allow me to begin with a metaphorical digression, with a layman's description of a theoretical model from physics, one that attempts to account for all energy and matter within the universe -a 'Theory of Everything.' In this way I hope to elucidate the abtruse concepts surrounding intertextual theory, thus, ironically, illuminating the seemingly incomprehensible by explicating the merely esoteric."
Then he spends two pages trying to explain String Theory, black holes, wormholes, Einstein's Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics.
SAY WHAT??? It's just a movie based on comic book, man!!! A simple defintition of terms like "intertext" would be more helpful, because you tend to throw this word around a lot!
According to Wikipedia, intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts...but "the term 'has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to [its] original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence.'" And as the Wikipedia article goes on to state, "examples of intertextuality include animated series like 'The Simpsons,' 'Futuramama,' and 'Family Guy' which are heavily dependent upon intertextual references as a source of humor."
OK. So "V for Vendetta" has a lot of cultural references. So what? So do many works of art and pop culture.
Dr. Keller: "By now the reader has probably begun to wonder, "What possible application could such a subject have to the study of film, literature, and intertextual theory? And the answer is 'Much, but all metaphorical.'"
Head pounding, migraine brewing, I reach for the Alleve.
Dr. Keller goes on: "The purpose of this discussion is to...track the intertextual footprints crisscrossing the porous and constantly interpenetrated terrain of James McTeigue's and the Wachowski Borthers' film "V for Vendetta (2005)."
But why "V for Vendetta?" I guess the professor thinks V4V is not like any other adaptation because the source material, the graphic novel, has relatively little "gravitational pull" on the film. The film is free to go where it wants. After all, the Wachowski's kind of ignored the plot of the GN, and basically rewrote it, much to the consternation of the GN fans and Alan Moore himself!
Dr. Keller: "VfV is not dependent upon the graphic novel exclusively, but mirrors and quotes a wide variety of texts and mediums-literature, cinema, history, medicine (epidemiology/immunology), painting, music, sculpture, politics, and sociology. Like Eliot's "Waste Land," VfV evokes, in fragmentary fashion, the history of Western culture and beyond, here suggesting a cyclic chronical of repression and liberation, each replacing the other at regular intervals."
Oh, come on, Professor, admit it: you're a Vendetta-head, just like the rest of us. For someone sooooo interested in how texts influence each other, you're remarkably silent on the GN. In fact there's no real discussion of the differences and similarities between the two! And that led to a major controversy and a lot of bad feeling all around. How could you not deal with that issue?
As for the title of the book, how could V4V NOT be a cultural pastiche, given that the source material is a cultural pastiche itself? Alan Moore has stated that he was influence by the following: "Orwell, Huxley, Thomas Disch, Judge Dredd, Harlan Ellison, Dr. Phibes, David Bowie, The Shadow, Night Raven, Batman, Fahrenhiet 451, Max Ernst's painting "Europe After the Rain," Thomas Pynchon, British WWII films, The Prisoner, Robin Hood, D**k Turpin..."
Except for Orwell, none of these influences are montioned in the book at all.
Oh, come now, Professor, you really like V don't you? Would you tell us please what you like about him?
Dr. Keller: "As a result of the fires at Larkhill, V has no face or, at least, no face that he is willing to reveal to the world, and certainly his unseen visage is without character or definition, as is common among those with extensive facial burns. His visage embodies the slipping signifier to which no stable meaning can be attached. He is without identity save for the several masks he puts on for the world and for the ghostly command that 'All alone' lives within the 'book and table of [his] memory...V's blank face is the intertext; he leaps into and out of a variety of narratives, deriving and lending a meaning only briefly before he moves on to the next meta-cultural reference. He plays Edmund Dantes in the cell at Chateau D'if, Winstin Smith and Sam Lowry battling their respective bureaucratic hegemonies, and Ivanhoe returning from the Crusades to liberate his country from a tyrannical usurper. He plays Frankenstein's monster in pusuit of his unprincipled creator and a malign pathogen assaulting the Bastille of the immune system. He is the devil to Lilliman's Faust, Bergman's Death confronting plagued humanity, the confidential informant in an espionage narrative, the hero in an action thriller, the Holocost survivor confronting the Nazi Death Camp commander, and the male romantic lead in love's tragedy. V's shape shifting confers meaning, insofar as it invokes a paticular narrative genre, and defers the same bacause the multiplicity of roles that he plays undermines the authenticity of any single gesture."
So, professor, in a nutshell, as Evey would say, "...he's all of us."
P.S. Sorry about the length of this post. I just had to get some things off my chest.
Last edited by Doctor Delia, 3/25/2008, 2:44 pm
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3/25/2008, 2:40 pm
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friendlysolarflare
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Re: A New Book About V
It's brilliant, Doctor D  thanks for doing this!
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3/27/2008, 12:02 pm
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Doctor Delia
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Re: A New Book About V
quote:
Cyranorox wrote: I want to talk to the prof!
Me too! Say, would anyone object if I contacted the author and invited him to this discussion board? I don't know whether he'd even answer my letter, but I'd like to try anyway. I want to discuss a few things about the book, but I feel a little funny giving only my one-sided opinions.
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3/27/2008, 4:54 pm
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CyranoRox
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Re: A New Book About V
No objection from me! Direct him to the Greatest Hits thread.
I've given it a quick read and cannot resist- all that talk about text but nothing about Weaving - as if he worked from the bare script and ignored the performance.
Text is the darling metaphor of lit crit - literally, it means cloth or fabric and is simply what they call a poem book or script.
The prof touches on the idea I respond most strongly to - V as Hamlet/Christ/Hades/God the Father. He mentions damn near all the evidence and never thinks to draw a conclusion.
Has he got a crush? Well, he wrote a book.... and thinks V is gay on what looks to me like thin evidence - V has more than 'affection' for Valerie and Evey. [well , Dr Keller? look at the first Erotic Dynamics page and Redzen's What With the Theories of V Being Gay. Follow PWSull's train of thought. Get back to us]
Apocatastatis Now!
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4/6/2008, 9:24 am
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Doctor Delia
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Re: A New Book About V
I don’t know about you Cyrano, but I’m having an awfully hard time with Professor Keller’s book. I don’t know whether I’m going to write to him because I do think its more important to write an honest appraisal of the book here, rather than to uncritically praise the Professor. I give him credit for writing it, but it could have used a little impartial editing, some proofreading and a lot of fact-checking! The language is simple but his writing style is a little disorganized.
I thought that the first chapter “Tyranny and the Powder Treason”, would be the most coherent, as it arose from an article he wrote on the Gunpowder Plot, but it reads more like, well, the kind of stuff we write off the top of our heads. It jumps from idea to idea, it doesn’t complete thoughts, it picks up the train of thought later, etc.….fine for fan criticism, but an “academic” work such as this should have a little more structure. Nevertheless, he makes some good points.
In this chapter Prof. Keller first describes the conditions that existed in England which gave rise to the Gunpowder Plot:
“Edward the VI had continued the Reformation begun by his father, Henry VIII…who had been rigorous in the persecution of anyone opposed to his split with Rome. Upon Edward’s early death, Mary I drew the country back to Catholicism amid a multitude of burning heretics and prominent Protestants fleeing for the Continent. While there was some anticipation and uncertainty in the popular mind regarding the religious orientation of the new Queen Elizabeth…the Catholic Church regarded [her] as illegitimate, a bastard who could not be named in the succession.” He then describes the struggles of Elizabeth with Spain and the Catholic Church, and how James VI, the son of Mary Queen of Scots (Elizabeth’s half-sister) became her successor.
Professor Keller: “James VI had once been the principal hope of Catholics for a new and sympathetic monarch…James repeatedly implied that he would be tolerant of religious diversity, but most promising was the report that the Monarch’s wife, Queen Anne, converted to Catholicism just before the royal couple departed for their English coronation. James forgave fines previously levied against recusants and suspended further penalties for one year. Moreover, he had emplyed many Catholic ministers in his previous government and had immediately sworn into his English Privy Council two members of the formerly disgraced Percy and Howard clans, both of whose progenitors had been implicated in and executed for conspiracies to liberate Mary Queen of Scots from her English captivity.” James also released Catholic priests from prisons and was secretly talking to the Pope about a return to the Church. In addition, he “initiated efforts to end England’s twenty years of hostility with Spain. It is in the peace with Spain and the 1604 renewal of Elizabeth’s law against priests and recusants that the Gunpowder Treason was engendered…English Catholics could no longer even hope for an invasion to liberate them from the protestant persecution.”
So it seems a little ironic, from our 21st Century point of view, that as things seemed to be looking up for English Catholics, they regarded their situation as slavery and forced submission.
Dr. Keller notes that several terms introduced in the film are similar to those of history. The “Reclamation” of VfV is like the Reformation. The “Articles of Allegiance” referred to by Suttler are apparently “an oath in which citizens-or perhaps only government employees-vow not to compromise the security of the nation by engaging in activities that tend to undermine the authority of the ruling party. The “Articles” shadow the “Oath of Allegiance” sought by Robert Cecil as a solution to the conflicted loyalties of the English Catholics in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a piece of legislation that he finally achieved in the wake of the Gunpowder Treason.”
Dr. Keller then draws parallels between the Gunpowder Plot and the “contemporary apprehension and rage of the English and American people over the increasingly repressive policies created to interdict terrorism in the years since 9/11. Similarly, the graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” written in the 1980’s, sought to interrogate the conservative Thatcherite government’s policies on AIDS, homosexuality, and public
surveillance.”
We appreciate that, but what I think Professor Keller fails to appreciate, is that the panic, which led to the assumption of power by Chancellor Adam Suttler, was the result of the St. Mary’s virus. The real world event that parallels the St. Mary’s virus conspiracy that V as William Rookwood describes to Finch is not 9/11, but the anthrax attacks of 9/18 on NBC, ABC, CBS, the National Enquirer, and several member of Congress. These attacks led directly to the unanimous passage of the so-called Patriot Act. Or as William Rookwood would have said, “Before the St. Mary’s crisis, no one could have predicted the results of the election that year. No one.” No one has ever been charged with these bioterrorist crimes and our government seems to show no interest in finding out who really did it. Which raises the question of 9/11 itself. Could our own government have been responsible for one or both of these acts?
Another irony which Professor Keller doesn’t mention is that the Gunpowder Plot is itself the subject of several conspiracy theories which rage on to this day. As Hugh Ross Williamson states in his book, “The Gunpowder Plot”
“…The true history of the Gunpowder Plot is now known to no man and…the history commonly received is certainly untrue…It is unquestionable that the Government consistently falsified the story and the evidence presented to the world.” The points Mr. Williamson lists are:
1. Confessions of the conspirators were obtained under torture
2. Gunpowder was controlled by the government, so how could anyone obtain that amount of powder without arousing suspicion?
3. John Whynniard, who leased the cellar, where the powder was found, was supposed to be a witness at the trial, but was found dead on the morning of November the 5th, before he could testify. A cause of death was never found.
4. Confessions were probably forged, as the handwriting of some were different and Thomas Wintour, misspelled his own name, as Winter.
5. Several subsequent “plots” were found to be bogus
500 years later the Gunpowder Plot is still being debated, and like that famous plot the answers to who is really behind the anthrax attacks and even 9/11 may never be known.
By the way, I read somewhere that Hugo Weaving (coincidentally) just happened to be reading "The Gunpowder Plot" when he was offered the role of V and was familiar with the controversy.
The chapter then goes on to discuss, V’s terrorism and the destruction of the Old Bailey and Parliament, but maybe that belongs in the next chapter, “V’s terrorism.” Anyway, enough for one day!
Last edited by Doctor Delia, 4/12/2008, 12:51 pm
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4/12/2008, 6:56 am
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friendlysolarflare
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Re: A New Book About V
 as always, Doctor D
Professor Keller seems to be missing some pieces of the puzzle - he should have consulted some of us ladies before publishing his book 
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4/14/2008, 10:21 am
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freedom4ever
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Re: A New Book About V
Doctor Delia, this is fascinating! Please continue. 
Are there any details regarding the Prof in the book? I mean, what do we know about his career, what is his history? I would be interested to know his motivation for writing this text.
quote:
Prof Keller wrote:
In this way I hope to elucidate the abtruse concepts surrounding intertextual theory, thus, ironically, illuminating the seemingly incomprehensible by explicating the merely esoteric."
 What a vichyssoise of verbiage!
Last edited by freedom4ever, 4/16/2008, 4:46 am
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4/16/2008, 4:41 am
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Doctor Delia
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Re: A New Book About V
Thank you very much Flare, Iseult, and freedom4ever.
Going through this book is kind of interesting and a bit more challenging than I thought!
To answer you question, f4e, his title is: Professor and Chair of the English and Theater Department at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. The titles of his other books include:
"Food, Film and Culture"
"Queer (Un)Friendly Film and Television"
"Anne Rice and Sexual Politics"
As co-editor:
"Fantasy Fiction into Film"
"The new Queer Aethetic on Television"
"Almost Shakespeare"
Anyway on to: Chapter 1, part 2
Sorry that I’ve been absent for the last week, but I had several deadlines which could not be avoided. Also this last part of Chapter 1 is more fragmented than the first part. So with apologies to the professor, I’m going to re-arrange some of his discussion points. A lot of what he has to say is plot summary anyway, and we’re quite familiar with that.
I guess you could sum up this section with the question: Why Guy Fawkes?
I mean, Moore and Lloyd were free to pick any freedom fighter/terrorist from any historical period, and yet they chose this strange half-mythological being who is annually burned in effigy on a holiday whose meaning has been largely forgotten by most people.
Well, the short answer is that Moore and Lloyd had problems conceptualizing the physical appearance or costume of V. At first, David Lloyd tried drawing various standard-issue super-hero type costumes, which just didn’t work, but from somewhere deep in his subconscious, the weird image of the doomed mannequin in the perpetually smiling mask consumed by fire bubbled up. Alan Moore obviously took this idea and ran with it, creating several parallels to the historical Gunpowder Plot.
We started to give the long answer to the question, Why Guy Fawkes?, in the previous section, but the long answer raises several additional questions:
Does the Guy Fawkes trope make sense from a historical perspective?
Does the Gunpowder Plot really have any relevance for today’s world?
Dr. Keller: “In the graphic novel, V blows up Parliament first and later attacks the Old Bailey, while in the film the destruction of Parliament is saved for the denouement, a final desperate act to bring about fundamental change. Obviously the destruction of or at least the attempt to destroy Parliament is requisite for the Guy Fawkes motif; however, as an assault upon Sutler’s government , the act is incoherent since it seems clear that Sutler permits no popular representation in his government; he rules absolutely with the assistance of a small cadre who obey him unquestioningly. [Tsk, tsk, Professor a run-on sentence with two semi-colons!] Thus the destruction of Parliament can only signify the damage that has already been done to representative government…V’s attack upon the Old Bailey has a similar significance, constituting an indictment of injustice within the Sutler government.”
Whoa, let’s back up for a minute.
One point that Dr. Keller does NOT dwell on is how these questions are addressed by the GN vs. the film. Let’s first look at GN V’s targets vs. filmic V’s targets, motives and ultimate goals. Do they reflect those of the historical Guy Fawkes?
If you believe the official story, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators sought to overthrow the government of James VI, by blowing up Parliament while it was in session, killing the king, and all of the Lord and Commons in attendance. The effect of this action was supposed to be rebellion and chaos. They also planned to kidnap the royal children, raise them as Catholic and install the eldest, Princess Elizabeth as Queen.
This really sounds more like something that home-grown terrorist Timothy McVeigh might have conceived when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, than like freedom fighting. Mc Veigh’s weapon of choice: A Ryder truck loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, diesel fuel and nitromethane. Sound familiar?
(Some say McVeigh hoped that by attacking the Federal Building Arab terrorists would be blamed triggering a nation-wide race riot, as predicted by his white supremacist beliefs. He claims he blew up the building because he was upset with the government over Waco, Ruby Ridge and atrocities that he witnessed in Iraq. In reality he was a gun dealer who was upset because of government restrictions on the sale of certain weapons like assault rifles, and because he was a loser in most areas of life, except gun dealing. He fits the profile of a rampage killer, like Micheal Douglas in “Falling down.”)
In the GN, V first destroys Parliament, then the Old Bailey. Then he takes over the BTN tower by threatening to blow it up (in order to broadcast a rather sarcastic assessment of the state of the nation). Then he actually blows the BTN tower up with all the people inside in order to silence the Eye and the Ear , which leads to chaos as the populace realize they are no longer being spied on. Lastly GN V (via Evey and a trainload of explosives) blows up No. 10 Downing Street, presumably to kill Chancellor Adam Susan while he’s at home. It is then left to Evey, who adopts the [life-long?] role of V to clean up this anarchic mess. Actually this kind of rampage killing is probably closer to what Guy Fawkes and Timothy McVeigh had in mind, than the goal of filmic V. All three sound like pretty sick sociopaths, and the co-conspirators involved in the Oklahoma City bombing sound a lot like those involved in the Gunpowder Plot.
Filmic V, however, is quite “the horse of a different color” from these three. Filmic V first blows up a largely deserted Old Bailey, to demonstrate the lack of justice in Sutler’s England. Then he threatens to blow up Jordan Tower in order to broadcast his message for the purpose of enlisting the aid and sympathy of the people. He then he blows up Parliament, a largely symbolic act, the meaning of which will be determined by the people who observe it.
Professor Keller says, “the Legislative body is perceived to be complicit in the increasing infringement upon civil liberties;” Therefore, this symbol of democracy needed to be destroyed in order to restore democracy. A paradox, to be sure, but not “incoherent.”
Fighting for “Democracy” in the abstract (or at least couching one’s self-interest in those terms) seems to be a relatively new concept, the American and French Revolutions come to mind. I don’t think it would have occurred to the 16th century minds of Guy Fawkes and his allies to fight for such a nebulous goal. For them, fighting for one’s religious (or economic) freedom was a more concrete objective. Likewise, GN V has very concrete goals: revenge, the destruction of the government that screwed him over, oh, and uh…the preservation of culture. Filmic V has a much more inclusive view. Although he has much of the same motivations (revenge, mostly and the desire for a culturally free society) he has embedded his primitive emotions into a more idealistic framework than GN V. Filmic V does not want Anarchy per se, but Revolution, a revolution powered by people and one which would empower them. A point underscored by the songs which play over the credits at the end of the film (“Street Fighting Man” and “BKAB.”)
IMHO, I don’t think that the Guy Fawkes trope makes much sense in the film, but it is a cool stylistic concept. In the GN, V is not a hero. His terrorism is merely a counterpoint to Susan’s (Sutler’s) fascism. The film, though, places V unquestionably into the role of hero, although a deeply flawed one. And Guy Fawkes, although a martyr, was not really a hero.
Also within this last half of Chapter one are some thoughts about Catholic martyrdom in general. Here’s an interesting point Professor Keller makes about the destruction of the Old Bailey:
“The Old Bailey is the Crown Court for central London, built on the location of Newgate Gaol, its façade constructed with the very bricks that composed the worst of the twelve prisons in early modern London. Jesuit priest and poet Robert Southwell was interred in Newgate just before his execution. Indeed, Newgate was considered “a staging post for the scaffold, a waiting room for death…The fate of captured missionary priests in England was not limited to the scaffold. The clergymen could expect the endure prolonged imprisonment and torture in the government’s effort to compel the revelation of their confederates and sponsors…V’s attack upon the Old Bailey, however, is mostly directed at the statue of justice that stands astride the building’s central dome…V’s violent repudiation of the figure signifies his challenge to the hypocrisy of the Noresfire regime.”
It would seem then that the entire Old Bailey itself is a symbol of hypocrisy.
In conclusion, the overall message of the film would seem to be a reiteration of that very “ancient warning” mentioned in the commentary by Stephen Rea.
Dr. Keller: “…the overly enthusiastic effort to interdict terrorism will only create more terrorists, not from without but from within.”
Or this quote from “Macbeth” mentioned by Dr. Keller:
“Nought’s had, all’s spent,
When our desire is got without consent.
“Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy [III.ii. 6-9]”
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4/19/2008, 6:18 pm
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