This is a part of literary theory assignment, found it interesting.. so here goes my first non-poem post..
DECONSTRUCTING V
The word anarchy literally means an-archon i.e. no leader. It implies a system where no one is ruled by any one. Often, anarchy is associated to lawlessness with an assumption that it would lead to the dictatorship of the most powerful (either in number or might). Most people would say that anarchy is a bad idea because the biggest gang will take over. That is precisely what is happening in a state which claims to have law and order. The ones who create law and order are the members of this mighty gang. Hence any other system of law is only an outgrowth of anarchy, but is misunderstood to be diametrically opposite of it. Anarchy is hence the only political position that is possible. The question here is how balanced could a democratic or a capitalist system or a communist system claim to be? Alan Moore and David Lloyd ask this through their graphic novel “V for Vendetta.” The story is on the enigmatic revolutionary anarchist, who systematically destroys the leaders of fascist dictatorship (called Norsefire), the story is placed in the setting of a near future Britain after the nuclear war.
V embodies their belief in the idea of anarchy. “V” is a masked (mask of Guy Fawkes) anti-hero who makes an attempt to convince British people to rule themselves. This process of convincing, requires to bring the ruling government down, which ruled Britain as Police state, by resuming extreme stands of murder and bloodshed. To break a structure of hard headed hegemony is a hard task.
Emergence of the powerful is inevitable and is the natural design of a social unit. A family, a small social unit is most often patriarchal. But patriarchal power is also only a position, which is neither superior nor inferior or equal with the others but only different from the rest. A family might get as dysfunctional in the absence of a mother as it would in the absence of a father (in terms of degree) but dysfunctional in different ways, hence implying that a mother holds a different power position which is as important. The point here is that anarchy is a natural system. Setting a system of law and order is worse hegemony, where it is given that ruling power is the superior and the “right”. This way the power of the other positions goes unrealized. The idea of the ‘leader’ is artificial. Ideally, anarchy means absence of a government, a self rule, where every individual enjoys space and respects the space of the other. But today, people are so conditioned to be ruled, to be governed by an outside source that the sudden absence or bringing down the government would leave them clueless as to how to act. To bring into existence mature anarchy would require education in great amounts and to an extreme degree of precision, which is practically impossible to achieve in a huge population. A population is always in a state of flux - people are ageing, dying and taking birth. Hence, education needs to be continually imparted and every individual should be educated to make sure that one is self governed enough, not to invade the space of the other. Could it be justified that in order to create an ideal leaderless self governed situation, one should wipe a chunk of population out? Here one needs to look into the possibility of anarchy being achieved by killing people, because killing would defeat the essential purpose of anarchy, to be self governed and letting others govern themselves. It holds diversity to be it’s strength. This is where the rationality of “V” is questioned. In the process of making Britain a people governed state, he evolves as a ruler himself. He bombs populated buildings and refuses to accept any other point of view, fanatically believing his view should be the only way of looking at everything. He brainwashes Evey (a prostitute who he rescues from a gang of police officers), till she sees his point of view. Also, V gives Delia Surridge (the doctor who works for the government) a milder death when compared to others because she happens to “realise” her mistakes.
He could be fascist in the sense that he compelled people to believe in anarchy, thereby perhaps unconsciously, shifting his belief from people’s freedom to his rule. Hence, there have been many thoughts as to why we tend to like “V” inspite of all the above. The reason would be that he appears to be acting for the cause of self rule of people, which again appears to be noble because we live in a society which believes in the philosophy that falls along the lines of that of “V’s”. But, what makes V a valid anarchist is his death in the end and his belief in his end. He does evolve as a ruler in the process of bringing an end to rule, which is why he believes in his death-to remain true to the cause of leaderless-ness. By dying he also kills the possibility of a hegemonic structure, his life could have brought upon.
