Indestructible Ideas in "V for Vendetta"

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - Holy Bible, NIV - John 1:1-5

[after a hail of gunfire doesn't stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won’t you die?… Why won’t you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
- V for Vendetta

According to Neil Postman, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World warned that, unlike the dire prediction of Orwell's 1984 where the truth would be concealed from the public, the truth would in fact one day be hidden in plain sight but swamped by an ocean of trivia. We can see this happening on TV today, where news broadcasts are not much more than entertainment: if a story does not make good TV, it does not make TV at all. Nevertheless, we still find in this ocean of trumped-up talent shows, blandly commercial music, stale rehashed sitcoms and macho action man movies, a few islands of truth that compel attention and stimulate thoughtful dialogue. These are the ideas, the "answers to the big questions" according to the Wachowski brothers, the creators of The Matrix.

"The Word" in the passage from the Gospel of John seems interchangeable with "The Idea." Jesus may have been crucified and killed, but the Idea of the Messiah, the Lamb of God who was sacrificed to bring light and forgiveness to the world is an idea - and ideas cannot be killed. Regardless whether you believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected in the flesh on the third day after he was crucified or not; the idea of a passionately loving Creator who came to earth in human form, living and enjoying life as one of us, bringing a message of hope and redemption to a humanity crushed under the weight of its own pride and then being sacrificed for the lowliest of all wrongdoers, is a beautiful story and an utterly compelling idea.

So compelling, in fact, that the idea has become cloaked in many stories as we have seen in films like Shawshank Redemption and The Matrix (see previous posts). Some of these guises may have sought to mislead viewers into believing in a false messiah, but they have done the original idea of Christ a big favour: they have kept it alive in the minds of people who are seeking the steady ground of ideas and answers in an ocean of trivia.

In V for Vendetta, we see the indestructible V as the idea of revolution in an age where Britain is ruled by a fanatical religious class with a rabid dictator who raves against homosexuals, Muslims and other groups who do not fit into his "Christian" world view. V represents the petit recit, the "little voice" in Postmodernist philosophy that will always rise up against the grand recits, the powers that rule and control the day. He is personified by Guy Fawkes, a man reviled for his plan of destruction of British Parliament but who is here celebrated for his courage in standing up against a government in the name of his ideology.

In the end of the film the man behind the mask dies anonymously (his body is blown to smithereens by his own explosives), but not before he has disseminated his idea: thousands upon thousands of people don the mask and "become" V as they march to witness the destruction of the Houses of Parliament.

In the same way, Jesus Christ died after he had lived and was witnessed by many, touching thousands of lives and thereby spreading the Idea after his death. The supernatural ripping apart of the temple curtain of the Holiest of Holies which only the high priest visited once a year (with a rope around his ankle so that he could be pulled out in case he was struck dead by the presence of God!) is highly symbolic: that which used to be the preserve of the religious elite now belonged to everybody. Everyone who remembered Jesus when they broke bread and drank wine would be one of his. He goes so far as, after his death, breathing his spirit into his followers at the Pentecost so that they could, in effect, become him.

The historical churches, however, started cloaking that Idea in layer upon layer of dogma and eventually downright lies by bending the words of men who wrote the Gospels and Epistles of the Bible out of shape to such an extent that we have the same situation in the so-called Church as Jesus had with the religious order of his time, the Pharisees: leaders who place burdens and condemnation on "sinners" but don't lift a finger to help them, actors in their own TV shows who care only for their own power and personal gain. The Idea seemed to die, smothered by the weight of hassocks and fancy robes, drowned in the clamour of money lenders like the Medici and suffocated by the stench of incense burned under somber incantations in Latin, making it the property of the religious elite again. It is in the name of this dead religion that people who should know better are condemning homosexuals, Muslims and everybody who doesn't fit their narrow definition of "Christian." The "Unity through Faith" slogan in V for Vendetta rings as hollow as the liturgy of the traditional churches which has lost its meaning by losing the Spirit, the Idea behind it.

But the Idea cannot die. It will always surface - sometimes in the most unlikely places like, yes, the secular cinema theatre where V, Neo, Andy Dufresne, Aragorn and many others show glimpses of the greatest Idea ever.