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Popular Culture Review
V’s status as hero is contradicted by his apparel and his words; the Guy Fawkes
mask he wears and the quote from Macbeth aligns him with two of the greatest
traitors in history. This resurrection of Guy Fawkes and use of Macbeth seems
like an arbitrary decision on the part of Moore and Lloyd at first glance.
Something to inspire reaction in the reader, a hackneyed use of literature. But it
begs the questions, why Guy Fawkes and why Macbeth? This paper would
argue that Vfo r Vendetta is a powerful resurrection of not only Guy Fawkes, but
Macbeth as well, and that while V for Vendetta is not an exact retelling of
Macbeth, in causing the reader to remember Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot it
pushes for a new interpretation of both events. It remythologizes.
The concept of remythologizing is one pulled from Alicia Ostriker’s book
Stealing the Language. While Ostriker defines the term “revisionist
mythmaking” (212) in relation to women’s poetry, this theory is indispensable in
understanding the connection between Vand Macbeth'. The moment Moore and
Lloyd opted to dress their hero V in a Guy Fawkes mask and introduce his
character with a quote from Macbeth they were remythologizing. This
remythologizing occurs chiefly through the reappropriation of the concept of
“hero.” A definition of “hero” is found in the essay “Heroes and Superheroes.”
In it Jeph Loeb and Tim Morris describe “hero” as a “moral category” (12). “No
level of achievements alone is enough to make someone a hero. That person
must embody noble qualities as well. Go look up the word ‘noble’ and you’ll
find phrases like ‘of lofty character or ideals’ and ‘morally elevated’.” (12). This
definition is, at best, problematic. A moral category is an extremely subjective
one.
The beauty of V for Vendetta is that its remythologizing does not offer a
view of “hero” never before considered—rather, it offers a different
interpretation of “noble” and “morally elevated.” It provides a better
understanding of the Catholic doctrine—double-effect—that was used to justify
the Gunpowder Plot. This increased understanding of the politics of 1606
enables a new, more subversive reading of Macbeth, and by remythologizing
“hero,” Guy Fawkes, and Macbeth, V for Vendetta provides a framing device
that significantly complicates the tragedy of Macbeth.
Double-effect was used not only as justification for the actions of the
Gunpowder Plotters, but also, it can be argued, Macbeth and V. Double-effect
was one action resulting in “two separate effects” (Fraser, 108). The two effects,
one good, one bad, had to meet certain requirements to be condoned by the
church. The most important requirement was that the good effect vastly
outweigh the bad effect; the bad effect, that which was harmful, had to be
involuntary, and, finally, it had to be impossible to separate the good effect from
the bad effect thus requiring the two to happen almost simultaneously (Fraser,
108).
The members of the Powder Treason felt very strongly that their attack on
James and Parliament was justified by double-effect. At the time of Queen
Elizabeth’s death in 1603, penalties for being Catholic had increased to a painful