Twenty years since V for Vendetta (2006)
By Mark Wegierski
web posted February 9, 2026
V for Vendetta, 132 minutes, 2006, directed by James McTeigue, script by Andy and Larry Wachows
ki, based on the graphic novel (comic book) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Hugo Weaving (V), Natalie Portman (Evey), John Hurt (Adam Sutler), Stephen Rea (Finch), Stephen Fry (Dietrich)
V for Vendetta is a movie which is stylish, interesting, yet also pushes a very overt left-liberal agenda. The division is roughly between the emotionally appealing story of V, a lonely resister against an evil system, and the misbegotten portrayal of that future nightmare as a fascist society which is explicitly identified in the movie as arising from the Conservative Party of Britain. In tune with some common current-day conceptions of Nazism, homosexuals and lesbians are shown as some of the main victims of this hypothesized future regime, whereas churches are shown as hypocritically enmeshed in the system, in exchange for certain benefits.
The movie is based on the graphic novel or serious comic book brought out in the 1980s by Alan Moore, who is widely considered one of the most prominent new-style comic book creators. When the work originally appeared it was said to be a reference to Thatcherism in Britain (Thatcher was in fact sometimes called "Thatchler" by some of her left-wing opponents), but the story has been very cleverly updated into "the near-future" with some reference to Bush's War on Terror. Alan Moore's strident objections to the movie seem quite crabby, making him look like an overly self-absorbed artiste, claiming to be unhappy with a major film production which brings great attention to a work of his that would have likely been mostly forgotten by now.
The fact that the story has been so easily transposed in time suggests that the "politically correct" Left's concept of "eternal fascism" never fades. Whether it is Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, or Dubya in the early 2000s, or Trump today, the fascist nightmare is considered to be just a step away from us. Even in Canada, the milquetoast Preston Manning (who co-founded the center-right Reform Party) was considered by some on the Left as "extreme Right"; the Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario, Mike Harris, was seen as a right-wing ogre; and Stockwell Day, who was briefly the leader of the Canadian Alliance (which had arisen out of the Reform Party), was characterized as a "Christian fundamentalist extremist" who was "scary" to so-called "mainstream Canada." Some Canadian left-wingers probably thought that the former Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, had hankered to create nightmarish situations for racial and sexual minorities in Canada, were he only given the opportunity by winning a strong majority in Parliament. There was even an article in a major Canadian newspaper (which mentioned the film) criticizing Tony Blair for what it considered as his massive crackdown on Muslim and left-wing dissent in Britain today.
Much of the film's symbolism is derived from Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot (1605) – for example, V always wears a sort of Guy Fawkes mask – which along with his black musketeer hat, wig of long black hair, and black cape, also makes him look like a stereotypical Charles I or Cavalier. A brief scene at the beginning of the movie shows the capture and execution of the original Guy Fawkes. However, Fawkes is made out to be some kind of revolutionary-left hero; the Roman Catholic context remains unmentioned. Fawkes' idea of blowing up the British Parliament buildings was clearly deranged (and there probably have been subsequent historical arguments whether that was really Fawkes' intent); and would have greatly intensified the persecution of Roman Catholics in England had it actually been carried out. However, it is true that, from the reign of Henry VIII onward, Roman Catholics have suffered many persecutions in the British Isles, extending in some cases (such as in Ireland) up to the twentieth century.
To a large extent, and especially in a media-saturated society like ours today, politics consists of "emotional engineering." Russell Kirk has noted that the essential conflicts in politics and society are over different imaginative visions.
Looking at V for Vendetta in this light, one can see a yoking of the high Romantic theme of the lonely, wounded hero in resistance to an evil or corrupt society, with left-liberal "political correctness" -- in the portrayal of most of the contours of that society in terms of the perennial fascist bogeyman. The reviewer noticed that on a conservative Internet forum someone called the movie, "1984 meets Phantom of the Opera meets Brokeback Mountain." The reference to Brokeback Mountain is especially pertinent in terms of a section in the movie about a lesbian filmmaker, who (it can be interpreted) made a "lesbian Brokeback Mountain" before the future turned hostile. Her brief prison testament which Evey discovers while incarcerated, greatly inspires Evey's resistance.
There is also a homosexual television producer (Dietrich) who is forced to conceal his sexual identity. After making a comedy program bravely ridiculing the regime, he is arrested, severely beaten, and then executed when a precious fourteenth-century copy of the Koran (he cherishes the physical book for aesthetic reasons) and other "subversive" literature and art are found in his mansion. It is mentioned that the regime specifically punishes those who have the Koran in their homes, by death.
On the other hand, a Catholic Bishop very well-connected to the regime is portrayed as a former adviser at a concentration camp and a molester of adolescent girls.
A fairly sympathetic figure serving the regime is the Police Inspector Finch, who has "democratic reformer" written all over him, and would be likely to play a major role in the wake of the system's collapse.
Although some traditionalist critics identified crypto-Marxist or crypto-Gnostic elements in the Wachowskis' Matrix trilogy – it was certainly more generally "trans-ideological" compared to V for Vendetta. It does say something about the current-day pop-culture that there appeared to be no worry that a movie which could be seen as heaping insults on persons who may see themselves as political or social conservatives might do poorly at the box office. The "triumph of the human spirit"-type story could certainly have been problematized for many people by the over-the-top valorization of "alternative lifestyles" and the digs against Christianity.
One of the main inspirations for V (and indeed many brooding dark heroes) is The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (pere) – and there is a clip from an actual 1950s movie version of that massive book, when V sits down in his well-appointed hideout with Evey to view it, describing it as his favorite movie.
V – although once a normal man – is a chemically created "monster" under his elegant black outfit – so his relationship with Evey can only be Platonic. It could be supposed that it is a big deal in a Hollywood movie when the hero and heroine have a relationship not based on having sex. Indeed, V chooses not to ever show his real face and body to Evey, something which she respects right to the end.
A "masked avenger" of clearly traditionalist provenance is Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, who rescues aristocrats, royalists, and clergy, from the Great Terror of the guillotine during the French Revolutionary period.
One can also note that 1980s movie, Ladyhawke, which portrayed a single knight dressed in black fighting on behalf of the Church of Rome against a heretical bishop and sorcerer of seemingly unlimited powers.
The Beauty and the Beast television series (which unfortunately ended in such a pessimistic way) also spoke to this dark hero imagery.
It could be argued that V for Vendetta, by commingling high-Romantic personal heroism and politically-correct social didacticism, is endeavoring to create an intensive pattern of "emotional engineering" on behalf of the current-day, antinomian system. Today, it could be argued that it is in fact "sexual minorities" who are the presumed, exalted cultural and social arbiters on many aesthetic, artistic, and behavioral questions.
It could also be argued that the current-day system of "political correctness", antinomianism and consumerism can only maintain itself by heaping huge mountains of social and cultural conditioning on virtually everyone in society. Traditionalists would say that such heaps of social conditioning are required by the current-day system, because the system is warring against human nature, which is prone to snap back to its "default settings" given only a slight relaxation of the conditioning process.
V for Vendetta could be seen as "vesting" all the good feelings around an idealistic resistance to evil and the chivalrous male's defense of his beloved, toward a justification of the current-day climate of sexual decay and a valorization of "alternative lifestyles." Some of the most powerful, overbearing tendencies in today's society are in all seriousness portrayed as possibly menaced in "a near-future" – especially (it may be surmised) if America continues to vote for the Republican Party.
Although the "mainstream media" has been raising the alarm about the supposed infiltration of Christianity into Hollywood – based mainly on the success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (a film which Hollywood, incidentally, pulled out all stops to kill at the box-office), and now the Chronicles of Narnia movies – their fears are clearly overwrought. Thomas M. Sipos, the author of the horror-satire Communist Vampires and the corporate satire Manhattan Sharks (with the on-demand publishing house XLibris) has been among those lamenting the fact that conservatives are simply not creating the cultural products that the vast majority of Americans consume.
In a recent editorial in Image Journal, Gregory Wolfe argues that Christians should not limit themselves to the literature created by J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis – calling for some kind of tradition-minded literature that would have certain more modern and adult sensibilities. One supposes that the apparent death of great Christian literature in the late modern period is related to the virtual death of Western great literature in general.
If traditionalism is not making much of an impact on literature today, its profile in the world of film and television is even less.
In V for Vendetta, the defense of art and aesthetics was linked with opposition to the fascist regime, as seen in V's extensive book, art, music, and film collections. He loved to quote Shakespeare, and Evey was the well-read daughter of a writer (her parents had been rounded up when she was a young girl). There is indeed the overbearing linkage frequently seen today between art and "politically correct" left-liberalism. Traditionalists, conservatives, and Christians are often accused of "not caring about art" or "having a problem with art."
It is high time to raise such questions as whether, in fact, it is not late modern values and the multifarious social and cultural effects of advancing technology that have made great art virtually impossible in late modernity.
In looking at various types of cultural production today, about the only sector where conservatives and traditionalists appear to have a significant presence is in political-type theorizing and writing. In some cases, conservative cultural critics can tease out some kind of conservative or traditionalist implications or meanings from cultural productions which have not been created by anyone even remotely conservative. Some evangelical Protestants have been especially imaginative in finding little nuggets of truth in the sludge of current-day pop-culture.
However, the ascent of traditionalists and conservatives into the highly important worlds of the academy, prestige journalism, and publishing, is too easily stymied. Given the political texture of most colleges in America today, especially in the humanities and social sciences, obtaining the Ph.D. that is the bare minimum for a scholarly position is extraordinarily difficult. It is also almost impossible to subsist on freelance writing; only being on the staff of a given publication, foundation, or think-tank gives one a decent income. Book publishing, to put it bluntly, is mostly controlled by the big New York houses and about a hundred prominent literary agents (as most publishers won't look at unagented manuscripts). Academics certainly make little money from publishing academic books, relying again on a staff position at a college as their main sustenance.
The situation of most traditionalist critics and writers today is that of a deeply self-sacrificial endeavor, where one's ideas are offered to the public in comparatively little-known publications or in various forms on the Internet, usually without fiscal remuneration. It should be said that there is a real idealism at work, the desire to speak the truth in the hope of sparking some kind of cultural and spiritual restoration.
The theme of the lonely, wounded hero resisting an evil system, raised in V for Vendetta, could be so much artistically and spiritually greater if it were voiced in the context of a better understanding of the real contours and lineaments of the current-day, near-dystopic, late-modern society, and with a more honest appraisal of the real dangers of the future. 
Mark Wegierski is a film and science fiction aficionado.
