V for Vendetta as Cultural Pastiche
A Critical Study of the Graphic Novel and Film
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About the Book
The 2005 James McTeigue and Wachowski Brothers film V for Vendetta represents a postmodern pastiche, a collection of fragments pasted together from the original Moore and Lloyd graphic novel of the same name, along with numerous allusions to literature, history, cinema, music, art, politics, and medicine. Paralleling the graphic novel, the film simultaneously reflects a range of authorial contributions and influences.
This work examines in detail the intersecting texts of V for Vendetta. Subjects include the alternative dimensions of the cinematic narrative, represented in the film’s conspicuous placement of the painting The Lady of Shalott in V’s home; the film’s overt allusions to the AIDS panic of the 1980s; and the ways in which antecedent narratives such as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 represent shadow texts frequently crossing through the overall V for Vendetta narrative.
About the Author(s)
Bibliographic Details
James R. Keller
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 247
Bibliographic Info: bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2008
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3467-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0497-8
Imprint: McFarland
Table of Contents
Introduction: Shadow Texts, Superstrings, and Parallel Universes 1
1. Tyranny and the Powder Treason 17
2. V’s Terrorism: Power and Performance 36
3. “Half Sick of Shadows”: Tennyson, Waterhouse, and The Lady of Shalott 60
4. V and The Count of Monte Cristo 78
5. 1984 and the Dystopian Genre 90
6. Knight, Death, and Devil 105
7 “Odds and Ends Stolen Forth of Holy Writ”: Shakespeare and the Invention of V 123
8. “Monuments of Unaging Intellect”: The Shadows in V’s Gallery 165
9. V for Virus: The Spectacle of the AIDS Avenger and the Biomedical Military Trope 191
Conclusion: Of Shadow Texts 223
Bibliography 229
Index 235
