Dystopia In The Film 'V For Vendetta'

Although set in the near future, James McTeique’s V for Vendetta (2005) serves as an allegory of historical and contemporary political climates. The film depicts an autocratic government that rules over an oppressed society through means such as mass media mediation and corrupt state-sanctioned police. The negative political environment in the film draws parallels to past dystopian regimes, highlighting the negative environment that society is living in today.

Originally a graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd published in the late 1980s, the apparent political dystopia in V for Vendetta presents parallels to Britain during Thatcherism. Throughout the film we see “detention centres,” an obvious reference to Thatcher “building concentration camps in which [she] intended to house HIV-positive patients” (Shepard, 2006). The film emphasises the authoritarian government’s abuse of power by showing the barbaric tests run on the

In addition to references to Thatcherism, the film’s dystopian political environment also reflects upon Nazi Germany. The constant reiteration of the barbaric practices carried out at the detention centres, such as the scene showing bodies being thrown into a mass grave, mirror those of the concentration camps that existed during Hitler’s reign. Many characters in the film, such as “the agency of the Gestapo-like Fingermen, who black-bag the heads of their victims,” as well as the film’s tyrannical leader himself, High Chancellor Adam Sutler—a portmanteau of “Susan” (the High Chancellor’s last name in the graphic novel) and “Hitler”— are blatant references to this dystopian environment’s similarities to Nazi Germany (Shepard, 2006). The masked antagonist, V, also clearly references Nazi Germany during his “pirate television broadcast” where he speaks “against a backdrop which shows images of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini” (Call,