The other day we covered propaganda, & we talked a little about memes, & we covered how we got into this economic situation, so today, it's only fitting, that we lave a little lesson on V for Vendetta. There's 400 years of history behind that mask & it is sort of the natural progression in the lessons we've covered thus far.
Of course not, we're talking about the real world here, we're going to be talking about a comic book.
No, I'm joking, we're totally covering both, but only kinda sorta maybe.
But to be fair we are talking about a comic book that can get you arrested if you're caught reading it in certain countries in the Middle East & Asia, & a mask that can, even in the US, land you with charges of terrorism...depending on what state you're in & how serious people like Walker are going to make your arrest charges.
That's right, there is more to it than just anti-mask laws, if they really want to fuck you, they can charge you with terrorism just for wearing it. To a lot of people that have a lot of power, this mask is a serious threat & they are acting like it.
It's no joke, Thanks to the USA Patriot Act, you can get charged with terrorism for covering protests as a journalist. Ask Amy Goodman what happened when she tried to report on the RNC in St. Paul.
And despite this, it is still an international best seller. It is the #1 comic book item sold around the globe. In 2011 it was the #1 seller in Egypt. It has become a global symbol & it means the same thing no matter where you go.
But, you know, this is a history blog, so we have to take a step back in time & look at the past before we can dig too deep into the present.
That's right, we're going to start with William Shakespeare.
Yeah, I know, he wasn't exactly on par with Alan Moore & Chris Claremont, but, despite his utter lack of literary prowess, he was still a really rather okay writer. I mean he did write one or two things that everyone in the entire world has heard about...& a few things far, far better than Westside Story & Grease.
Shakespeare was a Catholic, it's a little known & much disputed fact, but, yeah, it's still a fact, he was a Catholic. Some of his works were veiled attempts to satirize some of the anti-Catholic hysteria that was sweeping through England at the time.
He kept it to himself the way a lot of people try to hide the fact that they are Jewish...the only difference is that it's cool to be Jewish in California & most countries out side of the Middle East (who are understandably upset about an anti-Muslim genocide) & in old Will's time being Catholic would get you killed...like being Jewish used to...in the same countries that were killing the Catholics....but the Jews would get killed in Catholic countries too, which is why they all sort of went to Poland & that is another long story.
There is actually more than a little evidence to suggest that he used his famous theater to smuggle Catholics out of England before the crown could kill them.
Do you know what that makes Shakespeare?
So, you know, it's not at all something that England likes to talk about, you know, given that Will is an English icon & it is sort of embarrassing that he had to lie about who he was & did his best to undermine the best efforts of crown & country.
He was even said to have written The Tragedy of Macbeth as a satire about the witch hunts that James the VI & I was using to kill his fellow Catholics. The Tempest, well that one was sorta kinda obvious...unless you are a lit major that's intent on only reading for subtext & not, you know, the text...which was sort of all about subtext in The Tempest & fuck it, there's a reason everyone likes Richard III best.
England was having its own little religious war, one that a lot of the English transplants in Northern Ireland are still fighting today, which is sort of ironic, because the English in England could give a damn about religion today & the Irish in Northern Ireland could give a damn about religion. But, apparently, it is soooo important if you are English in Northern Ireland.
It's what happens when Michael Collins spends more time circling the moon with his buddies Neil & Buzz than he does figuring out the whole IRA thing...Oh good lord, that one was a groaner. The four people that actually got that, I could hear them groaning.
It made my mother cry.
Moving on...
We all sort of look at Eddie Izzard's descriptions of the Church of England, you know, the whole "Cake or Death," thing. The no bones in their arms thing, the "we took today's sermon out of a fashion magazine" sort of thing. You know, quasi-religious push-overs.
Of course, this might by satirically true today, but back in the day, well, they were all about killing Catholics. In fact, aside from the ease of divorce, the only big difference between the Church of England & the Catholic Church was that the Church of England killed Catholics, & Jews, & anyone that wasn't a WASP.
Here in America they have a reputation for being effete snobs, prigs, rich little cocks that will call Robbie Rogers a "fag" & then scream & run away with their limp wrists ironically bouncing wildly...but back in the day they were the toughest effete snobs in all of England & they had all the money & weapons, which they sort of still do, & that totally helps.
The literal WASPs loved him, the people that were in power & were royalty & wealthy & part of the upper-class, the House of Lords types were enormous supporters of James the VI & I.
He was oppressing the poor riffraff, of course they loved him.
I mean he had Sir Walter Raleigh killed for once talking to the man that would later make first of several attempts to remove the 6 & I from the throne.
The first attempt was creatively called the Main Plot & this one was carried out by a man named Henry Brooke & because Sir Walter Raleigh had once talked to him, Jimmy the 6 & I had them both killed...although Walter wasn't exactly a part of the plot.
The Bye Plot was another one, this one directed by both Catholic Priests & Protestant leaders that were begging for religious tolerance. In this case, it was intended to be a nonviolent kidnapping that would have worked had they been a little more violent.
That's right, they tried to kidnap the king in order to create an atmosphere of religious tolerance in England. It had gotten that bad, that bloody.
And then came the Gunpowder Plot, the plot that started it all...which was actually plot number three...four if you count the one against Elizabeth I, the Throckmorton Plot...but the Gunpowder Plot stuck.
It stuck because it had the better publicist, despite the fact that the Main Plot resulted in the death of an Englishman far more popular than Guy Fawkes.
Of course, it started off with Guy Fawkes as the villain. He was one of the men plotting against Jim the VI & I & that was a very unpopular thing in an England that was so divided that neighbor was pitted against neighbor over, well, over Henry's divorce & the religion it created.
And it didn't help that there was a very strict class divide between the Protestants & the Catholics, who were so poor that they were dependent on the church's charity to survive & thus were more loyal to the hand that fed them than the hand that took their food away.
It was such a divided England that they celebrated the 5th of November, not because half the population thought Guy Fawkes was a hero, but because half the population thought he was a villain.
To be fair, he was both. He was trying to kill the King & the House of Lords not for religious tolerance, but to put a Catholic Elizabeth on the throne....& he was a hero because he was trying to kill the king & the House of Lords that were trying to kill a good chunk of the population that the bard was trying to keep out of the flames & off the gallows.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There are two sides to the story of Guy Fawkes, just like the IRA, just like Hamas, just like ISIS...so you know, maybe it's not at all useful to draw those good guy/bad guy lines in the sand & look at everything in Black & White.
They used to burn effigies of Guy Fawkes & celebrate the night that he was caught & burned. England, every year, was celebrating their triumph over the horrendous forces of religious tolerance. They were celebrating the victory of intolerance. And they called it Guy Fawkes Day.
Remember, these are the British. These are the same people that, for the past 800 years have been holding parades through Northern Ireland to openly celebrate the conquest & subsequent oppression of the Irish.
We are talking about the British, the only people on earth that yearly rub it into the faces of the people that they conquered & then cry when the the conquered people get offended by it.
Not even Germany does that. Americans are assholes & we wouldn't dare act like that...Columbus Day.
But they used to call it Guy Fawkes Day, when they were celebrating the oppression of the Catholics in England.
Now, they just call it Bonfire Night.
A strange thing happened. Guy Fawkes died, but what he initially stood for lived on, & it grew & it evolved & the next thing England new, he had become the hero of a comic book about fascism, which was really a thinly veiled critique of the Thatcher Administration & the Reagan years.
It was a poem that made him first remembered. The same thing that made sure we would remember Paul's midnight run & William Dawes, who actually made it out of Boston to warn that the British were coming.
Had we lost the Revolution, the British would celebrate all through the streets of Boston on 4 July & wonder why we are so upset by it. You think I'm joking, but they did make sure that the Chunnel connecting England & France lets out at Waterloo Station.
One poem kept him in the public's imagination. One poem made the people burn him once a year all over England.
That poem, however, sort of told his story & then that made it to a comic book that had an artist & a writer (like all comic books do) & they turned him into a hero.
What we are talking about, boys & girls, is the evolution of an idea. The world's most famous & the world's most global meme.
It started with a poem, & then it turned into a comic book, one that was so popular that in 1995, a decade after if was published, my buddy Chris made me read it. A decade after it was published, the idea was still fresh enough that people were still recommending it.
A decade after I read it, it was turned into a movie.
The poem has since been shortened.
It's been shortened & turned into a meme, because, let's face it, Guy Fawkes really has nothing to do with it any longer. Now he has morphed into the comic book character V.
And even then, people ignore the fact that V was a flawed character that wanted his own personal revenge as much as he wanted to free England from fascism.
They don't care about who V was, like the character said, it is the idea that mattered & ideas are bullet proof. That idea spread across the globe.
It started with a Scientology protest & from there it moved across the globe. People protesting for democracy & economic equality across the globe have taken the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of revolution, as a symbol of freedom, as a symbol of the idea that V championed.
We see the masks everywhere today. In Egypt, when the people were protesting for democracy, we saw the mask. When the people, across the globe were protesting to bring an end to the economic policy we covered in Chicago Boys, we saw the mask. England, Spain, France, the United States, Greece, the mask is everywhere.
It was a symbol of the Occupy Movements across the globe. And just like Guy Fawkes, to the people in power the mask & the movement it represents has become a sign of evil rebellion. The people in control have denounced the language that comes with the mask & the idea that governments should fear their people, the idea that governments should be the voice of the people, not the voice for the people.
Movies have been made, in the same comic book form, to vilify the growing global movements based off the ideas in V for Vendetta.
And the struggle between the people & the movement continues today. More & more we see different organizations adopting the Guy Fawkes mask as their symbol, & all with the same idea, that the people should be in control of their own destinies.
The mask has become a symbol for an idea, that has morphed over the years from an end to the persecution of the Catholics in England, & the religious tolerance called for in the Bye Plot, the Main Plot, & the Gunpowder Plot, to a symbol of freedom & democracy & an end to the economic system created to oppress the people at the University of Chicago.
It has become a symbol of change & hope. It has become propaganda in on of itself. Almost 400 years after the Gunpowder plot, the stylized face of one man has turned into an idea that refuses to die.
I'll leave you with this:
Wait, We're covering a movie?
Of course not, we're talking about the real world here, we're going to be talking about a comic book.
No, I'm joking, we're totally covering both, but only kinda sorta maybe.
That's right, there is more to it than just anti-mask laws, if they really want to fuck you, they can charge you with terrorism just for wearing it. To a lot of people that have a lot of power, this mask is a serious threat & they are acting like it.
It's no joke, Thanks to the USA Patriot Act, you can get charged with terrorism for covering protests as a journalist. Ask Amy Goodman what happened when she tried to report on the RNC in St. Paul.
"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, & ideas are bulletproof."
But, you know, this is a history blog, so we have to take a step back in time & look at the past before we can dig too deep into the present.
That's right, we're going to start with William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare?
Yeah, I know, he wasn't exactly on par with Alan Moore & Chris Claremont, but, despite his utter lack of literary prowess, he was still a really rather okay writer. I mean he did write one or two things that everyone in the entire world has heard about...& a few things far, far better than Westside Story & Grease.
Shakespeare was a Catholic, it's a little known & much disputed fact, but, yeah, it's still a fact, he was a Catholic. Some of his works were veiled attempts to satirize some of the anti-Catholic hysteria that was sweeping through England at the time.
Do you know what that makes Shakespeare?
A terrorist.
So, you know, it's not at all something that England likes to talk about, you know, given that Will is an English icon & it is sort of embarrassing that he had to lie about who he was & did his best to undermine the best efforts of crown & country.
It's what happens when Michael Collins spends more time circling the moon with his buddies Neil & Buzz than he does figuring out the whole IRA thing...Oh good lord, that one was a groaner. The four people that actually got that, I could hear them groaning.
It made my mother cry.
Moving on...
We all sort of look at Eddie Izzard's descriptions of the Church of England, you know, the whole "Cake or Death," thing. The no bones in their arms thing, the "we took today's sermon out of a fashion magazine" sort of thing. You know, quasi-religious push-overs.
Of course, this might by satirically true today, but back in the day, well, they were all about killing Catholics. In fact, aside from the ease of divorce, the only big difference between the Church of England & the Catholic Church was that the Church of England killed Catholics, & Jews, & anyone that wasn't a WASP.
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
Here in America they have a reputation for being effete snobs, prigs, rich little cocks that will call Robbie Rogers a "fag" & then scream & run away with their limp wrists ironically bouncing wildly...but back in the day they were the toughest effete snobs in all of England & they had all the money & weapons, which they sort of still do, & that totally helps.
The literal WASPs loved him, the people that were in power & were royalty & wealthy & part of the upper-class, the House of Lords types were enormous supporters of James the VI & I.
He was oppressing the poor riffraff, of course they loved him.
The first attempt was creatively called the Main Plot & this one was carried out by a man named Henry Brooke & because Sir Walter Raleigh had once talked to him, Jimmy the 6 & I had them both killed...although Walter wasn't exactly a part of the plot.
It stuck because it had the better publicist, despite the fact that the Main Plot resulted in the death of an Englishman far more popular than Guy Fawkes.
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
And it didn't help that there was a very strict class divide between the Protestants & the Catholics, who were so poor that they were dependent on the church's charity to survive & thus were more loyal to the hand that fed them than the hand that took their food away.
To be fair, he was both. He was trying to kill the King & the House of Lords not for religious tolerance, but to put a Catholic Elizabeth on the throne....& he was a hero because he was trying to kill the king & the House of Lords that were trying to kill a good chunk of the population that the bard was trying to keep out of the flames & off the gallows.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There are two sides to the story of Guy Fawkes, just like the IRA, just like Hamas, just like ISIS...so you know, maybe it's not at all useful to draw those good guy/bad guy lines in the sand & look at everything in Black & White.
Not even Germany does that. Americans are assholes & we wouldn't dare act like that...Columbus Day.
But they used to call it Guy Fawkes Day, when they were celebrating the oppression of the Catholics in England.
A strange thing happened. Guy Fawkes died, but what he initially stood for lived on, & it grew & it evolved & the next thing England new, he had become the hero of a comic book about fascism, which was really a thinly veiled critique of the Thatcher Administration & the Reagan years.
Had we lost the Revolution, the British would celebrate all through the streets of Boston on 4 July & wonder why we are so upset by it. You think I'm joking, but they did make sure that the Chunnel connecting England & France lets out at Waterloo Station.
One poem kept him in the public's imagination. One poem made the people burn him once a year all over England.
That poem, however, sort of told his story & then that made it to a comic book that had an artist & a writer (like all comic books do) & they turned him into a hero.
It started with a poem, & then it turned into a comic book, one that was so popular that in 1995, a decade after if was published, my buddy Chris made me read it. A decade after it was published, the idea was still fresh enough that people were still recommending it.
A decade after I read it, it was turned into a movie.
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
It's been shortened & turned into a meme, because, let's face it, Guy Fawkes really has nothing to do with it any longer. Now he has morphed into the comic book character V.
It started with a Scientology protest & from there it moved across the globe. People protesting for democracy & economic equality across the globe have taken the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of revolution, as a symbol of freedom, as a symbol of the idea that V championed.
Movies have been made, in the same comic book form, to vilify the growing global movements based off the ideas in V for Vendetta.
I'll leave you with this:
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