(no subject)

[learnedax]

Finished V for Vendetta this morning. It's good. It's very good. I disagree, however, with jducoeur and alexx_kay that it is Alan Moore's best work. My central issue with it is that the story is, odd as this might sound, traditional to the point of not saying much. I had no foreknowledge of this book, and nothing in it surprised me. Great art can of course be made as process rather than product, and this is quite good art on those terms, but it also seems to go to great lengths to shake up the reader and tell them something interesting and new. I really wanted it to be both, but for me at least the latter aspect winds up coming off rather weakly.

Mine may also be a less than typical perspective. I'm a rabid fan of The Prisoner, and I saw a lot of parallels between it and this book (sure, all dystopiae look similar, but I see far more large and small echoes of McGoohan here than Huxley or Orwell).

Comments

From my camp

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

The reason I like V for Vendetta is the concentration camp elements. Moore weaves that horror together effectively, and shows the multi-faceted complexity of the situation by unveiling one character's involvement or interaction at a time. It's a better holocaust story than dystopia story.

Having said this, he's more heavy handed in V than in other works. That is the big difference between V and Watchmen IMHO.

You're comment on The Prisoner is an interesting one. Both deal heavily with how to be more than a cog in the machine. I need to see more episodes to compare them intelligently.

Re: From my camp

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The holocaustic side of the story seemed to me a contributing factor rather than the main story, although its impact is certainly seen throughout. If we're looking at perspectives on holocausts I have to mention Maus, as I don't think anyone has captured the complexities and depth of emotional response more effectively.

What? Not seen all of The Prisoner? I guess you'll have to be in on the marathon we've been thinking needs to happen. Many of the major themes (and hence parallels with V) really come to the fore in the last two episodes, which are extremely philosophically dense.