Probably agree that the politics of V for vendetta are too immature to really merit consideration, although what struck me is that V doesn’t so much start the revolution as restart the apocalypse-probably the only really interesting thing in the novel’s politics is the vitalist critique of fascism as a kind of autonomous immune system for 20th century culture maintaining a stultifying stasis even after it was time for it to die. It’s nonetheless essential Moore if only because it straightforwardly erects the Prometheus he spends the rest of his imperial phase deconstructing or ambivalently regarding.
Yes, the whole sequence of Moore imagining the demiurge needs to be read: V for Vendetta (anarchist apocalypse, materialist) to Miracleman (left revolution from above) to Swamp Thing (quietist retreat to private paradise) to Watchmen (neoliberal apocalypse) to Promethea (anarchist apocalypse, spiritualist). Agreed on the strange critique of fascism, too, which reads more like a critique of communism or some other essentially techno- and bureaucratic ideology (the sexually repressed leader masturbating at the computer) except when Moore bothers to remember that all the minorities have been genocided. He drains fascism of its historical fervor—no Futurist Manifesto here—to somewhat dishonestly put this fervor entirely on the side of anarchism.
yeah the worst piece of commentary in the book is probably Shakespeare and all the rest as having been banned, which would be fine if Moore were satirizing Marxism, or something of that nature, there is that historical distain for Shakespeare in that tradition but entirely elides the way fascism puts great work to use, and flattens it in the service of a one dimensional vision of a master culture
Probably agree that the politics of V for vendetta are too immature to really merit consideration, although what struck me is that V doesn’t so much start the revolution as restart the apocalypse-probably the only really interesting thing in the novel’s politics is the vitalist critique of fascism as a kind of autonomous immune system for 20th century culture maintaining a stultifying stasis even after it was time for it to die. It’s nonetheless essential Moore if only because it straightforwardly erects the Prometheus he spends the rest of his imperial phase deconstructing or ambivalently regarding.
Yes, the whole sequence of Moore imagining the demiurge needs to be read: V for Vendetta (anarchist apocalypse, materialist) to Miracleman (left revolution from above) to Swamp Thing (quietist retreat to private paradise) to Watchmen (neoliberal apocalypse) to Promethea (anarchist apocalypse, spiritualist). Agreed on the strange critique of fascism, too, which reads more like a critique of communism or some other essentially techno- and bureaucratic ideology (the sexually repressed leader masturbating at the computer) except when Moore bothers to remember that all the minorities have been genocided. He drains fascism of its historical fervor—no Futurist Manifesto here—to somewhat dishonestly put this fervor entirely on the side of anarchism.
yeah the worst piece of commentary in the book is probably Shakespeare and all the rest as having been banned, which would be fine if Moore were satirizing Marxism, or something of that nature, there is that historical distain for Shakespeare in that tradition but entirely elides the way fascism puts great work to use, and flattens it in the service of a one dimensional vision of a master culture
Right, it's a direct steal from Brave New World—which wasn't a satire of fascism!