From Hollywood

Resumen: En el presente artículo se analizarán las versiones cinematográficas realizadas a partir de los cómics del guionista de historietas inglés Alan Moore (Northampton, 1953). Hasta la fecha, cuatro han sido las novelas gráficas de Moore que han sido llevadas a la pantalla: From Hell, La liga de los hombres extraordinarios, V de Vendetta y Watchmen. Asimismo, el eje de atención se centrará en las modificaciones propuestas por estos filmes, que han distorsionado y alterado la esencia y el mensaje profundo que originariamente contienen las obras de Moore. Abstract: In this article we will analyze the film versions made from the comics of the english comic writer Alan Moore (1953, Northampton). To date, four have been Moore's graphic novels brought to the screen: From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta and Watchmen. In our study we will identify the modifications in these films that have distorted and altered the essence and profound message contained in Moore's works.

Aestheticizing Violence Within Transmedia Storytelling Context

In this study, V for Vendetta (2006) directed by James McTeigue, is analysed based on Henry Jenkins's transmedia storytelling terms. Henry Jenkins defines re-creating a story with different media tools as “transmedia storytelling” and evaluates this new storytelling form that emerged in the digital age as a new aesthetic linked with active participation that creates new demands on the consumer. V for Vendetta with a large fan audience has a story that became the symbol of the social movements that emerged against totalitarian regimes created in the modern state and social organisation. The story V for Vendetta that was first published at the beginning of 1980s as a dystopic comic book prioritising violence and terror experienced changes in the story with the effect of different narrative media. Within this context, this study with Henry Jenkins's transmedia storytelling theoretical basis analyzes how the main narrative elements of the story such as terror, violence, fear, and freedom are reflected in the V for Vendetta movie by using semiotic methods.

Shakespeare for Revolution: From Canon to Activism in V for Vendetta and Sons of Anarchy

Shakespeare’s works have long been a place of cultural and political struggles, and continues to be so. Twenty-first century non-canonical fiction is appropriating Shakespeare for activist purposes. The present article will analyze this phenomenon, applying the concept of cultural capital, the theories of cultural materialism, intertextuality, and appropriation in relation to popular culture, in order to study how Shakespeare’s plays are being appropriated from more radically progressive positions, and resituated in alternative contexts. Among the plethora of Shakespearean adaptations of the last decades, non-canonical appropriations in particular offer brand new interpretations of previously assumed ideas about Shakespeare’s works, popularizing the playwright in unprecedented ambits and culturally diverse social spaces, while giving voice to the marginalized. Thus, through entertainment, non-canonical fiction products such as V for Vendetta and Sons of Anarchy recycle the Shakespearean legacy from a critical point of view, while using it as a political weapon for cultural activism, helping to make people aware of social inequalities and to inspire them to adopt a critical stance towards them, as free and equal citizens.

(Anti)Fascism and Superhero Comics: An Anthropological Examination of Innovativeness in Comic Books as Exemplified by "V for Vendetta"

The paper analyzes the V for Vendetta comic books, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. These volumes are graphic novels whose characteristics place them in the literary genre of the critical dystopia, but they have also been associated with the genre of the superhero comic, which, according to a number of authors including Alan Moore, is inextricably linked to the ideology and practice of the political right, which in its extreme form assumes the form of fascism. The way that fascism is treated in that work, as well as in two other comics discussed in the paper (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), is linked to the way in which the process of creativity/innovativeness functioned in the context of the revision/deconstruction of the superhero comic book genre in the 1980s, both on the collective (intra-genre) and the individual level, on the level of the thought structure of the British writer Alan Moore. Using the structural-semiotic model of analysis, the paper seeks to fathom the logic of this deconstruction procedure "broken down" into the three comic books discussed in the paper, with particular emphasis on the analysis of V for Vendetta, with the aim of establishing its "hidden", connotative semantic dimension. The study adopts a modern view of the comic book according to which the essence of this medium, which distinguishes it from other narrative and graphic forms of expression as well as from film, can be recognized in the specific, sequential way of combining its visual and narrative components, thus generating meanings whose interpretation depends on the intention of the author but also on the view of the reader.

Politicization of Life and Auto-Thanatopolitics in V for Vendetta

This chapter offers a biopolitical reading of V for Vendetta using Giorgio Agamben’s topology of sovereign power and bare life. The chapter problematizes the boundaries of sovereign power, arguing that in the zone of indistinction, where bare life and the sovereign come closest to one another in an inextricable bond, by the inability to complete a thanatopolitical act bare life can absorb the potentiality of sovereign violence. Bare life cannot be liberated in the proper sense because its appearance is tied to the politicization of animal life through sovereign power. However, as violence reaches its apogee and biopolitics become thanatopolitics, bare life comes closest to the source of its creation. The chapter concludes by arguing that as the camp encompasses all aspects of life, the dynamics between sovereign power and bare life turn not dis-uniting or emancipatory, but rather “transformative,” “transfigurative” and ultimately, auto-destructive.

Estéticas activistas: cultura mediática y resonancia en las movilizaciones contemporáneas

En los años recientes hemos visto la circulación de símbolos comunes en distintas movilizaciones alrededor del mundo, tal es el caso de la máscara de V for Vendetta, los disfraces de personajes de Star Wars o The Handmaid’s Tale o el performance de “Un violador en tu camino”. Este artículo presenta una reflexión teórica sobre la presencia de elementos de la cultura mediática en el activismo, mediante la apropiación y la creación de símbolos. A la luz de estas manifestaciones, se propone una revisión de los conceptos de cultura mediática, resonancia, expresión pública y estéticas activistas, así como sus articulaciones. Esto contribuye a la comprensión de la dimensión simbólica del activismo en la era global.