While I was reading V for Vendetta I found a reference to Guy Fawkes, as I did not know who that man was and even if he was real or not, I look it up and I found a lot of information about him and the relation he had with V for Vendetta, and how he became the face of revolution.
Do you know who Guy Fawkes was?
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| Guy Fawkes |
He was born in 1570 in York. His family had accepted the religious reform dictated by Henry VIII of England, until his father died in 1579 and his mother got married to Denis Bainbridge, who was devoutly Catholic and took part in groups that openly resisted accepting the authority of the Church of England. Under the influence of his stepfather, Fawkes turned into Catholicism when he was 16. He enroled in the military forces to fight in the Dutch War of Independence, or the Eighty Years’ War in order to stand up for his religious ideology. Once he came back from the war, he joined to a group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, whose purpose was to carry out an attack which could give them the possibility of destroying the regime. Fawkes was the perfect man to carry out Catesby’s plan due to his military experience and knowledge on explosives. Catesby’s plan was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder, but during this attempt the group was discovered and some of the members were captured, that was the case of Fawkes who was severely tortured and killed. That day, on November 5th, Londoners were encouraged to celebrate that the King escaped from assassination by lighting bonfires. After all that happened, Fawkes is sometimes referred as the last man to enter the Parliament with honest intentions.
This event influenced literature over the years; one example of this is the graphic novel V for Vendetta. In 1980, the graphic novelists Alan Moore and David Lloyd “created a comic strip, "V for Vendetta", in which the main protagonist is a cloaked anarchist who wears a grinning, moustachioed Guy Fawkes mask while battling against a fascist authoritarian state” (The Economist) Moore and Lloyd wanted to transform Fawkes into an anti-hero for the modern age. V tries to change the regime fighting against the tyranny, oppression and the lack of freedom, he “destroys the Houses of Parliament by blowing it up, something Fawkes had planned and failed to do in 1605.” (Waites)
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| V destoys the Houses of Parliament |
Graphic novel artist David Lloyd created the Fawkes mask and, in a BBC interview, he says:
"The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny - and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way," (Waites)
Fawkes mask has not only influenced literature, it has also become the face of revolution. This mask was used by the hacktivist group Anonymous in 2008 when they protested against the Church of Scientology because it forced YouTube to remove/censor a video interview with Tom Cruise. The Guy Fawkes mask became a widely used method for hiding their faces which turned into the symbolic status within the group. Anonymous group adopted the character for protesting against authority. Lloyd said to BBC News Magazine: "Anonymous group needed an all-purpose image to hide their identity and also symbolise that they stand for individualism - V for Vendetta is a story about one person against the system."
Another example is the Occupy Movement which adopted the mask in 2011. On Fawkes Day (November 5th) a Facebook invitation urged "all OCCUPY protesters of the world to come together on November 5th to rally again for our efforts to end corruption and social injustice." (Nickelsburg). From then on, the mask became the symbol of the movement.
Years have passed and Fawkes is still a symbol of the rebellion and resistance against the power. Alan Moore, the author of V for Vendetta, told The Guardian , "I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It's peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.” (Lamont)
For you to think, do you know about other movements that have used Fawkes’s mask to promote revolution?
References
Lamont, Tom. «Alan Moore – meet the
man behind the protest mask.» The Guardian; The Observer (2011).
Moore, Alan and Lloyd. V for Vendetta.
New York: Vertigo, DC Comics, 1982.
Nickelsburg, Monica. "A brief history
of the Guy Fawkes mask." The Week Magazine (2013).
The Economist. "How Guy Fawkes became
the face of post-modern protest." The Economist 4 November 2014.
Waites, Rosie. "V for Vendetta masks:
Who's behind them?" BBC News Magazine (2011).
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