V for Vendetta as Cultural Pastiche: A Critical Study of the Graphic Novel and Film

The 2005 James McTeigue and Wachowski Brothers’ film
V for Vendetta
represents a postmodern pastiche, a collection of fragments pasted together from the original Moore and Lloyd graphic novel of the same name, along with numerous allusions to literature, history, cinema, music, art, politics, and medicine. Since it is based upon a graphic novel, the film is from its very inception intertextual, paralleling the text from which it was derived while at the same time representing the authorial contributions of the many people and outside elements that played a significant role in shaping the film.This work identifies and examines the intersecting texts of
V for Vendetta , with individual chapters providing localized readings of the story’s specific intertextual components. The subjects covered include the alternative dimensions of the cinematic narrative, represented in the film’s conspicuous placement of John William Waterhouse’s canvas
The Lady of Shalott in V’s Home ; the film’s overt allusions to the AIDS panic of the 1980s; and the ways in which antecedent narratives such as Terry Gilliam’s
Brazil , Huxley’s
Brave New World , and Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
represent shadow texts that frequently cross through the overall
V for Vendetta
narrative.