Lead to bigger questions: how does the medium change a story? Can it dig as deep? Deeper? What is added? What is lost? ![]() Ask about the color palate, level of realism. After this I use the opportunity to talk about Graphic Novels as a medium, how much is and can be conveyed. Begin to list the ideas and themes already raised on JUST this first page: When someone brings up the cameras with their ironic signage (they will), introduce the image and ideas of the panopticon. Ask what they notice and direct them to the similarities/differences between V and Evey’s rooms. After finishing journals, direct them to the first page and discuss settings: dystopic barbed-wire borders with looming cameras, Evey’s room, and V’s gallery. Prepare a few notes on surveillance and, specifically, how when one believes one might always be being watched and policed, one begins to police oneself. Start with a reading journal and while they do pull up an image of Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”. They need not read/watch the entire piece but they need to discover enough about it to write a paragraph on how the intertext speaks to and complicates the ideas in the graphic novel. I tell students to choose a thinker, artist, singer, novel, or film which appears in V for Vendetta and do some research on it. Intertext Analysis: Moore’s work is always filled with intertexts, works popping up, often in the background, which flesh-out the ideas he explores in the constricted language of the graphic medium. After this, I introduce the Panel Analysis Assignment, a paragraph in which they choose a panel and unpack the various choices for how they flesh out a theme of the text. Panel Analysis: I always show the students the first panels of Moore’s other masterpiece, Watchmen, along with his notes to the illustrator which show just how much thought goes into one panel of the artwork, as they’ll often want to treat illustrations like a direct reflection of the words on the page. Any of these can be replaced with a quiz if you’re concerned with students not reading. ![]() We begin each class with 5-6 minutes of journaling. Journaling: Throughout the reading, my students keep a journal to track key topics, themes, arguments (what I call a topic which the text casts in a particular light), and panels. While the roadmap toward fascism feels both timely and crucial to discuss in the 21st century, the promises and dangers of V’s methods prove just as compelling. But it is in the titular figure of “V,” the theatrical and enigmatic rebel who recruits a young woman, Evey, into his anarchistic aims, that the novel reaches its furthest depths of complexity and introspection. Immediate questions of politics, ideology, race, and policing are all raised. ![]() The novel overtly explores a nationalist, fascist England of the future, suggesting how an emblem of democracy could slip into such a political state. V for Vendetta is Alan Moore’s classic take on the vigilante anti-hero and, in keeping with the rest of his oeuvre, deconstructs the nature of heroism as much as villainy. While it can fit into 2 weeks of, say, a MWF schedule, the richness of the text is also easily sustained over 3 weeks of classes which meet twice a week. ![]() The following will provide 6 days of material which can be easily adapted to either of these lengths. The novel adapts well into 2-3 weeks of classes. It is also easier than many “classic” texts and engages students in a format and genre they may be either more interested in or which may prove a welcome novelty. It examines issues of gender and race, power and politics, literature and textuality. V for Vendetta fits neatly into most larger frameworks of literary discussion.
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