What is the relationship between what we see and how it informs our belief of reality? Michel de Certeau might say that what we call real is actually “simulacra,” or, in other words, something that replaces reality with representation. This dynamic is clear in the film V for Vendetta, which explores these questions through a futuristic dystopia in England where a manipulative state-run media controls all messaging and reshapes reality. It is evident that where V for Vendetta and de Certeau’s essay entitled “The Practice of Everyday Life” support one another is in advancing these points: (1) That seeing and perception, to a large extent, create belief, and (2) the same tools that are capable of creating belief can also sow mistrust.
To the first point, it’s clear from the start that the media plays a big role in V for Vendetta. The opening scene starts with popular news spokesperson Lewis Prothero ranting about the current conditions of what’s left of America. He claims that America is what it is because of “Godlessness.” He continues on, saying that no one escapes judgment. In this way, we see him use his platform to create a narration. And, as de Certeau writes, “these narrations have the twofold and strange power of transforming seeing into believing, and of fabricating realities out of appearances” (186).
In other words, Prothero uses his tool of mass messaging to construct or manipulate a new reality for his captive audience. This is a propaganda tool that is used to not only scare the people of England, but to create false belief. But that ability to create belief is not untouchable. In fact, as we see in the following scene, mistrust is sown through the same tools or channels as belief. This is evidenced by the film’s masked protagonist, “V,” who breaks into the national media headquarters and plays a message for all of London to hear. The message he records for the emergency broadcasting channel is his summary of the current state of affairs in England — a very different narration from that of Prothero.
V speaks of the corruption, manipulation, and lies of the Norsefire government. And he concludes with his plan for combating it — to detonate the British Parliament building in exactly one year from the present date. He speaks of the oppression and injustice that has been authorized by the government. And his words do not fall on deaf ears.
While the public has been beaten into submission and largely accepts the media’s narrative of reality, many still don’t embrace the false belief. Perhaps the Norsefire government makes an assumption that de Certeau addresses at the start of chapter four: “If it is false that you believe in something else, then it must be true that you are still on our side” (177). The public may not challenge the Norsefire government, but it also isn’t obvious that it ever fully accepted the belief the state-run media is trying to advance.
This is clear because V’s message was so effective in sowing mistrust within many elements of the population. And over the course of the next year, the time in which the majority of the film takes place, a momentum of anarchy and anti-Norsefire activity builds.
