How Does V Represent Typical Gender Roles to Communicate Messages?

Throughout the film V for Vendetta, it brings out some of the stereotypical gender roles between characters. They way it presents the gender roles at the beginning is quite sexist. It doesn't show the femininity of the characters until later on in the film. Once into the film you can clearly see that they then start to promote the fact of being feminine, masculine men, such as Chancellor Sutler,  loses there masculinity towards the end and then the film starts applying it to there actions and behaviour.

There is a sense of the father and mother figures towards some of the characters towards each other. If we take V for example he would be a mother figure at the beginning of the film towards Evey. He takes her in and looks after her by doing actions that we would categorised with feminine traits. Traits such as cooking which most people would class mainly as a feminine characteristic. Also when V is alone he likes to dance which is more popular with woman. Although V does a lot of these feminine actions, he still has a hype of masculinity by the actions he does towards Government and the scientist that experiments on him by killing them all. Going back to V being a mother figure, he is also a fatherly figure. When we think of fatherly figures we get the approach that they need to be strong, caring and someone they can trust. Evey up to this point trusted V but then that changes when she is put into a mock prison camp set up by V to try and get Evey to over come her fear. This is then giving her the sense of freedom that she's wanted and she is then reborn in a way.

At first, Evey is show to us as a typical women. Long hair, make-up and getting dressed up to go out. When she does go out her fear starts to come out more with the way she acts when she is attempted to be raped. This whole conception of fear is that there is always a source. In Evey's case it would be when her mother is kidnapped and black bagged out of her life. After that she has been living in fear all her and she has been needing a father figure to look up to. Dietrich would be the most suited in a way because being Evey's boss and them being close, Evey has someone to look up to. The scene where Evey can over come her fear is when she has just come out of the prison and has just realised that V set it up. She walks onto the balcony and raises her arms up to give the sense of freedom in her life. It then juxtapose with the scene when V is doing that in the fire, but his isn't for freedom, but for vengeance.

Chancellor Sutler possibly has the biggest impact of a fatherly figure. He has the most power over anyone in the film due to his stature. As a fatherly figure Sutler controls most of the nation, much like a father that has to control his family. He creates the rules, he tells people what they can and cannot do. When Sutler is first introduces it's him on the big screen talking down to three inspectors who are talking about the problem with the destruction of the Old Bailey. As the dictator Sutler has to tell everyone what to do and then they make up an excuse for why the Old Bailey was blown up. Sutler has a lot of the masculine traits that you would think that a dictator would have, he has the power, and most of all he has the voice of the people. His gender does change right at the end when he is killed by V. V makes him act all innocent, has him on his knees begging for his life. At this point Sutler knows what he has done wrong and he is crying and grovelling, this brings his high level of power and masculinity right down to low level of femininity. Now that Sutler's fatherly position has just been destroyed from his actions towards the people and towards V, he has now been removed from the family in a way and now killed. This could link in to reality due to the fact that if you are using power over family, you can be forgotten, you can be left by the people that helped you get to where you are.

Men act, women appear. This is challenged in V due the gender change with Evey. At the beginning where we have Natalie Portman as the typical girly girl with her hair and make up, change to where she loses her femininity. By having her change to a male gender role, she is now changing the perception of the men act and women appear. Originally, Natalie Portman would be there to feature, to be looked at, she is the Male Gaze in this film, but when she gets taken to the mock prison camp and has her head shaved, her femininity gets more and more shorter. The way she is made to look in the second part of film is to make her look man, to create a Female Gaze if you will. This is then there to try and get us to understand that there is more to woman in a film, other to just be looked at by males.

The destruction of Old Bailey probably gave V a hypermasculinity rush, meaning that it gave him more masculinity in his actions. The explosion made him look more powerful and the way that they have shot it, the use of the different angles, gave him the hype of masculinity that defined the gender of V. When if you look at the Old Bailey, it has a point top that can give it phallic imagery. The Old Bailey is a court, it represents can represent the justice of people, meaning if it destroyed, all meaning lost. When V destroys it, he uses it as a symbol. It symbolises the Government, Government not giving justice to innocent people. With the Old Bailey being a phallic object, when destroyed, it can get rid of all the power in that it has, it makes it weak and it makes it feminine.

V for Vendetta represents typical stereotypes of gender roles throughout the film. By doing this it gets communicates messages to the audience. This can be for showing the viewer to bring out the feminine traits. V helps promote the ideas of feminine traits in many ways seen throughout the film. Such as the phallic imagery and the use of the mother and father roles between characters.

How Does V for Vendetta Get Across its Message & Beliefs Through Its Themes

Introduction -
V for Vendetta involves many themes, some of which have messages that can get across as to how the story is told. Vengeance is a theme, V is doing all of this for revenge on the people that experimented on him many years ago. Whilst V is doing this for revenge, the sense of freedom is starts to come out, as V makes all the people stand up to Government and join him. Revolution is one of the most important themes as all the people are now learning not to be feared by Government, but for Government to be feared of the people. Also terrorism can be a big part, as V's acts are being called an act of terrorism, to him they are what he believes in. Religion can also play about this due to the Government experimenting and trying to make humans better.

Theme 1 -
Vengeance. This is what the story is evolved around. V is an experimentation from Government works but when all was destroyed and killed, he survived, all this has been for revenge so V has gone to kill all the people that were still alive and that experimented on him. One of these was the bishop scene. Evey was helping V to kill him by dressing up and acting venerable to the bishop, but when they are talking Evey tries to example it all to him but he doesn't believe. All this happens and then V comes in and kills him, but before he does the bishop knows who he is. He gets all this idea of vengeance when he dies. Purpose is to understand why he is doing all of this to all the people.

Theme 2 -
As all this is being done for revenge on Government, V unveils the theme of freedom. Freedom is the people standing up against there Government. At the final march scene where everyone has joined together, that has now given all the people a sense of freedom. The Government will stand down because they have over come the controlling nature of he Governments power. It's also shown through the angling of the camera, when it looks at the military men, the camera looks down upon them to show that power is being lost. This linking into that people shouldn't be afraid to show what they believe in.

Theme 3 -
One of the biggest themes and possibly the most important message in the film is the sense of revolution. When everyone is stood together all wearing the V mask, they have all now stood up in what V believes in, but then this gets the sense that they will now not be afraid to stand up in what they believe. Government should fear the people, not the people fearing the Government. Tries to get the message across that this is how real society should think, Government is just face, they need someone for people to believe in that they know they will help there future, but as the last person in charge said the same and yet nothing happens.

Theme 4 -
Terrorism occurs a lot in the film. But what people think is terrorism, V thinks is symbolism. When the Old Bailey is destroyed it's classed as terrorism. But for V it symbolises what he will do the following year. It makes it hard for us to determine the identity of someone when they think that the wrong think is the right thing to do. Gets a question going on what actually is terrorism? Terrorism is defined in many different ways, if someone does something bad on a day to day basis, is that classed as terrorism? Gets us thinking about reality in different ways as if everyone and everything we do could be an act of terrorism.

Theme 5 -
Finally religion. As Government take the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands to try and make us better humans in the scenes where people line up for shots, but then cut to a scene where there all dead in a ditch. They succeed in one try and that is when everything got destroyed and V had become a stronger person. As religion in this goes it tries to tell us that we shouldn't try and change who we are, some people would think that it's wrong and really we are just trying to play God in some ways. If this did happen and we succeed, like they did once, it could come back and kill us all for what we did to it.

Conclusion -
I believe that the film does show many messages to the audience through its themes. The way is film is produced and the structure it follows, you could not clarify it as a typical Hollywood Narrative. Although it does follow some of the rules, must are just guided. This could mean that because of how it's set out, and how it doesn't follow certain rules, it can make us question the rules in real life on society and Government are set out and how we follow certain rules.