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A Dystopian Reality: Britain in 2021
“Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
There are many many dystopian works and there have been quite a few dystopian film adaptations. The dystopian creations that stand out are those that speak to us in every era. Each work mirrors our reality to a greater or lesser extent. The great ones are those that, as they themselves get older in realtime, reveal to us a reality much closer and closer to the truth of our situation and predicament. The entertainment value becomes less and the truth value rises. We are now in the dystopian reality of ‘V for Vendetta’. It is not as entertaining as it once was because the reality in Britain in 2021 is making the story-line feel so recognisably real.
In the film version the takeover of Britain in 2027/28 is preceded by a disease known as St. Mary’s Virus that has ravaged Europe and killed over 100,000 people by the time the film starts. It is later revealed that the virus was an act of biological warfare by Creedy, the leader of the ruling Norsefire Party, which was then blamed on a terrorist group. The result of…
