It’s the 5th of November and as is pretty much tradition now everyone who’s seen V for Vendetta or read the graphic novel is imploring social media to remember the date. The ironic thing here is that we only remember the 5th of November on….the 5th of November.

Whereas the original intention of the poem/rhyme was to celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes and co-conspirators to blow up parliament and effigies of him are burned yearly on this date. The people rejoiced that the plot was foiled, the king was saved, and parliament remained intact. What V does in the story is take this idea and embodies Guy Fawkes to take up his original mission of destroying parliament but really by extension toppling the government. It’s a perversion of the rhyme: he says “remember, remember because I’m going to finish what he started” and now because of the cultural impact of V for Vendetta we parrot this rhyme (which I’m totally guilty of too no judgement here) on this date too.

So now we live in this strange world where we are simultaneously celebrating the real world defeat of Guy Fawkes but also the fictional anarchistic success of V both of which are tied to the 5th of November. Let’s remove the historical implications of the 5th of November though and focus on the use the gunpowder treason plot in V for Vendetta. V weaponizes this simple rhyme by creating real world stakes around the usage of it. He says “In one year I will blow up parliament on this date”. In context he wants people to remember the date as it will be the last spark in the coming revolution that he will engineer. Seen through a more figurative lens though it’s used in a cautionary way: “Remember, Remember the 5th of November because if you don’t we’re going to end up here again with our civil liberties removed and a government in place that runs the country via fear”. So I think we need to “remember, remember” constantly lest we end up where Britain does in the late 2020s. Perhaps a good time to remember will be this November 8th…