V versus Hollywood: A discourse on polemic thievery

Given that textual narrative can be infinite and the filmic framework finite, a space is created between the source material and its possible reappropriation, where a choice is made. Do the film executives decide to be true to the original (where the auteur's true meaning possibly rests) or do they bow to fiscal policy and sociopolitically risk-free cinema? The adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta from the original source and how this process evolves through film as a cultural, political and diasporic text is examined, with particular focus on the differing geographic and cultural ideologies that underpin the graphic novel and the filmic representation. This article posits a celebration of the beauty, visceral power and freedom of the graphic novel set against the power and homogeneity of the Hollywood film industry. It is possible to say that graphic novels do not exist as Hollywood's occasional goldmine, but in fact exist as a site of narrative and visual freedom, in and of themselves. The audience or subject position of experiencing the 'altered' version of literature, from all its various forms and sources, can be seen to create a spoon-fed pre-existent narrative usage via Hollywoodized culture that somehow manages, in this instance, to defuse political vibrancy and vitality and potentially reformat the narrative as mainstream popular culture … or does it?