“My name is Fawkes, Guy Fawkes. Guido for my friends.” Guy Fawkes is, in a way, a great creator of cool. He belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The Gunpowder plot was a plan to assassinate different lords to establish what Guido and his compatriots believed was a correct government. The plan was to stockpile explosives under a government building called the Parliament. Guido was to guard the explosives until everything was put into action. The plot failed, but Guido and his friends’ idea lived on. It left such a great legacy that all over the world, signs that Guido’s sacrifice was not in vain still exist, from festivals to… M.
The Guy Fawkes Mask, a mystery to all. How could a mask look so strange and grotesque and yet be so cool? The Guy Fawkes Mask is a representation of Guido Fawkes, yet it is not only that. It has a much deeper meaning. A meaning that digs deep. So deep that it touches the very essence of humankind: Rebellion, the source of coolness. The Mask represents an anonymous, a person whose identity is meant to stay unknown, which in itself is cool. An anonymous that will fight against the forces that be, whether it is a government or “the system”, whether it be the rules in general or a person of authority. Whichever it be, the Guy Fawkes mask represents an anonymous that will fight against that very point of authority. This mask is part of the legacy left behind by Guido Fawkes. A legacy so great that in 2006, a movie was created. This movie was a Veritably Vivifying representation of Guy Fawkes’s story, only from the point of View of a present day Britain controlled by a Vicious and tyrannical government. And its main character is… V.
Voila! A mysterious and humorous anonymous with a penchant for the dangerous. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an accurate description of V, the main character in the amazing movie that is V For Vendetta. V For Vendetta is a sublimely cool representation of one of the coolest topics, coolest attitudes or coolest actions that has ever existed. Rebellion. Rebellion is the source of cool. It is a logical conclusion after all: cool, whether it is now in 2011, or at its origin decades ago, cool is what is different, what is new. Up to a certain level, something new is something rebellious, since no one is used to it. Rebellion, along with an amusing yet mysterious and deadly hero, add a few amazingly inspirational and dramatic scenes and you have V For Vendetta, a movie that will stay engraved in the minds of all who watched it as one of the coolest movies ever. And even better, on top of leaving memories that future generations will and have based themselves on, the movie in question is based on an inspirational historical event. Yes, future generations have already started basing their culture on this movie. Mainly on one of the major communication tools of our time and the time before…WWW.
The internet. Home to so many different communities. More than there are in the so-called “real world”, although that term may be argued upon. These communities, just like so many civilizations in the past, live, die and merge. When they merge, they adopt the culture of the most prominent website. And then there are the underground communities, communities that pick their members with care. Communities that influence the rest of the web by hacking, spamming and infiltrating. All of these communities, prominent or underground, are related. Information travels faster than ever before. And the legacy of Fawkes and V travels and spreads, as fast, if not faster than other trends. It is cool. Why is it still cool after 5 years, or hundreds of years? Because it is one of the most perfect representations of cool there is. It represents rebellion nearly perfectly. So many communities and websites follow the influence of V and Fawkes. It started with the Mask. The mask evolved into “memes”, cartoon faces that represent complex emotions in a huge variety of situations. These memes originated from the Mask, but also from the scenes in V For Vendetta, among other things. Scenes that can be described as… I.
Inspirational, inspiration the way to create something out of nothing. Without inspiration, there would be no creation and in turn, no rebellion. And without rebellion, there would be no cool. The scenes in V For Vendetta were created by the movie’s producers through inspiration. And they themselves decupled their power of inspiration through the movie and its viewers, inspiring a whole generation to create a trend. A trend that has lasted much longer than most. A trend that up until has remained cool. How? Why? What? One word. The source of cools coolness. One of humankinds most basic instincts, change, modification…R.
Rebellion. Rebellion, as said throughout this text, is the source of cool. However, that is not exactly true. Inspiration is the source of cool. Rebellion, is the source of coolness. Rebellion is what makes cool things cool, rebellion is the flavor, the topping, added to the food that is creation. Whilst inspiration is the kitchen in which it was made. Rebellion makes things cool because something rebellious is basically something new, and something cool is the same: cool is new, cool is something never done before, something… Original.
Basically, V for Vendetta cool, not only because of how well the movie was made and how the actors acted, but because of what it represents: rebellion, and because of what it has caused: inspiration. A whole generation was affected by this movie, and this generation was the first to have the most powerful communication technology at their fingertips. All this caused it to remain cool for much longer than any other movie, style or music before. And even when the movie itself becomes uncool, once technoolgy has surpassed 2D images and videos, the world will remember and use the legacy that Guy fawkes, V, and this generation will have left behind
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