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Guy Fawkes in Hong Kong: How the Seventeenth Century English Insurgent Became an International Political Symbol Pratibha Rai Published: 2/2/2020

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Guy Fawkes in Hong Kong: How the Seventeenth Century English Insurgent Became an International Political Symbol Pratibha Rai Published: 2/2/2020 Guy Fawkes in Hong Kong: how the seventeenth century English insurgent became an international political symbol Pratibha Rai Published: 2/2/2020 Keywords: resistance ; Hong Kong ; insurgency ; symbolism 1. Introduction In a sea of umbrellas in Hong Kong, yellow vests in Paris, and black hoods in London, one face sinisterly smiles up at the government; the mask of V from the graphic novel, V for Vendetta. This face depicts an historical person, Guy Fawkes, who was in charge of explosives during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the famous failure of which the U.K celebrates every November. In the 1980s, Fawkes entered the global zeitgeist in the comic series V for Vendetta, where he features as the antihero in a dystopian, fascist England. Through the torque of legend, the mask of Guy Fawkes or ‘V’ is now an international symbol of political destabilisation for protestors. This article aims to disentangle the utterly fascinating and interdisciplinary web of how a seventeenth-century English insurgent became a resistance symbol, which recently prompted the anti-mask law in Hong Kong on 4 October 2019. The Guy Fawkes mask embodies the prismatic role of anonymity and disguise in empowering political resistance. Broad Street Humanities Review, [Issue] www.broadstreethumanitiesreview.com Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 2 of 9 2. Discussion Born to a Protestant family from York, Fawkes converted to Catholicism during his teenage years. As a Catholic, Fawkes was discontent with the persecution of his religious group who, in England, were barred from voting, owning land, and holding public office. This intolerance was not unique to his epoch but was perilously building through religious upheavals half a century before. The Reformation had unleashed religious and political instability throughout Europe, pitting Catholics against Protestants. A year after her accession Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers formulated a religious “settlement,” which envisaged a national Protestant church. In this period, it was an accepted and expected rule that all subjects within a state must adhere to the country’s official form of Christianity. In order to obtain this uniformity, the Elizabethan regime made being a practicing Catholic punishable by law and the act of importing or printing Catholic literature high treason. English Catholics hoped that Elizabeth’s successor, James I, whose mother was a Catholic, would bring a reign of peace. However, James continued to adhere to the 1559 settlement, thereby perpetuating its intolerant public policies. Furthermore, he ordered Catholic priests to leave the country and introduced legislation which denied Catholics the right to make wills. In this context of increased oppression and ingrained divisions, Guy Fawkes left England for the Netherlands and served in the army of Catholic-ruled Spain. As a talented soldier, he ascended the ranks and became notorious for his skills in handling explosives – a skill that caught the attention of another English Catholic named Robert Catesby. It was Catesby who was the mastermind behind the Gunpowder Plot with its principal aim being to bomb the Houses of Parliament on the day of its ceremonial State Opening. The group of conspirators hoped that this explosion would be sufficient enough to assassinate the Protestant ruling elite and plant a new Catholic monarch on the throne. The Plot, as history informs us, was a disastrous failure. Fawkes was responsible for protecting the barrels of explosives, which were discreetly hidden in the House of Lords’ cellar. However, the plot was discovered before the explosives were detonated. Fawkes was then incarcerated in the Tower of London and after undergoing torture to force him to disclose the names of his fellow co-conspirators, he was found guilty for high treason and executed in due manner. The anniversary of the Plot was made an official holiday in Britain in which bonfires are lit and effigies of Fawkes are set alight.i The event planted itself so firmly in the British psyche that since 1928, the Houses of Parliament are still searched every November by the Yeomen of the Guard. Though the Guy Fawkes mask is popularly associated with the graphic novel series V for Vendetta, the tradition of wearing masks of Fawkes had much earlier ancestors. From the eighteenth century, disguising oneself as Guy Fawkes became a cunning pretext for disorder and unpoliced revelry. In 1790, The Times documented instances where children were, “begging for money for Guy Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 www.broadstreethumanitiesreview.com Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 3 of 9 Faux”.1 A report on 4 November 1802 described a similar event where, “a set of idle fellows…with some horrid figure dressed up as a Guy Faux" were begging and receiving money, consequently being sentenced to prison as, “idle and disorderly persons”.2 In the Victorian era, it became customary for people to dress as Fawkes, wearing a stylized mask with features similar to the mask we now associate with V for Vendetta: a thin goatee, an upturned moustache and arched eyebrows.3 Throughout the centuries, Guy Fawkes’ image morphed from religious extremist, pretext for idle crime to a populist underdog; a metamorphosis largely catalysed by the serialisation of his life in the 80s’ graphic novel V for Vendetta. The Fawkes character, simply known as ‘V’, lives in a futuristic dystopian Britain governed by a fascist government. Similar to his historical counterpart, he plans to bomb the Houses of Parliament but whereas Fawkes fails, V succeeds. V’s crusade is successful in large part due to his ability to hack the state’s gargantuan computer network. The reinvention of Fawkes through V, whose plan ultimately prevails, gives the mask an ominous portent: that this time, their ploy may lead to victory. The book and the accompanying movie released in 2005 foisted a new image of Guy Fawkes within the socio-political zeitgeist, just at the time when a new generation of protest movements were gaining momentum. 1 David Cressy, "The Fifth of November Remembered", in Myths of the English, ed. By Roy Porter (Polity Press, 1992), pp. 79–80 2 "The great annoyance occasioned to the public by a set of idle fellows", The Times (hosted at infotrac.galegroup.com), 4 November 1802. 3 Sara Barrett, ‘Opinion in “The New York Times” <‘https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/opinion/guy-fawkes-day-v-for-vendetta.html> [accessed 6 January 2020] Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 www.broadstreethumanitiesreview.com Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 4 of 9 Figure 1. A masked Guy Fawkes being paraded on Guy Fawkes Night, Public Domain, 1868. The mask’s polemical energy gathered pace after appearing in various Web forums as it was adopted as a symbol for anti-establishment groups such Anonymous, Project Chanology, the Occupy movement, and Anonymous for the Voiceless. The mask provided Anonymous with just that: anonymity. The mask’s affiliations with anti-government or anti-establishment movements enabled it to become an international symbol of resistance. In an event heavily allusive to the Gunpowder Plot, protestors in May 2009 began wearing the Guy Fawkes mask as they rallied over the controversy of British MPs’ expenses by detonating a fake barrel of gunpowder around Parliament. In subsequent years, the Occupy movement explicitly identified themselves with the mask. On Guy Fawkes Day of 2011, a Facebook invitation called for, “all OCCUPY protesters of the world to come together on 5 November to rally again for our efforts to end corruption and social injustice.” Similar to the 2009 protests, not only the mask but also its historical reputation provided the fulcrum for dissent. The mask’s re-appearance in the Occupy Wall Street protests served to solidify the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of public rebellion. In recent times, V’s grinning visage has infiltrated the streets of Hong Kong during protests that began in June 2019, where resistance continues to be inflamed currently in 2020. Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 www.broadstreethumanitiesreview.com Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 5 of 9 Figure 2. Anonymous supporters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, Los Angeles, Author: Vincent Diamante, Creative Commons Why did Guy Fawkes’s mask in particular become such a symbolic confederate for millions of protestors around the world in the twenty-first century? Is it not ironic, even comically ignorant of protestors, to brandish a failed insurgent as the face of their efforts? The power of the Guy Fawkes’ mask may reside not in the teleological unfolding of the Gunpowder Plot but rather the dissent it represents and the lasting power the event had on public memory. While Guy Fawkes’ presence in twenty-first century protests might seem anachronistic, there is an historical continuity to Guy Fawkes’ face in our epoch; a face which symbolises dissatisfaction with the ruling elite; for Fawkes and his men, it was with a King who was not alleviating the oppression of his country’s Catholics, in Hong Kong, at plans to give extradition rights to mainland China. Furthermore, in 2011, Anonymous delivered a manifesto during OpTunisia, which unambiguously referenced the historical Guy Fawkes. On Guy Fawkes Night, it is customary to recite the rhyme: Remember, remember, the fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and plot. I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason, Should ever be forgot. Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 www.broadstreethumanitiesreview.com Broad Street Humanities Review, 1 6 of 9 In an open letter to the government of Tunisia, Anonymous alluded to this whimsical rhyme by stating: “the tighter you squeeze, the more your citizens shall rebel against your rule. We will use this brief span of attention we’ve captured to deliver a clear and present message which we hope shall never be forgot.”4 Thus, Anonymous transformed the Gunpowder Plot from a failure to a promise of justice, from transience (‘brief span of attention’) to a traumatic message that outlasts time.
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