"Remember, rememberOkay that's fascinating. According to wikipedia, the word "guy" in American English comes from Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British parliament on November 5, 1605 in an effort to re-install a Catholic monarch. The British have marked this day since that time with a fireworks display and more. The day, and the man, became more known internationally after a book, and then film, "V for Vendetta" came out (a wonderful film, by the way), with the signature Guy Fawkes mask that a number of you might recognize.
The fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."
What's interesting about V, the movie, is that it takes a "heinous act" in British history and turns it on its head. V in the movie is fighting back against a new totalitarian London that, in some ways, or perhaps many ways, is not quite the society we live in, but it could be some day. As V says in the movie, "Truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it, you were afraid." This is a classic clip from the movie, where V gives a speech to the nation on the national airwaves that he's hijacked. And here's another great clip from the movie, from the beginning where V meets the lead female character (it's not really a spoiler at all, so don't worry, but check out the quality of the writing, it's really wonderful).
(Odd linguistic aside - note at the end of the clip, above, where V says "we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever, be forgot." In American English, we'd say "forgotten." I'd read an interesting book about the history of English a while back, and it said that the "-ten" ending - as in "gotten" or "forgotten" comes from English that was used at the time America was colonized, but it's passed out of modern UK English, even though we still use it in America. I'm not sure if it's 100% gone from the UK - again, maybe Gilbert and some of you "over there" can help us out on this, I just thought it was interesting.)
I remember being in London on Guy Fawkes Day back in 1983. I was visiting a friend who was studying abroad there, I was studying in Paris, and I remember walking down the street and little kids kept coming up to me asking "a penny for the Guy?" The Guardian has a nice write up of this "holiday." Apparently, kids don't do the "penny for the Guy" thing any more. I'll have to ask Gilbert, our resident Englishman co-blogger, about this.
From the Guardian:
This is the face of protest in 2011. At Occupy demonstrations from Wall Street to St Paul's people choose to wear the same mask, an eerie phantom face of a diabolical musketeer, a cheerfully sinister underground d'Artagnan. The mask started its revolutionary career as the public face of the Anonymous movement. All in all it marks a massive change of fortune for one of British history's greatest villains.
For this is the face of Guy Fawkes, transformed into the mask of a modern avenger by artist David Lloyd and writer Alan Moore in their 1980s graphic novel V for Vendetta and popularised by the 2006 film of the comic book – not to mention merchandised; the mask is an official movie byproduct licensed by Time Warner, which has thus found a way to profit from the Crisis of Capitalism. A man demonised for centuries in British culture has become an icon of dissidence and defiance.
Guy Fawkes has taken to the streets, just as he disappears from his traditional starring role on Bonfire Night, 5 November. When Moore and Lloyd started their comic serial V for Vendetta in 1981 in a magazine called Warrior, British children still made rude effigies of the great inflammable Catholic and wheeled their lumpen creations around demanding "a penny for the Guy": today Halloween has taken over in children's culture and, in many parts of Britain, Guy Fawkes Night is merely Bonfire Night, with fireworks but no effigy.
