The Guy Fawkes mask has quickly become a key symbol of the worldwide fight against oppression and oppressive regimes. Its appearance in Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta and its 2005 film adaptation helped popularize the mask in the mainstream. Despite V for Vendetta’s undeniable cultural impact, the Guy Fawkes mask is better known as the “Anonymous” mask.
In the early 21st century, the “Anonymous” group became extremely popular in mainstream media for their massive coordinated cyber attacks, and for using the Guy Fawkes Mask as their symbol. But what is the history behind the mask?
The failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and Guy Fawkes
Firstly, the eponymous Guy Fawkes was a real person in history, a former English soldier who tried to blow up the House of Commons.
By the start of the 15th century, religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants were very high and further amplified when King James I took over from Elizabeth I after her death in 1603.
King James decided to continue with his predecessor’s oppressive policies towards Catholics. In response to the lack of reform and continued persecution directed against them, a group of Catholics led by Robert Catesby devised the “Gunpowder Plot.”
This was a desperate attempt to overthrow the Protestant establishment and replace it with a Catholic ruler instead. Guy Fawkes had the single most important role in this plot. He was tasked to guard the barrels of gunpowder which were placed in a cellar just below the House of Lords.
The plot was extremely unsuccessful. An anonymous letter tipped authorities off to Fawkes’s presence in the cellar, and he was caught and tortured until he revealed the identity of his co-conspirators. The failure of the plot was celebrated across England and only helped consolidate protestant rule and animosity against Catholics.
The Guy Fawkes Mask was designed 5 centuries later by David Lloyd, the artist behind V for Vendetta
The story of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot has become legendary over the centuries and is still commemorated every November 5th in England, when an effigy of Guy Fawkes is burned on a bonfire in every town and village. However, the modern depiction of the Guy Fawkes Mask was only designed in the 1980s by David Lloyd.
In V for Vendetta, he gave V’s mask the now iconic look: a wide smiling face, a pointed mustache, a thin goatee, and arched eyebrows.
Lloyd’s design was meant to evoke a sense of mischief and menace, capturing the defiance to the establishment embodied by Guy Fawkes, and the main character of the graphic novel, V. He intended to create a mask that could be instantly recognizable, easily reproduced and would be a symbol of the story’s themes of rebellion and resistance.
The main reason why the Guy Fawkes mask became the face of Anonymous is that the novel comments on oppression and tyranny, which is exactly what Anonymous claims to fight.
But the group is thought to have chosen the mask for other reasons too, notably that it provided anonymity, which was key for their “hacktivist” activities such as staging protests against Scientology.
The defiant and iconic look of the mask was enough to make Anonymous go viral in 2008 when going viral wasn’t even a thing yet in social media and mainstream media.
The group kept on using the mask because it was inexpensive, and it remains iconic to this day. This is shown by the fact that Anonymous has been inactive for a while, but the mask remains closely associated with this movement which was most prominent almost 20 years ago.
Throughout its extensive history, the Anonymous mask has continuously inspired other masks in the fight against oppressive systems and regimes. Perhaps the most important example of the last few years was the Salvador Dali mask used in Netflix’s hit series, Money Heist (La casa de papel).
There are similarities between the two, given that both the Anonymous and the Dali masks have a rich history of challenging conventional thought and regimes.
However, in the show, the Dali Mask was also used to preserve anonymity and show unity against an oppressive system, which in this case was Capitalism and the Spanish government.
We’ve already established the history, significance, and inspiration behind the Anonymous mask and given its incredibly iconic status you may be wondering if it has made someone a lot of money.
Ironically, the Anonymous / Guy Fawkes Mask has made a private corporation millions of dollars in sales. After the 2005 film adaptation of V for Vendetta, Warner Bros. secured the rights to the mask design as part of the movie’s merchandising.
So essentially, any time the mask is sold, Warner Bros. earns a royalty because they still hold the license.
