bukys@rochester.UUCP (Liudvikas Bukys) (02/24/85)
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SPOILER WARNING! You have been warned!
This article contains some of my opinions about the meaning of "The Prisoner".
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By the end of the show, it is made clear that the action-show/spy-show
part is irrelevant except as background. (This is not to say that it
is of no interest at all. But, really, the answer to "But which side
are they on?" is "It doesn't matter" or even "It is meaningless to ask".)
This is a program with messages at multiple levels. The last episode
doesn't even bother to operate at the shallow level, though, so would
no doubt be very unsatisfying to someone who hasn't been pondering the
deeper level[s].
I can't wait for this program to make the rounds again in a few years.
I can remember only a few of the numerous foreshadowings and fine
touches, but I'm sure I'll be able to appreciate them the next time
around. What I really like is that at no time does the show rub the
fine points in the viewer's face, drawing attention to itself. Rather,
it is just loaded up with goodies, many of which are rather obvious
(the scenes of #2 waking up and looking out of the window), some of
which are subtle enough that one might miss them ("you are #6", see
below); some may not even be there (intentionally, anyway), but the
viewer is able to find delight in the show by using his/her own
imagination within the framework of this story. And they got away with
it and made it palatable by wrapping it in an action/adventure/spy
setting!
---
[intro to almost every episode]
#6: Where Am I? #2: In the Village.
#6: Who are you? #2: I am #2.
#6: Who is Number 1? #2: You are, Number 6.
Note the comma! Is it really there? I don't know, but I find the
possibility delightful anyway.
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Here is my interpretation of what happened at the end.
There is this society called the Village whose goal is no make its
members conform. The things that they are required to conform to are
arbitrary and capricious, but it's not the pattern that matters, it's
the conformance. (This society is self-contained and autonomous. It
sets its own standards.) Society's members are expected to be cogs in
a machine, or, as Number 2 put it, "units of society". I think the
bicycle is a symbol of this: it suggests the mechanical role of the
units of society, and the quaint and arbitrary nature of this society
whose only goal is to maintain the status quo.
[2nd last episode; the "trial" scene]
#2: The fine will be 20 units. #6: Units are not for me.
Number 6 has consistently refused to conform. Why?
Well, his warders think they know. They recognize that certain
exceptional individuals are really "Individuals", that is, that they
*will* *not* conform. They have ways of dealing with the average guy,
whose resistance to the `pattern of this world' is able to be worn down
sooner or later. Number 6 is not the average guy, however.
Number 6 successfully survives all attempts to make him conform,
culminating in a psychological battle-to-the-death with Number 2. (I
could say more about that; not today.) The warders placed Number 6 in
this "Degree Absolute" contest, even at the risk of losing Number 2,
because they believed they couldn't lose. If Number 6 lost, he would
have cracked, and they would have succeeded in their goal of making him
conform. If Number 6 won, they would have discovered a true
Individual, someone who sets his own rules, someone who is truly
autonomous. This is the only thing they understand! The Village is
autonomous. The only quality the warders can respect in a foe is true
autonomy. Once Number 6 survives his ordeals, the warders worship him,
because Number 6 does the same thing that the Village does, only
better! His is the `triumph of the will'.
Or so they think. And so might Number 6 think, sometimes. When he
enters the tower to confront Number 1, he discovers just another
cog-in-a-mask, with a crystal ball in his hand, watching replays of the
great moments of Number 6. Come on, gang! This is pretty obvious.
The phrase is repeated. "I will not be pushed, stamped, filed,
briefed, debriefed, (etc). I will not be... I... I... I... I..." while
Number 6 pulls the orb-holder around, the camera zooms in on the number
on the holder's chest. "1" "I" "1" "I". `I am Number 1.' Number 6
is handed the crystal ball; the ball fills with the image of his own
flesh as he takes it in his hand. (Note the great symbol for a world
turned in on itself.) Number 6 stares into it for a second. And lets
it drop to the floor and shatter.
[2nd last episode; #2 from 1st(?) episode calls #6 on the phone]
#2: Why do you care? #6: You'll never know.
His warders did not understand him. In fact, they could not understand
him. "You'll never know." Even if he told them, they would not have
understood. Because they were trapped in their own solipsistic
universe, they could not understand an answer from beyond it. When
Number 6 foiled them, they could only assume that he was like them,
like their society. They assumed by that point that Number 6's "why"
was that "I am Number 1".
They were wrong, though I think that when Number 6 was holding the
crystal ball, he was thinking about it, and had to make the decision
that "I am not Number 1". In his hate for the Village, he could have
chosen to use his newly-bestowed power for revenge, in the process
becoming the very thing he hated, an autocratic one-man Village. But
his reason for resisting, his "why", was not his hate for the Village
(though I think he did hate it), or his considering himself above it
because he was number one in his own mind. His reason transcended this
world. The closest we come to knowing what it is is when he states
that he resigned "for peace of mind" and "honor".
We are not told the particulars of his reason. But the point of the
matter is not the details of his reason; it is that his reason is
transcendent. I can't help but think that this is the explanation of
the "The kneebone's connected to the ... Hear the word of the Lord"
song.
---
This stuff I'm pretty sure about; there are still many open questions
in my mind, some of them probably permanently open due to deliberate
ambiguity in the show. More on these open questions in a future article...
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Liudvikas Bukys
rochester!bukys (uucp) via allegra, decvax, seismo
bukys@rochester (arpa)bukys@rochester.UUCP (Liudvikas Bukys) (02/25/85)
Sorry, I forgot to put in a disclaimer: --> offensive to existentialists <-- Liudvikas Bukys rochester!bukys (uucp) via allegra, decvax, seismo bukys@rochester (arpa)
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Professor Wagstaff) (03/03/85)
> Here is my interpretation of what happened at the end. > There is this society called the Village whose goal is no make its > members conform. The things that they are required to conform to are > arbitrary and capricious, but it's not the pattern that matters, it's > the conformance. (This society is self-contained and autonomous. It > sets its own standards.) Society's members are expected to be cogs in > a machine, or, as Number 2 put it, "units of society". I think the > bicycle is a symbol of this: it suggests the mechanical role of the > units of society, and the quaint and arbitrary nature of this society > whose only goal is to maintain the status quo. [LIUDVIKAS BUKYS] Someone else also mentioned the small wheel pushing the large, as an analogy of individual to society in the mindset of those who run the Village. > Number 6 has consistently refused to conform. Why? > Well, his warders think they know. They recognize that certain > exceptional individuals are really "Individuals", that is, that they > *will* *not* conform. They have ways of dealing with the average guy, > whose resistance to the `pattern of this world' is able to be worn down > sooner or later. Number 6 is not the average guy, however. > > Number 6 successfully survives all attempts to make him conform, > culminating in a psychological battle-to-the-death with Number 2. (I > could say more about that; not today.) The warders placed Number 6 in > this "Degree Absolute" contest, even at the risk of losing Number 2, > because they believed they couldn't lose. If Number 6 lost, he would > have cracked, and they would have succeeded in their goal of making him > conform. If Number 6 won, they would have discovered a true > Individual, someone who sets his own rules, someone who is truly > autonomous. This is the only thing they understand! [LIUDVIKAS BUKYS] I really liked this article and the whole explanation, but it leaves out on important facet of that last episode. If I may draw on this interpretation to point out some other things: At the very end of the last episode, as the Village is "liberated", as its inhabitants run free, #6 returns to his own house in London, only to discover (and semminlgy not to notice!) his door opening AUTOMATICALLY as those in the Village. What did this mean? Is the world the Village? Is the village now the world? Liudvikas Bukys' explanation points out that the technology of the Village enables its leadership to force most average people to conform to their standards, to follow their rules at their whims. But #6 is a tougher cookie. He does not conform so readily as any who preceded him. They are making their best effort to make him crack, to make him submit, to make him conform. And, it appears that every effort to do so has failed, up to the very end. So they admit that he, #6 has won. > Or so they think. And so might Number 6 think, sometimes. When he > enters the tower to confront Number 1, he discovers just another > cog-in-a-mask, with a crystal ball in his hand, watching replays of the > great moments of Number 6. Come on, gang! This is pretty obvious. > The phrase is repeated. "I will not be pushed, stamped, filed, > briefed, debriefed, (etc). I will not be... I... I... I... I..." while > Number 6 pulls the orb-holder around, the camera zooms in on the number > on the holder's chest. "1" "I" "1" "I". `I am Number 1.' Number 6 > is handed the crystal ball; the ball fills with the image of his own > flesh as he takes it in his hand. (Note the great symbol for a world > turned in on itself.) Number 6 stares into it for a second. And lets > it drop to the floor and shatter. "I". "1". The individual. Surely #6 is an individual(ist). And surely he has beaten off every attempt to make him conform, to willingly put on his shackles, like Winston Smith, and proclaim that he loved Big Brother, or the Village, or whomever/whatever. Have they really lost? What is it they've done? When #6 emerges from the Village, when he and all others escape, when he returns to London (by road-----does this imply something about where the Village really was???), he is free. Or is he only "free"? He returns to his own home and seemingly fails to notice that it has become "Villagized". Is the way to enslave and subjugate the individualist simply to let him believe that he is free? Is *this* the point of the final episode of the series (and of the series itself)? Are they saying that the 1984 world of George Orwell is not only incredibly expensive and inefficient to maintain, what with constant monitoring and controlling of EVERYONE, but that it is also incomplete in achieving its goal of total subjugation of everyone? Are they saying that the "Brave New World" world of Huxley, where "Everybody's happy nowadays", where everyone, even the "individualist", is free (or feels free), is the "best" way to maintain a conformist society of individual human cogs? -- "It's a lot like life..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr