The Anarchic Prisoner
Part 2: Once Upon a Time
Number 9190771: In a continuation from last week's episode...
It could be that Penley's desire to convey her division from the Star Trek fans was the manifestation of a very Gothic fear. In the novels of the Imperial Gothic, situated at the turn of the nineteenth century, various intrepid explorers expressed a common fear: that of 'going native' or atavism. According to Patrick Brantliner, 'it expresses anxieties about the ease with which civilization can revert to barbarism' (28). There is a very real (or even fantastic), sense that such feelings are unsuitable for a postmodernist, especially when one considers that for 'Hobson, therefore, the path of social regression is marked by the signs of a corrupting, degenerate mass culture' (29).
Number 2: What's this got to do with The Prisoner?
Number 9190771: It's my belief that The Prisoner can be read as Gothic horror.
The Prisoner contains many ingredients of the Gothic:
the
most constant feature of the Gothic novel was
the presence of a medieval building of sort, with
secret corridors and labyrinthine underground
passages (30).
For instance, when the dwarf butler leads Number 6 to Number 1 in Fall Out, along the maze of tunnels beneath the Village, he uses a large key to open a wooden door (which the turns out to be metal and opens automatically!). Thus, the Gothic would appear to be employed in an unusual (or to use the term of the Russian Formalists), 'defamiliarised' way. I know that a scene was deleted between the wooden and metal doors, but editing itself has to be seen as a creative process. The first example comes very early on in Arrival. One of the first things the Prisoner sees is a maid within a tower. However, his first reaction is not to rescue her, but to demand what she is doing in his 'home from home'. Following this, the Freudian term 'das Umheimlich' (or the Uncanny), comes to mind when we consider that the Prisoner wakes up in the Village in a simulacra of his own home:
that
which is homely familiar, friendly, cheerful...
its negation therefore summons up the unfamiliar,
uncomfortable, strange alien (31).
It is
possible to argue, though, that The Prisoner does depart from some of the norms
of the Gothic genre, as enunciated by Elizabeth Mahoney: it 'would usually
feature the displacement of the young heroine's struggle to a faraway
landscape' (32). Jon Abbott reinforces this view: 'If we are to accept
the analogy of the series' premise, we must also accept Number Six as the persecuted,
not a knight in shining armour' (33).
It is not long before the Prisoner encounters the weapon
which the Village authorities use to oppress the inmates. Rover, as it is
called, is a large white balloon.
Number 2: That's not very frightening.
Number 9190771: Use your imagination, Pop.
As Carraze and Oswald write, 'The rebel is quickly caught: we glimpse for a moment his terrified face suffocating under a whitish membrane before the palpitating mass engulfs him' (34a). Carraze and Oswald almost articulate, almost make the link: Rover is a representation of the womb. Rover displays more aspects of her personality in later episodes: 'In The Chimes of Big Ben, Rover suddenly produces a couple of 'baby' Rovers... to bring the errant Number Eight (Nadia Grey) back to the Village' (34b). Thus, it is related to Kristeva's concept of the non-symbolic body : 'the body that gives birth, secretes, changes shape'. Barbara Creed has written that 'In horror films such as Alien, we are given a representation of the female genitals and the womb as uncanny - horrific objects of dread and fascination' (35). As such, Rover is related to Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject: that which is expelled from the body, such as sweat, blood, or excrement. One can see its relation to The Prisoner in the following passage:
The
abject constitutes the gap or hole at the border
of subjectivity which threatens to engulf the individual
when its identity is threatened. The place of the abject
is 'the place where meaning collapses'... the place where
'I' am not (36).
The split between self and Other is another feature of the Gothic (37).
To explicate further -
the
journeys which the protagonist... undertakes are
not merely literal journeys but an attempt to
represent her psychological 'journey' or
consciousness (38).
Thus, at
the end of his journey in Fall Out, the former prisoner does meet himself.
There would appear to be elements of masochism, as defined
by Freud, in The Prisoner. It could be that The Prisoner is subjecting
himself to moral masochism: 'the ego's need for punishment either from the
super-ego or from outside powers' (39). This would fit in with Number 6
constantly facing punishment from the various Number 2s. Yet there
appears to be a further element of masochism, related to Freud's feminine
position concept:
But
if one has an opportunity of studying cases in
which the masochistic phantasies have been
especially richly elaborated, one quickly discovers
that they place the subject in a characteristically
female situation: they signify, that is, being
castrated, or copulated with, or giving birth
to a baby (40).
This would explain why the Prisoner is given the typically female role of the Gothic. After he has been attacked by Rover for the first time, he wakes up under the gaze of an old woman in a rocking chair, in a scene that is reminiscent of a fairy tale: 'Red Riding Hood sleeps between the paws of the Wolf, the Grandmother actually is the Wolf' (41). The Prisoner has been symbolically castrated by Rover. After he has left the hospital - 'an imposing building reminiscent of a medieval fortress' (42) - he tries to regain phallic mastery, by seizing the hand brake of the taxi. The audience is lulled into believing the potency of the phallus when an escape route is offered by 'The Woman' later on in Arrival. This relates to Laura Mulvey's film theory:
Mulvey
posits that the male spectator looking at the
woman's image on the screen overcomes the threat
of castration that she presents either through sadistic
voyeurism, through identifying with a powerful male
character whose look penetrates the woman in order
to know, devalue, and efface her, or through
fetishization, through investing her body with an
often fragmentary perfection (her legs, her face, her
breasts) that substitutes for the absent penis (43)
'The
Woman' (as she is credited), is clearly fetishized, via her face. The
Prisoner tries to make good his escape, but he is symbolically castrated once
more. A phallic lever is pulled in the Village control room, and the
helicopter returns home.
The question arises of why the Village authorities use a
representation of the womb to keep their citizens in check. It may be
just a Gothic convention. For instance, in the film of Angela Carter's
The Company of Wolves, the heroine climbs a tree. In the tree is a nest,
full of eggs. They hatch, to reveal horrific human foetuses... The answer
may have been supplied by Carter herself, in the Omnibus documentary, Angela
Carter's Curious Room. The curious room represents a far more positive
vision of the womb:
There
is a theory... that the quest for knowledge
is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the
question 'where was I before I was born?'
In the beginning, was what?
Perhaps... there was a curious room. A room
crammed with wonders.
And now the room and all it contains are
forbidden you, although it was made just for
you... And you will spend all your life trying to
remember it (45).
This may be why the weapon is so effective. The Prisoner is oppressed by the very thing he seeks.
Number 2: I am not entirely convinced by this Rover/womb analogy.
As Max Hora writes, Rover is always linked with water: 'in Arrival, Rover
does not start off from the sea bed but emerges as a tiny Ping-pong ball
from the fountain' (46). Helen W. Robbins points out that eggs are always
associated with water, from fish in the ocean who lay and fertilize eggs
without the sexes touching each other, to humans, where the water is maintained
within the body of the woman. Thus the 'phantasy of life before sexual
reproduction is a fantasy of life in the womb' (47). Indeed, the Prisoner
could be seen to be suffering from Couvade (womb envy): 'a feeling of impotence
clearly stemming from jealousy... of female reproductive power' (48). In
Fall Out, when the former Prisoner has penetrated the womb of the Village, he
symbolically gives birth to the two rebels (Leo McKern and Alexis Kanner), by
releasing them from their womb simulacra (49), where they are held in place by
a metal umbilical.
Rover could also represent the moon. Barbara Creed
writes that 'a number of myths from ancient cultures associate woman's monthly
bleeding with the full moon' (50). The Prisoner also faces loss on
a regular, cyclical basis, as the bars slam on his face in each episode in
which he has failed to escape. It could be a Freudian slip in The Chimes
of Big Ben when the Prisoner sarcastically quips that he would like to be the
first man on the moon; to conquer and dominate it. Indeed, the Rocket
that blasts off at the end of Fall Out with Number 1 on board, does resemble a
lunar module. However, before he can do that, he must overcome Number 2.
A fan once wrote that the oval chair that each Number 2 sits
in resembles a foetus.
Number 2: What fan
was this?
Number 9190771: Don't know, sir.
Number 2: What do you mean, you don't know?
Number 9190771: I forgot to note it down, sir.
Number 2: Then you cannot use it. It is not the Word of the Lord.
Number 2: It is not procedure.
Number
9190771: Must be reverting to the oral stage.
Number 2: You're a fool!
Number 9190771: I am a fool. Not a cheat, sir.
Each Number
2 controls the Village from the centre of the womb. Globules of red liquid are
animated on the screen, to reinforce the impression of being within a
womb. The butler is always at hand to provide nourishment for the
foetus. However, there comes a time when this Curious Room, centre of all
knowledge, is jeopardised. This is due to Number 6, who has persistently
refused to reveal the reason why he resigned. Thus, there is some
knowledge missing - the womb is incomplete. Number 2 is no longer in control,
and in Once Upon a Time, even he is threatened by Rover, with banishment from
the foetal chair. There is only one place where Number 2 can get the
knowledge he desires - the Embyro Room. Or in other words, Angela
Carter's Curious Room.
Yet this Number 2 (McKern), is different from the ones
before him. In the Embyro Room, he reveals himself to be what we always
believed him to be - monstrous. He is the Number 2 most fully associated
with the abject. See how he bleeds, sweats, and spits. He is a
figure straight out of a fairy tale:
the
Father, the ogre, must be slain by the adolescent
who then possesses his inheritance, the ogre's castle,
the princess. The Father is never killed by name in the
fairy tales, but his threatening, confining destructiveness
is emphasized. He is masked by superlatives, but with
courage, ingenuity and strength he may be overcome (51).
'King of
the Castle' is one of the nursery rhymes which resound in Once Upon a Time and
Fall Out. The ogre may be dead, but his guard dog still lives.
Then, on the other hand, Rover may be the real master of this world.
Laura Mulvey points out that both 'the history of the
Oedipus Complex and the history of antiquity suggest a movement from an earlier
maternal stage to a later paternal or patriarchal order (52). She is the
archaic, 'the pre-Oedipal mother who must be repudiated by the son so that he
can take his proper place in the symbolic' (53). This is related to
Lacan's theory of language acquisition. Since Oedipus (the Prisoner), has
yet to resolve the riddle of the Sphinx (the archaic mother), it could explain
why the President and Number 48 speak gibberish in Fall Out. The archaic
mother disrupts the symbolic (language). However, when the former Prisoner
has discovered the answer to the riddle which is 'who is Number 1', the archaic
mother (Rover), can be destroyed.
This could be related to McGoohan's professed views on
progress, or rather, the futility of it, as represented by the Pennyfarthing:
'In the traffic jam... one is a statistic, a number, futile, a prisoner - you'd
get home quicker on the bicycle' (54). It may be, that rather being the
manifestation of the archaic mother, Rover may represent a new age, in which we
are slaves of technology - the artificial mother. This idea is inspired by
Roland Barthes:
the
age-old function of nature is modified: it is no
longer the Idea, the pure substance to be regained or
imitated: an artificial Matter, more bountiful than
all the natural deposits, is about to replace her, and to
determine the very invention of forms. A luxurious
object is still of this earth, it still recalls... its mineral
or animal origin... Plastic is wholly swallowed up in
the fact of being used: ultimately, objects will be
invented for the sole pleasure of using them. The
hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one
replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized (55).
Technology
is all pervasive in Arrival. Technology means that none of the Villagers
need to physically open a door: they open automatically. The repairman
rides a slow tractor: 'In an emergency, we walk'. Food is neatly packaged
in tins. Water arrives at the twist of a tap. Electricity provides
heat. Technology nurtures us, even resurrects us - note Number 2 in Fall
Out. Yet there may come a time when the door stays shut and we have no
means to open it. In the relatively new age of the artificial mother,
technology makes life too easy for us - for us of the First World.
Another ingredient of the Imperial Gothic is the sense that
there is little opportunity for adventure in the modern era. Brantliner
quotes Lang as writing that as 'the visible world is measured, mapped... we
seem to hope that a world of invisible romance may not be far from us...'
(56). The world of 'invisible romance' referred to is that of the Occult,
another staple of Imperial Gothic, with its crystal balls and spiritual
happenings. As the former Prisoner walks into Number 1's lair in Fall
Out, he passes a series of globes, each with a different representation of
Earth. Number 1 swivels round, bearing a crystal ball which reveals that
the Prisoner will never be free. The Prisoner smashes the ball, and rips
away the mask. The terrifying truth is revealed. This time, it is
not the barbaric She who regresses to an ape (57). It is the western
conqueror, he who would seek to dominate all others, who is revealed as the mad
degenerate. The Prisoner faces the awful truth that he could hardly bare
to face himself. How can one be an individual without subjecting other
people? And thus Number 1 finally makes his pointless trip to the
moon. The rocket exhaust even succumbs the artificial mother, the
'omnipresent and all-powerful totality, an absolute being, only in the intuition
- she does not have a phallus - which deposses her' (58). So ends Fall
Out. However, there is still one point to make:
The
desire to return to the original oneness of things,
to return to the mother/womb, is primarily a desire for
non-differentiation. If... life signifies discontinuity and
separateness, and death signifies continuity and non-
differentiation, then the desire for and attraction of death
suggests also a desire to return to the original state of
oneness with the mother (59).
Number 2: And you wondered why Penley wished to differentiate. (SPEAKS INTO DICTAPHONE). Put Number 9190771 on suicide watch tonight.
Number 9190771: Have I not got the right to change my mind? What right has my past to speak of my present? (60).
Number 2: If you want to die, I'll kill you boy!
Number 910771: That's not how it's supposed to work!
Number 2: I'll kill you, boy!
Number 9190771: There's tradition... A procedure to follow!
Number 2: Ah, that's better. That's good, my lad.
Number 9190771: Don't worry, your time will come, Pops.
Return to our Patrick McGoohan page to read the next part of Kevin Patrick Mahoney's The Anarchic Prisoner
28). Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism 1830-1914, Cornell University Press, 1988, p.229.
29). Ibid., p.237.
30).
Gilbert Phelp, 'Varieties of English Gothic', in Boris Ford, ed. New Pelican
Guide to English Literature No.5, Penguin, 1983,
p.110.
31). John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado, Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, Macmillan, 1984, p.140.
32). Elisabeth Mahoney, ed., in Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Everyman, 1994, p.xx.
33). Jon Abbott, Starburst, Vol. 5, No. 4, March 1984, p.22.
34a). Carraze, op. cit. p.37.
34b). Barbara Creed, 'Dark Desires', in Steven Cohen et al, ed. Screening the Male, Routledge, 1993, p. 131.
35). Barbara Creed, 'Horror and the Monstrous Feminine', in James Donald, ed. Fantasy and the Cinema, British Film Institute, 1989, p.135.
36). Creed, Dark Desires, p.121.
37). Tulloch, Unfolding Text, p.128.
38). Mahoney, op. cit. p.xx.
39). Creed, Dark Desires, pp. 120.
40). Ibid., pp.120-21.
41). Patricia Duncker, 'Re-Imagining the Fairy Tales: Angela Carter's Bloody Chambers', in Literature and History, Vol. 10, No.1, Spring 1984, p.8.
42). Carraze, op. cit. p. 39.
43). Helen W. Robbins, 'More Human than I am Alone', in Steven Cohen et al, ed. Screening the Male, Routledge, 1993, p.143.
44). Hora, op. cit. p.20.
45). Kim Evans, Producer 'Angela Carter's Curious Room', in Omnibus, BBC, 1992.
46). Hora, op. cit. p.20.
47). Robbins, op. cit. pp.139-40.
48). Ibid., p.135.
49). Ibid., p. 137.
50). Creed, 'Dark Desires', p.123.
51). Duncker, op. cit. p.9.
52). Laura Mulvey, 'The Oedipus Myth: Beyond the Riddles of the Sphinx', in James Donald, ed. Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory, Macmillan, 1991, p.27.
53). Creed, 'Monstrous Feminine', p.134.
54). Carraze, op. cit. p.7.
55). Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Paladin, 1989, p.106.
56). Brantliner, op. cit. p.240.
57). Rider Haggard, She, Oxford University Press, 1992, p.294.
58). Creed, 'Monstrous Feminine', p.135.
59). Ibid., p.136.
60).
Sean Burke, The Death and the Return of the Author, Edinburgh University Press,
1993, p.57.
Lisez cette page en français avec
Babelfish Lesen
diese Seite auf Deutsch mit
Babelfish
