The Anarchic Prisoner
Part 4:
The Chimes of Big Ben
Number
9190771: And now for my next trick... I shall endeavour to produce a
reading of The Prisoner in the manner of Michel Foucault.
NUMBER
2 CLAPS ENTHUSIASTICALLY.
Number
9190771: I thank you.
At
times, The Prisoner appears to be indivisible from the era in which it was
made. Much fruitful analysis has already been gained from a comparison
with James Bond. Certainly, there are other Cold War cultural influences,
other than just the popular spy novel. One way in which to analyse The
Prisoner's cultural context is via Michel Foucault's concept of
epistemology. According to Foucault, any similarity which may be
discerned between two artists in an era, is due to the fact that their work is
'entirely determined by the epistemic configuration' (85a). In opposition
to psychoanalysis, Foucault does not view sexuality as a natural process,
rather it is historically determined (Dollimore, 1991, 222-223). For
instance, Costello (1988), suggests that the Greek texts read in public schools
(which stated that love between men was more highly valued than carnal love for
a woman), was related to the incidence of homosexuality within these
institutions, as the pupils were taught an earlier historical construct of
sexuality. In relation to a manipulative web of power, deviants (sexual or
otherwise), are placed in a marginal position. However, it is precisely
because of this that they are essential for the maintenance of power. So,
the Prisoner could be read as being just such a deviant.
1975 saw the publication of one of Michel Foucault's most famous works:
Discipline and Punish. Its subtitle was The Birth of the Prison, and as
such, it can be moulded to provide a theoretical view of the Village.
Indeed, Foucault reveals why it may have be necessary to imprison Number 6 in
the first place, especially in view of his possible homosexuality:
If it was truly necessary to make room for illegitimate
sexualities, it was reasoned, let them take their
infernal mischief elsewhere: to a place where they
could be reintegrated... The brothel and the mental
hospital would be those places of tolerance (71).
L.S.Kauffman
provides a basic summary of the theory: 'Foucault argues that bodies are turned
into machines in the army, the school, and the hospital' (72). To use
Foucault's term, all these are means of producing Docile Bodies. A rather
obvious example would be the fake lobotomy operation which Number 6 undergoes
in the hospital in A Change of Mind. The discipline of the army and the
school are also evident in Once Upon a Time, where Number 6 is regressed to his
time in each institution. Indeed, the dilemma facing Number 2 is very
much like that of the examining magistrate in a torture case, 'for the rule was
that if the accused held out and did not confess, the magistrate was forced to
drop the charges', with victory to the tortured man (73).
The confession is one of Foucault's favourite themes, and is
just as important to the various Number 2s. In A Change of Mind, Number 2
keeps asking Number 6 to have 'a little chat' over the 'small matter' of his
resignation. Foucault provides a quotation from Ayrault: 'It is not
enough... that wrong-doers be justly punished. They must if possible
judge and condemn themselves' (74). Number 6 tricks Number 2 into
believing that he will do just that, in the hope of encouraging others to
confess! Just as Number 93 earlier performed his 'confession' at the lectern
outside the committee room. Although, the effect is considerably
diminished by the fact that he is just repeating what the Committee wants him
to say, via the tape player.
Foucault then goes on to theorise about 'the right to
punish':
The
citizen is presumed to have accepted...with the
laws of society, the very law by which he may be
punished. Thus the criminal appears as a juridically
paradoxical being. He has broken the pact, but he
participates in the punishment that is practised
upon him. The least crime attacks the whole society;
and the whole of society - including the criminal - is
present in the punishment (75).
The
Prisoner certainly seems to participate in his punishment. When Number 86
removes the straps to give him the injection during the operation, Number 6
makes no attempt to escape.
Foucault also writes about the concept of the Norm.
The Norm is constituted by a relentless examination of each subject. In
the modern age, the 'threshold of description' (76), has been lowered.
Whereas before, only the 'privileged' few were described in detail, now
everyone is - every individual. 'This is a means of control and a method
of domination' (77). With so much data gathered, it is possible to draw
up a fictional Norm, to produce 'all the shading of individual differences'
(78). In Arrival, the Prisoner is shocked to find that he is the subject
of an all inclusive file. The irony being is that the information
contained within is the very process through which he becomes an
individual. So it is a contradiction in terms for the Prisoner to attempt
to become a 'free' individual, since there can be no individuals who have not
been circumscribed. In the film of The Company of Wolves, Red Riding Hood
turns into a wolf, a metaphor for her deviant sexuality. Number 6, is
similarly deviant, much to the frustration of Number 2 (Leo McKern):
NUMBER
2: Society is the place where people exist together... that is
civilisation. The lone wolf belongs to the wilderness. You must not grow
up to be a lone wolf!
PRISONER:
No sir.
NUMBER
2: You must conform. It is my sworn duty to see that you must conform
(79).
One of
the first things the Prisoner does in Arrival, is to climb the tower.
Consequently, he is nearly deafened when the bell automatically strikes the
hour. It is another way in which the prisoners are kept in check, by
keeping to a time-table, a practice inspired by 'monastic communities', to
'establish rhythms, impose particular occupations, regulate the cycles of
repetition', as Foucault writes (83). In The Chimes of Big Ben, Number 6
and Nadia associate freedom with that sound. However, it is those very
chimes that make the Prisoner realise that he has been deceived, revealing that
he had always been a prisoner of time, even in London. In that same episode,
the Prisoner asserts that Number 2 is just as much a prisoner as he is, as they
sit by the beach. Foucault makes the same point: 'enclosed as he is in
the middle of this architectural mechanism, is not the director's own fate
entirely bound up with it?' (84). Thus, in A Change of Mind, the Prisoner
usurps the timetable, the one fixed constant in the Village. At the
strike of four, Number 86, hypnotised by the Prisoner, declares Number 2 to be
'Unmutual'. It is all Number 2 can do to escape the fury of the
mob. This is demonstrated even more so in Once Upon a Time: Number
6 and Number 2 swap places - Number 2 becomes Number 6. Thus, the persona
of Number 6 (Leo McKern), dies to the beat of the clock and the Prisoner's
relentless cry of 'Die six!'
Surveillance is a necessity to keep subjects in check.
Foucault writes a great deal about Bentham's concept of the Panopticon.
This consisted of a large tower at the centre of a prison, from which a
prisoner could be observed at any time. The Village's Panopticon is most
probably located within Number 2's residence, the Green Dome. However, it
does not really matter where this Panopticon is, for it can see into all
corners of the Village via camera and even radar. The Village control
room functions perfectly: 'the inmate must never know whether he is being
looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so'
(80). Beyond that, the Village may even be a version of the Auburnian
System: the advantage of which 'was that it formed a duplication of
society' (81). In The Chimes of Big Ben, Number 2 had a more radical
dream - 'the world as the Village', in which prison and society have been
inverted on a universal basis. Foucault may even explain the surreal cage
which takes the escaping rebels to London in Fall Out:
But what, in June 1837, was adopted to replace the
chain-gang was not the simple covered cart... but a
machine that had been very meticulously designed:
a carriage conceived as a moving prison, a mobile
equivalent of the Panopticon (82).
In A Change of Mind, Number 86 warns the Prisoner about his 'frivolous
attitude towards the committee', especially since the hearings are
televised. This must surely be a reference to the hearings instigated by
Senator McCarthy in the Fifties. As MacPherson writes (1991), the very
fact that the people charged with 'Unamerican activities' were shown in the
process of testifying on television, seemed to confirm their guilt (82).
According to her, McCarthy's witch hunt worked because people subjected
themselves to this very repression (226). Thus people felt the need to
police themselves, to deny that part of themselves which would not
conform. Finding scapegoats such as the Rosenbergs (who supposedly sold
the secret of the A bomb to the Russians, and were duly executed), tended to
relieve tension. Cameras are all pervasive in The Handmaid's Tale
(Margaret Attwood's vision of a future repressive American society,
Gidea). As Kauffman relates (1992), the cameras in that film have a logo
on them - an eye enclosed within a pyramid. In Free For All, the Prisoner
is watched by Number 1 in the committee room, which also takes the form of eye
on a pyramid. As Carraze and Oswald observe (1995), such imagery is quite
Masonic (68). It effectively symbolizes the governments of The
Handmaid's Tale and The Prisoner: as secretive institutions dominated by men.
The tensions of the Cold War are documented in great
detail by Pat MacPherson in her analysis of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
Indeed, much of Plath's work does relate to the Cold War, and uncannily echoes
The Prisoner. For instance, Jacqueline Rose (1992), quotes a passage from
Plath's journal, in which the poet deconstructs the letter I, questioning what
it symbolizes, and observing how it is never constant, but continually split
into many subjectivities. In Fall Out, the former Prisoner is finally
allowed to become an Individual by the President (Kenneth Griffith), and is
invited to address the assembly. He tries to speak, but the assembly
drowns him out with cries of 'I,I,I' (or 'aye, aye, aye' ((or 'eye, eye, eye'))
) . There could even be a representation of Plath within the
series. In A Change of Mind, the committee tries to cure the depressive
female poet, Number 42.
So while Plath may have felt constricted in her freedom of speech
within McCarthy's America, there is evidence that there was a similar process
occurring in Britain, one that was less widely broadcast. The era
immediately succeeding the Second World War was that in which the British
Welfare state was at its most powerful. This created a whole series of
institutions in which docile bodies could be restricted (Sumner, 1994,
182). There is, for instance, the example of Durham buildings in the
famous sixties television play Cathy Come Home, written by Jeremy Sandford
(1988). He interviewed several inhabitants of Durham buildings: one
former prisoner of war complained that he still felt imprisoned, for he had
never had his own home (10). As for Cathy herself, she falls victim to
the new powers of the welfare authority when they take away her children.
In Durham buildings, people were so regimented, that couples were separated, as
they would have been in the workhouse. In Arrival, the Prisoner is
shocked to discover the Village Old People's Home - a clear signal that the Village
(the State), would never relinquish its hold on anyone. He was not the
only citizen in the Sixties to be removed from his home and community; although
the Village is far more pleasant than the usual tower block. Note the
term 'tower': viewed from another perspective, it could be a typical
Foucauldian concept. Originally, towers were built to protect you (to cut
you off from others, the threatening outside), but it such a way, it could also
imprison you.
However, Fall Out reveals that there were ways
in which people could resist. For instance, there is the figure of the
hippie, epitomised by Number 48. According to Jim McGuigan (1992), the
'individualistic' hippie was considered to be a subversive threat (97).
Colin Sumner (1994), clearly links hippies to the space age. Indeed, the
rocket in Fall Out could either symbolize the atom bomb, or the related space
race to be the first on the moon. Sumner describes the hippie attitude as
thus:
When 'all you need is love', the inadmissible tired old
moral agendas of the elite seemed like alien forces
from outer space, and their police agencies were thus
experienced as beasts from beyond (205).
This
seems particularly applicable to The Prisoner. Fall Out is significantly
different from the episodes which preceded it. The viewer is surprised to
hear the Beatles' 'All you need is love', instead of the nursery rhymes which
had dominated the series previously. This impression is reinforced by
Angela Carter's personal account of 1968 (1988), in which she relates how bands
from the poorest parts of Britain, such as Liverpool, successfully adapted the
music of Southern American blacks (212-213). It cannot be
accidental that Number 48 then sings a Negro spiritual, 'Dry Bones'. In
Fall Out, McGoohan acknowledged Britain's popular music naissance in a
spectacular way.
Angela Carter also provides a possible reason as to why hippies were so
disliked by the cultural elite (211-212). She writes of how a whole generation
turned against American Imperialism, and specifically the war in Vietnam. As
the President (Kenneth Griffith) says, 'these attitudes are dangerous, they
contribute nothing to our culture, and they must be stamped out'. Hippies
may have been individualistic, but they had collective beliefs.
There may be a reference to Vietnam in Fall Out: as the rocket blasts off and
destroys Rover, what sounds like the voice of French Indo-China (Vietnam),
sings 'I, I, I, like you very much' (I obviously don't know the works of Carmen
Miranda well enough). This is possibly linked to Frederic Jameson's views
on Postmodernism (1984): that it was based on the might of a bloody
American imperialism (17). The threat of nuclear holocaust is never
absent from an episode entitled Fall Out. The rocket looms above all the
drama in that particular shelter. It brings to mind one of the most
powerful passages from Foucault (1990): he theorises that wars of the twentieth
century have been so bloody due to the fact that they are no longer fought to
defend the body of the sovereign king. Instead, it is the sovereignty of
the individual which is fought for, so, in any modern war, far more of the
population are involved than ever before, and thus far more are killed
(136-137).
Yet, however useful Foucault's theories are in an analysis of The
Prisoner, one cannot escape the conclusion that this series was written from a
psychoanalytical perspective. At the very least, there is a discernible
effort by McGoohan to construct an Oedipal drama in Fall Out. For instance,
when the former Prisoner intervenes in the trial of Number 48, he quite clearly
calls the President 'Dad'. It has already been noted that the symbolic
order (language), is somewhat disturbed within Fall Out, as the President and
Number 48 speak gibberish. To return briefly to Foucauldian epistemology,
it has to be noted that this was not the only example of Oedipal drama within
the popular culture of 1968. The Doors' song, The End, has an obvious
Oedipal theme, which involves a son screaming his desire to kill his
father. Indeed, the genesis of the song is described in explicit detail
by Jerry Hopkins (1991), and clearly evokes Jim Morrison's inspiration by
Oedipal theory.
However, by the very fact that the Prisoner discovers that he has been
imprisoned by himself in Fall Out, the whole series must be read as some kind
of psychodrama. As Anthony Easthope(1992), writes in a chapter entitled
'The Castle of the Self' (35-44), if a building appears in a dream, the
psychoanalysis reads it as a representation of the self (36). Thus in a
fortified building such as a castle or prison (the Village), the masculine ego
must be defended. What it must be defended against can often be seen from
what has been left outside, but there are also means of fighting an enemy from
within. Easthope theorises on Leonardo Da Vinci's design of a castle,
which was meant to protect a garrison commander from the mutiny of his own
forces, by allowing only one route of surveillance: from the centre, radiating
outwards (39). Crucially, Easthope identifies the 'enemy within' of the
masculine ego: his own femininity. Given the degree to which the Prisoner
has battled his own femininity, such as transferring his psychodrama to a
Gothic stage, and his possible homosexuality, one can only come to the
conclusion that Easthope has articulated a fundamental truth.
This can only be confirmed by statements such as these:
But
when the feminine seems to have infiltrated
within, as it must do because of the bisexual nature
of every individual, it threatens the whole castle and
must be savagely repressed. Either way, since
defence is attack, the more the 'I' strives to be total
master, the more aggression it releases (42-43).
Easthope
even equates 'I' with 'eye' (as above), individuality with surveillance.
He later relates that the phallus has always been of more interest to men than
to women (104). However, desire for the phallus is equated with
homosexuality, and therefore must be rejected. Fall Out's rocket is a
typical phallic symbol. It is possible, that by letting the rocket blast
off, the Prisoner renounces homosexuality and the femininity within him.
Yet this does not equate with the gay reading of the previous section, so it
could be, to the contrary, that the rocket phallus blasts off to ejaculate
homosexual desire, to bring it into being, to release it. Both Dollimore
(1991) and Easthope reveal that Freud's term Paranoia related to repressed
homosexual desire (177 and 106). In a clinical, psychoanalytic sense, the
Prisoner's paranoia, his belief that he is being attacked from all sides, can
only relate to repressed homosexuality. To raise the sights even higher,
such repressed homosexuality could be used by a psychoanalyst to explain the
paranoia of the Cold War, even the Cold War itself. This idea could very
well be discarded as theoretical nonsense, yet, even so, such a rebuke could
not deny the validity of a fiction based on this fear, such as The Prisoner.
Return
to our Patrick
McGoohan page to read the next part of Kevin Patrick
Mahoney's The Anarchic Prisoner
71).
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, Penguin, 1990, p.4.
72).
Kauffman, Special Delivery, p.242.
73).
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Penguin, 1991, pp.40-41.
74).
Ibid., p.38.
75).
Ibid., p.90.
76).
Ibid., p.191.
77).
Ibid., p.191.
78).
Ibid., p.184.
79).
Carraze, op. cit. p.185.
80).
Foucault, Discipline, p.201.
81).
Ibid., p.238.
82).
Ibid, p.263.
83).
Ibid., p.149.
84).
Ibid., p.204.
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