I've found the "Village" portrayed in Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" to be a more profound message about the world that we actually live in. If the viewer can get over it being a product of its time, as well as the confusing ending, there's a lot of allegory packed into the show that reflects the direction our own societies are headed in:
- Surveillance is not only treated as a given but is incorporated into the conveniences of everyday life. (e.g. The door to Six's domicile opens not automatically but because he is constantly being watched)
- The state wants your "information", so much that it knows more about you than you know about yourself. (e.g. The authorities predict precisely what Six would want for breakfast, right down to how many strips of bacon)
- The line between government and corporation are blurred so much that all food is produced and branded by the Village, which even has its own logo plastered on everything. (All of the food provided to Six is branded as "Village Food")
- The inhabitants of the village all wear the same colorful(albeit ridiculous looking) clothing, almost all of which is unisex. People come from all sorts of ethnicities, yet are made to comply with a single bland culture in under the superficiality of being "international". (The push for gender equality and diversity, while laudable, can easily turn into its own opposite)
- Most of the village inhabitants(or inmates) are infantilized, are essentially adult children who wear child-like clothing and are even seen playing like children. They have no responsibility or agency, but are perfectly content to live a pointless existence inside a resort-like prison.
- The village has a "democratic" system of electing "Number 2", but this system is merely superficial as those who are actually in power and the media have already chosen who they want in said position, and the population is easily swayed to vote for the chosen one.
- Children are completely housebound, only every being seen in one scene of a single episode in the series. Some have read into this as suggesting that the children of the village are always kept inside for safety reasons, much like how todays helicopter parents and governments overprotect children out of irrational fears like "stranger danger".
- The veneer of the village is cheerful in a saccharine-sweet way, so as to drown out any of those negative thoughts or "sudden attacks of egoism". Much like how we are constantly bombarded by music when we are shopping or simply trying to have a conversation at public venues, the Village has a vast system of PA speakers that are playing cheerful or calming music. The village only goes further in that it also plays music in people's homes without their consent.
- The government of the Village is difficult to comprehend, and those who run it are really prisoners themselves, but work within seemingly indefinite layers of bureaucracy. Nobody actually knows who is actually in charge.
- Those who don't wish to participate in the society of the village, yet would be content on being left alone, are considered "unmutual" and made to be social pariahs. Labeling someone with such a blanket term is an easy way to convince the dim-witted masses into agreeing with a position they might not even understand.
Ian Barnes
- The education system in the village, in the little glimpse that way saw it, is very interested in making "learning" so efficient as to sacrifice understanding for the sake of rote memorization. A system called "speed learn" is used to give everyone an education in a matter of hours, yet all those who are "educated" can do is recite what exactly they were told without any insight or understanding of their absorbed knowledge.
A series called "Tyranny of the Masses" analyzes The Prisoner in greater detail, though anyone watching The Prisoner by itself without expecting it to be a spy-thriller should be able to figure out a lot of those things anyway.
Overall, I've found The Prisoner to be much more eye opening than even Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World, yet next to nobody I've told has heard about it. It's much more profound and in allegorical to our time, despite it having broadcasted in 1969.
Ayden Howard
youtube link doesnt even work
Owen Lopez
Portmeirion is a lovely place, I should head back there sometime.
found part 1 anyway. but TY anyway very interesting starting to watch now
Grayson Cox
All true, good post, to be fair this is all pretty basic stuff which people have known about since the show aired in the 1960s, but it's good to know new generations are discovering The Prisoner
Isaac Ortiz
In other words, it depicts Communism.
Blake Cooper
I still need to watch this, only got through the first episode and loved it.
Lincoln Johnson
>Most of the village inhabitants(or inmates) are infantilized, are essentially adult children who wear child-like clothing and are even seen playing like children. They have no responsibility or agency, but are perfectly content to live a pointless existence inside a resort-like prison. >characters who are literally you
at the time of its creation, the democracy of Britain still had strong elements of authoritarian class-based hierarchies, so many of the more liberal types who wrote this show may have felt the communism of the then USSR to be a more healthy or viable egalitarian society
of course several decades prior to that we had Orwell writing about the authoritarianism of the socialists, and since The Prisoner borrowed heavily from his work, in portraying a totalitarian dystopia they were in fact doing as you say: depicting communism
the ending is only confusing to brainlets and no, it's not about politics
Camden Richardson
Movie and TV icon Patrick McGoohan had his Scanners co-star Jennifer O'Neill in tears on the set of the cult 1981 film by ripping into her for marrying three times. A fervent Catholic, The Prisoner star took exception to O'Neill's personal life and didn't hold back in letting her know. Director David Cronenberg recalls, "He had extreme Catholic views about sexuality, which came onto the set. "My leading lady... came to me incredibly distraught and said, 'Patrick said, 'Are you a whore? Are you a slut?' And he started to lay into her because she'd had, like, five husbands. "That was Patrick, and those were the things I had to deal with as a relatively young director. He was probably the most difficult actor I ever worked with, though he gave a fantastic performance." At the time, O'Neill had wed three times. She went on to marry another two men and has been wed to Mervin Louque since 1997.
Sebastian Reed
Pure kino
Levi Gutierrez
>people write about shit going on in their society >decades later someone reads it >notices it has things complaining about society >WOW THIS IS ODDLY TOPICAL. WHAT A REAL PROPHET THIS WRITER WAS. People have been complaining about the same shit for decades. The world is always ending. It's always on the precipice of great change. The newer generations are always weaker and helpless. The future is always dim. Older people have to justify the universe without them which is why they want it to end when they're gone. It's hard to imagine everyone getting along and moving on without them.
It's famous. It's literally one of the most famous TV shows ever made. It was made in 1967-68, not 1969, and the ending is the entire point of the whole thing: the ego alone is not enough to escape the prison. Ancaps, many of whom love the show, routinely miss the point of this.
Nicholas Williams
>more liberal types Learn basic stuff about ideology before blogposting.
Elijah Mitchell
>almost all of which is unisex. None of it is.
Matthew Lewis
I went recently. unfortunately a wedding was on and you couldn't go near the hotel at all. also some of the higher up buildings are private residences with no admittance
Robert Johnson
Not really, no. Both side of the Cold War become more and more similar to each other was actually addressed at some point.
Owen Young
have yikes
Christian Rodriguez
>makes a show attacking all institutions >remains a lifelong hardline member of the biggest institution of them all, the Roman Catholic church. >religion goes completely unmentioned in his show because he can't even entertain the idea that it could be corrupted by human authoritarianism
The Roman Catholic church is plainly authoritarian whereever it gets free reign, and uses a lot of techniques that could be called brainwashing. This isn't a fringe opinion, it's fact.
