@@jelkel25 The worse part is that they're becoming very hard to avoid. Once a neighborhood has an HOA, it's almost impossible to get rid of and, of course, anyone moving in must join the HOA as part of their home purchase. Unless you buy a home in a brand-new development, or way out in the boonies, you may not have much choice.
@@jelkel25 progressive takeover of california in the 60's is what made it a staple. It doesn't go away because it's both a way of curb checking what others see as undesirables and at the same time works almost as a status to show off that you aren't poor. And yes, it's one of the most anti-american things ever devised
The nice thing about the show was his spirit. He won the war for the most part even though he lost most of the battles. He also never gave up despite the adversity.
Perhaps the meaning of the final scene was that our protagonist realized that he had been a prisoner even before he was abducted and sent to the Village.
It really is amazing we're still analyzing the meaning of the Prisoner more than 50 years on from the original series. I introduced my older children to this show and they saw something different in almost every episode that I had not considered after multiple viewings.
What made McGooan totally believable as the Prisoner was his role as Danger Man/Secret Agent Man … We already identified him as a Cold War spy . All those episodes of skullduggery and assassination … not James Bond … colder , harder … more deadly .
Behind McGoohan's eyes, there was always a tiger pacing it's cage. And every once in a while, he'd walk past the open door, just to remind you it was there.
I'm pretty sure that everyone here would love it if our Savage Professor here would make longer videos. Not always but I'd listen to an hour long rant any day. Also, I'm just really we all found this channel, and that someone like him made it. Thanks Bro
A show I did not understand at all while growing up, and then rewatching at age 29 having moved out and spent half a soul crushing decade running the ratwheel of the modern world- I felt I understood it far more than I ever wanted to.
I've been waiting for this one. Your interpretation falls pretty close to my own. I watched Danger Man / Secret Agent as a kid, but did not pick up on The Prisoner until college in 1980. The college library had the entire series with the commentary and interviews by Warner Troyer from TV Ontario. My friends and I watched the entire series over about a week. (They were on reel to reel video tapes). The remake was off the mark in my opinion. Unfortunately, most of our leaders would see this as a "how to" instead of a warning, much as they do with 1984, Animal Farm and others.
Watching McGoohan in "Danger Man" informed the watching of "The Prisoner" ... for those that had watched and enjoyed "Danger Man." Yet they were clearly set in separate universes.
Kind of funny. Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and yes, The Prisoner were the reasons why I chose Intelligence for my career specialty when I joined the military so many decades ago. An odd choice but not really I suppose since I come from a military family with a long history. It was the height of the Cold War and the world was far more grey than people realized (even now). When you joined the game you learned you couldn't fully trust any side. Everybody lies. Like the show, you were always trying to puzzle out the truth of what was being told to you. "Be seeing You."
Aldous Huxley feared a Benevolent & Technological Autocracy more than what Orwell showed us in 1984. As of 2024, we can see his fears were realized, concerning the terrible future to come...
Yeah … and it’s never the socialists is it? Miserable thieving “free-market” capitalist conservatives and their enablers and protectors of their left flank … “the liberals”.
@@HugebullThat Christian nut job? Really? The decline is economic and material … neoliberal capitalism of Reagan and Thatcher et al … and has been planned by the close cousins of Lewis, the Xn fundamentalists who at base are just a ponzy scheme themselves that cozy up to the neoliberal capitalists for warmth because they utilize the same methods and have so much in common.
And yet neither Orwell nor Huxley would come right out and say the clear truth behind both their dystopic visions; the intrusion of self-serving uncivil capitalist free-market ideologues into all aspects of our lives including government was THE clear and present danger in the wests liberal democracies.
This is one of my favorite videos from you. I suppose that's partly due to how much The Prisoner means to me. I remember vividly when the idea of an omnipresent surveillance state was science fiction. Now, it is just fact.
I highly recommend a trip to the village of Portmeirion in Wales where The Prisoner was filmed for anyone interested in architecture. Not that deserts aren't also interesting and beautiful (for any fans of the reimagining).
@@feralhistorian I hope your channel continues to grow. You've found a permanent place in the philosophy and pop-culture commentary youtubers I like, along with the likes of Pilgrims Pass and Whatifalthist.
I have heard so much about this show but never watched it. Being a little boy at the time, the Avengers was more my speed ( Emma Peele was my first crush!) I really need to watch this show.
I was waiting for "Be seeing you" at the end and was not disappointed. The Prisoner is one of my foundational shows, in that it helped shape my worldview, adding a dose of healthy skepticism to my generally progressive outlook.
Yooooo you're covering some crazy deep cuts. I know the prisoner was a big deal when it came out but nobody knows it now Looking forward to seeing your take on the ending. Keep it up homie, you're a real one
It has a consistent and enthusiastic cult following in the UK, it's an excuse to wear boating jackets if nothing else. The internet is the ideal platform for the speculation that accompanies the series so it still has a life there. In a way I'm glad the remake didn't take off as the modern era has a habit of s*itting on classic shows and movies it finds "problematic", it means the shows legacy will remain intact for those who prefer uncomfortable freedom in the future.
No one after GenX knows it you mean. For Gen X "I am not a number, I'm a free man" was one of the things that made up our identity. It is referenced countless times in our music and media and why alot of GenX are not comfortable with everyone wanting to collect labels. Patrick McGoohan was a man who lived his beliefs and turned down many big roles because they went against them. He famously refused to be Bond due to the gun play and the treatment of women. He had retired to an apartment in my area and I used to enjoy talking to him at the coffee shop. He was hard to talk to at first, but once he knew you were not there just to see a celebrity or babble nonsense he really opened up.
@rutgaurxi7314 He didn't bother others or push his veiws on random people but he definitely didn't care about social norms if you approached him and would not soften his responses just to make the other person comfortable or to seem more genial. If you were going to make him part of the conversation you got him as is. He didn't insult people or become nasty he just didn't hide how he felt about a subject and became dismissive if he felt the topic was nonsense. Other than that he was generally polite and stuck to his own. He also had a style of dress and manner that felt anachronistic, not so much a rejection of modernity in general but a personal decision not to actively take part in it completely. When he was sitting with a beverage and book he had a basic cell phone on the table, per the request he have it from someone close to him, but he seemed to distance himself from it and when his eyes happened to fall on it he would absently push it aside out of his veiw. Of course I can only speak directly to his later years when I knew him and not how he was during the time of his shows.
@@KelsaRavenlock I am reminded of the homage to _The Prisoner_ in, of all things, _Reboot._ It's a dream sequence, but it also marks the protagonist's change from 'aimless survivor' to 'hero.'
Any conversation with a Villager is uncertain. The Villager telling no. 6 they wish to stay could be planted by the Masters to seed that idea. They could believe you are a guard, and refuse to incriminate themselves. I liked the no. 2's. Every no. 2 had their own approach to coercion, their own flairs and flaws.
Patrick McGoohan Wrote and started in the Prisoner and was a prolific writer and director as well as actor. I’m a big fan of his Columbo episodes. He was an eccentric creator who purposely violated conventions and refused to be normal. I get the feeling the Prisoner is semi-autobiographical and the last episode of the Prisoner is one of the weirdest moments in tv history.
I think you've just helped me articulate my problem with interpretive, open-ended works: they pose questions to the audience that, as abstract human artifices, *can't* have answers whereas in the real world you simply *don't* always have the answers. This is a small but very important distinction! The thing I like about open endings, of course, is that they're often nowhere near as disappointing as the majority of concrete ones.
Fantastic episode and an excellent analysis. I could have watched another half hour. I also hadn't read Clearly's essay before, so thank you for the link. One of my own favorite "pet" interpretations of Fallout is to take it literally. Throughout the series, we see the inner workings of the Village, and instead of some all-knowing mysterious power it is generally revealed to be a pretty standard bureaucracy run by the exact same type of bureaucratic idiots that run offices, agencies, and regimes since time immemorial while spouting doublespeak about their policy goals that becomes more sinister the more powerful they get. So imagine you're #1, and you have been running this place after you got coopted in your own version of Fall Out. And you decide to escape and be free of these idiots because even you can't change this. So what do you do? Well... You've got all the identity-challenging technology of any 1960s mad scientist, including mind transfer machines and face-changing tech. And you've got a new prisoner who is almost exactly like you once were who had just left their life behind and won't be missed for a while. The solution is obvious. Bring him in. Prepare his life for you to take it over. And then whether he decides to stay or go, YOU are the one (pun intended) who walks out and escapes the village. It might even have worked, except #6 rebels even harder! You could actually see a huge chunk of the series as an almost comedically frustrating series of attempts by #1 to find some kind of mind/face/body-swapping technique that will work long-term and let him escape all while being sabotaged by his own subordinates and #6's uncompromising rebellion. Takes the entire series into a kind of scary/groovy Kafka comedy. Which works as well anything else.
I haven't seen this but it heavily reminds me of "We Happy Few", a game with a similar premise and theme. They both also draw from this tendency in British Society to "Keep Calm and Don't Rock the Boat".
We Happy Few is a great dystopia trapped in a so-so game. Story-wise, I thought it was a fascinating twist on the genre. Especially how the fall of the city doesn't come from any kind of deliberate organized rebellion, but through individual mistakes and low-information decisions causing knock-on effects that breed systemic instability. And yes, WHF was undoubtedly inspired by the Prisoner, at least a bit. The idea of using Simon Says as a method of social control absolutely sounds like something McGoohan might have cooked up.
Well, well, well, someone made video on The prisoner in 2024. Myself, only by a chance, have discovered the series this year, watching an interview with Bentley Hart. It was stunning to see how modern, the series was for its time, and still is.
What an amazing work it was!! Watched it as a little kid , always frustrated not to be able to predict when the episodes would air. They really did air at random on our PBS station, which seems totally fitting. Only in retrospect do I realize what a profound effect the show had on my development, preferences in entertainment, ways of thinking, etc. Ah, the conformity that could have been mine, lol!! I really have always preferred shows that seemed to reward the viewer for rewatching. Some habits die hard.
On the one hand, it was their go-to method for inducing unconsciousness. On the other, if they wanted to drug him (or beat him) unconscious, there's not a whole lot he could do to stop them.
I rewatch the episodes frequently, and I always seem to find new things or ideas in them. This show is totally relevant in today’s world. Social media has become The Village; a place that’s comforting on the outside, but a trap on the inside.
I had a crazy dream as a kid where the balloon security drone hunted me down in the swamp. I've never seen or even heard of the show until I was an adult.
Aw yeah, my favourite speculative fiction analyzing mountain anarch covering my favourite espionage-themed theatre of the subconscious. There's an interview Patrick McGoohan did for Canadian public access TV (if memory serves) that really illuminates his line of thought behind the show, and his personality in general. It's the latter which feeds my current reading of the Prisoner. Interpreting it as social commentary is valid, it's the way the work was intended to be received, but there's plenty of artistic reaction to the pressures of oversocialized modernity. But there's only ever going to be one Patrick McGoohan. For me, the Prisoner plays out as pure autobiography. He was *the* Secret Agent Man after all, and the Prisoner is the sort of recontextualized, lumbering beast that results when mainstream spy thriller tropes are run through the gauntlet of Patrick McGoohan's resentment towards the constraints and expectstions of that role. I was told once that McGoohan was considered for the role of James Bond but he turned it down because the Bond character was morally distasteful. The Prisoner really benefitted from the South Park expedient writing. Especially towards the end, it is an auteur dredging from his Lynchian subconscious. McGoohan strikes me as a 19th century reactionary who had the misfortune of being born a century too late, and filtering his values through a modernist 20th century lens. I know he would have loved to see what the 21st is like. Imagine explaining to him what Tinder is, let alone the recent medical-related totalism...
A movie I truly liked was Circle of Iron, the ending might give light to what Prisioner and its ending was trying to tell us, where the anwser lies and how the path to it maintains thr journey rather than destination.
All the way from England, not only old enough to remember the original broadcast but have seen it again every 10 or 12 years since.More amazed at how different yet samey subsequent viewings leave me feeling, especially as the performative nature of the village resembles modern life.
There were many interesting things about The Prisoner--it was such a good show. But two of the biggest points to me were that The Village really wasn't one side or the other, East or West, but was really part of both sides, stressing the point that he quit simply because he was disgusted by the whole thing. In true paranoid fashion, nobody could believe that was his reason for quitting. If he's quitting our side, then it must be because he's going to the other side--all the travel brochures they considered a mere blind, and not the truth. The irony of not being willing to believe what is true. But yeah, ultimately, no matter how you try to interpret it, it's more about asking questions than giving answers. I originally thought it was about the inner struggle each of us has, and to some degree that might be true. Why else would it be his face when he saw #1? But it's more likely about the struggle between the individual and society in general, with the episode's various takes on different aspects of society, in addition to his own individual struggle to deal with those aspects of society. But again, no clear answers--it's up to the viewer to decide what answers, if any, actually apply to the struggle.
I think a key issue of the underlying dilemma is - in my view - the need for rules and conformity with them for security and prosperity. Without those rules and conformity to them, the individual gets outcompeted by those who conform. There is a choice, but a false one since noone can afford to go alone against society.
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the thoughts it asked me to tangle with. But in the end it seemed like someone in over their head when given everything they wanted. A chilling situation to be in as a human.
I've watched The Prisoner for decades. It's so well done on every level. The cinematography is so crisp and fresh as though it was recorded yesterday. The themes are as relevant today as when first broadcast. I identify with No 6. A roll model and expression of my own existence. While it may not be what McGoohan meant or intended, I was left with the impression that (John Drake) realized that there was no escape from the life he chose for himself. A prisoner of his own choices. And that the conclusion Fall Out established that this was all just a fever dream. He could never leave.
I don't care what anyone says: "No. 6" was Agent, John Drake. Having investigated several similar programs {run by national interests} He found himself imprisoned in one made by his former masters. The "release" at the end of the series was not a matter of his having beaten The Village. He proved and perfected its systems. These were applied to a second "testbed"... ...England. No. 6 escaped nothing. He was transferred to a larger and more sophisticated prison. PLEASE do something regarding "The President's Analyst"
I've had this ongoing debate with a mathematician friend of mine regarding "systems" when it comes to the way societies operate. He posits that the moment of a systems inception there becomes a hard dividing line between "possible" and "impossible" within the rules of a system, and nothing is "new under the sun" as far as the system is concerned; either the rules allow it or they don't, and the only way to break from that is to make a new system. Things like The Prisoner make me question if that theory is a political ideological viewpoint rather than a (unproven) logical axiom, in a sort of reimagining of the phrase "Everything Within the State, nothing Outside the State" as a critique of how societies setup things and then keep them that way, in this case by a synthesis of cognitive hazard and physical force. I'll have to give this series a watch, it sounds oddly topical.
Seems like the obvious counter-argument is that humans are chaotic and never follow rules perfectly. Human behavior is fuzzy. Rules are ignored, overlooked, bent, and broken in everyday life, and that's even before talking about outright corruption and malfeasance.
@@jasonblalock4429 Yeah that was the first tack I went after with him on, but consider this: we accept that these are possibilities, and implement laws within the system to constrain (or depending on the locality, enable) those actions. But what's interesting about The Prisoner is this depiction of people who can't conceive of stepping out of the defined rules of the system, and when someone tries to, there's apparatus of the system to bring them back to the mean. It's not *unique* to The Prisoner, but the way it explores various modes of such authoritarian systems that have "perfect control" of their people, and show how someone dropped in from a different context might pinball around, but the low entropy authoritarian state has seen "everything" that people can offer and has adapted.
@@byrondumont-eve By that definition, something 'new under the sun' is the same thing as 'breaking the system.' Or, if you prefer, 'acting outside the system' is synonymous with 'instituting a new system.'
I found fascinating similarities between number 6 journey and the knight Lancelot, main character of Soviet fantasy movie "To Kill a Dragon" made in 1988. Both are strong individuals that got trapped in the village under totalitarian control with compliant populace that feels indifferent to the protagonist goal of dismantling the system, with some trying to stop him. But while "The Prisioner" ends with number 6 successful rebellion that destroyed the village and led him and his accomplices back to freedom, "To Kill a Dragon" focus more on the aftermath - that despite destroying figurehead of the oppressive order it would quickly be replaced by softer yet still the same one in nature, as the other seen option for society is complete anarchy. And even if Lancelot will take power to lead people out of this deterministic fate, he will eventually end up doing the same things that did previous oppressors. Highly recommend to watch the movie yourself - to me at least it's a good example of anti-totalitarian fiction from people that actually experienced it, not form western observers that heard or read about the topic. Not sure if there were any dub of this classic in English, only know that there is a sub version on TH-cam
I liked the surrealism of the Village. There are rules, but the rules are malleable and never truly consistent. The Village has shops and stores and services but its not clear how anyone earns anything. The Village will try to get you through various angles, but very rarely overt violent coercion. Village events and festivals appear as needed. Large parts of the Village serve no real purpose, or hide a true purpose. The people of the Village fall into unclear categories of prisoners, guards, menial staff etc where a persons role is unclear. Some people are too without purpose, their secrets or usefulness already absorbed by the Village until they are simply stored.
TH-cam teased me with this and an Oculus Imperia video side by side. I had to flip a coin 😎 Awesome work Feral and thanks for pushing out such awesome content! One of these days I do want to be a Patron when finances allow 🤘
I found your channel last week with your essay of why you think the Serenity ending was too optimistic for these times. Today there's an essay about one of the greatest TV shows ever. Are you kidding me? 😊 I've only ever watched The Prisoner in the OG broadcast order and was wondering about the other ways of watching the series. Think I'll try this now as it's about time for my yearly watch again. Great video, love the channel. Attending the Six of One convention is a bit of an experience, you really feel like you're in the Village.
Patrick McGoohan was an "odd duck". If you look at his film oeuvre, he made interesting choices, which I believe coincided with his character. He turned down the role of James Bond for "moral" (or aesthetic) reasons. I have always regarded The Prisoner as his greatest and most self-revelatory work. (And the miniseries was an abomination!) One gets the impression that Number Six is the most important person in The Village, but why are all those other people there, and who are the occasional victims of Rover? In ways, it is reminiscent of the "retirement home" in The Borgia Stick, where failed mobsters are taken, to be lobotomized, a terrifying alternative to being whacked. And then, there's Rumpole showing up. Repeatedly. “A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star Oh well half dozen of the Other, one might say. But I have the DVD set, so perhaps another seventeen?
I saw the Village as a place to also store people who have given up their secret, or fulfilled the job the Village needed. People who know too much can't leave. A bunch of people are menial staff, they do the custodial or administrative or security work. Many are just held indefinitely in the Village limbo.
@@keithmichael112 We don't really get to know them. I assumed many of the people stored in the Village weren't new. We don't get to know how many years the Village had to work on them. We get to meet a few people who are new arrivals, like no. 6.
This is great! Working my way through your backlog, this is amazing. If you ever have a hankering to talk about Children's Post Apocalypse stories, I humbly suggest contrasting the film Solarbabies (1986), Tomes and Talismans (also 1986) a limited series meant to educate children about the library system, and The Tribe (1999), a New Zealander Post Apocalyptic Cyberpunk children's soap opera that ran for 5 seasons.
You should make a grand Playlist on your channel for all your analyses videos. I tend to watch a few at once, when a new one is released, and it would be more convenient. I expect I'm not the only one. There used to be a "Play All" option on peoples' home YT page which would essentially do that. However the YT overseers, in their great wisdom, appear to have removed that feature in recent months. Anyway, thanks for another great vid!
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!" Words feared by any authoritarian movement, doesn't matter the economic system. Edit: Only became aware of this series because of Ricardo Montebalm's "Golden Age of Video" Edit: Yeah, becoming tired of everything being "Liberal's fault," when modern Liberalism is nothing more than Conservatism that wants to still be invited to the parties with interesting people.
You remind me of a friend of mine, Rick Partlow. He's a Sci Fi writer and all around good dude and smart guy. He moved from Central Florida to Wyoming not long ago. Keep up the fantastic work, sir!
I remember watching that show a little over a decade ago, I was in my mid 30's back then. It was interesting, but I'm sure I failed to pick up on most of its themes. I should probably rewatch it one of these days, so I can fail to pick up on them again.
This was amazing, thank you for diving into this show which would likely otherwise be forgotten! It reminded me a lot of the, strange as it may seem, commissioned anime to celebrate Cup Noodle’s 35th anniversary - Freedom Project. The characters and mech design were done by Akira’s Katsuhiro Otomo. There are a lot of similarities between the two series and I’d love to see your take comparing it against The Prisoner.
Bab5 absolutely took that 'be seeing you' gesture from 'the prisoner.' I figure its some sort of meta-reference to the show itself - nodding at Bester's authoritarianism/system he represents.
To my mind, the only time television aspired to be more than mindless entertainment was with "The Prisoner." It is a thinking person's program, open to multiple interpretations and circumspection of one's life. Right now, to me, it feels more relevant than it did 60 years ago.
Interesting analysis. The Prisoner will always be a conundrum because the writers wanted it to be that way, just as many of us are confused about the absurdities of our society. I did think there was a clue as to why our protagonist resigned. One of his first questions to Number 2 was, "Who's side are you on?!" If you have to ask that question about an operation that is clearly evil to its core, what does that say about "your side"? He observed that his side was just as corrupt, self-serving, and cruel as the other. This was also reflected in his angry questioning of whether or not his society was better than the "bad guys." I think he had lost faith that any society could be anything except evil and self-serving. Better to resign and take a vacation to get away from it all -- perhaps at a relaxing seaside resort...
I remember seeing this in my high school days on our local PBS station. It stimulated several discussions in my group of friends, but we never really saw the whole series, (though I do remember the scene where Number 1 was 'revealed,' and there was a gorilla mask . . . .) I have not seen the remake, but I can't imagine that it would (or even could) capture the "look and feel" of Cold War "Spy-Fi" zeitgeist that the original did so effortlessly. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this series with us! My Like is in the 1.1Ks
I wonder if Feral Historian will do "Master and Margarita" in the future. Aside from being a modern classic, it covers the Stalinist iteration of pathologizing dissent.
I always thought the final scene of The Prisoner (the butler from the village and the electric door) implied that some part of the village followed the protagonist as an admission that he had won. It did not occur to me that it might also imply that some part of the village followed him and stayed with him. Or that he never really fully escaped from the Village. This has given me something to think about.
I like your use of different settings for recording. It really works for me, but I couldn't say why. Idk if they tie into the narration or just set the scene, but I usually am audio only while doing other things, but with your vids I find myself watching the screen. Thank you.
Great analysis overall! One note that I disagree with is the Religion part. I don't think it has anything to do with materialism or modernity, otherwise McGoohan would have specifically said so. I think it is more a question of not muddying the waters with alternate elements of control designed to be cantilevered to the central edifice of control, not quite a part of it but not fully against it either, like sports, television, popular music, etc... The fact that there was an episode planned with a church and #2 as it's preacher, that never saw the light, seems to me more that McGoohan decided against it, because it belabored the point of the series into unnecessary and probably inescapable brambles.
Not sure if you take recommendations from comments, but I think you might enjoy taking a look at the patlabor films- specifically the second film has an interesting sequence and overarching story about the nature of conflicts and a "justified war vs an unjust peace". Watch the movies in order. The third movie doesn't exist and can't hurt you
It’s one of the few shows where nobody depicted is truly a “good guy”, everybody is painted as “bad” during the show, starting with Six. There’s a protagonist, but nobody is ever put forth as “good”.
A comment on the “layers of symbolism sometimes conscience and sometimes not” is even more complex than even that. The movie Luca was criticized for not being overt about its gay coding but when the writer explained his true inspiration the person criticizing him got her shorts in a twist because he told her it was a different inspiration that happened to him, but the emotional truth was so true to her experience as a gay woman she told him it should have been more about her. The classic Freud line about a cigar just being a cigar doesn’t mean that the cigar won’t become a symbol of something within the narrative. The balloon was because the machine they had intended became impractical so they found a creative thing that became it’s own symbol within the narrative in a way a more realistic “machine” could not.and in a show definitely full of symbolism it’s hard to tell what was practical and what was deliberate and even what may have been subconscious or dare I say they just thought looked cool.
I'd love to hear your take on the Metal Gear series, particularly Metal Gear Solid 2, which came out in 2001, but many have pointed out managed to predict the current socio-political climate with surprising accuracy. You don't have to actually play the games, by the way. Most of the plot and exposition is delivered through cutscenes and "codec" calls (basically, segments where the main character converses with one or more characters over a radio built into his inner ear), of which compilations can be found all over youtube.
21:41 A point missed is that it is never clear who is a Prisoner in the Village and who is a Warder (guard). Everybody but The Butler wears summertime clothes. We only know who is whom at the end of a story or if the plot demands it. There is also the element that there may be multiple Villages in widely-spaced places to confuse any escape by a person as capable as Number 6 (look at the alternate version of "The Chimes of Big Ben" for where I came up with that idea.) The place is the Adult Summercamp from Hell.
In the GURPS game, they took up the idea of lifers. People are sometimes simply stored in the Village. They have no purpose to the Masters but can't be let loose. This includes much of the staff.
The Village is a model for homeowner associations (HOA).
@@user-ed1gj1ng5g Those things really make me scratch my head, I'm very surprised Americans tolerate them.
@@jelkel25 The worse part is that they're becoming very hard to avoid. Once a neighborhood has an HOA, it's almost impossible to get rid of and, of course, anyone moving in must join the HOA as part of their home purchase. Unless you buy a home in a brand-new development, or way out in the boonies, you may not have much choice.
@@jelkel25 progressive takeover of california in the 60's is what made it a staple. It doesn't go away because it's both a way of curb checking what others see as undesirables and at the same time works almost as a status to show off that you aren't poor. And yes, it's one of the most anti-american things ever devised
@jasonblalock4429 You can, by the power of Christ!
Save us Mr Gault!
Will you stop being socialist?
No!
Then there is nothing I can do!
24:15 I was super convinced a big balloon was going to come take the feral historian away at the end of this video
Why did you think a balloon would stop him?
Nvm let’s get you some ice cream 🍨
The Rover is great. They tried to build a robot guardian on a Dalek-level budget, but settled on a wire-pulled balloon when the robot was a hassle.
@@1kevintron feral historian utterly defamed
almost 25 minutes of my favourite hilltop historian? A surprise, but a welcome one.
The nice thing about the show was his spirit. He won the war for the most part even though he lost most of the battles. He also never gave up despite the adversity.
Did he thoe?
In Fallout, he eventually ended up "solving" the dilemma by going guns blazing, even if he "escaped" he was still twisted by the Village.
That's the interpretation I had as a child. I grew to realise that was a very naive interpretation.
@@rukifellth2 I think it's pretty clear at the end that he didn't escape anything, he just reframed his perception.
Perhaps the meaning of the final scene was that our protagonist realized that he had been a prisoner even before he was abducted and sent to the Village.
It really is amazing we're still analyzing the meaning of the Prisoner more than 50 years on from the original series. I introduced my older children to this show and they saw something different in almost every episode that I had not considered after multiple viewings.
"The Prisoner" is one of the very rare times that television ascended to the level of art.
“Who does number 2 work for!?!”
Careful, buddy, you're going to blow out your o-ring.
You tell that turd who's boss.
"That would be telling."
You, are number six.
Man of culture, I see.
What made McGooan totally believable as the Prisoner was his role as Danger Man/Secret Agent Man …
We already identified him as a Cold War spy .
All those episodes of skullduggery and assassination … not James Bond … colder , harder … more deadly .
Behind McGoohan's eyes, there was always a tiger pacing it's cage. And every once in a while, he'd walk past the open door, just to remind you it was there.
I'm pretty sure that everyone here would love it if our Savage Professor here would make longer videos. Not always but I'd listen to an hour long rant any day. Also, I'm just really we all found this channel, and that someone like him made it. Thanks Bro
I'm glad you covered the Prisoner, not many people remember it nowadays.
A show I did not understand at all while growing up, and then rewatching at age 29 having moved out and spent half a soul crushing decade running the ratwheel of the modern world- I felt I understood it far more than I ever wanted to.
I've been waiting for this one.
Your interpretation falls pretty close to my own.
I watched Danger Man / Secret Agent as a kid, but did not pick up on The Prisoner until college in 1980. The college library had the entire series with the commentary and interviews by Warner Troyer from TV Ontario.
My friends and I watched the entire series over about a week. (They were on reel to reel video tapes).
The remake was off the mark in my opinion.
Unfortunately, most of our leaders would see this as a "how to" instead of a warning, much as they do with 1984, Animal Farm and others.
Watching McGoohan in "Danger Man" informed the watching of "The Prisoner" ... for those that had watched and enjoyed "Danger Man." Yet they were clearly set in separate universes.
I think it was in the Many Happy Returns episode he was once referred to as Drake.
@@smbritton1 I'll have to check. "Danger Man" was much more of its time than "The Prisoner."
Kind of funny. Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, and yes, The Prisoner were the reasons why I chose Intelligence for my career specialty when I joined the military so many decades ago. An odd choice but not really I suppose since I come from a military family with a long history.
It was the height of the Cold War and the world was far more grey than people realized (even now). When you joined the game you learned you couldn't fully trust any side. Everybody lies. Like the show, you were always trying to puzzle out the truth of what was being told to you.
"Be seeing You."
I'm curious if you found the career rewarding/fulfilling, especially to your traits of mind/intellect that drew you towards it?
I knew (also from media) that the game was rigged. I’ve tried hard to stay out of it, but it’s so hard without being a hermit.
Aldous Huxley feared a Benevolent & Technological Autocracy more than what Orwell showed us in 1984.
As of 2024, we can see his fears were realized, concerning the terrible future to come...
And still, CS Lewis is the one who saw in the clearest way where everything was going.
Yeah … and it’s never the socialists is it? Miserable thieving “free-market” capitalist conservatives and their enablers and protectors of their left flank … “the liberals”.
@@HugebullThat Christian nut job? Really? The decline is economic and material … neoliberal capitalism of Reagan and Thatcher et al … and has been planned by the close cousins of Lewis, the Xn fundamentalists who at base are just a ponzy scheme themselves that cozy up to the neoliberal capitalists for warmth because they utilize the same methods and have so much in common.
@@HugebullCS Lewis? A Christian ideologue? That’s what’s wrong? Not enough Christians? 😂
And yet neither Orwell nor Huxley would come right out and say the clear truth behind both their dystopic visions; the intrusion of self-serving uncivil capitalist free-market ideologues into all aspects of our lives including government was THE clear and present danger in the wests liberal democracies.
This is one of my favorite videos from you. I suppose that's partly due to how much The Prisoner means to me.
I remember vividly when the idea of an omnipresent surveillance state was science fiction. Now, it is just fact.
What we are only just beginning to realise is it was this way all along.
I highly recommend a trip to the village of Portmeirion in Wales where The Prisoner was filmed for anyone interested in architecture.
Not that deserts aren't also interesting and beautiful (for any fans of the reimagining).
I love everything about your channel man. I like the raw conversational approach you take on books movies and shows. Please keep these coming
You have become easily one of my favorite creators. Hope this channel gets huge and becomes all you could want and more.
It has already exceeded expectations, but I'm certainly looking forward to taking it further if that's what's in the cards.
@@feralhistorian I hope your channel continues to grow. You've found a permanent place in the philosophy and pop-culture commentary youtubers I like, along with the likes of Pilgrims Pass and Whatifalthist.
@@Green_Tea_Coffee whatifalthist is intentionally silly though
@@snowtification4818 Of the opinions I've read online, that is certainly one of them.
@@snowtification4818 He's really interesting.
I have heard so much about this show but never watched it. Being a little boy at the time, the Avengers was more my speed ( Emma Peele was my first crush!) I really need to watch this show.
I was waiting for "Be seeing you" at the end and was not disappointed. The Prisoner is one of my foundational shows, in that it helped shape my worldview, adding a dose of healthy skepticism to my generally progressive outlook.
YES THE PRISONER!
Most relevant show today.
The remake doesn't match up to the original!
@chrismac7416 never even seen it.
For a spiritual sequel, try "Nowhere Man" with Bruce Greenwood.
@@SierraSierraFoxtrotglad to see someone else remembers that excellent series
Yooooo you're covering some crazy deep cuts. I know the prisoner was a big deal when it came out but nobody knows it now
Looking forward to seeing your take on the ending. Keep it up homie, you're a real one
It has a consistent and enthusiastic cult following in the UK, it's an excuse to wear boating jackets if nothing else. The internet is the ideal platform for the speculation that accompanies the series so it still has a life there. In a way I'm glad the remake didn't take off as the modern era has a habit of s*itting on classic shows and movies it finds "problematic", it means the shows legacy will remain intact for those who prefer uncomfortable freedom in the future.
No one after GenX knows it you mean.
For Gen X "I am not a number, I'm a free man" was one of the things that made up our identity.
It is referenced countless times in our music and media and why alot of GenX are not comfortable with everyone wanting to collect labels.
Patrick McGoohan was a man who lived his beliefs and turned down many big roles because they went against them.
He famously refused to be Bond due to the gun play and the treatment of women.
He had retired to an apartment in my area and I used to enjoy talking to him at the coffee shop.
He was hard to talk to at first, but once he knew you were not there just to see a celebrity or babble nonsense he really opened up.
@@KelsaRavenlock He was by all accounts based beyond all belief, often going against social norms.
@rutgaurxi7314 He didn't bother others or push his veiws on random people but he definitely didn't care about social norms if you approached him and would not soften his responses just to make the other person comfortable or to seem more genial.
If you were going to make him part of the conversation you got him as is.
He didn't insult people or become nasty he just didn't hide how he felt about a subject and became dismissive if he felt the topic was nonsense.
Other than that he was generally polite and stuck to his own.
He also had a style of dress and manner that felt anachronistic, not so much a rejection of modernity in general but a personal decision not to actively take part in it completely.
When he was sitting with a beverage and book he had a basic cell phone on the table, per the request he have it from someone close to him, but he seemed to distance himself from it and when his eyes happened to fall on it he would absently push it aside out of his veiw.
Of course I can only speak directly to his later years when I knew him and not how he was during the time of his shows.
@@KelsaRavenlock I am reminded of the homage to _The Prisoner_ in, of all things, _Reboot._ It's a dream sequence, but it also marks the protagonist's change from 'aimless survivor' to 'hero.'
Any conversation with a Villager is uncertain. The Villager telling no. 6 they wish to stay could be planted by the Masters to seed that idea. They could believe you are a guard, and refuse to incriminate themselves.
I liked the no. 2's. Every no. 2 had their own approach to coercion, their own flairs and flaws.
Patrick McGoohan Wrote and started in the Prisoner and was a prolific writer and director as well as actor. I’m a big fan of his Columbo episodes. He was an eccentric creator who purposely violated conventions and refused to be normal. I get the feeling the Prisoner is semi-autobiographical and the last episode of the Prisoner is one of the weirdest moments in tv history.
I've never heard of this one, now I've got a show to track down this weekend.
Amazon Prime has it. Or did last month when I finally got around to watching it, spurred on by a couple of McGoohan's appearances on _Colombo._
I think you've just helped me articulate my problem with interpretive, open-ended works: they pose questions to the audience that, as abstract human artifices, *can't* have answers whereas in the real world you simply *don't* always have the answers. This is a small but very important distinction!
The thing I like about open endings, of course, is that they're often nowhere near as disappointing as the majority of concrete ones.
Fantastic episode and an excellent analysis. I could have watched another half hour. I also hadn't read Clearly's essay before, so thank you for the link. One of my own favorite "pet" interpretations of Fallout is to take it literally. Throughout the series, we see the inner workings of the Village, and instead of some all-knowing mysterious power it is generally revealed to be a pretty standard bureaucracy run by the exact same type of bureaucratic idiots that run offices, agencies, and regimes since time immemorial while spouting doublespeak about their policy goals that becomes more sinister the more powerful they get. So imagine you're #1, and you have been running this place after you got coopted in your own version of Fall Out. And you decide to escape and be free of these idiots because even you can't change this. So what do you do? Well... You've got all the identity-challenging technology of any 1960s mad scientist, including mind transfer machines and face-changing tech. And you've got a new prisoner who is almost exactly like you once were who had just left their life behind and won't be missed for a while. The solution is obvious. Bring him in. Prepare his life for you to take it over. And then whether he decides to stay or go, YOU are the one (pun intended) who walks out and escapes the village. It might even have worked, except #6 rebels even harder!
You could actually see a huge chunk of the series as an almost comedically frustrating series of attempts by #1 to find some kind of mind/face/body-swapping technique that will work long-term and let him escape all while being sabotaged by his own subordinates and #6's uncompromising rebellion. Takes the entire series into a kind of scary/groovy Kafka comedy. Which works as well anything else.
Wow it’s insane 2 minutes in we are in deep analysis already wth it is so rare to find a video so on point
I haven't seen this but it heavily reminds me of "We Happy Few", a game with a similar premise and theme. They both also draw from this tendency in British Society to "Keep Calm and Don't Rock the Boat".
We Happy Few is a great dystopia trapped in a so-so game. Story-wise, I thought it was a fascinating twist on the genre. Especially how the fall of the city doesn't come from any kind of deliberate organized rebellion, but through individual mistakes and low-information decisions causing knock-on effects that breed systemic instability.
And yes, WHF was undoubtedly inspired by the Prisoner, at least a bit. The idea of using Simon Says as a method of social control absolutely sounds like something McGoohan might have cooked up.
Well, well, well, someone made video on The prisoner in 2024. Myself, only by a chance, have discovered the series this year, watching an interview with Bentley Hart. It was stunning to see how modern, the series was for its time, and still is.
What an amazing work it was!! Watched it as a little kid , always frustrated not to be able to predict when the episodes would air. They really did air at random on our PBS station, which seems totally fitting. Only in retrospect do I realize what a profound effect the show had on my development, preferences in entertainment, ways of thinking, etc. Ah, the conformity that could have been mine, lol!! I really have always preferred shows that seemed to reward the viewer for rewatching. Some habits die hard.
Great show, though #6 really should have been more wary of the drinks offered to him since they almost always knocked him out.
He was just a man thirsting for a drink lol
On the one hand, it was their go-to method for inducing unconsciousness. On the other, if they wanted to drug him (or beat him) unconscious, there's not a whole lot he could do to stop them.
I rewatch the episodes frequently, and I always seem to find new things or ideas in them. This show is totally relevant in today’s world. Social media has become The Village; a place that’s comforting on the outside, but a trap on the inside.
I had a crazy dream as a kid where the balloon security drone hunted me down in the swamp. I've never seen or even heard of the show until I was an adult.
Don't know when you were a kid but I've seen that drone parodied on the simpsons and some other stuff.
@benjackson1454 I grew up with two channels. The news and the weather.
Aliens bruh.
Maybe it was based on a super friend legion of doom episode...they had orb in that one too!
11:35 mandatory fun with Leo McKeen!
Saw this as a kid when it aired in the US and loved it. It was challenging and I found that the best thing about it.
Aw yeah, my favourite speculative fiction analyzing mountain anarch covering my favourite espionage-themed theatre of the subconscious. There's an interview Patrick McGoohan did for Canadian public access TV (if memory serves) that really illuminates his line of thought behind the show, and his personality in general. It's the latter which feeds my current reading of the Prisoner. Interpreting it as social commentary is valid, it's the way the work was intended to be received, but there's plenty of artistic reaction to the pressures of oversocialized modernity. But there's only ever going to be one Patrick McGoohan. For me, the Prisoner plays out as pure autobiography. He was *the* Secret Agent Man after all, and the Prisoner is the sort of recontextualized, lumbering beast that results when mainstream spy thriller tropes are run through the gauntlet of Patrick McGoohan's resentment towards the constraints and expectstions of that role. I was told once that McGoohan was considered for the role of James Bond but he turned it down because the Bond character was morally distasteful. The Prisoner really benefitted from the South Park expedient writing. Especially towards the end, it is an auteur dredging from his Lynchian subconscious. McGoohan strikes me as a 19th century reactionary who had the misfortune of being born a century too late, and filtering his values through a modernist 20th century lens. I know he would have loved to see what the 21st is like. Imagine explaining to him what Tinder is, let alone the recent medical-related totalism...
A movie I truly liked was Circle of Iron, the ending might give light to what Prisioner and its ending was trying to tell us, where the anwser lies and how the path to it maintains thr journey rather than destination.
All the way from England, not only old enough to remember the original broadcast but have seen it again every 10 or 12 years since.More amazed at how different yet samey subsequent viewings leave me feeling, especially as the performative nature of the village resembles modern life.
There were many interesting things about The Prisoner--it was such a good show. But two of the biggest points to me were that The Village really wasn't one side or the other, East or West, but was really part of both sides, stressing the point that he quit simply because he was disgusted by the whole thing. In true paranoid fashion, nobody could believe that was his reason for quitting. If he's quitting our side, then it must be because he's going to the other side--all the travel brochures they considered a mere blind, and not the truth. The irony of not being willing to believe what is true.
But yeah, ultimately, no matter how you try to interpret it, it's more about asking questions than giving answers. I originally thought it was about the inner struggle each of us has, and to some degree that might be true. Why else would it be his face when he saw #1? But it's more likely about the struggle between the individual and society in general, with the episode's various takes on different aspects of society, in addition to his own individual struggle to deal with those aspects of society. But again, no clear answers--it's up to the viewer to decide what answers, if any, actually apply to the struggle.
I think a key issue of the underlying dilemma is - in my view - the need for rules and conformity with them for security and prosperity. Without those rules and conformity to them, the individual gets outcompeted by those who conform. There is a choice, but a false one since noone can afford to go alone against society.
A crucial part of my growing up. Something so uniquely of its time and yet it still speaks to me more loudly than anything in the media today.
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the thoughts it asked me to tangle with. But in the end it seemed like someone in over their head when given everything they wanted. A chilling situation to be in as a human.
Welcome to the GLOBAL Village. Be seeing you.
"... in all the old familiar places..."
I've watched The Prisoner for decades. It's so well done on every level. The cinematography is so crisp and fresh as though it was recorded yesterday. The themes are as relevant today as when first broadcast.
I identify with No 6. A roll model and expression of my own existence.
While it may not be what McGoohan meant or intended, I was left with the impression that (John Drake) realized that there was no escape from the life he chose for himself. A prisoner of his own choices. And that the conclusion Fall Out established that this was all just a fever dream. He could never leave.
I don't care what anyone says: "No. 6" was Agent, John Drake.
Having investigated several similar programs {run by national interests} He found himself imprisoned in one made by his former masters.
The "release" at the end of the series was not a matter of his having beaten The Village.
He proved and perfected its systems. These were applied to a second "testbed"...
...England.
No. 6 escaped nothing. He was transferred to a larger and more sophisticated prison.
PLEASE do something regarding "The President's Analyst"
The Phone Company is ALWAYS the villain!🙃
@DavidNash1948 That movie is among the most prophetic, ever made.
Be seeing you.
I've had this ongoing debate with a mathematician friend of mine regarding "systems" when it comes to the way societies operate. He posits that the moment of a systems inception there becomes a hard dividing line between "possible" and "impossible" within the rules of a system, and nothing is "new under the sun" as far as the system is concerned; either the rules allow it or they don't, and the only way to break from that is to make a new system. Things like The Prisoner make me question if that theory is a political ideological viewpoint rather than a (unproven) logical axiom, in a sort of reimagining of the phrase "Everything Within the State, nothing Outside the State" as a critique of how societies setup things and then keep them that way, in this case by a synthesis of cognitive hazard and physical force.
I'll have to give this series a watch, it sounds oddly topical.
Seems like the obvious counter-argument is that humans are chaotic and never follow rules perfectly. Human behavior is fuzzy. Rules are ignored, overlooked, bent, and broken in everyday life, and that's even before talking about outright corruption and malfeasance.
@@jasonblalock4429 Yeah that was the first tack I went after with him on, but consider this: we accept that these are possibilities, and implement laws within the system to constrain (or depending on the locality, enable) those actions. But what's interesting about The Prisoner is this depiction of people who can't conceive of stepping out of the defined rules of the system, and when someone tries to, there's apparatus of the system to bring them back to the mean.
It's not *unique* to The Prisoner, but the way it explores various modes of such authoritarian systems that have "perfect control" of their people, and show how someone dropped in from a different context might pinball around, but the low entropy authoritarian state has seen "everything" that people can offer and has adapted.
@@byrondumont-eve By that definition, something 'new under the sun' is the same thing as 'breaking the system.' Or, if you prefer, 'acting outside the system' is synonymous with 'instituting a new system.'
I found fascinating similarities between number 6 journey and the knight Lancelot, main character of Soviet fantasy movie "To Kill a Dragon" made in 1988. Both are strong individuals that got trapped in the village under totalitarian control with compliant populace that feels indifferent to the protagonist goal of dismantling the system, with some trying to stop him. But while "The Prisioner" ends with number 6 successful rebellion that destroyed the village and led him and his accomplices back to freedom, "To Kill a Dragon" focus more on the aftermath - that despite destroying figurehead of the oppressive order it would quickly be replaced by softer yet still the same one in nature, as the other seen option for society is complete anarchy. And even if Lancelot will take power to lead people out of this deterministic fate, he will eventually end up doing the same things that did previous oppressors.
Highly recommend to watch the movie yourself - to me at least it's a good example of anti-totalitarian fiction from people that actually experienced it, not form western observers that heard or read about the topic. Not sure if there were any dub of this classic in English, only know that there is a sub version on TH-cam
Another excellent analysis of an old favorite. Well done, sir!
I liked the surrealism of the Village. There are rules, but the rules are malleable and never truly consistent. The Village has shops and stores and services but its not clear how anyone earns anything. The Village will try to get you through various angles, but very rarely overt violent coercion. Village events and festivals appear as needed. Large parts of the Village serve no real purpose, or hide a true purpose. The people of the Village fall into unclear categories of prisoners, guards, menial staff etc where a persons role is unclear. Some people are too without purpose, their secrets or usefulness already absorbed by the Village until they are simply stored.
And then he became Longshanks in 'Braveheart'
TH-cam teased me with this and an Oculus Imperia video side by side. I had to flip a coin 😎
Awesome work Feral and thanks for pushing out such awesome content! One of these days I do want to be a Patron when finances allow 🤘
I found your channel last week with your essay of why you think the Serenity ending was too optimistic for these times. Today there's an essay about one of the greatest TV shows ever. Are you kidding me? 😊 I've only ever watched The Prisoner in the OG broadcast order and was wondering about the other ways of watching the series. Think I'll try this now as it's about time for my yearly watch again. Great video, love the channel. Attending the Six of One convention is a bit of an experience, you really feel like you're in the Village.
Shout! Studios YT channel plays the Prisoner, literally playing Many Happy Returns on a livestream right now. My favorite episode.
Badass I was trying to tell my friends about this show once but idk they just weren’t into it, I’m so glad you covered it
Thank you so very much for all of these videos; on every subject you manage to present some new insight that even I, at 60, failed to notice.
Patrick McGoohan was an "odd duck". If you look at his film oeuvre, he made interesting choices, which I believe coincided with his character. He turned down the role of James Bond for "moral" (or aesthetic) reasons. I have always regarded The Prisoner as his greatest and most self-revelatory work. (And the miniseries was an abomination!)
One gets the impression that Number Six is the most important person in The Village, but why are all those other people there, and who are the occasional victims of Rover? In ways, it is reminiscent of the "retirement home" in The Borgia Stick, where failed mobsters are taken, to be lobotomized, a terrifying alternative to being whacked.
And then, there's Rumpole showing up. Repeatedly.
“A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
Oh well half dozen of the Other, one might say.
But I have the DVD set, so perhaps another seventeen?
I saw the Village as a place to also store people who have given up their secret, or fulfilled the job the Village needed. People who know too much can't leave. A bunch of people are menial staff, they do the custodial or administrative or security work. Many are just held indefinitely in the Village limbo.
I always thought number 6 was the most important because he kept resisting, everyone else folded immediately
@@keithmichael112 We don't really get to know them. I assumed many of the people stored in the Village weren't new. We don't get to know how many years the Village had to work on them.
We get to meet a few people who are new arrivals, like no. 6.
I would love to see your take on Fahrenheit 451. I feel like that gets neglected.
This is great! Working my way through your backlog, this is amazing.
If you ever have a hankering to talk about Children's Post Apocalypse stories, I humbly suggest contrasting the film Solarbabies (1986), Tomes and Talismans (also 1986) a limited series meant to educate children about the library system, and The Tribe (1999), a New Zealander Post Apocalyptic Cyberpunk children's soap opera that ran for 5 seasons.
You should make a grand Playlist on your channel for all your analyses videos. I tend to watch a few at once, when a new one is released, and it would be more convenient. I expect I'm not the only one.
There used to be a "Play All" option on peoples' home YT page which would essentially do that. However the YT overseers, in their great wisdom, appear to have removed that feature in recent months. Anyway, thanks for another great vid!
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!"
Words feared by any authoritarian movement, doesn't matter the economic system.
Edit: Only became aware of this series because of Ricardo Montebalm's "Golden Age of Video"
Edit: Yeah, becoming tired of everything being "Liberal's fault," when modern Liberalism is nothing more than Conservatism that wants to still be invited to the parties with interesting people.
Another fantastic commentary video. I'm going to take this as a sign that I'm due for a re-watching of The Prisoner.
Simply mind blowing, number 2
I'm glad you made this one.
I have a funny feeling were largely on the same wavelength.
Channel is growing nicely and we're gifted a 25 minute video on Friday? My man, you produce my favourite content on youtube.
I'm glad you covered this show, it get's so little attention on youtube.
You remind me of a friend of mine, Rick Partlow. He's a Sci Fi writer and all around good dude and smart guy. He moved from Central Florida to Wyoming not long ago. Keep up the fantastic work, sir!
I remember watching that show a little over a decade ago, I was in my mid 30's back then. It was interesting, but I'm sure I failed to pick up on most of its themes. I should probably rewatch it one of these days, so I can fail to pick up on them again.
This was amazing, thank you for diving into this show which would likely otherwise be forgotten! It reminded me a lot of the, strange as it may seem, commissioned anime to celebrate Cup Noodle’s 35th anniversary - Freedom Project. The characters and mech design were done by Akira’s Katsuhiro Otomo. There are a lot of similarities between the two series and I’d love to see your take comparing it against The Prisoner.
Also, love the Bester sign off!
You mean the Prisoner sign off...
Bab5 absolutely took that 'be seeing you' gesture from 'the prisoner.' I figure its some sort of meta-reference to the show itself - nodding at Bester's authoritarianism/system he represents.
@@SteveT3D, I agree! And I love me some B5, lol.
@@SteveT3D Yeah, JMS said as much back in the day. It was 100% a deliberate homage.
@@SteveT3D B5 made other references to the show. JMS is a big fan.
To my mind, the only time television aspired to be more than mindless entertainment was with "The Prisoner." It is a thinking person's program, open to multiple interpretations and circumspection of one's life. Right now, to me, it feels more relevant than it did 60 years ago.
Interesting analysis. The Prisoner will always be a conundrum because the writers wanted it to be that way, just as many of us are confused about the absurdities of our society.
I did think there was a clue as to why our protagonist resigned. One of his first questions to Number 2 was, "Who's side are you on?!" If you have to ask that question about an operation that is clearly evil to its core, what does that say about "your side"? He observed that his side was just as corrupt, self-serving, and cruel as the other. This was also reflected in his angry questioning of whether or not his society was better than the "bad guys." I think he had lost faith that any society could be anything except evil and self-serving. Better to resign and take a vacation to get away from it all -- perhaps at a relaxing seaside resort...
I suggest Charles Einstein's "Mutiny of the Soul" and Drapetomania for additional reading.
Hope to see a review of Escape from New York, and Escape from LA. These former future history movies, are now alternate history movies of their own.
New FH video dropped just in time for my walk home from work. Nice!
I remember seeing this in my high school days on our local PBS station. It stimulated several discussions in my group of friends, but we never really saw the whole series, (though I do remember the scene where Number 1 was 'revealed,' and there was a gorilla mask . . . .)
I have not seen the remake, but I can't imagine that it would (or even could) capture the "look and feel" of Cold War "Spy-Fi" zeitgeist that the original did so effortlessly.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this series with us!
My Like is in the 1.1Ks
I wonder if Feral Historian will do "Master and Margarita" in the future. Aside from being a modern classic, it covers the Stalinist iteration of pathologizing dissent.
Never heard of this show! Interesting review, thank you for dusting it off.
Questions are a burden to others, answers a prison for oneself
I always thought the final scene of The Prisoner (the butler from the village and the electric door) implied that some part of the village followed the protagonist as an admission that he had won. It did not occur to me that it might also imply that some part of the village followed him and stayed with him. Or that he never really fully escaped from the Village. This has given me something to think about.
It's The Matrix... but analog
My absolute favorite piece of counterculture media it is a masterpiece.
I like your use of different settings for recording. It really works for me, but I couldn't say why. Idk if they tie into the narration or just set the scene, but I usually am audio only while doing other things, but with your vids I find myself watching the screen.
Thank you.
"Give me Liberty, or give me higher wages..." -2024- YP
You can visit the village, it's in Wales, it's beautiful. Had to leave quickly before.. . Well you know
Having worked on the cockpit lighting for the BONE, I'll always have a soft spot for the big beasties.
Great analysis overall!
One note that I disagree with is the Religion part.
I don't think it has anything to do with materialism or modernity, otherwise McGoohan would have specifically said so.
I think it is more a question of not muddying the waters with alternate elements of control designed to be cantilevered to the central edifice of control, not quite a part of it but not fully against it either, like sports, television, popular music, etc...
The fact that there was an episode planned with a church and #2 as it's preacher, that never saw the light, seems to me more that McGoohan decided against it, because it belabored the point of the series into unnecessary and probably inescapable brambles.
Not sure if you take recommendations from comments, but I think you might enjoy taking a look at the patlabor films- specifically the second film has an interesting sequence and overarching story about the nature of conflicts and a "justified war vs an unjust peace". Watch the movies in order. The third movie doesn't exist and can't hurt you
Watched it yesterday, what a fantastic film, I also recommend Jin-Roh, if you haven't seen it yet.
@@rutgaurxi7314 i have! i enjoyed it. i did not know that it was part of a franchise before i finished the movie, but it stands well on its own
Cool, something I've never heard of. Time to add it to the watch list.
It’s one of the few shows where nobody depicted is truly a “good guy”, everybody is painted as “bad” during the show, starting with Six. There’s a protagonist, but nobody is ever put forth as “good”.
Never heard of this show gotta put it on the watch list
A comment on the “layers of symbolism sometimes conscience and sometimes not” is even more complex than even that. The movie Luca was criticized for not being overt about its gay coding but when the writer explained his true inspiration the person criticizing him got her shorts in a twist because he told her it was a different inspiration that happened to him, but the emotional truth was so true to her experience as a gay woman she told him it should have been more about her. The classic Freud line about a cigar just being a cigar doesn’t mean that the cigar won’t become a symbol of something within the narrative. The balloon was because the machine they had intended became impractical so they found a creative thing that became it’s own symbol within the narrative in a way a more realistic “machine” could not.and in a show definitely full of symbolism it’s hard to tell what was practical and what was deliberate and even what may have been subconscious or dare I say they just thought looked cool.
I'd love to hear your take on the Metal Gear series, particularly Metal Gear Solid 2, which came out in 2001, but many have pointed out managed to predict the current socio-political climate with surprising accuracy.
You don't have to actually play the games, by the way. Most of the plot and exposition is delivered through cutscenes and "codec" calls (basically, segments where the main character converses with one or more characters over a radio built into his inner ear), of which compilations can be found all over youtube.
I'm not a military hardware nerd but for whatever reason I have a soft spot for the B1 Lancer. You're lucky you got to see them while filming. :-)
"I'm not a number, I'm a free man!
Live my life where I want to
You'd better scratch me from your black book
'Cause I'll run rings around you!"
It was all in the comma.
"You are, Number Six"
I watched all of this in one day, when i was 17, off vhs. It was a strange day
It taught me the old saying, "you have to look out for number one" was true. ❤
21:41 A point missed is that it is never clear who is a Prisoner in the Village and who is a Warder (guard). Everybody but The Butler wears summertime clothes. We only know who is whom at the end of a story or if the plot demands it. There is also the element that there may be multiple Villages in widely-spaced places to confuse any escape by a person as capable as Number 6 (look at the alternate version of "The Chimes of Big Ben" for where I came up with that idea.) The place is the Adult Summercamp from Hell.
A, B, & C and Dance of the Dead are among my favorites. I also adore Living in Harmony.
We're not locked in here with them...... they're locked in here.... with us....
In the GURPS game, they took up the idea of lifers. People are sometimes simply stored in the Village. They have no purpose to the Masters but can't be let loose. This includes much of the staff.