The Prisoner in the Gulag: It’s Your Funeral and A Change of Mind
The introduction to this series of posts considering whether The Prisoner could reference Soviet Russia may be found here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/the-prisoner-in-the-gulag-introduction
It’s Your Funeral
There are a number of easy possible allusions to Soviet Russia in It’s Your Funeral.
For a start we have the obvious artifice of the society in the Village, which feels like much of the artifice in Soviet society. The Soviet ethos was very much towards a planned society with plans and goals, very much as the Village has been planned. I am specifically thinking of the obviously invented Appreciation Day when the entire Village rejoices in whoever happens to be Number 2 at the time, and of course the Appreciation Monument is reminiscent of the Soviet monumental propaganda I have already mentioned in this series of posts.
The artifice extends to the Village currency in this episode: previously it has been called credit units, then became work units, and in this one is just called credit. The old lady who wants sweets is told she’s used up her credit for the week, so it’s clearly a sort of pension rationed out to the residents, rather than being an actual currency which is allowed to flow and pool where it will as in capitalism. When Number 6 pays the watchmaker, the watchmaker punches a ticket which Number 6 produces. This whole system is utterly contrived and the exact opposite of capitalism, so this is one of the more clearly reminiscent aspects of communism and therefore the Soviet Union in this episode.
Finally we have the obvious surveillance of the residents. This is reminiscent of citizens surveilling each other in the Soviet Union.
However as I have said before when I have posted about the episode, I have a favoured interpretation of this one, which means I am going to have to prefer something else to a Soviet Russia reference. My humble opinion is that the presence of actor Martin Miller, who appeared in Danger Man, is a deliberate reference back to Danger Man, and I think this episode is best interpreted as indicating that Number 6 is in fact John Drake. I think the show was intended to be open to multiple interpretations, but I just think the John Drake identification fits this episode best.
A non-Soviet point strikes me about the episode, because it depicts a tiny community which bizarrely has a general store which has already been shown as chock full of cuckoo clocks, and a whole watchmaker shop is revealed in this episode. This is to reach White Rabbit levels of Alice in Wonderland obsession with time, and I might at some point do a run through of the show assuming nothing is real.
A Change of Mind
Coming to A Change of Mind, it feels almost as if I have covered this episode before, and in fact the association with Soviet Russia writes itself. Of course, being all about conformity and punishment, the episode could well allude to the Soviet crime of social parasitism.
The fact that Number 6’s social parasitism is then psychiatrised with Instant Social Conversion and then fake psychosurgery, exactly fits the way psychiatry was (mis)used for those who refused to fit in in the Soviet Union.
However, while this episode is reminiscent of the misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, I think a better interpretation of this particular one is that it is criticising the social conformity role of psychiatry in every society. Therefore because psychiatry is the subject, of course it could be applied to the Soviet Union, as it could to Britain, Italy, or wherever. In this case the promise of psychiatry is particularly fake because it’s represented by both the quack remedy of Instant Social Conversion and a completely fake operation, and the reality here is abuse and coercion.
Another more fitting possible interpretation here is that Number 6 is actually finding out what goes on in the Village (whether willingly as a plant or not) by dint of putting himself through it as a victim.
In conclusion these are two episodes which could possibly allude to aspects of life in the Soviet Union, but only because they are aspects of life everywhere, and which are better interpreted differently.
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