The Prisoner in The Gulag: The Schizoid Man and The General
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
The Schizoid Man
There really isn’t a lot to say about possible references to Soviet Russia in The Schizoid Man because the episode sort of sits up and asks how the Five Year Plan is going without having to be prodded. The natural reference is in the science fiction element (both the supposedly swapping personalities and in the Zener card experiments). Scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union was incredibly advanced, disastrous,pseudo-scientific, and, of course, inhumane, and frankly the sort of thing even the Village authorities could only dream of. Basically think of the most unethical experimentation you can and it was probably done in the Soviet era. Thousands of people died because of the speudo-scientific theories applied to crop growth, and thousands died in one single experimentation when people were just left on an island.
Of course it’s difficult to say what got out of the Soviet Union in the sixties and what McGoohan would have known about, but that doesn’t really matter because the requirements of propaganda ensured that while some incredible experimentation was going on, the public face always had to be better. Frankly, the propaganda is incredible, but so is the reality which was kept firmly hidden behind the curtain.
I don’t therefore have much difficulty believing that The Schizoid Man could be intended to reference Soviet Russia.
The General
The science fiction (or possibly pseudo-science) of course continues in The General with Speed Learn.
The whole Speed Learn episode has a very Communist feel to it, to my mind: rather than acting individually the Villagers are all acting as one in following a single plan to the benefit of the Village authorities.
Speed Learn itself could represent Communist propaganda: it is of course far from being a real education which teaches the student to think and marshall information rather than just parrot it. In Speed Learn the whole village receives the approved information and they all parrot it to each other. They have to give the right answer rather than discussing it in any way, surely the function of propaganda.
The Professor can be seen as a contradictory character, personifying the Soviet persecution of dissidents (many of whom were intellectuals), while also clearly having a position of great responsibility in the Village. Probably he is in the sort of position that Number 6 would have ended up in if he had ever compromised with the Village authorities.
There is something incredibly Alice in Wonderland about the Village having to chase the professor along the beach to catch him and force him to give his lecture. Usually surely it is the students who have to be chased and obliged to attend lectures?
So there are several possible suggestions of Soviet Russia in the episode.
However I think a better overall interpretation of the episode than referencing Soviet Russia is the idea of societal control, depicted most obviously in the fact that the General who is the object of pursuit proves to be a computer rather than a person. Number 12 introduces himself to Number 6 as ‘a cog’, Speed Learn is administered through the medium of the machine that is television and quite a lot is made of the Professor losing his tape recorder. The machine as an image of society as a machine dominates this episode, and I think is probably the most natural explanation.
It also gives a hint of the final solution of the show, namely that Number 1 is actually Number 6 in that Number 6 finds a bust of himself among the busts of the Village great and good made by the professor’s wife. Despite his continual conflict with the Village authorities, this episode depicts Number 6 among them.
Overall, an episode with several possible suggestions of Soviet Russia, but one that perhaps is better explained as referencing society as a machine.
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