I first watched the television series The Prisoner in my mid-20s, so about 20 years ago now. I’ve watched it several times since and in my opinion anglo television should have ended then, and not just because of its technical and artistic achievements. It should have in spite of them – the biggest achievement of all is that it perfectly demonstrated why television (and consequently all the surveillance tech that stemmed from it that the show gives a frighteningly prescient rendition of) should have been dismantled as an industry with its airing. I’m not really a television enthusiast, but like anyone else under this order, I’ve seen my share whether I like it or not (by hook or by crook). I can’t think of any other shows I’ve taken the time to watch that have left me seriously thinking about how awful the whole endeavor really is.

Maybe that’s naive and provincial of me, maybe I should watch more to get a better impression of why I shouldn’t! As much as such a contradictory statement could possibly be true, I cannot with these majorly media-covered and “acclaimed” series, don’t really want to, and in not so small part thanks to this show and the things I’ve taken away from it. I was not really raised on television and that mostly followed through into my early adulthood – I didn’t have the time for it and didn’t care. Then “prestige television” came along at a time I was insisting that television was dying and we should welcome its demise. That one didn’t turn out so well, did it. But then again I didn’t have anything to show my work, just a general feeling of unease and realizations of what it means to stay alive as the tides turned internationally into something even more grotesque.

There was a sweet spot between a dearth of interest in television among people in my age range and cohort and before google put a greater streamlined stranglehold on the internet. There was something really hopeful even among the ruins of that time – that communication (the passing of in-formation) was possible in an unprecedented way. Dissidents could report in real time and people had a chance to act on it and organize. Hope was all it was able to hold, unfortunately. Instead, we were drip fed The Sopranos. What’s the refrain? Oh don’t get me wrong, it was great. It can also be said to have been when television “should have ended”, I suppose. Overall, in my opinion, it speaks to the final death throes of independent organized labor. I don’t know that it overtly makes a political statement toward that end, but it made the degradation look slick and sexy as those dinosaur soldiers and bosses flailed and took each other out.

But in a real time political sense, Sopranos spoke to a small audience. They got the message or didn’t and many met untimely ends, at least for them. It took me a long time to understand the actual political significance of The Prisoner in that way. My greener and younger self’s impression when I first watched it was that it validated a lot of things I thought about [S]ociety, but I was left asking what it meant politically, and not because of the read it’s often given as individualist libertarian or whatever. That’s not to say there wasn’t a sort of samizdat longing present engendered by such inclinations with the repetition of “whose side are you on?” as “both sides become indistinguishable from the other”. I like to think Number 2’s cackle in response to 6’s declaration of being a free man in the intros is meant to disabuse outsiders of this notion, and it points to the inside jokes aimed at the inside. After all, Patrick McGoohan came off Danger Man before making this which to my memory served as series of televised morality plays incongruous from one to the next as he “fixed” things on behalf of NATO whilst jet setting around the world.

Like most anglo television, Prisoner doesn’t challenge one to act politically, as thought provoking as it is. Can any television actually do that? That is not strictly rhetorical. In my experience, the answer is a big fat no. Now I wonder, like with Sopranos, did it find its specific, small audience at the time? How many long knives were at the draw then? It no doubt illustrated a template for the future; you can point to any number of official economic summit white papers and draw comparisons to the present day and just observe the ways in which society transformed from the late 60s on. Inside jokes were consistent that pointed to a mockery of those on the “outside” of the bureaus et cetera, but this also came at a time when people were more literate about the real doings of what are always cast as “their/(our)” governments. I can imagine it struck a chord among the aforementioned outsiders because it combined the general disaffection among the public at the time while giving uncanny specifics on how it would or could all play out in the future.

There are themes that instill paralyzing fear and an ever-present sense of isolation we are conditioned by television as a whole to do…nothing about – but more than that, the aim of television and its controllers is to lull us into positively appreciating that we are “seen” by the television as a dead, self-perpetuating mechanism unto itself. I think both RedKahina and KeatsSycamore on twitter have discussed this trend of “being seen” in the advanced stages of television as The Prisoner had it, the former putting the emphasis on what it does for the clerks, the wired population, as a prosthesis. Unlike much that exists now containing specific messages intended for these lackeys, flacks, and spooks – that includes seemingly direct orders given to those involved in the production and maintenance of individual figures via soap opera-esque dramatization – Prisoner demonstrates that these mechanisms of control as they existed then and as they were meant to develop further signaled future, absolute imprisonment for all (as we see now, those who are left standing after waves of depopulation and subsequent enslavement). It is not a model strictly reserved for “former” spooks, and, in reality, anyone who resists has in-formation relevant to Number 2’s participation in the ultimate project he or she can never “tell” about.

The outside audience can see how futile it is then that Number 6 declare himself a “free man” simply by saying it after pursuing a career in sabotaging the freedom of others he may have once considered his compatriots from within the national boundaries that were going through stages of rapid deterioration even then. Number 2’s state of amusement from this is actually “telling” – the individual free man cannot technically exist under any order, and individuality itself along with the concept of freedom, free movement in particular, is impossible in the world they are building. For those who see it, the following joke is another that outsiders can indulge in at insider (but certainly not owner) expense –

This comes from the comment section on YouTube for the sixth episode entitled “The General”. In it, residents of The Village are propagandized to accept and applaud the Professor’s “speed learning” courses. After these 15 minute sessions of staring into the Professor’s televised image, they can babble back and forth to each other the “facts” they have “learned” verbatim. No one has a deeper understanding of the political significance of these psychic tellings and they aren’t meant to. Ringing notifications signifying operant conditioning raise the alarm to give it your full, undivided attention as 6 is somewhat surprisingly willing to do. (This is a telling setup for the following episode in which 6 unthinkingly returns to old habits and tradecraft instincts, once again betrayed for it and shipped back to The Village after escaping.) It is easy to see it as commentary on education and the encroaching force of concentrated ruling class media on it, and the trappings it entailed then as an institution. Further, the acceleration of these tactics can be particularly demoralizing watching it in present time. We don’t even get a whole 15 minutes to go through the material now; it’s 15 seconds (the time limit for “reels” on the big (anti)social media platforms) to a minute forty or so.

With this latest viewing, I came away thinking how utterly alien these institutions forced upon us really are. It made me slip into a mode thinking that they always have been, that absolute control always has been calculated by them. I think this can be a reactionary response – it is one that has been cultivated by these same institutions even while truly human history has been realized – as true skill and meaningful recognition of it can occur even as it is institutionally coopted and appropriated. Should we simply nod along, blankly accepting “that’s the way it goes” as Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza? That’s the nihilism this sort of reaction softens us up for.

Though the end of “The General” simply asks “why?” in a heavy handed, elementary way (it’s enough to break the machine! which is, The General), it is a valid question. Maybe more appropriately it should be, “to what end?” Because I truly think that for all the concentration and theft of the talents and abilities of collective, social humanity by the rapacious transnational ruling class, it will come to an abrupt end, even for them. There will be nothing of value left. We see that in the intensified depopulation programs now, and we may die en masse trying to prevent it, but it will end.

Ruling class owned and led institutions are perversions of free association and independent organization whose forms and prospects for such really do present the possibility of something beyond what we have known that don’t always have to “be like that”. What is the alternative? Waking up like this guy every day?