Here’s commentary on the third episode of AMC’s The Prisoner.
Spoiler Alert – this review will reveal sundry details of the episode.
A man called Number 6, rather than a name, finds himself in a community called The Village, wondering where he is, how he got there, and trying to return to a place called New York.
Most of the residents would tell Number 6 that there is no New York, and that he’s simply mad to imagine that there is, and that he once lived there.
In the third episode, Anvil, the community administrator, Number 2, gives Number 6 a chance to become a spy for The Village surveillance, and to observe those dissenters the authorities consider dreamers – the madness of believing in something beyond The Village, or questioning ideas about the community.
Number 6 sees that the administrator cannot be trusted, but he agrees to be part of a two-man surveillance unit, in the hope that he might learn more about the origins and truth of the place.
There are some striking scenes in the episode, especially how children are taught, from their early school years, to observe and record their parents’ behavior, and to identify any anomalies in their parents’ routines.
As one could guess, the children lack an adult’s discernment, so even commonplace changes in routine – such as a skipped exercise class – suggest something sinister in an adult’s behavior.
The sensible conclusion, of course, is that small changes are only small; there’s no grand conclusion to be drawn. The children don’t see it that way, and they are encouraged to see minor changes as suggestive of big events and motivations.
How does that suspicion come about? The Village’s society must encourage and reinforce the notion that questions, contrary opinions, and novel ideas are both wrong and mad.
The natural, rational faculty of a person drifts into both suspicion of motivation and discomfort with contrary opinions only through tutelage.
So how does this happen? In The Village it happens because children are indoctrinated. In a small community, in rural America, I think it happens when adults set aside American individualism for a sense of order, control, comfort, and familiarity.
The description of these impulses, when they become overbearing, is telling. One will not hear someone declare, ‘this is what America expects, or requires.’ Instead, the need for order is expressed in local, seemingly practical ways, but almost always terms without reliance on the principles of this state or country.
The local convenience or need that regulators assert often has no foundation in American principle; an authority in a vulgar and unprincipled place abroad could assert something similar.
(When those who attempt to regulate locally do so with reliance on a supposed American standard, they typically misconstrue that standard. Usually, they don’t even make the effort.)
It’s not that they favor government intrusion; it’s that they favor governmemt’s support of their views as a defense of the community itself.
The community began, flourished, and would go on well with far less government, regulation, or planning, and the insistence that these three are indispensable to life. Of all the conversations, meetings, and moments between people in our town, only the smallest number depend on government.
Every encroachment from meddling bureaucrats further undermines positive and voluntary private activity.
Civil society is fundamentally a private, unregulated, uncontrolled set of associations. The number of things people do apart from government puts lie to the notion that government is necessary for community prosperity.
Yet, wherever he goes, Number 6 finds others who share his convictions, and the presence of so many hidden dreamers is reassuring to him. He’s resolute in his individualism, and comes to see that even with The Village, others share his view.