Number 6 March 2009

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I am not a number. I am a person. The Prisoner, Number 6

In the summer of 1968, a TV series premiered on CBS as a summer replacement for The Jackie Gleason Show. It was a British import (filmed in the north Wales village of Portmeirion) about a spy who, having resigned his position is drugged and kidnapped and wakes up captive in a holiday resort. He is intimidated, interrogated, subject to mind control techniques and forced to explain himself week after week, resulting in his repeated attempts to escape from The Village and find out the identity of his captor, the elusive Number 1. The show, The Prisoner, starred and was co-created by Patrick McGoohan, who died January 13 at age 80 in Santa Monica, California. The actor was born in New York and raised in England and Ireland.

We were in the middle of the Vietnam War (which peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive), the invasion of British rock music, the assassination of Martin Luther King (April, 1968) and Bobby Kennedy (June, 1968). We were a generation coming to terms with the real world; not the one we were led to believe in by our parents, schools, churches and the media. I asked myself how much I wanted to fit in, what I wanted to fit into, what fitting in meant in terms a of gain or a loss to my individuality and life. All of us do this to some degree in our late teens and early twenties as we ask age old questions about identity, place and meaning.

I developed a much deeper sense of the rhetoric of the world and what was really going on through these reflections and life experiences with the adult world, friends and part time work, although it is clearer and less emotional to me now. In some cases, I felt the intentions of others around me to point me in a particular direction rather than to help me find my own. The summer between high school and college, for example, was especially intense. I worked 3:30 p.m. - midnight as a laborer in a foundry where I heard from the shift supervisor and my third shift colleagues the repent of the working class not to trust management, the highly educated or the government. My girl friend of the time was losing interest in going to college and me and she, as well as several friends, became a part of the full time work force and part time college that fall.

During the days between high school and college, I hung out, worked out and contemplated what might lie ahead. After my shift, I caught reruns of The Prisoner that aired from midnight to one a.m. and some of my concerns were clearly articulated by the show. Who would own me? My job, my girlfriend, school, parents, society? Or ME? And to what degree would the various individuals (stakeholders) attempt to exert control and get me to fit into their life rules, norms,

When being trained to be a high school social studies teacher a few years later, I was counseled by mentor teachers to question my ideals, cut my hair, spend large amounts of empty face time with superiors and cow tow to the whims of parents, administrators and even in some cases students often at the expense of student learning and school goals. Luckily I was not just majoring in education. I was also majoring in sociology and learning about the structure and functioning of society. I questioned, and eventually decided that I couldn’t live the life of a high school teacher. My older brother, a few years ahead of me in the teaching profession, stayed after hours at the high school he taught at and had resigned from on his last day of classes to post flyers around the school emblazoned with his picture and the caption, “The prisoner has escaped the village!” My generation made questioning authority a part of our very being as we had felt “imprisoned” by society, parents, schools, work and sometimes even friends. And, even though we were shaped by these key influencers and influencing events, we found our own values, goals and paths in life. And, some of us chose a life of more independence than others who were more comfortable fitting in.

Pop culture gave us comedians like Jackie Gleason and spies including James Bond. McGoohan, who already had passed on becoming James Bond, was already known to audiences as John Drake (Secret Agent) whose theme song became a hit for Johnny Rivers. But we wanted something deeper and more cultish that spoke to us at our time in life and society. The Prisoner was truly something different and captured my attention then as well as now (via NETFLIX.) Most other spies were glorified cops implementing their master’s agenda. The typical spy was no more than “a company guy,” with a tendency to do it their way, not questioning anything at all about ideals, motives, means and ends and collateral issues. By contrast, The Prisoner questioned the demands of cooperation, giving in or capitulating and becoming a part of that which needed to be questioned or disagreed with. The character and plot was, metaphorically, McGoohan’s story, having quit Secret Agent at the height of its success because it no longer suited him to play the role.

The Prisoner was social satire at its best and came at the perfect time in history to help me better understand the world around me then or now. There was always humor in his contrariness, and if Number 6 was fated to remain a prisoner caught time and again at the border by Rover, the bouncing ball from hell, or shown that his imagined escape was merely an illusion, he remained himself. He was truly self-reliant, anti-authoritarian and good looking in an Everyman sort of way with the twinkle in his eye that in itself bespoke a kind of inner light and freedom. As hard as they tried, they could not wash or cleanse his mind.

Having earlier in his career deprived himself of the notoriety and prison that a major character can create for an actor (James Bond), he more recently turned down the roles of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. This may have been because of health reasons, as has been reported, but I like what Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times says. “I prefer to think of him once again exercising his right to be perverse [abstinent]. I am not a wizard, he might have well said. I am a free man.”

I have felt Rover near me, shepherding me back toward the center at several times in my life and career. Sometimes I have given in too easily and other times I have thought I was actually a free man only to painfully realize otherwise when my illusion was revealed. I have made a few inspired points in escape attempts that have hurt me but have helped others see what is really going on in “The Village.” And, I have made a few successful escapes. Perhaps my graduate studies in anthropology and my career as an organizational culture and change consultant were strongly influenced by The Prisoner. Patrick McGoohan inspired me and his character, Number 6, has become a part of me.

Lessons Learned:

1. Know who you are and where you are going. 2. Let key influencers and influencing events shape you but not imprison you. 3. Know your place in time and history. It helps you understand the context. 4. Watch The Prisoner.

The Village