The Unbearable Heaviness of Numbers

A good part of my life now is filling out numbers on forms, punching numbers when reaching most business or bureaucratic offices by phone. It is the first thing people ask you: your claim number? Then perfunctorily they ask for other information like your name, your address, your phone number. This is not unfamiliar territory to most of us.

Every time I begin to think I am reduced to a number, I think of that fabulous series The Prisoner with the late great Patrick McGoohan. If any man approximated God in the world of television and movies for me, it would be Patrick McGoohan, the man who brought us that series.

For those of you who have never seen the series, McGoohan plays a British agent (who some have considered to be John Drake from his Danger Man days) who abruptly resigns, and as soon as he gets back to his apartment, is drugged and brought to a village where everyone is a number. He becomes Number Six. The series presents us with a number of themes in various genres, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, etcetera. A theme that follows from episode to episode is that of the individual vs. the collective.

As the show begins, and Number Two tells him he wants information, he tells them, "I am not a number! I am a free man!" McGoohan was rather prescient in bringing what was in large part, his creation to the small screen, because the time was a coming when our individuality, our identity, our freedom would be challenged by simply being another number in the system.

I did not get to watch The Prisoner as a child. It was not until a couple of years ago that Ma and I sat and watched the series together, always looking forward to the next DVD arrivals. When it was finally over, I think we both felt a sense of disappointment that it finally came to an "end". For a while, it had been just as Battlestar Galactica was for me, recently, nothing, on television, on DVD was quite the same. When Patrick McGoohan died earlier this year, I wanted to watch both Danger Man and The Prisoner all over again, in homage to "the man". Ma was not up for it. I think I'll give her until the end of the year, and come January, his barsi, I'll talk her into it!!! *rubs hands together gleefully*

One of the more popular quotes besides the one above from the show: I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!

And that is what I feel like sometimes with certain offices, for which I have become a file, a claim, a number. And the struggle continues to keep one's life one's own!



In this clip not only do you see the one of the more popular quotes from the series, but also, Number Six's appeal to those who might have "a remnant of a brain" makes me think about certain events that are taking place in the world. Certain "ideas" and/or "ideals" (I use the words advisedly)for which certain folks have given up their ability to think beyond what is fed to them as a regular staple of their lives, and they in turn impart their food or "wisdom" to us by any means necessary. They too, are numbers, of a different kind.

It was not that McGoohan disliked numbers, although I am not certain whether he liked mathematics or not. He appeared to dislike the idea of being part of the herd, of losing one's identity, one's own self. His struggle to maintain his, and not to give that up in order to be popular, or wanted by Hollywood could be said to be indicative of that.

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One of the movie channels, AMC, the one who gives us the good but somewhat overhyped Mad Men, is going to bring us a new version of The Prisoner with Ian McKellen as Number Two, and Jim Caviezel as Number Six, and this takes place on a tropical island.



The purist in me says hell no! But I know the curiosity in me will win . Comparisons will be made which will undoubtedly be unfair. What was done in the 1960's cannot be redone. It has to be different. I already know it will not be better, but a younger generation may think differently. We shall see!

As they said in the village, "Be seeing you!"

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the quotes from the series are from Wikiquote and Wikipedia has pages on both McGoohan and the 1967 series.