We are all Pawns podcast #1 - Arrival
Added 2023-08-22 13:01:59 +0000 UTCSo sadly, due to the SAG-AFTRA strike guidelines, the Jumpgate podcast has been put on hold for the time being. BUT, that isn't going to stop Vera and I from podcasting together. Instead, we've decided to do a mini-series about the old British 1960s show The Prisoner, and it might very quickly have become a favorite show of mine! Be seeing you ;)
Comments
I remember when the Prisoner was first shown on American television in the summer of 1968. I was way too young to appreciate it's subtleties, just old enough to remember that I saw it. Patrick McGoohan had previously done the series, Danger Man, released here as Secret Agent. In it, he played John Drake, a government agent. I'm told he circumvented the rules, questioned authority, and the morality and ethics of things, didn't kill people he was told to kill, etc. One huge theory at the time of "The Prisoner" was that this was the same character. McGoohan was criticized for turning down the role of James Bond, then doing a copycat character. But it was more of a parody or dissection of James Bond that he did. I had a college Literature professor who considered it the greatest television series ever made. Such great presentation. "I had my reasons for quitting". "What were they?" "I just told you. MY reasons!"
Xenaboy
2023-09-16 00:21:55 +0000 UTCPortmeirion, in Wales.
Ingvar
2023-08-31 12:46:08 +0000 UTCLove that you're doing The Prisoner. If I remember right, The Village was (still is?) a (real-world) resort in north Wales (UK).
Scuzzbopper
2023-08-29 22:19:12 +0000 UTCI just realized that I have a connection to this series, of sorts. A friend of mine owns (or owned, I haven't seen it in a few years) the same type car used in the opening credits: a Lotus Seven. It is indeed a "tiny car", very low to the ground, as Jessie observed. My friend got a personalized license plate for her car reading "NOT A KIT" because, according to Wikipedia, "The Lotus Seven design has spawned a host of imitations on the kit car market, generally called Sevens or Sevenesque roadsters." Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to ride in her car, which is probably for the best, since I would need a crane to get out of it.
Lin Kibblemom
2023-08-25 20:00:14 +0000 UTCInterestingly, the lyrics to the theme song for McG's earlier series, "Secret Agent", include the line "They've given you a number and taken away your name".
Lin Kibblemom
2023-08-25 19:51:41 +0000 UTCWait, what about the guidelines means you can't talk about babylon 5?
UlvenAspiration
2023-08-23 17:22:56 +0000 UTCI'd hesitate in agreeing with Jessie that this is an anti-fascist piece of art. The themes of this show are couched in so many overlapping layers of metaphor and in medias res dialogue that it can be difficult to tease out anything beyond a general terror and distrust of the surveillance state in all its varied forms. (A more recent version of this show would probably look something similar to Person of Interest, another otherwise interesting entry from the regrettable Jim Caviezel oeuvre). I've seen some arguments that because of the communal nature of the village and the time period in which this came out that this show was written to Capitalize (in multiple meanings of the word) on the terror in the western imagination of the Stasi / the KGB / any oppressive police force which 'naturally' attended any socialist state or any state that was even thinking about implementing socialist reforms. So from that perspective, the Prisoner *might* be considered as something of a cautionary tale if the UK elected the 60s equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn. I'm not sure how much I buy that argument, but I certainly can't dismiss it either. The CIA has demonstrably false-flagged much less subtle propaganda both before and after this show was aired, so you never know. But I *do* like Jessie's trans reading of the lead and of the pains to which the village goes to try and deadname him at every turn.
Rhiannon M
2023-08-23 09:25:34 +0000 UTC
