Mindset. So important. So nebulous. So full of surprises.
I’m working on illustrations today that use a portion of a dollar bill as a frame (e.g. where George’s stuffy head usually is, someone else’s will be). Easiest way to begin was to take a big .jpg of a George, erase parts and alter parts. Later I’ll add my own drawings on top.
The whole time I was messing with the file, my reactive monkey-brain was shouting, “No! No! You can’t deface currency!” Or alternatively: “You can’t depict a dollar bill! They’ll think you’re counterfeiting!”
Total nonsense, of course. But a perfect example of how those Lessons of Authoritah get into the child-brain and stick around long after reason takes hold.
No wonder that Patrick McGoohan (BIG spoiler if you’ve never seen The Prisoner) cast — ulp! — we ourselves as the enigmatic “Number One” who holds even our fiercest, most independent selves captive.
What taboos — or what commandments — of Authoritah have you found lurking around your own brain, long after you thought you were free of them? Or which have you gotten rid of, but only after surprises or struggle?
When I was little they indoctrinated me to believe: the police are your friend, legislators represent the people who elected them, trust authority to know and do what is best, justice and right will always prevail, and Santa flies around the world in one night delivering presents to all good little boys and girls.
Once I realized the truth about Santa, all their other lies just crumbled.
I still feel a little guilty when I ignore the national death hymn (and flag worship) and keep right on doing what I’m doing if I’m unfortunate enough to be within earshot when it is sung. Also- I worry a little about some “patriotic” brownshirt beating me up for opting out of the ritual.
Thanks for the spoiler! 🙂 I bought The Prisoner this year and have been slow watching it due to other activities. But oddly, I think I might understand it better now, knowing where it’s coming from.
Respect for the flag – not letting it touch the ground, or hang out in the rain – is one I often think of when I see it “abused”. Yet I really haven’t cared for several years, and have wondered what the “red, white and blue” stands for anymore.
My understanding of Anarchy was a long time coming; and though I do understand the concept of a ruler-less society, I’m still not sure I believe that a true anarchic society can ever exist. (There’s always someone to ‘lead the charge’ if nothing else – Nat Lyons, for one, in Hardyville Tales, or Jenny Smythe in The Probability Broach.) For that reason, I tend to squirm inwardly when I hear the words Anarchy or Anarchist in casual conversation, until I’m quite sure the speaker knows what he’s talking about.
Authorized Vehicles Only. It was slow in coming,but I realize the best stuff lies past those signs.
Pat, FWIW, the “real” identity of Number One was debated for years by fans, particularly in the days before people had any means of stopping the action and examining a particular frame. The revelation is fast and strange and very much up to interpretation. In fact, I was surprised to learn that McGoohan had ever admitted anything about that conclusion.
Oh brother. Flags and anthems and police and all that stuff! And yep, once Santa Claus fell, it was only a matter of time for the rest.
And Matt, several times a week I walk my dogs up an alley where a sign says “Do not enter.” Even though I know the sign is only for vehicles, I always feel a little furtive.
But, do you count it as one of your 3 felonies a day?
Maybe I’m cut from a different cloth than you guys. I adore American ideals, NOT the gov. To me the flag represents Americans, NOT the government. When I get back to US soil from anywhere, I feel like I’m home – even if I’m still 1,000 miles from my abode.
Sam, this isn’t so much about emotional reactions as it is about taboos and commands that were implanted (?) in us at a young age, which we still have knee-jerk reactions to.
The Prisoner was such a touchstone especially coming from such a collectivist country. An individual who relentlessly fights against the nonsensical rules imposed upon him and never gives in. Even though it is implied that he was a cog in the machine that imposed such rules upon the masses before being forced onto the island where he was subject to similar tenets.
Haven’t seen it in years, may have to revisit it.
Agreed, Benjamin. The Prisoner can be seen on so many levels, and even on many watchings there’s so much in it to think about.
Of course it’s dated now — and even in its original incarnation there were episodes McGoohan & Co. had to throw in more to appease the TV bosses than anything. I think if I were to watch it again — or recommend it to someone who’d never seen it — I’d start with what McGoohan identified as the seven essential episodes.
But yeah … very much worth a re-visit.
Best freedomista TV ever — until Firefly came along. And gotta admit The Prisoner had more depth.
just waiting — LOL! I think it would be cheating to count that as one of my felonies when it doesn’t even make it to misdemeanor. Anyhow, I’ve probably committed by aloted three before I even leave the house in the morning. 🙂
A lot of my taboos came from not keeping up. Back when I was a kid, cops were your friend.
OTOH I do remember the day when I figured out that sitting in the school’s hall with your head between your knees wasn’t a real good response to an A-bomb attack.
Some of ’em are beneath the surface. Recently I started looking into airgunning, which for some reason I can’t fathom now I never really discovered as a boy. (On the flip side, that makes the discovery now quite a kid-like pleasure.) And I caught myself being astonished that airgunners routinely and openly use various means of sound suppression (to get peak sounds down to the 80-90 dB range). Likewise, when I found out that you can come by full-auto BB guns with nary a hitch or hassle, it somehow surprised me. I mean, “everyone knows” that F-troop is gonna come for you if you so much as practice hammers (extremely fast pairs) with sincerity, or if you even think about saving your ears by (gasp!) reducing the report…of your firearm.
I even know it’s not supposed to be true; the stamp process from the “revenooer” days should make it all hunky-dory if I just properly bow in supplication to the almighty conferring authoritah…but we all have heard the stories of harassment at best, and it just never occurred to me that suppressors or select fire could be an aboveground thing.
There’s no good reason for that, and I should bloody well flush that thinking out with the rest of whatever statist garbage remains in there.
😀
Claire, I had read about McGoohan’s influence on the show and his “my way or the highway” approach to some episodes. He sounded like a rare breed of actor/director/writer. I was quite saddened by his passing a few years ago and that he… wasn’t given the free reign on other projects that he deserved. One with much to say but without a venue.
I somewhat inevitably looked at his imdb page and found this still. Maybe that sums it up, a gun pointed at our head with our ears shut. Cronenberg has his moments. eXistenZ in particular had quite an impact on me as a young man.
I don’t know why I’m surprised you like Firefly. I haven’t owned a TV in over a decade but the internet finds a way. Or maybe it makes perfect sense, a small group of independent minded individuals simply out to make their own way.
Benjamin — thanks for the background and the photo. I didn’t know until years later how much that show belonged to McGoohan’s creative soul (to the point where he used pseudonyms to disguise how much of it he was writing, directing, and producing). I did know that he left an internationally successful TV series and did some serious arm-twisting to do The Prisoner.
He was such a private man; I wonder whether (at least to some extent) he chose not to have a powerful venue from then on. He seemed not to enjoy being a celebrity.
Kevin,
“but we all have heard the stories of harassment at best, and it just never occurred to me that suppressors or select fire could be an aboveground thing.”
You bring up a damn good point. Since people do get harrassed for doing perfectly legal things (while others literally get away with murder), part of the mind control lies in keeping us guessing, keeping us fearing.
It took serving on a jury to break that particular habit of thought. Seeing how the state manipulates everything about a jury trial to make it nearly impossible not to find in favor of the state.
On Firefly, I believe Weedon found himself in a conundrum. He could be honest, and tell a very anarchist/agorist story, or he could let his own pretty-much main-line Democrat attitudes come through.
Mostly, he chose honesty. And for that I respect him and his work.
On “The Prisoner”, I never “got” that #6 was actually #1. The way I saw the ending is that #6 is allowed to think he’s won, but while he has returned to his home, he never actually escapes. The Village stays with him no matter where he goes.
This is the state, which remains the ultimate violent authority no matter how much illusory “freedom” one may think one has. The state can do anything it wants to you and walk away, simply declaring itself justified.
Be seeing you!
There is one of those old taboos that just seems impossible to break, I’m a deitydoubter but still find myself using the term “oh god” at times of extreme pain or excrutiating pleasure. Whereas oh shit, oh crap, oh yes and oh no are very emotion specific, oh god is positive-negative neutral, it can be used in any situation.
Claire – As you might have guessed, there are government guidelines for using money in advertising … http://www.secretservice.gov/money_illustrations.shtml.
Imagine my surprise, years ago, when my scanning software recognized that I was scanning a Federal Reserve Note, thus prompting alert/warning boxes.
Art — Sigh. There would be regulations, wouldn’t there? Only surprise is that they’re so simple. No surprise at all that they’re totally obsolete in the digital age. Size? Change it in a flash. Destroy the medium? When copies are on five or six computers before the job is done? LOL!
Fortunately in this case, I’m using only a small portion of Wikipedia’s .jpg of the bill, and if anybody thinks that the construction worker and the veggie seller I’ve put in place of George Washington are the real thing, they’ve got real problems!
LOL… my three year old and I love marking up the “real” ones for http://www.WheresGeorge.com bill tracking. No longer care in the slightest… and my son never will… just don’t want to mark them up so much the banks notice ’em and send them to the FED to be destroyed. Fun little game… watching a George you had travel the world… georgophy lesson too.