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The Icon Of Individuality Who Will Live Forever As “The Prisoner”
Patrick McGoohan dies aged 80
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Fans of the cult 1960’s TV show The Prisoner are today mourning the death of Patrick McGoohan, who passed away aged 80 after a short illness, but the role embodied by McGoohan as “Number 6″ will live on as an icon of individuality and freedom in an increasingly totalitarian and controlling society.
McGoohan’s character, who introduced every episode with the cry, “I am not a number, I am a free man!”, railed against the overlords of a beautiful yet oppressive open air prison known as The Village during the 17 episode series as his ceaseless efforts to escape were continually thwarted by the authorities that ruled over the mostly brainwashed and subservient population.
The series was littered with disturbing parallels to what has unfolded in terms of the big brother panopticon that surrounds us more than 40 years after The Prisoner was first broadcast.
McGoohan himself was the creative force behind many of the episodes as well as playing the lead role and he made it clear in interviews that The Village and its symbolism was merely an allegory for the psychological prison of modern society – authoritarian control, mindless consumerism and lack of independent thought, or as McGoohan put it, “A place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible, trying to break his spirit so that he accepts that he is Number 6 and will live there happily as Number 6 forever after,” adding that the character of Number 6 symbolizes “the one rebel that they can’t break”.
“We’re run by the Pentagon. We’re run by Madison Avenue. We’re run by television. And, as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt, we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche,” McGoohan said in a 1977 interview.
“As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy. We’re at the mercy of the advertiser. And, of course, there are certain things we need, but a lot of the stuff that is bought is not needed. We all live in a little village. Your village may be different from other people’s villages, but we are all prisoners.”
The series was decades ahead of its time and predicted the ubiquitous surveillance society that we now find ourselves living in, as well as technological advancements such as the cordless phone, which was unheard of in the mid 1960’s, as well as miniature spy cameras.
The rulers of The Village, headquartered within a giant central dome that also served as a CCTV surveillance hub allowing them to track the movements of every citizen, were symbolized by a metallic pyramid with an all-seeing eye at the top, but the viewer only ever met a series of sidekicks called Number 2, and never discovered who was Number 1 until the very last episode.
McGoohan enraged many viewers with the controversial conclusion of the series, which revealed that Number 1 was Number 6 himself, a metaphor for the fact that ultimately we are wardens of our own prison. The finale also depicted the prisoner’s escape, only to reveal his return to another form of prison – society itself.
The intellectual mystique that surrounded the series engendered a cult following that remains decades later and provides a literary alarm bell for the direction in which our world is heading – with freedom, privacy and individuality being crushed and replaced with authoritarianism, bureaucracy , and tyranny as well as an exaltation of the cultural mundane while genuine originality, intellectualism and creativity is shunned.
In the following four part interview, Patrick McGoohan explains the inspiration behind the series and how it was an allegory for modern society.
The spirit of McGoohan’s creation lives on in all of us as we each in our own small way continue to rebel against the prison planet that has been built around us while attempting to educate the wardens who continue to support the very means of their own enslavement.
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37 Responses to “The Icon Of Individuality Who Will Live Forever As “The Prisoner””
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January 15th, 2009 at 10:42 am
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=UQIAwjcc5GY
January 15th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Live long and prosper in your new found freedom. Thanks for your insight and inspiration and intelligence, and most of all, your individuality! Peace in eternity, friend. You have escaped the village!
January 15th, 2009 at 11:11 am
*************************
Be Seeing You!!
*************************
January 15th, 2009 at 11:16 am
R.I.P. #6 Patrick McGoohan
January 15th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
“Mel Gibson will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a Number.”
-Patrick McGoohan
January 15th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Thank you for all you have shown us! <3 I wish you peace and love.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
In the 1960s they still showed these kinds of shows. Now the prison has been built, we’re in it and only one door is still open.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
We’re the goyim slave race here to serve the Master jewish race according to the secret Talmud.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
The guy sure knew what he was talking about.
FREEMASONS are behind our enslavement. The pic shows McGahoo in front of the third eye on top of a pyramid, the masonic symbol.
The freemason, Bilderberg, CIA, MiA, Knights of Malta clique are all under the Zionists. They control the whole thing.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
mrwickey,
Couldn’t say it better myself. I have been a fan of The Prisoner and the message of individuality the series conveyed….
RIP Mr McGoohan.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Thanks for the article and the interview Paul.
Rover, “the balloon thing”, by the way, for those who missed out on the whole christian/catholic/jesuit philosophy in their childhood, represented the “host” – a small circular piece of white wafer that the priest pops onto your tongue as “the body of christ” during “holy communion”, to my mind, and that represents, well, frankly, a kind of ‘power mumbo jumbo’ for want of a better description. Harmless nonsense to the enlightened but scary stuff for any child who has to endure the implications if not the outright threats (”eternal damnation in the fires of hell” for example) that it is meant to bolster and give authority to; just as, indeed, the blood sucking vampire tradition, it seems to me, represents the drink that goes with it (the wafer) which, guess what, just happens to be filled with (halleluhyah chorus) the “blood of christ”.
Symbollism (which, hey, is what the whole Prisoner thing is after all) – the really interesting stuff – comes from our, errm, unconscious consciousness, is an unwitting expression that we may half notice but be oblivious to it’s true source and, very often, it’s true meaning too, but it’s purpose is to express and communicate truth.
I said “Be seeing you” (see my other comment) unaware it was the closing of the interview…
“Be seeing you”
“It means quite a lot”
(takes glasses off and give direct look)
“Be seeing you”
PEC
SaneThinking.com
January 15th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
“Where am I?”
“In the Village.”
“What do you want?”
“Information.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION!”
“You won’t get it.”
“By hook or by crook, we will.”
“Who are you?”
“The new Number Two.”
“Who is Number One?”
“You are Number Six.”
“I am not a number — I am a free man!”
“You cannot leave this village.”
“I will tell you what I am going to do to this village: I will take up an axe and destroy its doors. I will break down its walls and trample them down.”
“Where will you find anything more beautiful than this village? Not one of the people here grows tired of their daily round of working and consuming, not one slumbers or sleeps in the village of the New World Order. This house of Satan is run by the Pentagon, by Wall Street, by television and you will never get out. Since you can’t leave, you might as well give in.”
“I have a spirit of my own, a mind of my own, a soul of my own, and it’s not all my own because it’s joined with a greater force beyond me, and I will never give in
“There is no force beyond you. Now you are dweller in a castle, on the sea, in a wasteland, you will do as I command. “
“You are the enemy.”
“No, your enemy is within you. You accepted the chains.”
“.No. I’ll never accept your chains.”
“You are a monkey.”
“I am a man, a person, a free man!”
January 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Patrick!
Thanks for the lesson in being a fighter against “Them”!
January 15th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Prisoner: “Who is Number One?
Voice: “You are Number Six.” perhaps meant as “You are, Number Six.”
May God speed Patrick. And long live your masterpiece as a warning to free men everywhere.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he also the “Secret Agent” man?
Dyzzle Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Though I’ve never seen it, the first part of that 4-part interview says he was the Secret Agent man. Good call
January 15th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwYzibBTrsk downright surreal NIST
January 15th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
So long, Pat, and thanks for all the memories.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:19 am
I watched this show with my dad when it first came to US TV, we are both fans. I didn’t have a deep appreciation for ‘the prisoner’ at that age, but now do. A couple of years ago I got him DVD sets of the first half of all the shows, he went out and bought the rest. Good and timeless stuff.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:28 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmXcsaz7BIs copy and spread this before they take it down again .. thanx
January 16th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Up The Irons!
January 16th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
great character. I like his candidness with the interviewer and audience, he leaves things open to interpretation for people to discover and ask questions to find some answers or truth to have to think about a message he was trying to convey and so relate to in the human condition- I love all the comments above to, except for the ones where people couldn’t resist having a dig at the Jews again(I hold prison planet partly responsible for this mind set now with it’s bias views on Gaza situation only focusing on the “terrible” deeds of Israel not giving the stories a proper context as Alex was keen to do with the Russia/Georgia fiasco).Anyway thanks Patrick for your insight and work as a professional actor, may you ever enjoy a/the freedom that the creator of this wonderful planet originally intended for us to have within the boundaries of Love itself. I was wondering if anyone in the audience of this interview was going to ask him about any influences in his personal life, eg.George Orwell’s 1984 book may have had. One thing I liked and noticed was the way he answered all questions which I believe to be the truth, and in this example concerning the religious aspects and how he said it might have been at the back of my mind in context:
Audience questioner :Mr McGoohan, my question deals with religion. I understand in reading a little about you, that you are a very religious man, ah my question pertains to followed. I have interpreted a lot of the acts as being, having this content, I’m thinking specifically as ah, the crucifixion of the two rebels when their arms are drawn apart, the temptation of no. 6 by the president of the village – the temptation of Christ, dry bones right out of Ezekiel. All of that ah, first of all would you agree with the, my idea that that is intentional, that it is
Patrick’s reply : um answering, ah no I had never any religious inspirations for that whatsoever, I was just trying to make it, err..err, dramatically feasible, certainly the guy putting me up on a throne and all this stuff that you know err, that’s Lucifer time but I never thought of it at that moment or maybe somewhere in the back of my mind it was there and the hip bones connected to the tie bone thing, uh, I just thought it was a very good song for the situation you know and also it was applicable ah to the young man ah because as you know it is easy for us to go astray in youth then he was astray, he was trying to get everything together again.
Audience member replies : “when I speak of religion I mean, err a moral attitude towards life
Patrick : I would..I would think that’s necessary, yeah. and so it continues….(from you tube clip 3, 3rd one down)
Audience member: Ok then is it fair to say that no. 6 draws upon that, is that the source of his defence, is that how he gets up in the morning and faces another day in the village?
Patrick: I think that’s a very good comment and I think that err it’s probably true, yeah. I mean moral(pause), force err which says that I have a spirit of my own, a mind of my own, a soul of my own and its not all my own because it’s joined with a greater force beyond me. I don’t think he got up every morning and analysed it to that extent but I think that that force is within him. And anyone who is able to fight in that err individual way I think has a..
Audience member: would you say that there was a distinct lack in the rest of the villagers..are they soulless beings?
Patrick : ah the majority of them have been sort of brainwashed..their souls have been brain washed out of them..watching too many commercials I think is what happened to them, yeah…and so it continues
I love the balance of the man how he promotes individuality and freedom of the individuals choice, (as with God gave us free will) yet without loosing the respect for God and acknowledging this higher force beyond him, that quest for greater truth outside the realm of man as God says in his word he has set eternity in the hearts of men. So he is moral by not casting off that greater moral framework enshrined in the 10 commandments given to man by God, the Law of love and so we can gauge his heart is to promote right but not to be subject to a man’s or other persons authority. He is neither for or against authority we could say. In my mind he promotes sensible ideas that leave it up to the individual to want to have the freedom to do right without big brother bearing down insulting our integrity and intelligence to force us to do right as God’s law covers these very aspects. In other words it is ok to have as much freedom as one wants so long as it is not breaking God’s law of Love and ultimately what should be common sense to the individuals conscience that Love does no harm to its neighbour and so the scriptures written in the Holy Bible make sense, for example
2 Corinthians 3:17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
and
Romans 8:21
that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Luke 4:18
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
I also like what a famous founding father had to say which is a good general sum up for us
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Samuel Adams
January 16th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
extremely interesting points, made an effort!
but Christianity is a religion of passion, of intuition, of the elan vital as Patrick understood
he was spirit in motion, spirit with a purpose, spirit in action
for spirit to activate it needs a stable moral platform.
morality is just the rocket launcher – spirit is the rocket
as for Gaza, there is no context to explain that: one child is killed trapped in a prison, and it is one child to much, because it is a world of its own, an entire universe with God inside it and with the RIGHT to life given by GOD, who created this complex world filled with a secret purpose with secret battles and puzzles and tests
one person suffers, and it is a person too much not because all humanity suffers when one person suffers
a force of lightning flows through you and you pick up the sword
that is what Patrick did
that is a felt force, a passion, an intuition, an energy
not a rational calculation
January 16th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Intelligent,concise,understanding, encouraging and inspiring – thanks for patrick
January 16th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.....s/?p=11109
‘The Prisoner’ new series!
January 17th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Patrick McG was Irish and the Irish took on Christianity of their own freewill unlike say the Germans.
In Ireland, there were no forced conversions, murders etc.
The local Druids and chiefs listened, thought the religion made sense in the light of their own beliefs, and recommended it to their clan members and the clan members also liked it and became Christian of their free will.
That is why monks from Ireland went off to rechristianise Europe out of convction.
And they succeeded – to an extent.
The Roman Catholic church has nothing to do with Christianity. The Romans tried to assimilate the religion and use if for their imperial purposes and founded an imperial church. The German hordes destroyed Rome and found the ruins of the imperial structure of the Roman Catholic church and immediately saw its usefulness for them and took it over.
German tribes were forced to convert to Christianity, a religion they did not understand.
Christianity in Ireland has many resemblances to Hinduism – not surprising since Jesus Christ himself stayed in India and Tibet between 14 -30. Russian explorers found evidence of this in the monasteries of Ladakh and Tibet.There was also a local legend about a holy man “Issa” who went back to his homeland and was vilely treated and killed.
The people who think Christ survived the crucifiction and went on to found some royal bloodline in France are deluding themselves.
The whole point of these religions is to show people that there is a force within them that is stronger than their physical death, so strong it can survive any punishment or trial. It just needs to be found. It is found by relinquishing the ego and narrow drives.
If Christ had survived as a physical man and not as a spiritual man what would be the point in believing in him????
The Irish believed in an afterlife and so do the Hindus and so does Plato – whose philosophy also bears a striking similiarity to Hinduism – and Christianity, too, believes in an after life as anyone who reads the Hindu commentators such as Yogananda Paramahana on Christianity can see.
The great streams of religious thought and philosophy that can from the Indo European core flowed out in Hinduism, Toaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam , Greek thought and Moses.
But it seems the Canaanite Ba’al worshippers were too evil and cunning to either recognise the truth or live according to the truth.
they subverted Judiasm and much of the Roman Catholic Church and formed the first organised crime syndicate complete with freemason structures etc. Now they rob, steal and kill through ever more cruel and cunning devices, bringing the world to collapse.
They are the ones without a soul, Patrick McG was speaking about.
But they are on the wrong side of truth and so ultimately doomed.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I guess he finally will meet Number 1. Be seeing you.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:32 am
I first heard this tv series Prisoner in one of the album of Iron Maiden. This series is very
interesting i will try to find this series. Thanks
January 18th, 2009 at 4:09 am
heard that they are working on a new “the prisoner” why can’t they just leave it alone..or at least call it something else that’s like trying to do another “Columbo” you just can’t top something so classic..McGoohan was the most underrated actor of our time..by the way McGoohan made 3[at least 2] appearances on Columbo..not surprisingly Mcgoohan was in my favorite Columbo of all time..where McGoohan was in charge of the military school and fired that cannon off every morning..the cannon is the center of the plot of the episode..can’t remember the name of that particular episode but its 5 stars nonetheless..Hollywood never gave McGoohan the credit he deserved..they originally wanted McGoohan as James Bond in Dr. No but obviously choose Sean Connery instead..if McGoohan had gotten the Bond part,his career obviously would have taken a much different direction…they just aren’t actors like McGoohan around anymore ..not even close..Hollywood is about special effects now..real actors and acting is is a dying art..just turn on the new awful TV shows[no thanks]
January 18th, 2009 at 4:12 am
‘by the dawns early light” is the Columbo episode with McGoohan as the staunch old military captain and the cannon…McGoohan and Peter Falk were good friends too..
January 18th, 2009 at 4:14 am
you can find some of the “The Prisoner” episodes on youtube…some in their entirety..just watch a couple a few weeks ago..”The Prisoner” was waaaay ahead of its time..
January 18th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Danger Man.
January 18th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
I started watching this series at Stage6.com but the darn site shut down only after I watched a couple.
January 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
“we want information, information, information.”
“who are you?”
“the new number two.”
“who is number one?”
“you are number six.”
“i am not a number, i am a free man.”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
‘Not a prisoner, i’m a free man,& my blood is my own now.Don’t care where the past was,I know where i’m going.”
Up the Irons!!!
Iron Maiden 4 life
RIP Patrick McGoohan, God bless
January 20th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I was looking for the Secret Agent DVDs on Netflix, and found “The Prisoner”. It was a great series especially for its time. I think Patrick McGoohan was the creator and producer, or at least had a lot of control of the show. I didn’t get the wierd bubbles that guarded the place at first, but without CGI available, it was a creative and innovative idea. In the DVD commentary one actor had a heart attack they took it so seriously.
God bless Patrick McGoohan for trying to warn us of what was coming.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
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