User:Music2611/Projects and Sandbox
Themes
Non-conformity and individualism
"Like The X-Files, The Prisoner was a mainstream form of entertainment that critically commented on the condition of the individual in modern society while playing with the conventions of the spy genre and, indeed, the medium of television itself."
—Joanne Morreale, Northeastern University[1]
Surveillance
Another recurring theme in the series is surveillance, interconnected with its main theme of (non-)conformity as it relates to the control exercised by the rulers of the Village to keep the villagers in check.[1] The Village functions, in effect, as a panopticon. While the 'green dome' is the centre of monitoring the villagers behavior, the village is riddled with cameras and bugging devices, but their existence is never made explicit, enforcing conformity as it is always possible that the villagers are being watched. As Mann, Nolan and Wellman point out, this echoes how in "public or semi-public (e.g. commercial) locations individuals are liable to become unwilling and sometimes unknowing subjects of surveillance, and the knowledge that they may be under surveillance may be sufficient to induce obedience to authority," revealing the allegorical layers McGoohan attempted to add to the series.[2]
References
- ^ a b c Morreale, J. (May 2006). "The Spectacle of The Prisoner" (PDF). Television & New Media. 7 (2). SAGE Publications: 216–226. doi:10.1177/1527476404270610. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
- ^ Mann, S., Nolan, J., Wellman, B. (2002). "Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments". Surveillance & Society. 1 (3): 331-355. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
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