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Volume 25, Nos. 3 & 4 (2001) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum “I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!”: PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPRISONMENT IN SCIENCE FICTION* CHRISTINE ALICE CORCOS** I. INTRODUCTION Nowhere is the unhappy bargain between our desire for protection and our longing for independence more evident than in the science fiction speculations of such television series as The Prisoner3 or such films as Logan’s Run4 and Blade Runner.5 Among the most popular dramatic events in these series and films, is that of the imprisoned individual, who is unable to escape because of (1) an oppressive government or other organization, (2) lack of technological ability, or (3) lack of awareness that he is a prisoner. Rarely is the prisoner “guilty” of an act that late twentieth century viewers would agree is a crime. Thus, as Franz Kafka noted in The Trial, the specter of accusation and imprisonment is even more terrifying—how can one plead his innocence when he does not even know of what crime he is accused? The emphasis on and exploration of the meaning of imprisonment, of what it means to be imprisoned, is a common theme in science fiction. But the area is so broad that I will limit my comments to three universes in which imprisonment is both physical and linguistic: The Prisoner, Logan’s Run, and Blade Runner. These universes were created, in order, by actor-director Patrick McGoohan, authors William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson and screenwriter David Zelag Goodman, and author Philip K. Dick and director Ridley Scott. Each deals with imprisonment in a unified way, considering the question of the nature of individuality and the relationship between individuals and their governments. Each postulates a world in which behavior is regulated by a supranational organization of some sort: in Blade Runner, an unnamed government that works hand-in-glove with private industry, represented by the Tyrrell Corporation; in The Prisoner, a covert inter-national security organization that controls the behavior of governments and individuals, manifested by “the Village”; and in Logan’s Run6 the shadowy council that governs the City of Domes, an environment manu-factured to provide protection from the fallout of nuclear war. Note that in both Blade Runner and Logan’s Run, imprisonment is further represented by a date certain for “renewal” (death): four to five years for the replicants in Blade Runner and thirty years for the inhabitants of the City of Domes. Number Six, the eponymous Prisoner, is presumably serving an indefinite term (until he “confesses,” by revealing his reason for resignation). Personal information is power, which is why the government wants it and Number Six withholds it. For all these universes, technology is both a necessary part of control and an avenue toward its eradication, just as law is the formal apparatus of control and the method of its subversion. Both technology and law are presented as essentially amoral bodies of knowledge, at the service of anyone learned in their lore. But the learned ones, scientists and lawyers, are either good or bad. The disciplines in which they are expert give them no ethical guidance to solve the philosophical and moral problems they encounter. Further, because language is one of the primary tools of law (the other being physical power needed to enforce the language), it is a major source of meaning and interpretation in these three universes. The “naming of things” in these worlds allows those in power to assert domination over others. Upon acceptance of their linguistic imprison-ment, and the accompanying loss of ability to talk outside or beyond the accepted classifications, their war against oppression is severely impaired. Television series like The Prisoner suggest that intelligence agents make a Faustian bargain with their governments, accepting a lifelong imprisonment in their chosen role, a theme earlier sounded in John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and in the series The Invaders, in which the architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) knows “the truth” about alien invaders, and consequently both the aliens and the government are after him. Omnipotent governments can also im-prison those who do not know they are imprisoned, from George Orwell’s 1984 protagonist Winston Smith to Logan and his friends in the City of Domes. Some imprisonment takes place through operation of the “general will,” which may or may not be legitimately expressed by the government in charge. Thus, some individuals are imprisoned for the good of society, irrespective of their actions, which may constitute crimes or which may simply be a result of their existence, regardless of what we might consider to be their natural rights to be free. We see this idea expressed in the treatment of the replicants in Blade Runner, and in Planet of the Apes, in which humans are enslaved because of their lack of intellect. This enslavement resonates with us because we are “like” the enslaved ones, and different from the jailers, who are in our own world, often enslaved (put in zoos, used in medical experiments, and so on). Technology, which plays a role in each of these imprisonments, may itself become the jailer, as in such films as Colossus: The Forbin Project, in which a supercomputer escapes from the control of its creator and takes over the world, and, to a lesser extent, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the computer Hal acquires both sentience and the will to survive at all costs. OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT: THE PRISONER Briefly, the series postulates the existence of a heavily guarded area known as “The Village,” in which persons with highly classified information who have attempted to leave the secret services of their respective countries are imprisoned.9 In a sense, the Village represents a living death, since inhabitants disappear completely from society, apparently never to be returned. In many respects the Village resembles a traditional small English town,10 with a town square, a number of shops, a town band, and an organized round of activities for the residents. This bucolic existence masks its government, represented by a progression of sinister “Number Twos,” who retain complete physical control over the inhabitants, including the nominate Prisoner. How the Prisoner comes to live in the Village is the stuff of night-mares. A secret agent, apparently working for the British Government (since the opening scenes are set in London and everyone has an English accent), storms into his superior’s office and resigns, angrily refusing to give a reason. Resignation without a stated reason is unacceptable, as the agent soon finds out. Operatives enter his home after filling it with sleeping gas, and kidnap him. He awakens in what appears to be his own bedroom, but is actually a replica located in “the Village,” a mysterious and inescapable settlement unknown to any mapmaker. The occupants of the Village all have numbers instead of names, and most seem perfectly content with their existence. The few malcontents usually turn out to be undercover operatives intent on discovering the Prisoner’s secret: the reason for his resignation. As long as the Prisoner refuses to divulge his reason, he will remain in the Village, addressed as Number Six and continually harassed and monitored. What the Prisoner refuses to accept, but what seems equally clear, is that his agreement to serve his country as a secret agent is an irrevocable one. He is a Lockean, continuing to insist that he is “a free man,” able to withdraw from the contract he has made with the government. The government disagrees. It may suspect that he has made another bargain with an opposing government or entity, or it may simply want to assure itself that he will never reveal the secrets to which he is privy. The Prisoner has been a source of lively debate ever since its airing, and McGoohan himself has refused to explain what he believes the series ultimately means. I suggest that Number Six’s inability to escape his freely made choice (he chose to join the secret government organization of which he was a part, and now cannot “resign,” or give up the game) symbolizes the current layperson’s distrust of government and the legal system generally. The Prisoner postulates a legal system that coerces or enslaves the individual, and in the denial of the free will of the individual becomes illegitimate and a justification for resistance. Similarly, attempts to escape imprisonment are “moral,” even required, if one is a prisoner of war, as Number Six considers himself to be. Hence, Number Six frequently engages in lies, blackmail, dissimulation, and betrayal of possible allies, and is always shown to be correct in his assessment of their motives. He, far more than The X-Files’ Fox Mulder, “trusts no one.” The Prisoner holds that law which acts to imprison the individual is necessarily illegitimate, and that nearly any action on the part of the individual to destroy the system is a legitimate one. We never see the Prisoner commit murder, for example, but even that act may not be beyond the pale. For the Prisoner, who is presented as clearly incorrupt-ible, continued service in a job he no longer believes in—that is, the subjugation of individual desire for the greater good as determined by national security issues—is never a persuasive or justifiable option. The mere fact that he is a “prisoner,” unable to obtain an explanation of his plight (much like Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial), is the only evidence we need in order to condemn the system. The lack of individual rights in the Village is an exaggeration of the current state of individual rights in Britain, most notably the eradication of the right to silence,11 although it predates that change by thirty years. Note that from the point of the view of the state, the Prisoner’s actions are not so different from terrorism, while he would maintain that terrorism in the service of freedom is virtue. Note also that in his presentation of the Prisoner’s plight, McGoohan shifts our attention from Number Six’s motives in resigning, which may indeed be dangerous to national security, to the government’s motives in keeping him a prisoner. By refocusing the debate, McGoohan guarantees our acquiescence in his contention that the government’s behavior is illegitimate. The use of language in The Prisoner limits the hero’s ability to contest what is presented as reality. Places do not have distinctive names; they are “the town hall,” or “the store.” The only individualism allowed is that of the Village itself (it is the only Village and represents the bounds of the universe) and of the villagers’ individual names: for the time that they are in the Village, people have unique numbers. For the inhabitants of the Village, the Prisoner is Number Six. For us, the viewers, he is the Prisoner. He is the only prisoner, because he is the only individual who knows he is imprisoned—that there is a world outside. He believes that he once lived there, and that he was (relatively) free, and that he can return. He does not believe that he dreamed it, any more than he believes, like Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s hero in La Vida Es Sueño, that his current presence in the Village is a dream. It is an open question whether there are any inhabitants of the Village who are not window-dressing; if there are, they are remarkably good at keeping secrets. If at least some of the inhabitants of the Village are also prisoners, Number Six is doubly alone, since he never connects with any of them. Thus, while others may also be prisoners and have their own imprisonment stories, his story is truly individual and he is truly isolated. Notice, however, that while the Prisoner is always Number Six, Number Two’s identity changes frequently. At least four different actors (including one woman) played Number Two. Thus, even in his lack of individuality the Prisoner is individual: he is always Number Six. Ordinary society is linked only by friendships based on societal roles in Logan’s Run. Logan Five and Francis Seven are both Sandmen, whose function is to “terminate runners,” which seems to be the basis for whatever ties these two may have. Once Logan Five “runs,” his ostensible friend Francis Seven tracks him, notwithstanding their prior relationship. Individuals do not have personal relationships, except for sex. Reproduction is clinical, and anonymous. Still, when discussing his offspring, a baby he spots in the nursery, Logan comments on the infant’s calm. On a whim, Francis sets off the alarms to wake the baby, but it sleeps through the noise.12 Later the two speculate about the baby’s mother: “FRANCIS[:] I don’t know what makes you so curious. You have any idea who his seed-mother was? LOGAN (quickly)[:] Of course not! I’m curious, not sick. (laughs)”13 The symbolism of escaping to the outside and underneath is obvious. The city is surrounded by freedom and the truth of existence outside its walls, and supported by the courage and independence of those beneath it (symbolically undermining it). Logan Five, the protagonist of the film, is employed as a “sandman,” an agent whose sole function is to kill those who defy the City’s laws concerning the necessity of participating in “Carousel,” ritualized death. Sandmen impose the City’s will through force once persuasion by others fails, and they never fail. Logan is assigned to masquerade as a runner and go “outside” to search for escapees seeking “Sanctuary” and kill them, since their return to the City would breed discontent as well as knowledge about a possible existence beyond and outside the control of the City. In order to give him a plausible reason for running, those in control accelerate his aging process. As a consequence Logan “loses” several years. When he asks for reassurance that he will “get them back,” he is ignored, his first indication that he, like everyone else, is expendable. Not even his status as a Sandman, a “terminator” of those who defy the laws of the City, can restore his rights to a full thirty-year existence. The City does not exist to serve its residents, in spite of all the entertaining paraphernalia that surrounds their daily lives. They exist to serve it. The City’s redefinition of terms that ordinarily would convey pleasant or unpleasant experiences shows the extent to which the use of language and symbol in law can persuade human beings to engage in what amounts to self-destructive behavior. “Carousel” is amusement for those who watch and death for those who participate. It is the City of Domes’ equivalent of the Romans’ bread and circuses. By describing the result as potential “renewal,” the City’s rulers convince the residents that Carousel is not only necessary but good, a sacrifice by the individual for the good of the whole. Those who “run,” who give up their chance at “renewal” through Carousel, are “terminated.” Their deaths are quite permanent; no one imagines that they might be renewed. Renewal is by no means certain, although Francis Seven comments that he does not understand the runner mentality: “If you go on Carousel, you have the same chance as everyone else.” “But,” objects Logan Five, “have you ever actually known anyone who was renewed?” “You sound like a runner,” responds Francis.14 “Renewal” also sounds suspiciously like an almost religious experience, through which the residents of the City of Domes attain eternal life, while “running” indicates an individual is afraid to face up to his social responsibilities. The importance of renewal to the residents is understandable. It is their only possibility of achieving a kind of individual immortality, particularly since they know from an early age when they are scheduled to die.15 No one in the City has an original name; they are names accompanied by numbers—Logan Five, Francis Seven, Jessica Six. They do not have families and do not know their parents. When Logan visits the nursery to see one of his “offspring,” Francis teases him about his obsession with continuing his genetic line, with seeking a kind of immortality. Apart from providing reproductive cells, sex is an amusement to the City residents. It has no function in creating lasting human relation-ships; Logan meets the rebel Jessica through her decision to “go on the Circuit”—to seek a partner for the night. When he selects her, she demurs. He attempts to persuade her, then in disgust gives up, con-veying to her that she has misled him. Logan also discusses with Francis whether it is healthy to wonder who the “seed mother” (biological mother) of his child is; the men agree that such speculations are not only wrong but unhealthy. Society decrees that children be born anony-mously and brought up anonymously, and that they exist for the city. Once Logan and Jessica leave the City of Domes, they realize that they are in effect prisoners “Outside.” By escaping, they exile themselves forever from the world that shaped them. That world cannot be altered satisfactorily to allow for a compromise between individual rights and group responsibilities, given the power structure preferred and protected by those who control the city. Therefore, Logan’s only course is to destroy the City of Domes, and ironically to liberate all the individuals inside who had thought their prison was really freedom from the want and danger “Outside.” THE MEANING OF LIFE IN BLADE RUNNER The similarities between Deckard’s job as a “terminator” and Logan’s job as a “sandman” are obvious. Both maintain order through the elimination of those who question authority, and both use the terminology developed to hide the ugly truth. Ironically, they are prisoners of their own positions in society and their own success. Indeed, the “director’s cut” of Blade Runner suggests that Deckard himself is a replicant, the ultimate traitor to his kind, since he assists humans in eliminating those of his “species” who are troublesome to their creators. Words dehumanize in science fiction because they label. Once labeled, beings can be categorized and ruled, given more or fewer rights based on those categorizations. Legal systems have traditionally functioned in this way, and continue to do so in the science fiction universes of the future. The irony in Blade Runner encompasses the contrast between a highly developed society in which humanity is strictly defined and individual rights carefully limited, and the desire of artificially created humanoids to acquire those rights. Significantly, although the “killing” of an android by a human is defined as “termination” and legally condoned, even encouraged, the killing of a human being by an android is considered murder. The android population has responsibilities but no discernible rights. Indeed their responsibilities, such as the penalty for harming human begins, seem based on Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.” Each character in the drama is deeply affected by this conflict. The protagonist, the former “blade runner” Deckard, becomes so sym-pathetic to his quarry, and gradually so unable to differentiate between himself and the androids, that he eventually becomes incapable of doing his job. After he “kills” one of the escaped replicants, he tells us, “The report would read routine retirement of a replicant, which didn’t make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back.” In the film Deckard has no first name, emphasizing his quasi-human status as a hybrid being, a human who routinely engages in killing beings who look astonishingly like humans. The voice-overs that occur in the first release of the movie (missing from the subsequent cut) and other clues, including a dream (the “unicorn sequence”), suggest that Deckard may be a replicant himself. Like an android, Deckard is expected to follow orders without question. Once he begins to question his own humanity, he understands the nature of the androids’ quest, and in so doing reaffirms his own nature. Like the society in 1984, the society in Blade Runner makes use of euphemisms to disguise the real profession of “blade runners.” They are a type of executioner, legally empowered to hunt down and “retire” (in effect, kill) the androids. The creation of the Nexus-6 androids, “more human than human,” and according to their manufacturer Dr. Tyrrell, intended to increase the level of their human owners’ comfort through the androids’ almost perfect mimicking of human responses and thought patterns, is the problem posed by the drama. The Nexus-6 androids are so close to human that they have developed self-awareness and a love of liberty. The manufacturer has built in a fail-safe mechanism, a limited lifespan, that cannot be altered. The Nexus-6 “replicants” know of this limited lifespan16 and demand that their creators make alterations. When they discover that this is impossible, they murder the humans whom they regard as responsible for their plight. For them, knowledge of their limited lifespan is the most “human” part of their understanding, while knowledge of the exact date of their deaths is an unusual circumstances for most humans. Only self-aware beings can understand the enormity of the concepts of birth and death. The battle between Deckard and the replicants continues until the last one, leader Roy Batty, mortally wounded during a fight with Deckard, saves Deckard’s life and then “dies.” The replicant’s imprisonment ends in inevitable death, and yet through his mercy to Deckard, he becomes “more human than human.” Deckard is not the only individual imprisoned in this universe, of course. Rachael, the woman he meets at the Tyrrell Corporation and with whom he eventually falls in love, is herself a replicant, although she is unaware of this fact. Deckard discovers her true nature while doing a “Voigt-Kampff” test—a kind of emotional IQ test—on her. Like a latter-day McCarthy inquisition, the test is designed to uncover replicants who are trying to “pass” as humans. When Deckard discovers her origins and also that she is unaware of her nonhuman status, he accosts her maker, Dr. Tyrrell, and asks, “How can it not know what it is?” For him, Rachael has moved very quickly from the category of human to object, much as prior to the 1960s a person with African ancestry might have moved from “white” to “colored” if his genealogy were investigated. Deckard is as much a prisoner of his own thinking about Rachael and other replicants as she is of hers. Rachael herself is bewildered when Deckard tells her that she is not human. Relying on the kind of verification and evidence that a human being would, she asks, “[B]ut what about my memories?” She has memories and photographs, Deckard says, “[O]f a mother she never had, a child she never was.” They are artificial, he tells her, “[T]hey’re anybody’s memories. They’re Tyrrell’s nieces’.” Rachael’s self-awareness is, ironically, what has kept her imprisoned. It has prevented her from understanding her origins because it corresponds to the self-awareness that “other” humans have. The film, and Dick’s novel, pose the question for us: if a being is self-aware, does it matter whether it is created artificially? And if not, can humans justify imprisoning, regulating, and destroying such beings? Like Number Six and Logan, Deckard eventually escapes, in his case from 2017 Los Angeles, the year in which the film is set. He takes Rachael with him, telling us implicitly that he has moved her out of the “it” category, as he tells us explicitly that Rachael is indeed unique: She has “no termination date.” Rachael will face death at a date unspecified, just as human beings normally do. Unlike them, the Prisoner believes that another world exists “outside” the Village and desperately wants to rejoin it. His desire fuels his ability to survive his imprisonment. Thus he spends his time alternately trying to escape from the Village and discovering the identity of “Number One.” In the final episode, Fall-Out, he achieves both goals: Freedom and the knowledge he seeks. Unfortunately that knowledge is small comfort. He discovers that he himself is Number One, and his imprisonment has been his own doing. Like Logan, Deckard and Rachael, Number “Six of One” (as McGoohan’s fans have named their admiration society) must come to terms with the fact that both the maximum security prison and ultimate freedom exist in the individual mind. He is somewhat manic . . . proud . . . as he peers through the nursery window into a kind of foam cocoon which cradles THREE SLEEPING INFANTS. Logan is KNOCKING on the soundless glass.David Zelag Goodman, Logan’s Run: Screenplay (1975), <http://you.co.il/scripts/ logansRun.html)> (last visited January 10, 2001). 13. Id. 14. Id. 15. A mechanism implanted in one hand indicates their remaining life spans. 16. Roy Batty, the leader of the replicant rebels, demands to know “how long” he has to live. Unlike human beings, replicants can know their precise date of death (“termination date”). However, the Nexus-6 replicant with whom Deckard escapes has no “termination date,” making her much closer to “human” than Batty or his friends. |
