Watching reruns of Gilligan's Island was, for me, the final nail in the coffin of my belief in democracy, and the last bit of evidence I needed to believe in Original Sin. I was in my 20s, in college, and while watching it late one night on cable, I thought, "What an awful way to live."
It occurred to me, like a little lightbulb going on over my head, that at times I almost hated Gilligan, who, like Homer Simpson, was one catastrophic screw-up, and decided that in real life the Skipper, who had a fist the size of a softball, would have hit Gilligan with more than his hat.
I wondered, who could the castaways elect who could possibly be a decent ruler? No one. Why. Because they were all most decidedly imperfect. Since the island was a microcosm of the world, the same rules that applied there applied to everyone else. No one is good enough to rule everyone.
There is an amusing theory, which I first ran across on the Web, that each of the castaways represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Professor is Pride, Mary Ann is Envy, Mr. Howell is Greed, Mrs. Howell is Sloth, Ginger is Lust, and the Skipper is Anger and Gluttony. Since Gilligan doesn't fit any of the sins, some have facetiously suggested he's Satan, since he dresses in red and is the one responsible for keeping the castaways in the Hell that is the island.
I don't believe the creators of the program purposely meant the castaways to represent the sins. I suspect they just intuitively understood what the characters should be like.
Since all of us have at least a bit of the Seven Deadly Sins inherent in us, each of us has an Inner Professor, an Inner Mr. and Mrs. Howell, an Inner Ginger...all of us are flawed, and therefore none of us are fit to rule everyone else. Goodness –- you can make the argument that Gilligan's Island is a Christian program! Who woulda thunk it?
The term often used to describe our Inner Idiots is "archetype," which can be described as a personality pattern than expresses itself in different ways. An expression of the archetype of Satan, for example, is Shakespeare's Richard III (the movie, with Ian McKellen, is a gleefully wicked riot of diabolical fun). An easier way to understand "archetype" is to consider it a "little self" that we have in us.
All of us have, for examples, a Gilligan self, and a -– blech –- Eddie Haskell self. We have Barney Fife selves, and Tooter Turtle selves. All of us are cursed with the Original Sin of Gilliganitis – we're always going to mess it up.
Relating archetypes – our "little selves" – to each other can be great fun. Eddie Haskell was a hypocrite –- he was a suck-up to those who could hurt him, and was a bully to those weaker than he was. He's actually the archetype of many politicians. What archetype could Eddie turn into? The aforementioned Richard III, a consummate politician who postured as a decent man to those whom he wished to impress, and was a monster to those he wished to harm.
People sometimes talk to me about archetypes of the "Earth Mother" and the "Wolf Woman." My eyes glaze over. No one understands what they're talking about, anyway. But everyone understands Gilligan and the Skipper. They're our modern myths, and our modern archetypes.
The snooty may claim Gilligan's Island is not "art," or if it is, it's pop art. That's fine with me. Shakespeare's plays were not originally meant to be read. They were meant to be performed, for the masses. They were the movies of his time, the pop art. Today, he is considered the epitome of l iterature. (I know, Gilligan's Island is never going to be considered as good as Shakespeare; I'm just making the argument that one should never underestimate pop culture. Everyone knows who Eddie Haskell is; hardly anyone knows about Richard III.)
Modern psychology backs up my belief in our "little selves." Object Relations Theory (which you're about as likely to learn in college as you are Austrian Economics) postulates that each of us has an infinity of selves that are activated in our relationships with other people. Except for the arcane advanced jargon, a lot of it is just common sense.
When you raise a child, you become a "father" or "mother" self because of your relationship with the child. Then, later, you develop a "grandmother" or "grandfather" self (a self, that as all parents know, naturally allies itself with the child so that it's an enemy of the parents). And the way you act with a baby or dog is certainly not the way you act with your boss. ("Oooh, him is just sooo cute").
Because we have so many "selves," we are capable of great good, and great evil. But none of us can be all good, or, for that matter, all bad. The early Socialist writers, who thought Man would quickly become god-like through a socialist society, were just as about as deluded as one can be. The leftist understanding of human nature (most especially their own) is, for all practical purposes, non-existent. That is why leftism produced such horrors in the 20th century. It didn't understand the potential Richard III that exists in all of us.
Because of the fact that so many archetypal potential "little selves" exist in us, it's obvious none of us are a tabula rasa, a blank slate. It's because of Gilligan that I years ago dismissed Skinnerian behaviorism, which postulates all of us are little more than blank slates. As I said, don't underestimate the power of pop culture; it led me to dismiss a lot of the nonsense that passes for psychology today.
The wisdom of Gilligan's Island teaches us a realistic, balanced view of human nature. Actually, you could consider watching it a sort of a voyage of self- discovery. Some may identify with Mr. Howell, who took a trunkful of money on a three-hour tour. If you identify with him, you may want to ask yourself just how greedy and stingy you are.
Unfortunately, I identify with Gilligan. I have since I was a kid. This means I have to watch myself. For years I've noticed that if I get around too many people, and spend too much time with them, catastrophes happen.
When I was a kid, parents would not only not let me in their houses, they wouldn't let me in their yards. I once walked by an above-ground plastic pool in a neighbor's backyard, and put my hands on the side of the pool so I could look in the water. The entire side gave way, pouring the entire pool into their yard. I stood there, paralyzed in awe, as they ran out, yelling, "What did you do?" "Nothing," I told them. They didn't believe me. Another time, I was with a kid who burned up an entire wheatfield, and after that, with one who burned down the barns behind my house.
I even accidentally shot a friend in the leg with a BB gun. I chalk all of this up to Gilligan's Aura, which still haunts me to this day.
Since all of us are burdened with some degree of the Castaways' Selves, democracy is one of the worst forms of government that exists. In a democracy, politicians will appeal to our envy, our greed and our sloth in order to get elected. This means democratically-elected politicians are the worst people to put in office; they have to be manipulative, lying Eddie Haskell hypocrites to get elected. This is one of the reasons why democracies always fall.
And people say that TV is a wasteland. Ha!
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