[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[binkie]

It might be necessary to break out the paracetamol in advance. Thanks to everyone who commented and made me work out why the treatment of the Blake image in season 9 bothered me as much as it did. Now maybe it will bother you too I should point out, though it is hardly necessary for me to do so, that I am not a Blake scholar. What follows is purely the result of half-forgotten academic research from my first post-graduate degree undertaken many (many) years ago.

(07-12-2010 02:45 AM)A Cousin Wrote:  I am not certain that I am ready to discard the "God as Architect" symbolism of The Ancient of Days image.

(07-12-2010 03:05 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  The Blake tattoo is enigmatic in and of itself open to many different interpretations.

(07-12-2010 12:56 PM)Belle Wrote:  As for the Ancient of Day's tattoo...I wonder if this tattoo might have ment to Lucas the complete surrender to the place he was in and the pain he suffered; if he truely anticipated dying there and came to accept this possibility.
It seems to me this painting embodies the total believe of not being able to change ones faith, a total surrender to what the 'stars haved mapped out' for ones life. If this is the case, the utter feeling of defeat must have been tremendous.
Or maybe he got this tattoo as a constant reminder NOT to give in to this feeling of defeat and NOT to accept that one can't change ones path?

One of the things that bothered me SO MUCH about the writing decisions in season 9 was that so many of them were so very literal in the solutions they offered to what were genuinely intriguing considerations. The Blake tattoo is only one example of this.

What frustrates me more than anything about the season 9 explanation for this value is the extent to which we – as intelligent viewers of an intelligent drama – are expected to accept that the only question of motivating significance in its use, in both script and character terms, is that of the interpretive quality of the image. All we are permitted to ask is the simple, purposive, question: What is the story in this picture? And we are given an equally simple, literal, response: This is the story of controlling predestination and acceptance of personal fate. This, as far as season 9 is concerned, provides us with sufficient texture to re-read Lucas as an un-confessed sinner waiting to be found out. But it doesn’t. If it did, we wouldn’t still be so frustrated by the insulting over-simplification of the conclusion. There are too many elements missing from the conclusion we were given, and they are all textual. Seasons 7/8 invested in the character of Lucas a wealth of understated, subtle backstory and inner life, which season 9 stripped out. The Lucas-is-John conceit cannot satisfy even a cursory interrogation because it depends for its worth on such a flimsy and superficial reading of these textual elements.

The conclusion of season 9 in relation to the Blake tattoo that this-means-this fails to take account of several vital textual elements, all of which are addressed in rhetorical and character terms in seasons 7/8: Why, of all the ‘Christian’ artists working with subjects of faith, did Lucas (and the script) choose Blake? Why, of all the breadth and depth of allegory available in the work of this artist, did Lucas (and the script) choose Ancient of Days? Why place the image so specifically in the location on the body where an inmate in the Russian prison system would traditionally adorn himself with a cross or a building of worship? All these questions are answered in the fabric of the character and the textual detail of the script in seasons 7/8. All the answers are ignored in season 9 in deference to the conclusion that Lucas is a man in thrall to an uncontrollable, inescapable fate he has always known would be his undoing. I am offended by the simplicity of this conclusion because it is so ignorant of the detail in the choices (in both narrative and character terms), and the reasons for those choices.

Blake’s experience of faith was intensely personal. It is too easy to refer to him as a non-conformist, because even this suggests adherence to a set of principles shared and accepted by others within a communion. He set himself apart from the orthodox theistic principle of dualism, arguing in every portion of his work that self-denial and urgent restraint in obedience to an externally-imposed code of morality was in itself akin to sin. Blake was, in so far as he can be accommodated under the label of any sect, a kind of radical protestant. He was enthused and inspired by the need to make daily re-acquaintance with God (or the concept of the divine). It is man’s separation from God – and, conversely, God’s separation from man – which causes mutual suffering in the fraught relationship between the created and the creator. Blake understood that the faith of God in man is as vital to both reality and representation as the faith of man in God. This is so important to an appreciation of the textual justification for Lucas’ interest in Blake, and for his choice of the image from Ancient of Days as a factor in his self-definition in prison.

Lucas tells Dean in 7.6 that his father was a Methodist minister in Cumbria when Lucas was growing up. This is such a specific piece of personal detail, I think it unlikely that the script ever intended it to be anything other than a statement of fact on the part of someone still in the process of re-learning interpersonal relations away from an institutional or systematised setting. It is telling, I think, that Lucas shares this information as part of the tea-making ritual. I have written before about the significance to Lucas’ character of this ritual as a mechanism of survival. One aspect of the ritual in the kind of prison setting in which Lucas has been – particularly given his status as an intelligence asset – is very much that of trade. Tea, coffee or water is often used as a kind of currency by prison operatives in return for a satisfactory response to a question. Tea embodies for Lucas an aspect of truth, or at least of appropriate exchange. He tells Dean the truth about his minister father because, in that moment, there is no reason for him not to.

Methodism has an established history in many of the former mill towns of Lancashire and the Lakes, and is still a conspicuous presence in these areas. As someone with a non-conformist protestant background, Lucas will have been familiar with the defining feature of this iteration of Christian faith: that it is necessary to re-make a personal relationship with God every day. The presence of God in the world is, according to the tenets of dissenting protestant morality, realised by expressions of personal faith. God is the architect of the universe, but man is the architect of faith. Protestantism holds that salvation comes solely from the justification of faith, not from the conference of any divine expression (such as, for example, the catholic notion of grace).

The writers of seasons 7/8 did not choose Blake for Lucas on a whim. They chose Blake because he appealed to Lucas – he almost described Lucas – on something like an atomic moral level. Ancient of Days speaks to a personal destiny arising from a personal experience of God in the world. It is not a Newtonian depiction of a blind watchmaker. It is fundamentally not a depiction of the concept of fate as abandonment. It is a deeply felt, morally questing, dissertation on the role of the individual in his own life. It is a depiction of the implications of personal liberty and the freedom to choose. Blake’s God is not a controller, but a designer, and a facilitator of individual accomplishment. The tattoo culture of the Russian prison system locates a crucifix in the same place as Lucas locates his Blake. Within this prison system, the crucifix signifies the oppression of the bearer, who has, like Christ, been sentenced and punished by the authorities. Lucas is not conceding this point of victimisation or insignificance in the face of something bigger and more unknowable. He is instead re-establishing his own purpose and resilience in an internal moral context of his own making. Lucas’ Ancient of Days bears direct relation to the tattooed motto Gnothi Seauton (know yourself). Tetxual detail tells us this is not coincidence, and that it is not surrender. Season 9 tells us it is fear of fate. Season 9 is (at least regarding its treatment of this character and his script) a disappointingly superficial crisis of faith.

(07-12-2010 12:56 PM)Belle Wrote:  I do have a question, however.
I know that sailors f.i. got tattood for reasons of recognition, if they would drown on sea and their bodies were found beyond recognition, one could tell who they were by looking at the tattoos they got. So they actually equalled who they were with their tattoos.
Could this be a reason prisoners got tattoos, too? You never know, I guess, what could happen to you and your body whilst in such a harsh environment.

Belle, for the sake of what remains of the potential for brevity in this post: I think you make an excellent point regarding the use of tattoos in the recognition of their bearers. This has certainly been true for members of the armed forces throughout history. It was, of course, also true of death camp inmates and, in some cultures, prisoners of war. There are separate values of control at work in each of these cases, so they cannot be correlated in response to a single interpretation. I like very much what you say about the equation of identity with the rendition of the tattoos. There is a great deal of potential here for reflection on the question of anonymity in a system which relates WHO you are to WHAT is manifest on your body. If I didn’t think it would kill this thread for good, I would offer to have a go at posting something on this. However, I suspect world stocks of headache medication might suffer as a result!