Gilligan's Island

Gilligan Fights the Cold War

35 Gilligan Fights the Cold War Professor pronounces solemnly, “We see us as we are, but you see us as we would like to be,” a stirring tribute to the better angels of our nature. This simple yet profound lesson in humility is housed in a complex narrative. The Rashomon inspiration is focused on a sequence of episodes that demonstrate the lasting impact of World War II. Schwartz here uses the repetition of series television to fold back one episode about the Skipper’s posttraumatic stress disorder, another about the Japanese soldier having lost his entire life fighting a long since finished war, and yet a third about the Skipper reenacting the Japanese soldier’s continued waging of the war after having been conked on the head. Schwartz waits until the fourth episode in the series, as the first season winds down, to deliver the emotionally compelling moral. Only by returning to the simplicity of Gilligan’s worldview in which telling the truth is the key to narration can the castaways, and allegorically the audience, learn to put aside violent self-interest in lieu of the benefits of community. By fusing the first season of the show to the legacy of World War II, Schwartz was thus able to allegorize the United States’ role in the Cold War onto a seemingly safe political subject like the Japanese enemy in World War II. By seasons 2 and 3, the show would much more directly engage the Soviet Union as the nation ’s true enemy. Gilligan Fights the Cold War In “Nyet, Nyet—Not Yet” (season 2, episode 45, November 18, 1965), a Soviet space capsule falls into the lagoon. The Professor , above the foibles of political differences, runs to greet the cosmonauts, Igor and Ivan, colonels in the Soviet space program . However, it is in their encounter with Mr. Howell that the cosmonauts engage in the most simplistic fighting of the 01 Metz text.indd 35 1/20/12 12:00 PM 36 Gilligan’s Island Cold War. Igor claims that Mr. Howell is a “capitalist exploiter,” which Mr. Howell greets as a fabulous compliment. Not caring at all about ideology, the castaways merely want the cosmonauts to help them get rescued. Alas, the cosmonauts leave the island without telling the Soviet government about the castaways , despite suspecting them of being American colonists of the Pacific Islands. They simply cannot take the risk that their Soviet superiors will come to know of their incompetence. Sure enough, in the episode’s coda, the TASS news agency on the radio informs the castaways of the cosmonauts’ and Soviet government’s cover-up: the capsule did not land off course in the Pacific Ocean but instead eighteen inches from its intended target, in the Black Sea. Beyond the Cold War, Gilligan’s Island frequently returned to the theme of war and violence. In “Forward March” (season 2, episode 58, February 17, 1966), the castaways come under attack. During the teaser, someone lobs a grenade at Gilligan and the Skipper. It explodes in a bush just beyond Gilligan’s head. After another grenade attack during their argument over whether to surrender or not, the castaways decide to fight back. Ginger volunteers to work as a Mata Hari spy, while Mr. Howell takes over as general, appointing Skipper as secretary of the navy, Gilligan as a private, and Mrs. Howell and Mary Ann as medical nurses. After being strafed with machine gun fire, the Professor enters the jungle to investigate. He returns with the machine gun, which was oddly abandoned by their enemy, despite being full of ammunition. Mr. Howell concludes that they are dealing with an enemy of superior intelligence. The Professor observes that their opponent is violating all of the principles of guerilla warfare. This turns out to be the organizing joke of the episode; the enemy is not a guerilla, but an actual gorilla. The Professor then observes that the ape must have been on the island during World War II and “figured that was the way humans played 01 Metz text.indd 36 1/20/12 12:00 PM 37 Gilligan Fights the Cold War with each other.” Again, the politics of World War II contaminates the utopia of the island; the violence of human behavior, mimicked by the animal world, now threatens the castaways in the present. A cave again serves as the episode’s place of resolution. The...