Gilligan's Island

Introduction: A Minimalist Allegory

1 1 Introduction: A Minimalist Allegory At the end of the episode “Gilligan Goes Gung-Ho” (season 3, episode 83, December 26, 1966), the Gilligan’s Island castaways decide they need a police force. Due to the duplicitous machinations of the other petty, self-promoting male castaways (the Skipper [Alan Hale Jr.], Mr. Howell [Jim Backus], and the Professor [Russell Johnson]), young Gilligan (Bob Denver) is elected deputy. At first, the boy rises to the task, but by mid-episode, he is unable to distinguish between minor infractions and major transgressions. Gilligan locks all six of his compatriots (the men as well as Ginger [Tina Louise], Mary Ann [Dawn Wells], and Mrs. Howell [Natalie Schafer]) in a cave with bamboo bars serving as a jail. As the episode continues, the castaways attempt to trick Gilligan in an escape plot but only succeed in luring the lad into the cave himself, after which he throws away the key, trapping them all inside. Fatefully, an airplane flies over the island at this exact moment. Because they are all locked in the cave, none of the islanders are able to light their SOS signal made from wooden logs. As a consequence, not of anarchy, but of law and order—that is, the imposition of hierarchical civilization on the natural order of the island—the castaways are once again forced to live in exile for at least another week. This episode is emblematic of the cultural importance of Gilligan’s Island (CBS, 1964–67). While typically reviled for its episodic inanity—stupid Gilligan yet again keeps the castaways from being rescued—it is my contention that this narrative minimalism (how many times can Gilligan do something stupid to keep those poor people from getting rescued?) is the source of the show’s startling invention. Instead of imbecility, the show produces a vibrant critique of dominant American values. The repetition encourages the posing of a very different question: Why would the castaways want to be rescued when they in fact live in a utopia far away from the dysfunctions of 01 Metz text.indd 1 1/20/12 12:00 PM 2 Gilligan’s Island mainland America? Or, as Laura Morowitz puts it in her study of the episode “Goodbye, Old Paint” (season 1, episode 34, May 22, 1965) in which a Paul Gauguin–like primitivist painter depicts Ginger as a Balinese dancer: The hope of rescue raises another essential meta-theme of the series: the castaways’ constant desire to return to Western civilization. We might well wonder why the castaways would want to leave the island; material abundance , companionship, and an absence of the stresses and dangers of “civilized” life render Gilligan’s island a tropical paradise. Yet the castaways are forever in search of a way “home.” The reality of elsewhere can never match the dream, as Gauguin knew all too well. . . . As postindustrial Westerners, they cannot remain in the realm of the timeless and ahistorical (a realm reserved only for “natives ”). Movement is a prerequisite of their condition. . . . Capitalism always seeks an elsewhere. (122) Morowitz forwards a way of thinking about not the simplicity but the complexity of Gilligan’s Island. The issue is not so much about how repetitive the episodes are but what interest that repetition produces. The contradiction of the show is that its long-term narrative obsesses about rescue, whereas the themes of its individual episodes scream out an intense regard for the island’s utopian isolation from a corrupt mainland civilization. Not only is this Gilligan’s Island’s central motif, as Morowitz observes, but television’s itself. Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) on I Love Lucy (CBS, 1950–59) is stuck on her island, an apartment in Manhattan where she can never break into Ricky’s show; Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) on Hill St. Blues (NBC, 1981–87) fights a crime-riddled city from his island office in the midst of an overburdened police precinct; and Jerry on Seinfeld (NBC, 1990–98) is confined to his apartment like a Samuel Beckett prison, as the finale of that series makes quite 01 Metz text.indd 2 1/20/12 12:00 PM 3 The Existential Island explicit. All television allegorizes the isolating nature of American “island” life and our communal attempts to overcome its consequences; Gilligan’s Island is simply the most explicit show in the history of the medium concerning these circumstances. Over the...