Gilligan's Island

What Great Books Would You Bring to a Desert Island?

39 What Great Books Would You Bring? strike. In the teaser sequence to “St. Gilligan and the Dragon,” the women demand more privacy, refusing to do any more cooking or laundry until the men acknowledge their concerns. “We think that women should have the same rights as men,” declares Ginger. The Professor tries to explain rationally: “Historically , it is the men who make the decisions.” Not taking the women seriously, the men laugh at Ginger, Mary Ann, and Mrs. Howell as they leave the encampment to form a women’s cooperative on the other side of the island. The episode quickly devolves into a “battle of the sexes” reworking of the “Job Switching” episode of I Love Lucy (season 2, episode 39, September 15, 1952). After the men realize that they are incompetent cooks, they seek out the women for reconciliation . When the women see a giant caterpillar in the jungle, they think it is the men trying to play a trick on them. However, they become genuinely frightened when they see that the men have come to apologize. Gilligan beats down the monster with a stick before the Professor can explain that it is a lost weather balloon and that they could repair it to engineer a rescue. By the time the Professor gets to Gilligan, he has completely destroyed the balloon’s fragile fabric. In short, at best, Gilligan’s Island grappled with identity politics in a simplistic way common to 1950s sitcoms such as I Love Lucy. Such would not be the case with the show’s engagement with the Western literary tradition. What Great Books Would You Bring to a Desert Island? As constructed by Sherwood Schwartz, Gilligan’s Island repeatedly announces itself as existing within, not as opposed to, the literary tradition. Gilligan’s Island continues the tradition of envisioning a functioning island utopia resistant to the corrupt 01 Metz text.indd 39 1/20/12 12:00 PM 40 Gilligan’s Island values of mainland civilization that began with Renaissance (Sir Thomas More) and Enlightenment (Sir Francis Bacon) representations of utopian island communities. The Enlightenment constructions continued into the nineteenth century. Laura Morowitz cites Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1875) as a source text for Gilligan’s Island. Quoting Pierre Macherey’s essay on Verne, “Jules Verne: The Faulty Narrative,” in A Theory of Literary Production, Morowitz argues, “The underlying themes of Verne’s novels are voyage, scientific invention, and colonization . Such themes come to be embodied, respectively, in the characters of Gilligan’s Island: the Skipper (voyage), the Professor (invention), and the Howells (colonization)” (118). Morowitz produces an analysis of the episode “Goodbye, Old Paint” in which an abstract expressionist painter, Alexandri Gregor Dubov, arrives on the island to hide from the modern world and celebrate primitivism in his created artworks. The episode grafts its traditional plot interests—the castaways greet all newcomers to the island as mechanisms of rescue—to an analysis of the cultural status of art. In order to be rescued, the castaways have to pretend that they love Dubov’s abstract paintings; they hope this will convince Dubov to return to the mainland, confident he has regained his ability to paint well. Mr. Howell’s idea is to lure Dubov into painting the castaways. Ginger attempts to interest Dubov in her services as a model. She claims Picasso and Chagall have already painted her, but that she promised Salvador Dalí that he could be next. Since Dubov hates Dalí, he agrees to paint Ginger as a Bali dancer, but she thinks he has said “belly dancer.” After the confusion is cleared up, Dubov produces an abstract version of Ginger made out of geometrical shapes. As part of their scheme to get rescued, rather than indicating their personal scorn for modern art, the castaways enthuse about how wonderful the painting is. Gilligan lets slip Mr. Howell’s plan to Dubov; in reaction, Dubov continues to paint rather than return to the mainland. 01 Metz text.indd 40 1/20/12 12:00 PM 41 What Great Books Would You Bring? In the second act of the episode, Mr. Howell invents another scheme: they will set up Gilligan as a rival painter to Dubov, in order to get his creative juices flowing. This time, Gilligan in fact delivers the populist critique of modern art: he explains that he painted like Dubov in the third grade, which resulted in...