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| Cullen Thomas |
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Every episode begins the same way: a naive Brit or American is in a hot foreign country and is persuaded by a smooth talking new friend/boy-friend/girl-friend into smuggling drugs from said hot foreign country into Europe or North America. Taped up with cocaine or heroin or hash and sweating bullets the scheme invariably goes wrong and the naive Anglo-Saxon gets caught and is thrown into an overseas prison. Actors play the younger version of the subject and they narrate their own story in a studio usually (especially with the Brits) with self mocking ironic detachment. Some of the prisons are so chaotic and corrupt that the subject's life is in jeopardy and they must literally fight to survive from day to day. Other prisons are a little more humane but none of them resemble the gentle Scandinavian prisons which are more about reform than punishment. (A few of the less successful episodes have the subject getting kidnapped by terrorists etc. but this, I feel, is stretching the purity of the format.) Why is Banged Up Abroad so compelling to me? Well, for a start I can easily imagine myself getting banged up abroad, not necessarily because of drug smuggling, but maybe because of an incident in a bar that gets out of hand or a violation of local laws of which I am unfamiliar. The fantasy of escape from a barbaric foreign prison has been a staple of literature for centuries, perhaps millennia (St Paul pulled a daring prison escape somewhere in the New Testatment) and while very few of the subjects on Banged Up Abroad actually manage to escape, it's not difficult to put yourself in their shoes, wondering if you could do the time and if not how you would try to get yourself out. This idea is so obviously interesting to me that I even wrote a novel all about it called Dead I Well May Be...
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If you're only going to watch one episode of Banged Up Abroad try to find the one starring Cullen Thomas who gets arrested for trying to smuggle drugs into Korea with his girlfriend Rocket. Cullen's prison experiences are fascinating: after some initial self pity and suffering Cullen transforms himself through a kind of zen process of meditation and self analysis into a mature and thoughtful young man. For Thomas getting arrested for drug smuggling is, in a way, the best thing that ever happened to him, giving his existence meaning and allowing him to live what Plato called the examined life, or what the poet Novalis felt was the greatest journey of all, the journey inwards into the depth of one's own experiences: "nach innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg." Thomas used the prison time to become a more reflective and interesting person rather than in his phrase "letting the time use him." He has also written a rather good book about his experiences that can be got on Amazon.com, here. And surely even Barry Norman wouldn't disapprove of that.
28 comments:
Yes, I remember the arguments about Midnight Express.
And yes, it's not difficult to put yourself in those shoes. I also used it for a novel (Dirty Sweet). When I was eighteen I was living away from home in Calgary and was part of a ten-man overnight cleaning crew in a department store that was arrested for robbing the place. A few of the guys got jail time (those with previous arrests) but most of us just got probation. My novel grew out of me wondering what would have happened to me if I'd gone to jail. Well, the fantasy version of what would have happened, not the sad, depressing reality I know it would have been....
Adrian,It would seem deep self-transformation is probably one of the most difficult of processes in human life.I will never do "it" again usually refers to single events,conditions or circumstances.Repeat incarceration,serial divorce or alcoholism come to mind as widespread problems often demanding radical self-change .The prerequisite to positive change is very very difficult i.e. admittance of self-culpability and a recognition of incapacity to change longterm behavior.Sadly our Anglo-Saxon culture does not put a premium on verbalization of one's self-destructive problems to others.Often this act is regarded as weakness. This view maybe changing with younger people.Psychoanalyses,Religion and AA seem to work.Jail can work but can also lead to suicide.Best Alan
John
I've read Dirty Sweet of course but I had no idea about the background to the novel. The true story could be an interesting Afterword to the book maybe?
Dead I Well May Be doesnt really have an interesting story behind it. My wife and I were in the Yucatan travelling and came across this awful prison in the jungle. People were seemingly going in and out at random and we visited it along with a bunch of locals. But of course I wasn't actually arrested or chucked in there myself thank God.
Alan
Yeah I like the idea of AA apart from the surrendering to the higher power bit. I wonder if you can do AA without that bit...
I suppose the most famous reflective prison notebook is Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius
I dont think I'd take the patyh of Cullen or indeed Boethius, I reckon I'd go to pieces pretty quickly.
Adrian,Thank you for the link,no fool he. I wonder though what he would say to those who claim to have been "reborn" via a religious experience and then become vain,intolerant and contemptuous of those who have not shared a similar catharsis. I also would have a hard time with A.A.'s surrendering to a higher power but I think one's religious formation would be a factor.Best Alan
It's funny that people are unsympathetic to the drug smuggler, since such a huge percentage of the populace indulges in illegal drugs, which of course have to be provided by someone taking risks.
Even I, boringly law abiding as I usually am, have been caught out in a situation or two that might not have ended up as well as they did. The law isn't particularly well known for leniency just because someone is young and an idiot.
I read a fascinating interview with Colin Dayan a few days ago about what solitary confinement is really like inside the U.S. supermax prisons. Unfortunately the link to the Believer article doesn't give you much, but for what it's worth, it's here. I'm very interested in her book The Law is a White Dog, which is available from Princeton.
apologies for the ghost rectangles that some of you might be seeing on the blogpost. I've been trying for the last hour or so to get rid of them. Nothing seems to work so I'm just going to give up at this stage.
Once again that decision to do Music Appreciation as an O Level rather than Computer Science has come back to haunt me...
It's coming out fine on my end, but I do appreciate the way you tried to save all our comments in the interim. A bit above and beyond I think.
Your computer degree would have been outdated by now so you still chose the right path.
Alan
Boethius is well worth reading but its a bit tricky for the non specialist. Alan De Boton's (sic?) Consolation of Philosophy is a nice summary.
Seana
Yeah its still annoyingly messed up on my computer but I'm going to let it go now.
I'm not sure it was the right path to be honest, I could see myself designing video games in some cool pad in Mountain View or SF but thats never going to happen. Unless they have contacts in the New York or London publishing worlds I wouldnt advise any young person to go into prose writing (at least as their living, perhaps as their spiritual calling).
Mountain View isn't cool. Sorry, Mountain View readers.
No, you should never advise any young person to go into the arts. But you should never dissuade them either.
Seana
So basically say nothing to anyone? Yup I could do that.
But don't.
There but for chance.... I could have ended up in a Turkish prison if I hadn't been so foolish as to get conned into buying a kilo of soap instead of hash, (Hey, I WAS stoned at the time,) So, yes, I can certainly sympathize, and be glad that this particular result was a positive one.
I think everyone should be discouraged from going into the arts. If the discouragement works there wasn't likely going to be much art produced anyway.
But I'm probably just old and wrong. I haven't figured out this whole over-educated slacker generation - they're starting to shake my faith in art and philosophy - how come so few people who get the best liberal arts education can't get anything together? Isn't it supposed to teach them to think? (I will admit I mostly started to think about this when I saw one scene from the show "Girls" where she goes to an expensive restaurant to ask her parents for more money for... some reason... and I felt myself siding with the parents)
It's not quite the arts, but we get parades of young interns and journalism students tramping through the newsroom, and I want to ask them: "Why?" In one case I did, and the reply was admirably practical. She thought editing skills would serve her well in law school, which made me feel a bit better about future lawyers if not about my profession, which is de facto eliminated.
As for over-educated slackers, I try to temper any superiority I may feel (and I do) with the recollection of how useless I was when I was in college,
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com
Seem to remember the wee lad, Oscar Wilde,had a good line in prison reflections.
John
Someday I'll relate to the world my cocoa leaves incident at Dublin Airport. That feeling when the sniffer dog starts jumping all over you...Jesus giving me chills just thinking about it.
John
I think what the slacker generation have perfected is ironic boredom. If you're under 25 and telegenic (and with amazing insider connections in the case of Girls) and you invest all your art with a shrugging, subdued, ironic, detachment you'll do well.
Peter
I was useless but at least I knew my limitations. And I had a respect for the written word and like the girl in the Pulp song I had a thirst for knowledge.
Trev
and you can read the Ballad of Reading Gaol free here:
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Ballad-of-Reading-Gaol.html
Adrian, I may not have known how to pronounces Sophocles' name my freshman year, but I did know to write across the cover of the course's final examination booklet that the definition of a tragic hero is one who does not acquire the necessary knowledge until after he has handed in his exam booklet.
I just watched this episode on your recommendation and want to clear up a couple factual inaccuracies. First, he's smuggling hash into S. Korea from the Philippines. Second, Rocket didn't get him into the shit, she was against it from the start and he said he did it in spite of her. Maybe he's doing his best to paint her in a good light, and maybe it's different in the book. But I wanted to clear her good name.
TMA
You're probably right about Rocket in the show. Its a couple of years since I watched the episode. I think, however, in the book it's - shall we say - a bit more complicated. But since the Rocket remark was just a throwaway line I shall delete it and I'll fix the line about smuggling drugs INTO Korea. Good episode though, no?
Thank you! Yes it was a good episode. Any others stand out to you as must-watch?
Actually, I wish there'd been more about his time in prison. It was all about the journey there, and 3 minutes at the end about his time inside. I suppose I should get the book if I want more details on those 3+ years.
Tma
There's a really good one about an Irish plumber who gets caught up in international drug smuggling in Venezuela. Cant remember which season though...
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