[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[binkie]

I am writing this with the assistance of Hedex and a hot water bottle, so don’t hold your breath for insight .

This is one of those very rare occasions when it might actually have been useful to consider the character of Lucas across seasons 7/8/9. However, because season 9 failed to supply a mechanism by which this would be possible, I have had to ignore season 9, as usual. On the other hand, a discussion about the often chaotic relationship between remembering and forgetting, or oblivion, might be useful in itself, if only to highlight the extent to which season 9 could have taken better advantage of this as a rhetorical device in exploring the vulnerability of Lucas’ own state of mind and self-perception, and the consequences for his actions and motives which might easily have arisen – or been manipulated – in relation to this. Creating a discrete person for Lucas to have forgotten to be is surely the least interesting investigation of the influence of memory in being and time. Yes, I think I did just invoke the, admittedly questionable, moral authority of Heidegger in criticising the current writing team of Spooks. That’ll teach them to make such anvil-icious use of Kierkegaard’s assessment of subjective truth and the proof of doubt in individual experience: 9.5, I’m looking at you! Anyway, on with the slightly light-headed show...

blackpearl asks:

(12-12-2010 07:49 PM)blackpearl23456 Wrote:  But one thing I do wonder about Lucas and his tattoos is why, upon his return to England, did he not have them removed? I would have thought that he would have wanted to. He seemed so keen to try and forget the past (although it proved difficult, as things kept bringing up memories), and, in my opinion at least, it would have made sense for him to get rid of one of the most major memories of his time in Russia: his tattoos.

This is a splinter question in that every element of an answer suggests another question and another possible answer. Before we even begin to consider what the tattoos represent in terms of what Lucas might, or might not, want, or need, to remember, we need to address in context the extraordinarily subtle question of what memory is, and what remembering means.

Memory is more than simple recall, and it is less definitive than neurological function. Memory is a concept and a perception and a defining principle within and of the human experience of what it means to be human (rather than, for example, a bat). Memory, and the shared consciousness of a conceptual entity that is memory, enables the human expression of both technical record and creative endeavour. We have, make use of, and recognise memory in our own experience of being and knowing, and we translate this readily to an assumed experience of what it is (like) to be an individual within a collective. We recognise and remember the collective, because the collective recognises and remembers us. Lucas must remind himself of the reality of an individual experience which has no basis in the collective experience of the culture to which he has been reintroduced following his release from prison. While he might still recognise and remember the collective, he cannot be certain that the collective recognises or remembers him.

The collective amnesia of the human condition erases time (memory, experience, conscious expression of consequence) as it goes, forgetting what it is that brings definition to the experience of being, and to encounters with actions in time. Activities of conspicuous record, attempts to overwrite time with experience, and to imbue that experience with significance in the act of recording it (presenting it for later recall and, crucially, reinterpretation), are in themselves facets of the construction of memory and its function in the sustenance of individual and collective culture. Without these things, and without the cultural construct of the concept of memory (what it is and what it is for), humanity fears its history for a tabula rasa. A gap in the record connotes an unreality of experience, or an absence of history. How does the human condition respond to a person whose seemingly anomalous existence both exemplifies and inhabits just such an absence? How does the culture of a collective experience of memory and reality accommodate an individual experience of memory and reality which, by its self-contained oblivion, seems to contradict the validity of that collective experience? How does the individual experience make for itself a place in a collective reality which recognises only its temporal absence?

Belle makes the point that:

(07-12-2010 12:56 PM)Belle Wrote:  ...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.

I think this has practical and conceptual importance for this discussion. The idea that identity might be communicated purely by visible signs of record gives way to a consideration of whether this applies also to identity in individual and collective memory. Lucas’ tattoos were an aspect of his definition and recognition in prison, both in terms of how he was catalogued and perceived within the system, and in terms of how he situated himself within that system. What are the tattoos to Lucas now that he is no longer in prison? While they might still function as a means by which his body could be identified, do they still attest to the identity of Lucas in his own memory of himself?

Byatil’s suggestion is another (typically!) tightly-packed piece of commentary:

(12-12-2010 08:01 PM)Byatil Wrote:  I think in a way he probably liked to remind people (as well as himself) of what he'd been through.

I like the expression of this point because it addresses the practical and moral implications of the difficult relationship between individual and collective memory. Lucas’ release from prison sees him faced with this complex dilemma of forgetting and – by moral implication - being forgotten; or of remembering and – by moral requirement - reminding. Whatever he chooses for himself becomes a cause in the consequence for collective memory. In either case, there is a strong case to be made that he is living the wrong life (see how season 9 could have developed its storyline for Lucas without the need for John?!). If he chooses to forget – to obliterate individual memory and conceal the Lucas he has become through his experience of prison – he also authorises the blindness of the collective: he can never be recalled or recognised by the collective if the individual experience he presents is nothing more than a response to an absence from collective memory. If he chooses to remember – to validate individual memory and reveal the Lucas he has become through his experience of prison – he necessitates the attention of the collective, which must now recognise his memory of himself, and this experience of being in time, as the remembered experience of the collective. In other words, whatever choice he makes, Lucas is what he has become, and collective memory must, by either ignorance or acceptance, accommodate this becoming. Lucas’ choice at this point is to continue or to cease. He chooses to continue.

Another interesting consideration raised by both Byatil and blackpearl is that of the cultural memory of something that is in the memory of an individual. Byatil‘s phrase “he liked to remind people...of what he’d been through” raises the question of how – or whether – subjective memory can describe experience in collective recall. Lucas is “reminding people” of something of which they have no knowledge. The tattoos act as a particular kind of authentication of an unknown value. The tattoos communicate, across a broad spectrum of cultural recognition, the fact that the bearer has been in prison. Additional sub-cultural filters can make this more or less specific to the experience as it was lived (though not, I suspect, as it was known by Lucas in living it). The reminder, then, is in fact a prompt to accept about this person a quality of hidden experience. Lucas doesn’t have to talk about his experience of prison because the tattoos are, in most cases and to most people, a sufficient expression of the fact of that experience. There is a sense in which Lucas uses the tattoos as a barrier to collective memory, rather than as an invitation: a ‘keep out’ sign. This might help to explain why it is that:

(12-12-2010 08:01 PM)Byatil Wrote:  He never appears self-conscious over his tattoos (except when Elizabeta comments on them and he covers the band on his arm), and indeed has a tendency to show them off somewhat.

I wonder if he is not so much “showing them off” as he is hiding behind them. If he can retreat far enough beyond the sign of what the tattoos are in the collective memory (a connotation of the fact of imprisonment), then he may possibly be able to let go of the subjective memory which gives them the individual and personal meaning born of experience in space and time. Even his statement to Harry in 7.1 that “they all mean something” could be read as a first step on the way to divesting them of meaning in a post-release reality. If he says that they mean something, then that is all they have to mean. The statement has a kind of logical determinism. The significance of the tattoos is that they have significance, nothing else about them matters now.

Lucas keeps the tattoos because they prove he is something other than a gap in the record, or a memory glitch. He remembers because he must. His memory of himself is the means by which he gives purpose to his absence from the collective memory, and by which he is able to validate the individual experience which could so easily be obscured by that absence. The tattoos, in their simple physical evidence, recognise and remember the illusion of absence, and require that same recognition of the collective memory which would otherwise preserve the illusion.