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thisbluespirit) wrote2014-03-01 08:38 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote2014-03-01 08:38 pm
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Public Service? : Public Eye meta
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hc_bingo square "prostitution". Meta on the character of Frank Marker from Public Eye and how much he can and can't be said to prostitute himself (metaphorically at least).
(~1200 words. Non spoilery and hopefully accessible. No warnings needed that I can think of.)
Public Service? – Public Eye Meta
"I'm like you - paid by the hour, not by results."[1] So says Frank Marker to a prostitute in one of the earliest surviving episodes of Public Eye, a UK 1960s/70s TV show about a low-rent private detective which somehow by dint of being as realistic as possible managed to make gripping TV out of the smallest of stories and kept its lone hero a fascinating yet real, refreshingly non-stereotypical and fallible figure over 10 years and seven series. Frank's something of an enigma, despite or maybe because of his ordinary, down-to-earth nature.
The prostitute comparison above is not accidental, even if it's not true in the most literal sense (as far as we know, Frank Marker doesn't have sex with anyone during the entire run of the series[2]). In other senses of the word, it’s another matter. He's working alone at something he (and most others) find distasteful, morally ambiguous at best, hiring himself out to be used by other people for a fee, hanging about street corners, and often putting himself at risk in the process.
Frank hires himself out (by the day rather than by the hour, in fact - his fee is £6 a day for most of the series) to strangers, to become involved in their lives, and some of them want to use him in ways he doesn't expect. "I used you... I thought you wouldn't mind because I was paying you,"[3] one client says, and she's not the only one.
In the course of the series (or the surviving half of it), people attempt to use Frank to get revenge on someone, to find (with intent to kill) someone in police protection, to take the blame for a crime (for which he goes to prison for two years), to create a reaction (suspicion/jealousy), or even to take a beating for them. Frank tries to avoid and detect the people who are likely to lie to him and use him, but he doesn't always manage it. He's not a deductive genius, he hasn't got money or friends in high places, or even the support of colleagues - he's an isolated, at-risk figure, vulnerable to abuse by those who hire his services and those he investigates.
He clearly finds much of his work distasteful, comparing himself at intervals to "... the man who drives the corporation dustcart"[4], or a sewerman. His job is "...collecting dirt. Other people's. It rubs off and I don't like it."[5] And yet he continues: following ordinary people, interfering in their lives, looking through their possessions, their windows, lying to gain information, and all for clients who frequently don't deserve his efforts. When he's desperate to pay his bills, he'll take on work he likes even less, from something as innocuous as expensive cat-sitting to hard-core debt-collecting. (When someone takes him to task over the latter, and tells him to stop, he counters with the argument that if it's an ugly job, why shouldn't he do it? If someone has to, why not him?[6])
His acknowledgement of the unpleasant nature of his job seems to be part of why he sees himself as being beyond the pale, or contaminated, reinforcing his tendency to isolate himself from people who want to help or befriend him: "I'm in a dirty business... No matter what way you look at it, there's never a job that doesn't smell." (And as Percy Firbank, one of those few friends points out in response - how he spends his time and who he is are the same thing.[7]) The few people who care about him – and the viewers watching – feel he is prostituting himself in a sense; that he's much too good to do what he does. His probation officer sees his going back to working as a private eye is a disaster, his landlady (with whom he has a tentative romantic relationship) feels it's a failure to help him on her part, and Inspector Firbank who works with him in the later series, thinks he should find something better to do. Even his bank manager tells him he's worth more than he thinks. [8]
They have reason to feel that way – Frank's way of life clearly damages him. As a result of his work he doesn't just have to endure failure, disappointment, resulting trust issues, and generally seeing the worst side of life and human nature on a regular basis, but a year of prison and eight months on parole, his inability to stay with the people who care about him, lack of well-being (he's beaten or threatened several times throughout the series, even aside from whether or not he can afford to eat and clothe himself properly) and sacrifices his personal reputation.
Frank's intensely moral, but almost everyone assumes a private eye will be corrupt in some way, even before they find that he's got a criminal record. It's a reaction he gets over and over (he's already weary of it in S1, let alone S7), to the point that a police sergeant, who encounters him while investigating a suicide does some background research and, on learning that Frank's got a friend in the force, takes that not as reference for Frank, but as an indication that Inspector Firbank must also be corrupt.[9]
On the other hand, though, this is a choice he makes. Frank is on a one-man crusade: he's here to help the people no one else wants to bother with, and better they come to him than somebody else who will try to take advantage of them. He's ready to work for anyone who needs him, sometimes even when they can't afford him - people who get into trouble through their own fault. He'll save a shop-lifter from being arrested, help a man who's caught up in a carbon-paper scam, find mitigating evidence for a murderer, help free a known 'villain', or interfere in any number of personal relationships. As he says at various times over the years, the people who come to him haven't got anywhere else to go.
Ron Gash, a fellow private detective (and temporary partner), wanting Frank to admit that he's in this for the money as much as everyone else is, can't get that out of him, and instead inadvertently hits the truth: Frank sees himself as a public servant. [10] That, after all, is what the man who drives the corporation dustcart is.
"I do my work, I take my money and I move onto the next foul up, because there always is a next one. And don't think you're the first person who looked at me and wondered what sort of man does what I do. Do you want me to justify it? Go and ask the... undertaker - or the sewerman... why he does it! Doesn't matter why... You need us."[11]
On his bad days, Frank Marker may feel he prostitutes himself, or other people may think so, but most of the time he's there to provide a service no one else will, and that's one of the main things that seems to drive him and makes him unable to give up his work. "You care," as someone points out to him[12], and he does, despite his own cynical better judgement. He's interested in people, even when he doesn't like them very much. He wants to do what he can to help the people nobody else will, and when that works, well, yes, he says, you can call that fun.[13]
SOURCES
1. "The Morning Wasn't So Hot" (S1)
2. That is, not counting "The Golden Boy" where he absolutely didn't have a one night stand with David Gwillim's character while blind drunk, honest. I didn't mention that here, either, obviously.
3. "Home and Away" (S6)
4. "Works With Chess, Not With Life" (S2)
5. "How About A Cup of Tea?" (S7)
6. "It's A Woman's Privilege" (S6)
7. "How About A Cup of Tea?" (S7)
8. "Hard Times" (S7)
9. "The Trouble With Jenny" (S6)
10. "The Fall Guy" (S7)
11. "The Man Who Said Sorry" (S6)
12. "What's To Become of Us?" (S7)
13. "Hard Times" (S7)
hc_bingo square "prostitution". Meta on the character of Frank Marker from Public Eye and how much he can and can't be said to prostitute himself (metaphorically at least). (~1200 words. Non spoilery and hopefully accessible. No warnings needed that I can think of.)
"I'm like you - paid by the hour, not by results."[1] So says Frank Marker to a prostitute in one of the earliest surviving episodes of Public Eye, a UK 1960s/70s TV show about a low-rent private detective which somehow by dint of being as realistic as possible managed to make gripping TV out of the smallest of stories and kept its lone hero a fascinating yet real, refreshingly non-stereotypical and fallible figure over 10 years and seven series. Frank's something of an enigma, despite or maybe because of his ordinary, down-to-earth nature.
The prostitute comparison above is not accidental, even if it's not true in the most literal sense (as far as we know, Frank Marker doesn't have sex with anyone during the entire run of the series[2]). In other senses of the word, it’s another matter. He's working alone at something he (and most others) find distasteful, morally ambiguous at best, hiring himself out to be used by other people for a fee, hanging about street corners, and often putting himself at risk in the process.
Frank hires himself out (by the day rather than by the hour, in fact - his fee is £6 a day for most of the series) to strangers, to become involved in their lives, and some of them want to use him in ways he doesn't expect. "I used you... I thought you wouldn't mind because I was paying you,"[3] one client says, and she's not the only one.
In the course of the series (or the surviving half of it), people attempt to use Frank to get revenge on someone, to find (with intent to kill) someone in police protection, to take the blame for a crime (for which he goes to prison for two years), to create a reaction (suspicion/jealousy), or even to take a beating for them. Frank tries to avoid and detect the people who are likely to lie to him and use him, but he doesn't always manage it. He's not a deductive genius, he hasn't got money or friends in high places, or even the support of colleagues - he's an isolated, at-risk figure, vulnerable to abuse by those who hire his services and those he investigates.
He clearly finds much of his work distasteful, comparing himself at intervals to "... the man who drives the corporation dustcart"[4], or a sewerman. His job is "...collecting dirt. Other people's. It rubs off and I don't like it."[5] And yet he continues: following ordinary people, interfering in their lives, looking through their possessions, their windows, lying to gain information, and all for clients who frequently don't deserve his efforts. When he's desperate to pay his bills, he'll take on work he likes even less, from something as innocuous as expensive cat-sitting to hard-core debt-collecting. (When someone takes him to task over the latter, and tells him to stop, he counters with the argument that if it's an ugly job, why shouldn't he do it? If someone has to, why not him?[6])
His acknowledgement of the unpleasant nature of his job seems to be part of why he sees himself as being beyond the pale, or contaminated, reinforcing his tendency to isolate himself from people who want to help or befriend him: "I'm in a dirty business... No matter what way you look at it, there's never a job that doesn't smell." (And as Percy Firbank, one of those few friends points out in response - how he spends his time and who he is are the same thing.[7]) The few people who care about him – and the viewers watching – feel he is prostituting himself in a sense; that he's much too good to do what he does. His probation officer sees his going back to working as a private eye is a disaster, his landlady (with whom he has a tentative romantic relationship) feels it's a failure to help him on her part, and Inspector Firbank who works with him in the later series, thinks he should find something better to do. Even his bank manager tells him he's worth more than he thinks. [8]
They have reason to feel that way – Frank's way of life clearly damages him. As a result of his work he doesn't just have to endure failure, disappointment, resulting trust issues, and generally seeing the worst side of life and human nature on a regular basis, but a year of prison and eight months on parole, his inability to stay with the people who care about him, lack of well-being (he's beaten or threatened several times throughout the series, even aside from whether or not he can afford to eat and clothe himself properly) and sacrifices his personal reputation.
Frank's intensely moral, but almost everyone assumes a private eye will be corrupt in some way, even before they find that he's got a criminal record. It's a reaction he gets over and over (he's already weary of it in S1, let alone S7), to the point that a police sergeant, who encounters him while investigating a suicide does some background research and, on learning that Frank's got a friend in the force, takes that not as reference for Frank, but as an indication that Inspector Firbank must also be corrupt.[9]
On the other hand, though, this is a choice he makes. Frank is on a one-man crusade: he's here to help the people no one else wants to bother with, and better they come to him than somebody else who will try to take advantage of them. He's ready to work for anyone who needs him, sometimes even when they can't afford him - people who get into trouble through their own fault. He'll save a shop-lifter from being arrested, help a man who's caught up in a carbon-paper scam, find mitigating evidence for a murderer, help free a known 'villain', or interfere in any number of personal relationships. As he says at various times over the years, the people who come to him haven't got anywhere else to go.
Ron Gash, a fellow private detective (and temporary partner), wanting Frank to admit that he's in this for the money as much as everyone else is, can't get that out of him, and instead inadvertently hits the truth: Frank sees himself as a public servant. [10] That, after all, is what the man who drives the corporation dustcart is.
"I do my work, I take my money and I move onto the next foul up, because there always is a next one. And don't think you're the first person who looked at me and wondered what sort of man does what I do. Do you want me to justify it? Go and ask the... undertaker - or the sewerman... why he does it! Doesn't matter why... You need us."[11]
On his bad days, Frank Marker may feel he prostitutes himself, or other people may think so, but most of the time he's there to provide a service no one else will, and that's one of the main things that seems to drive him and makes him unable to give up his work. "You care," as someone points out to him[12], and he does, despite his own cynical better judgement. He's interested in people, even when he doesn't like them very much. He wants to do what he can to help the people nobody else will, and when that works, well, yes, he says, you can call that fun.[13]
SOURCES
1. "The Morning Wasn't So Hot" (S1)
2. That is, not counting "The Golden Boy" where he absolutely didn't have a one night stand with David Gwillim's character while blind drunk, honest. I didn't mention that here, either, obviously.
3. "Home and Away" (S6)
4. "Works With Chess, Not With Life" (S2)
5. "How About A Cup of Tea?" (S7)
6. "It's A Woman's Privilege" (S6)
7. "How About A Cup of Tea?" (S7)
8. "Hard Times" (S7)
9. "The Trouble With Jenny" (S6)
10. "The Fall Guy" (S7)
11. "The Man Who Said Sorry" (S6)
12. "What's To Become of Us?" (S7)
13. "Hard Times" (S7)