Locke on HBO

"Does saying it make it so?" (Austin 683)

I was watching Boardwalk Empire last night. This is a show on HBO that fictionalizes the smuggling operations that took place during the Prohibition Era in the 1920/30's. One character, Chalky White, is a "prominent" African-American man who runs a smuggling operation for a corrupt politician (played by Steve Buscemi). One day while working on a shipment of alcohol, Chalky's warehouse is attacked by members of the KKK resulting in the deaths of 4 black men. Enraged, Chalky shoots one the fleeing Klansmen and he dies as well.

This outrages the community because black men at this time were not ever permitted to shoot a white man (they completely ignore the fact that the house was attacked by the KKK). To protect Chalky, Steve Buscemi's character has him arrested and thrown in jail. While in jail, Chalky's wife brings him "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens to help pass his time. As she leaves, another prisoner sees her and begins to heckle Chalky. He mockingly asks Chalky what he is reading, to which Chalky replies "Tom Sawyer". At this point, I am kind of confused because I can clearly see that the title is "David Copperfield". This is a good example of anti/signification (at least I think so). I quickly figure out that Chalky is mocking the prisoner back because that prisoner is illterate. This really reminded me of Locke and his idea that words are just signs. They have no inherent connect to the ideas they identify.The mocking prisoner can't decipher the signs (letters) and so therefore he cannot understand their meaning.

At first, the viewer is confused and he wonders if he's reading the words right, or if perhaps the title does not match the text of the book. The prisoner continues to mock Chalky and eventually finds out(too late) that every prisoner in the jail has been benefited by Chalky (he gave money to one's mother, a turkey on Thanksgiving to another, a job for another's father). He gets beaten up, and the scene ends with Chalky asking the other prisoners "Which one of you boys knows your letters" and a prisoner reads the book aloud to the group

This just really emphasizes the symbolic aspect of words. I just get the image in my head of someone cracking a code. Seeing this on TV really helped me understand how Locke saw words and also how words can signify something they aren't. To that prisoner, the words "david copperfield" meant "Tom Sawyer" because he couldn't read and Chalky gave him that interpretation. It is hard for me to understand because I can only barely separate the words "david copperfield" from the meaning they imply, but in this scenario, I think "david copperfield" is sufficient to describe "Tom Sawyer (the idea)" just as much as "tom sawyer" because the prisoner doesn't know any better.