Robinson Crusoe on Mas a Tierra; Napoleon on Elba; Schofield on Nosy Ankarea. Island exile is an opportunity for man, that bare-forked thing, to confront his essence in solitude. Yet where Crusoe explored theology, economics and the nature of human civilisation, and Napoleon brooded on his world-historic destiny, Schofield is bellyaching to the viewers of Channel Five about losing his job for schtupping one of the runners on his daytime telly show and fibbing about it to management.
Commentators are using phrases like ‘redemption arc’ to describe the action of Cast Away. Schofield insists that this isn’t a route back to the limelight so much as ‘me having my say as I bow out’. He has no intention, he declares on TV, of returning to TV.
Schofield isn’t just marooned on an island. He’s marooned between two cultural eras
He said as much when all this blew up last year, mind you; and here he is.
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