Creator of the Twilight Zone and very dapper dude, Rod Serling had a lot to say.
A lot to say.
And he was ready to say it all. From his experiences as a Jewish-American WWII combat soldier to the postwar conditions he saw in Cold-War America.
But caught between politically-driven media censorship and bottom-line commercial sponsorship, Serling often found that he was cut off from saying it.
After advertising sponsors gutted any potentially ‘offensive’ material in his play addressing the racially-motivated murder of teenager Emmett Till, Serling realized direct commentary was always going to be a no-go.
He needed an alternate path.
Sci-fi, largely dismissed as a genre of little consequence at the time, offered him a perfect disguise.
A kind of American bella figura that accomplished its personal goals by presenting the public with a pleasing presence…
…not a presentation relying on beauty, “class” or elegance as in the Italian tradition, but rather on dismissible quirkiness…
…the kind that over decades culminated into the “nerd” culture now so deeply embedded in our mainstream.
Alien invasions reflected the fears, contradictions, hypocrisies and ironies in America’s fever-pitch paranoia of “others” and “enemies”.
Fantastical AI dove deep into human and beyond-human emotionality as it pondered the wondrous side of a new era’s strange technological possibilities.
Magical objects appeared mysteriously in otherwise ordinary realities and played at modern man’s Achilles heel: his view as himself as a purely logical apex.
This was how Serling delivered contemplations on fear, greed, courage, power-gone-wrong, soldiers’ PTSD, prejudice, future-making, arrogance, and ethics-
With science fiction as parable.
Broadcast to the public.
Hidden in the wide, wide open.
Even prior to the launch of the show, Serling was already serving up his American bella figura as this clip of an 1959 interview captures. Here we see Serling comfortably lying through his teeth about, as this journalist put it, “giving up on writing anything important for television”:
The Zone looks lawless. For everyday folks with an ordinary range of strengths and flaws, experiences vary. Sometimes temporary and strange, other times enchanted and healing, still other times seemingly cruel and endless.
It’s always a toss up for the average Joe.
Or perhaps, it isn’t, but the set of rules governing their experiences remain a mystery to us.
For the arrogant, the greedy, the bigoted, the swindling, the dictatorial, the cowardly, and the cruel, however, the Zone lays out a singular road. A clear and unfailing one:
There will be no rest for the wicked.
Folks who have given into the worst of human behavior must face themselves, and the hidden architecture of the Twilight Zone will move reality around until they do.
Filed neatly under Twilight Zone Justice are a handful of stories on bigotry and hatred that hit a particularly resonant note for our times.
While the economic factors often underpinning racist waves are not brought to light, the following episodes are nonetheless insightful and instructional for helping to attend to the socio-political ghosts haunting our times.
Stoking the Flames of Hate
Set in a post-WWII working-class downtown, "He Lives" (1963) follows a young Neo-Nazi who rises to become the movement's leader with the help of a mysterious guide.
This episode serves as waystation between yesterday’s German Nazism and today’s American extremism, complete with (silent but apparent) economic frustrations, scapegoating, and patriotic-sounding values.
A must-watch in general and a valuable discussion point for those with loved ones who may unknowingly support such positions without understanding the full implications.
On the Dangers of Hating Those Who Hate
Set in a small Midwestern town, "I Am the Night; Color Me Black" (1964) is a cautionary tale about the destructive cycle of hate. The plot centers around the execution of an unpopular idealist who killed a local racist. On the day of the execution, the town wakes up to find the sky is still dark and the sun has not risen.
The episode shows how the righteous can go wrong. As well as those who seek to correct the righteous-gone-wrong.
If we are not watchful, such a cycle begins to spin and spin until it is a whole world of vengeance as justice.
Of pain for pain, eye for eye, tooth for tooth until all the lights go out.
Toggling the Line Between Hated and Accepted: “White Ethnics” in the Twilight Zone
One of the most well-known episodes, "The Shelter" (1961) is a cautionary tale about Cold War panic in the form of a (white) suburban neighborhood that receives emergency orders to take cover.
It’s a great, must-watch episode with much to discuss in its main storyline, but I’m going to focus on an element that I have not seen receive attention.
As neighborhood friends fight over the only bomb shelter on the block, one American-born character accuses his dark-featured, accented friend Marty of being like other foreigners:
"pushy, grabby and semi-American."
It’s a quick but loaded interaction that offers a rare glimpse at the often silent mid-20th century pressures Americans from the "other Europe" (Southern, Eastern, and non-Protestant) faced in the not-too-distant past.
Rare because the folks who went through such things, for a variety of reasons, typically said nothing about it.
A similar white-ethnic toggle appears in the above-mentioned episode "He Lives." In the opening, Catholics and Euro-ethnic foreigners are named as some of America’s problematic "others;" later in the episode, they then (with the exception of Jewish-Americans) seemingly appear as part of the Neo-Nazi crowds that dot the story.
It should be noted that America was, at the time of this filming, several decades into its immigration ban on Asian countries and “the other Europe.”
While I couldn't find a clip of the xenophobic interchange, here’s the setup at an ordinary dinner in an ordinary suburb. To help situate these dynamics in time, keep in mind that the children in this episode are the Boomer Generation.
In order to relay universal truths, The Twilight Zone took a deliciously American road filled with with sci-fi, modernity, fantasy, mass media, audacity, and nerd culture.
Even the name of the show holds significance as the term has rich roots in philosophical, militaristic, and scientific usage.
In the diasporic cultural circles I run in, I think we can fall into a trap of looking exclusively to our ancestral lands for wisdom and tradition. At least, I know I have.
And certainly, the old countries and our ancestral centuries-long customs are valid places to go.
They are not, as Jessica Mariglio and I have been discussing, the only wells from which we can drink, my diasporic friend.
We have rich pools to swim in here as well. Wherever here may be. Which for me mean the States.
New, rambunctious, and flawed as she may be. Yes, indeed, there is such a thing as American ancestral wisdom.
And we should not be afraid to claim it.