Monsters on Maple Street, page 30
Meanwhile, the history of another program, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967–1969), served as another reminder of the limits of postwar television. Despite airing at the same time as Bonanza, the Smothers Brothers was a runaway success, particularly with younger audiences. A variety show, the program featured a blend of comedic acts and musical guests, including Pete Seeger, George Harrison, Buffalo Springfield, Joan Baez, Ray Charles, and Jefferson Airplane. The program became increasingly controversial, however, with its inclusion of political satire, particularly aimed at the Vietnam War and the 1968 presidential election. Perhaps most famous of all, Pat Paulsen ran a presidential campaign as part of the show’s biting political satire. The program’s deadly mixture of being both popular and subversive proved more than enough to cause alarm to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He began calling William S. Paley, the CEO of CBS, urging him to remove political content from the program. Ultimately Paley gave in, canceling the show in 1969.3 If The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, and The Addams Family demonstrated how to creatively subvert the status quo on television, The Smothers Brothers reminded audiences of the medium’s limitations.4
Serling’s career following The Twilight Zone included a variety of different projects for both television and film. He wrote the screenplay for Seven Days in May (1964); attempted a short-lived western entitled The Loner (1965–1966); contributed to The Planet of the Apes (1968); wrote several specials for television, such as A Carol for Another Christmas (1964) and Eyes (1969); and was perhaps most recognized for his hosting The Night Gallery (1970–1973). Although Serling contributed to a couple of episodes, he lacked creative control of The Night Gallery, having been hired by Universal for his popular image. He soon found the show full of formulaic horror and cheap thrills, conspicuously lacking the incisive social element he had injected into The Twilight Zone. “I’m staying on as announcer. . . . It’s not mine at all. It’s another species of formula series drama,” he once remarked. After fighting so long against sponsors’ dominant control of the medium, he also was hired for several TV advertisements. He narrated a Proctor & Gamble ad for floor wax and offered his celebrity status to Crest, Anacin, and Z-Best rustproofing.5 While in his later years he seemed to be compromising his strongly held beliefs, this was partially because he had, regrettably, sold CBS the rights to The Twilight Zone following the show’s last season. The show airs today on the Syfy channel, where it has a dedicated New Year’s marathon, and it has made the leap to streaming, with Netflix, Hulu, and Paramount+ having carried the series. Serling, who proved prophetic in so many ways, failed to see the longevity of his creative output.
Regardless of these late struggles, Serling remained interested in democracy and social issues. In his later years, he found a new outlet on college campuses. In 1967, he began to teach writing classes at Ithaca College, where he remained a faculty member until his death in 1975. Thus, while his platform for social criticism had largely vanished from popular media, he regained it to some extent in the classroom. He not only taught courses but frequently made appearances at universities throughout the nation, including UCLA in 1966 and 1971 and in 1970, USC, where he gave the commencement address. These invitations to teach and speak during the height of many social movements in the United States demonstrate The Twilight Zone’s enduring impact.
And while the phrase The Twilight Zone has entered into our vernacular, indicating something eerily fantastic or odd, this common usage seems to miss the point. For it was not the illusory or fantastical that served as the show’s true foundation, but the perilously real particularities and prejudices that make up our actual world—the hazardous, oppressive, mind-numbing elements that we too often accept without question. These features were never exclusive to The Twilight Zone and never will be. By making “reality” seem stranger and more grotesque to relatively insulated Americans, Serling sought to call attention to the fact that their reality is arbitrarily constructed. Whether Americans choose, somewhat subconsciously, to cede to marketers, politicians, pundits, and actors, all responsibility and power in defining reality, without actively contributing themselves, still remains to be seen.
In a related sense, Serling also exemplified a trend that became increasingly apparent during the postwar period—the commodification of cultural dissent. While Gil Scott-Heron declared, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” manufacturers and marketers figured out ways to do just this, repackaging elements of the counterculture and selling them right back to “nonconforming” Americans, thereby ensuring their conformity. As Thomas Frank has recently explained, “The anointed cultural opponents of capitalism are now capitalism’s ideologues.” Instead of advertisers putting forth an image of conformity, tradition, and conservative values, they have, like Nike did in 1994 with William S. Burroughs, invited their once ardent critics to boost their hip factor and expand their markets to the most marginal would-be social rebels. From Burger King, one learns, “Sometimes you gotta break the rules,” while Levi’s lets the jean-wearing public know, “There’s no one way to do it.”6 If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then American marketers have deluged the counterculture with an endless torrent of it. Consequently, the sponsored world has effectively declawed its once outspoken critics and offered them an open-ended invitation to join it. The world of consumerism now actively pursues the unorthodox, marginalized, and nonconforming members of the world in order to come up with fresh, new ideas, a phenomenon explored in the PBS documentaries Merchants of Cool and Generation Like.7 Meanwhile, numerous The Twilight Zone characters have been transformed just like Dan Hollis was by Anthony in “It’s a Good Life”: they are literally now toys.
For some, this inclusion of the counterculture in the marketplace provides evidence of the democratization and inclusivity of consumer capitalism. Although racially and culturally inclusive imagery is increasingly found in ads, products, slogans, and industries, they remain largely that—images. Whether the imagery comes from MLK, the Beat writers, the Black Panthers, social activists, or punk rockers, their truly subversive ideas are effectively removed. Consumers everywhere can now enjoy noncontroversial and intellectually dull versions of some of the most probing minds in American history. The social critics, poets, and singers of the postwar era have been manipulated and decontextualized to suit the whims of marketing campaigns. Even though William Burroughs reassures us in his Nike ad that “the purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain,” there is indeed something confusing about all of this. In the same vein, why Crest once wanted to feature Serling, a world-renowned chain-smoker, to be its spokesman is a bit perplexing. But apart from simple ironies like these, there is something far more troubling at work: these figures’ genuine intellectual thought has vanished before the public’s eye as a direct result of being “incorporated.” While the more frequent appearance of countercultural voices and critics in ads may make companies seem more eclectic, hip, and smart, they have quite possibly fooled us—if we believe that they, as companies, or the United States, as a society, genuinely embody the principles of those voices.
The revolution, in fact, is not just being televised, it is being outright promoted. For example, ZzzQuil tells one on MLK Day, “Today is the day for dreaming.”8 This irony seems almost too much to bear: a murdered civil rights leader is used to promote sleeping aids. Similarly, Popchips reminded chip eaters everywhere that MLK was a “poptomist” and featured his words, “The time is always right to do what is right,” probably the vaguest and most malleable statement from MLK they could find.9 Consumers are not encouraged consider how King worked tirelessly against poverty, economic inequality, racial violence, voter suppression, and American wars that killed millions of people. Even more recently, MLK has been wildly misappropriated in the fight against teaching Critical Race Theory or even talking about systemic racism in the interest of “colorblindness.” Ibram X. Kendi has referred to it as the “second assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” and explained how “King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as his dream.”10
Nina Simone has also recently been given a second career thanks to Ford. She posthumously promoted the automobile manufacturer’s 2017 line with her song “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,” in an advertisement along with footage of people being stuck in traffic and a poor cat that cannot get its head out of a box. Her once powerful appeal to justice, “I wish I could break all the chains holding me,” now relates to simple inconveniences, like putting on pants. The fight for racial equality has been mindlessly equated with inconvenient work commutes and wearing shirts that are perhaps a little too tight to take off. While Simone worked tirelessly to promote racial equality and justice in the postwar United States, Ford reassuringly explained: “No one likes being stuck. That’s why Ford is developing new ways to help you through life—faster, easier, better. Today and tomorrow we’re going further so you can.”
While marketing approaches and images have changed since The Twilight Zone, one element has remained constant—the final, simplistic, solution. Just as appliance manufacturers ensured parents that a piece of modern technology could free them to be more attentive to their families, the purchases of certain clothing items, beverages, cars, and cologne still offer guarantees of freedom. Similarly, consumer purchases are supposedly the most authentic means of confirming one’s status as a self-actualized social rebel. Instead of being empowered to think critically, act collectively, and seek to resist and regulate sources of corruption that permeate society, one can, among other things, indulge in a midnight snack. Rather than think outside the proverbial box, those who are genuinely hungry for change can instead simply “think outside the bun” by placing an order at a conveniently located Taco Bell drive-thru. Being a nonconforming rebel has never been so easy.
During his years as a television writer, Serling asked, “How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?” The question is now “How can you promote critical thought, meaningful action, and intellectual stimulation when proceedings are now interrupted by civil rights activists promoting Ford Motor vehicles?” In other words, how can one argue for the continual need to support and fight for one’s rights and those of the others, when the voices of such social causes have been domesticated and mischaracterized so profoundly? Marketers have taken the work and thought of social critics and turned them into a cozy image or warm feeling. But Americans are in serious danger of amnesia if they cede all control and historical memory to marketers whose primary interest remains improving their images, boosting their sales, and making consumers “feel something.” Restoring singers, activists, and writers to their proper context, focusing on their unique work and ideas, rather than image, is clearly a vital need. If America’s history is to be maintained and not endlessly vandalized by marketing and political campaigns, then a more concerted effort is required.
This implies a need not to simply offer historical actors some kind of vague reverence but to constructively and creatively maintain the connection of strugglers with their struggle, as well as our own. It has been my attempt here to show that innovative thinkers and writers, are in fact “stuck” by the very marketing that promises liberation, and consequently, so are we. Along with these historical actors, it is clear that we too, need to exist beyond the “dimension of sight and sound,” but be once again allowed to dwell with others, living and deceased, in the “dimension of mind.” By reconnecting The Twilight Zone to the rich intellectual world in which it emerged, I have sought to do the opposite of marketers—emphasize the significant and durable ideas, rather than the overly recognizable images.
The continual cultural significance of The Twilight Zone, however, is represented through not merely the marketing and commodification of the show’s recognizable images and characters but the persistent need for social criticism within popular media. The most obvious example is the 2019 The Twilight Zone reboot, hosted by Jordan Peele, which revived the original program but also, in some ways, Serling’s pre–Twilight Zone career. The first episode, “The Comedian,” has the same title and subject matter as one of Serling’s Emmy-award-winning 1950s teleplays. Serling’s 1957 work, starring Mickey Rooney, told the story of a viciously ambitious comedian who abused anyone and everyone around him. Similarly, the 2019 episode follows a fledgling comedian, Samir Wassan, played by Kumail Nanjiani, whose jokes about the Second Amendment and political issues consistently fall flat with audiences. After Samir realizes he can get more laughs by incorporating more personal matter, such as making fun of people from his past and present life, his career quickly takes off. His skyrocketing success, however, does not come for free, as he realizes that everyone he incorporates into his routine vanishes, never to be heard from or seen again. Very soon, his dog, his girlfriend’s nephew, former classmates, and current coworkers disappear. Undeterred, Samir continues using different people in his comedy, even taking vengeance against unruly audience members by making fun of them and ensuring their disappearance. The point is clear enough—he will use and destroy anyone to advance his career and fame. When his ex-girlfriend shows up at the club where he is performing and calls him out for his abusive tactics, he makes his last joke about himself, thereby ensuring his own disappearance. Peele closes the episode: “Samir Wassan learned the hard way that sometimes getting everything you want means losing everything you love. And after finally finding himself on the verge of becoming somebody, he chose instead to once again be a nobody. In the end, Samir’s final encore is a show you can only buy a ticket to . . . in The Twilight Zone.” This episode, like so many in the original series, dramatizes the wages of success and achieving one’s version of the American Dream. The new series carried the legacy, exploring such themes such as post-traumatic stress disorder, immigration, consumer culture, and misogyny.
However, one of the series’ most powerful episodes returns to the one of the major reasons for the creation of The Twilight Zone: racial prejudice and injustice. The episode, “Replay,” features a plot device from “A Most Unusual Camera,” in the original series (S1, e3; S2, e10). While “A Most Unusual Camera” told the story of a camera that could foresee the future, “Replay,” incorporates a camcorder that can turn back time, making it possible to alter the past. The episode features an African American family, Nina Harrison, played by Sanaa Lathan, and her son Dorian Harrison, played by Damson Idris. Dorian is accompanied by his mom as he is off to start college at Tennyson University, a historically Black university. The episode ultimately revolves around their repeated encounters with a racist police officer, Officer Lesky, who continually finds reasons to suspect them of wrongdoing. Each time they encounter him, first for speeding on a highway, later on for a noise complaint at a hotel, the exchanges escalate dramatically: the cop uses a taser on Dorian in one instance and slams his face against a glass picture frame in another. Each time, however, Nina uses the camcorder to turn back the clock, giving them another chance to reach their destination without having to encounter racial profiling and police brutality. Having rewound the tape one more time, Nina sees the officer in the diner and offers to buy him a slice of apple pie as a gesture of appreciation for his service. Her plan to gain the officer’s trust, however, backfires as he soon suspects she stole her car, and he demands to see the vehicle title. As Dorian reaches for his cell phone to show the officer a photo of the car’s title, Lesky fires a round into Dorian’s chest. Dorian and Nina seemingly cannot escape violent run-ins with the same racist officer, no matter how many times Nina rewinds the tape.
Finally, taking a different route, Nina and Dorian visit Nina’s estranged brother. With his help, Nina and Dorian find an underground tunnel that leads to Tennyson University. When they emerge on the surface, though, the officer pulls up and begins questioning them again. While Nina holds the camera, Officer Lesky says, “You think you can intimidate me with a camcorder? Don’t you watch the news?” Nina replies, “You’ve crossed the line. Harassing us, abusing authority. You’ve been profiling us, targeting us, following us, shooting us, killing us. Not anymore. Now we cross the line. My son will cross that gate. Right now, right here. My son will go to college. So back the fuck up!” She finally adds, “I see it now, Officer Lasky. You’re the one who’s really afraid.” The episode concludes with Peele’s closing narration: “Nina Harrison found that only by embracing her past could she protect her son’s future. And it was love, not magic, that kept evil at bay. But for some evils, there are no magical, permanent solutions, and the future remains uncertain even here in The Twilight Zone.” The fact this episode aired amid a string of killings, whose victims were Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and many others, demonstrates the desperate need for popular media to continue to expose and address rampant social injustice.
While Serling would undoubtedly be troubled by the great number of injustices still being perpetrated in American society, he would be glad to see that there still are television writers who share his social consciousness and concern. Writer and producer Charlie Brooker’s creative output, including How TV Ruined Your Life, which focuses on the suppression of reality on television, and Black Mirror, centering on technology’s impact on modern life, are clear descendants of Serling’s series. And in 2016, Ithaca College created the Rod Serling Award for Advancing Social Justice through Popular Media. The annual award was first given to David Simon, whose best-known work includes The Wire and Treme, dramatic explorations of urban life in Baltimore and New Orleans. In its second year, the award went to Kenya Barris, whose show black-ish has included commentary on police shootings, complicated aspects of raising Black children in America, and the continual struggle for racial equality. It remains clear that there is a need and a demand among public audiences for popular media to broach controversial subject matter so that they might not be entertained to death, but to think and thereby more meaningfully connect to their real world.
