Twilight Zone -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 13:24:10 03/06/08 Thu
Author: CS Holden
Subject: Twilight Zone

In discussing this class with friends, "The Twilight Zone" (the good old one, not the crappy new show that steals the old name) almost always comes up. Many episodes deal with the mob-ilization of human beings against an individual. The plots are comprised of little moments that reveal hints about an individual or a group of individuals, and by "hints" we could also use the word "markers." As the group slowly converges onto the victim, therein we get our moral.

I'm specifically thinking of an episode called "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." We had to read the screenplay back in high school, and a few years later I got to see the actual episode. It's a wonderful working-through of the scapegoat mechanism and the ensuing violence. (For a plot summary of the episode, here's the Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street)

The aliens outside of the town have the following conversation while the humans dissolve into chaos.

"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines, their telephones, their lawnmowers, throw them into darkness for a few hours, and then sit back and watch the pattern."

"This pattern is always the same?"

"With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find.... and it's themselves. All we need do is sit back and watch."

"I take it that this place...this Maple Street...is not unique."

"By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets, and we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves."

And then Rod Serling's pithy closing narration: "There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own; for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to 'The Twilight Zone.'"

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