Slashdot Mirror
50 Years of the Twilight Zone
pickens writes "Fifty years ago on October 2, American television viewers first heard the words: 'You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone.' Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture, appearing nearly uninterrupted through television, syndication and DVD releases and under license to air in 30 countries. 'The whole idea of "The Twilight Zone" jumped off the television screen and became a catchphrase, a buzzword for something much beyond the TV show itself,' says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. 'When you say Twilight Zone, it's its own genre.' The original show ran just five seasons, 1959 to 1964, with 156 episodes filmed; Serling wrote 92 of them, and other contributors included Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury. Anniversary observances were held at Ithaca College in New York, where Serling taught from 1967 until his death in 1975, and which keeps Serling's archives; and also at Antioch College in Ohio, where Serling was a student."
You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door.
In recent years, many directors have forgotten that slick special effects do not compensate for poor storytelling. Consider "Star Trek V" (directed by William Shatner) and "Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace" (directed by George Lucas). Both movies are packed with colorful special effects generated by sophisticated computers.
Yet, I prefer the black-and-white story of the "Twilight Zone".
So what you're saying is you have a hard time with any kind of fiction that's not science fiction?
The Twilight Zone was never pitched as a science fiction show. In his intros during the opening credits, Serling specifically says things like, "It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge."
The point was not to tell you a cool story with aliens and space ships in it, or to speculate on what the future would be like (though some episodes had these elements). The point was to present teleplays that used elements of the fantastic as shortcuts that allowed the show to present universal moral dilemmas and commentary on the human condition within its half-hour format. If you can't deal with that because it doesn't include aliens, then I suspect you've been missing out on a vast world of literature and ideas.
So often I read Slashdot and I see all these smart people, and then every kind of discussion of any fiction or entertainment is always science fiction. And then there's always one of those "Star Trek vs. Star Wars" nerd who will jump in and scream, "That's not really science fiction, it's fantasy! IT'S FANTASY!!!!" Y'know... who cares? Good stories are good stories.
Breakfast served all day!