The Twilight Zone: A Product of the Times

Although The Twilight Zone technically started in 1959, in a lot of ways, it’s a 60s show.

That makes a lot of sense.  Created in the tail end of the 1950s, the culture was already transforming into the society of the sixties.  Sensibilities were changing, and so was television.  America was entering the Space Race, the Cold War was in full swing, and the war in Vietnam was causing strife in the country.  It was a scary time, and no show demonstrated that quite as well as The Twilight Zone.  

Like the alien invasion/red scare horror movies of the 1950s, The Twilight Zone took what America was afraid of, and applied it to the show.  Sometimes it was allegorical, sometimes it wasn’t, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what the episodes were saying.  Nuclear war.  Invasion.  Loss of identity.  Lack of control.  War.

Why am I telling you this?

Simple.  In order to analyze and understand a piece of entertainment, we also have to have an idea of what the culture was like at the time, to contextualize it.  No film (or television show) is an island, and not only is it affected by pieces of media released around the same time, but by real world events and situations.  Which makes sense, as the creators of the media are living in this society they are producing this media in.

The same holds true for The Twilight Zone.  

Whether aliens were involved or not, these were real fears that Rod Serling and the crew behind The Twilight Zone utilized in their stories.  It was a commentary on society, specifically the culture of the late ‘50s, early ‘60s.  This made it extremely relevant at the time, but unfortunately, that can seem to be its biggest problem.

One of the questions that gets thrown around about older media has quite a lot to do with the relevance of a piece at the time of its release.  A common argument is that, if it was relevant at the time, in a changed culture, the piece loses its significance.  That the culture’s sensibilities and tastes have changed.  That it’s ‘too dated’.  

Those of us who enjoy older movies and television tend to encounter this criticism quite often: the claim that the entertainment we enjoy is ‘too dated’ for modern audiences to enjoy.  Typically, this criticism applies to makeup, clothes, special effects, or acting, but also to a wider issue, the issue we tend to look at here.

The culture can’t help its clothes and makeup.  It can’t help the technology, or special effects.  If we take a step back and remember the context, we can forgive that form of dated, acknowledging that movies are made in a different way than they used to be.

Harder to accept is the ‘datedness’ of ideas.

These are the films and television shows built on the ideals of a culture that have since been discarded for a better understanding.  Films like Revenge of the Nerds or Weird Science, that can be very hard to watch in hindsight.  Movies or shows that don’t just include a few elements of dated ideas, but are based in them, irremovable from the cultural prejudices and problems of the time.

That’s the issue we look at here, and it’s the question we’re looking at today.

Does The Twilight Zone fall into the category of television shows that are too dated to appeal to a modern audience?

Let’s take a look.

At first, the answer to that question might seem kind of obvious.  I’ve already stated above that the episodes were distinctly tailored for an audience with the fears most present in the 1960s.  That, and the fact that there have been multiple reboots of the series since the original, would seem to point to the fact that of course it’s too dated.  After all, if it needed to be updated for new audiences, that surely means the original doesn’t hold the same impact now that it did when it came out, right?

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.

See, despite these remakes, reboots, and film adaptations, the general consensus is that none of them hold a candle to the original series, and it remains one of the most popular shows of all time.  How can that be, if the original is ‘outdated?’

There are those who argue that Rod Serling’s original The Twilight Zone is timeless, or, as timeless as any piece of media can be.  It’s black and white, with fashion, language, and references understandable to an audience of the early 1960s.  But there’s something else there that speaks to a more forward-thinking set of ideas.  At the close of the episode The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, Rod Serling has this to say:

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout.  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.”

Rod Serling, a Jewish-American who fought in World War II, had more than a few things to say about anti-racism.  Being banned by the censors, he couldn’t address racism as it applied to the black population of America, but he could address it as it related to the Asian-American population, giving us episodes like Quality of Mercy/Nothing in the Dark and The Encounter, starring a pre-Star Trek George Takei.  These were gutsy episodes to produce at the time, as were episodes like Big Tall Wish, episodes starring a diverse cast.

This is a big part of The Twilight Zone being affected by the culture, but in a game-changing way.  It took issues that were present at the time, and reflected them in a way that showed understanding about the situation, and how wrong it was.  In cases like that, it’s hard to argue that the show is dated, and that includes in its handling of the fears of the time.

Like I said earlier, although the stories in The Twilight Zone have a lot to do with fears at the time (nuclear war, etc.), it’s hard to argue that we as a country, or even as the human race, still don’t have these same fears.  We are still afraid of ‘invasion’, of isolation, of captivity.  In some ways, the brutal truth of these episodes holds up better now than it did when they were first produced.

In short?

Is The Twilight Zone outdated?  Only in externals.

The ideas the show was based on holds up today as well as, and in some cases better than, it did at the time it was created.  It’s an amazingly solid piece that’s relevance resides not only in the past, but well into the present.  People still get invested in these stories, in these twists, in being uneasy by the end of an episode.  The smart writing and intense storytelling are just as influential now as they were sixty years ago, and just as influential as they will continue to be in the years to come.

Thanks so much for reading!  Remember the ask box is always open if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or just want to say hi!  Join us next week when we’ll be looking at the visual and audio storytelling of The Twilight Zone.  I hope to see you there!