Well, it's been a long silence, but my computer's been down for almost two weeks. And it's late tonight, so this isn't gonna be a long one, but it's been running around the little rat-trap of my brain so I might as well let it out to play.
Remember The Twilight Zone? No, not the ones they did in the 80's and 90's. The original Rod Serling series. The well-crafted creation, largely based on well-written short stories by award-winning writers? That Twilight Zone?
Well, we're living in it. Now.
I had to read the script to one TZ show 'way back in junior high school and it stuck with me. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. I believe Serling may have written that one himself. Do you remember it?
It was about a group of small-town residents. And one night their electricity goes out. Their cars won't start. Their phones and radios go silent. But in a slightly weird way. And they all get together and panic a bit. Then one man goes and checks to see what's going on in another neighborhood. And two men attempt to go to the authorities, but are stopped by a youngster who's read, maybe, too many comic books, who suggests that it's aliens doing it. Aliens who look just like the people on Maple Street.
And at first people scoff. But then one neighbor's car works and then dies again. And the suspicion and accusations start, fingers are pointed and secret animosities are being unleashed at erstwhile friends and neighbors. A small group of people quickly become a mob, despite the efforts of cooler heads:
Steve
(interrupting)
Charlie, don't tell me what I can afford! And stop telling me who's dangerous and who isn't and who's safe and who's a menace.
(he turns to the group and shouts)
And you're with him too - all of you! You're standing here all set to crucify - all set to find a scapegoat - all desperate to point some kind of a finger at a neighbor! Well now look, friends, the only thing that's gonna happen is that we'll eat each other up alive--
And just at the height of the fear, when one neighbor after another has been accused, someone comes toward them along the darkened street. They can't see who it is. And one of the crowd gets a shotgun. And the shotgun is fired. And the lights suddenly come on. And they discover they've shot one of their own neighbors, the man who went to see about the next block over. And with that it should be over, but it's not. Because the lights are still going out and coming on. First in one house, then another. And instead of calming down, the hysteria mounts. Rapidly. Rocks are thrown. People are taking sides and chaos is ruling them all.
And then we draw back and find ourselves looking at two figures standing in the open doorway of what is clearly a rocket ship.
- Figure One
- Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines and radios and telephones and lawn mowers...throw them into darkness for a few hours and then you just sit back and watch the pattern.
- Figure Two
- And this pattern is always the same?
- Figure One
- With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find...and it's themselves. And all we need do is sit back...and watch.
And so doctors are arrested on airplanes because they look Mideastern. And a cop car that should have rightfully followed me along one street, because I was speeding at the time and not wearing a seatbelt, instead chose to follow the car next to me who turned down another street, because the driver and the passenger looked vaguely Arabic. And we all sit glued to our televisions each night, ostensibly to get the weather report and the ball scores, but really to see if anything exploded in our area that day. And even the most rational of us inch closer and closer to that frame of mind where doing something, anything, to hit back at the "monster in the dark" feels better than doing nothing.
And Serling summed it up in his voiceover epilogue for a show that was, at that time, more about the HUAC hearings than either Bin Laden or Hussein, but which has frightening resonance today:
- Narrator's Voice
- 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, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children...the children yet unborn.
(a pause)
And the pity of it is...that these things cannot be confined to...The Twilight Zone!
And somehow, I wonder what Serling would think, or write, if he were still with us today?
11:17:21 PM 
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