Unitarian Universalist Values in the Twilight Zone

Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington

Heritage Day, May 27, 2008

Rev. Paul Ratzlaff

 

Conversation with Carolyn:

Paul: Have you heard of the “Twilight Zone?”

Paul: When I was a kid, we’d watch it sometimes on our black and white TV, but it was freaky. Nowadays if you want to see it, you can on You Tube.

Did you know that the creator of that TV series was a Unitarian Universalist?

Paul: Nope. He was raised as a liberal Jew. After serving in the army, he attended Antioch College with its Unitarian roots going back to Horace Mann. He fell in love with Carol Kramer, a Protestant. When their two daughters were born they settled on Unitarian Universalism as a great way to raise their mixed religious family. They were active members of the Santa Monica, California, congregation, and supported the UUA and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Paul: Serling said, “…of all the media, TV lends itself most beautifully to presenting a controversy.” He realized that with a small number of actors, etc., “he could get his point across.” 

Paul: Serling was frustrated with the economics of TV. In 1959 he said, “I think it is criminal that we are not permitted to make dramatic note of social evils that exist, of controversial themes as they are inherent in our society.”

Paul: No way! He came up with the idea of using science fiction and fantasy as a way to write about the subjects he wanted to.

Paul: Exactly! From 1959 to 1964, he wrote or adapted 99 of the 156 episodes.

Paul: As a UU you can imagine – prejudice, loss of identity, capital punishment, censorship, the Holocaust, ageism, and social conformity are among the themes.

Paul: Indeed, they still plague us. Serling died in 1975, but the issues he wrote about are still here.

Paul: What do you mean?

Paul: I’m not certain, but sometimes people who are outside the mainstream can bring a fresh perspective to things that people in the middle of things don’t see.

Paul: Perhaps. Clearly he had a creative mind to begin with. His association with UUs supported, and may have expanded, his creativity.

Paul: I think you may be on to something. Take prejudice, for example, even the people who make prejudiced statements, are probably afraid of prejudice on some level.

Paul: I’m proud of Rod Serling’s accomplishments. And I’m proud that he was a Unitarian Universalist.

 

Based on article by Beringia Zen at www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/rodserling.html

 

UU Values in the Twilight Zone

 

Here’s a synopsis of an episode on the Twilight Zone:

Lying in a darkened hospital room, her head entirely wrapped in bandages, Janet Tyler, whose hideously abnormal face has made her an outcast all her life, waits to see if the last treatment has succeeded in making her look normal. This is her eleventh hospital visit – the maximum allowed by the State. If it is a failure, she will be sent to a village where others of her kind are segregated. Unseen by her, only heard, the shadowy figures of her doctor and her nurse come and go. On televisions throughout the hospital, the Leader of the State speaks of “glorious conformity,” as Miss Tyler’s bandages are gradually removed. Revealed, her face is extremely beautiful. The doctor draws back in horror. The treatment has been a failure! As the lights are turned on, we see the faces of the others: misshapen, asymmetrical, like something out of a nightmare. Crying hysterically, Miss Tyler runs from her room, down several hallways, and finally into a room where she comes face to face with another “freak” – Walter Smith, a strikingly handsome man in charge of an outcast village in the north. He has come to take her there. Gently, he assures her that she will come to have a sense of belonging and that she will be loved. He advises her to remember the old saying: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

[And then the tag lines:] Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it, what kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out among the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned…in the Twilight Zone.[1]

What an effective way to illustrate “the inherent worth and dignity of every person!” Many of us have struggled with looks and body types that are not thought of in our society as beautiful. We fear that, looking the way we do, we will not be loved. Just look at the commercials that play on these anxieties. “Use our product, and you will be loved.” Moreover, we who are white-skinned are learning to appreciate how devastating our Euro-centric norms of beauty are for others. An African American acquaintance speaks of straightening her hair. She says she does it “to make you [us white-skinned people] comfortable.” Her naturally kinky hair, she fears, disturbs others, so she processes her hair to “fit in more.” I loved the movie Shrek. It’s a contemporary “fairy tale” that takes on the cultural norms of beauty and ugliness.

As Carolyn and I mentioned for the children, Rod Serling realized that he could address serious questions through a science fiction and fantasy series for TV. He could reach millions with these questions and observations. And so he did through five seasons of the Twilight Zone between 1959 and 1964.

In our own time, when fears about Christian fascism are about – a fear that totalitarianism will dominate through the means of fundamentalist religion, it is refreshing to review a 1961 episode titled “The Obsolete Man.” Remember that this was only a few years after the McCarthy hearings, and but a couple decades from the Third Reich.

The opening of the show begins with:

[After that introduction, the show develops along these lines.] In this future society, all books have been banned, along with all religion. Wordsworth, a God-fearing librarian, is judged obsolete by a chancellor of the State and sentenced to be executed in a manner of his own choosing. He is granted three requests: that only his assassin know the method of his death, that he die at midnight the next day, and that he have an audience. Forty-five minutes before he is to die, he invites the Chancellor to his room and reveals that he has chosen to be killed by a bomb set to explode precisely at twelve. He then locks the door, trapping the Chancellor. A TV camera will broadcast all that transpires – and Wordsworth will prove which is stronger, the will of the State or that of the individual. At first, the Chancellor hides behind his bravado, but soon it becomes clear that no one is coming to save him. Wordsworth calmly reads from a forbidden Bible. The minutes tick by. Finally, the Chancellor cries out, “In the name of God, let me out!” Wordsworth hands him the key and the Chancellor bolts from the room – none too soon. The bomb explodes and Wordsworth is killed. But he has triumphed; when the Chancellor returns to his court, he finds he has been judged obsolete and replaced. Loyal members of the State surround him and tear him to pieces.

[The tag line?] The Chancellor – the late Chancellor – was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under ‘M’ for mankind…in the Twilight Zone.[2]

The UU principles are obvious: Numbers 4 and 5 at the heart of our seven principles – “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;” and “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”

In the fifth and final season, Rod Sterling wrote a companion episode exploring similar issues to the skit “The Trade-Ins” that was acted before our eyes. This one he titled “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain.” In it Serling wrote of a husband forty years older than his “gold-digging” wife, Flora. The husband desperately tries to keep up with his young wife. He insists of taking a highly experimental youth serum. At first he is transformed into a younger man, more parallel in age to his wife. But, unfortunately, the serum continues its work – he regresses until he is a baby, now in the care of his wife, forced at the loss of her inheritance to care for this infant every minute.

[Serling concludes the episode with these lines:] It happens to be a fact: as one gets older, one does get wiser. If you don’t believe it, ask Flora. Ask her any day of the ensuing weeks of her life, as she takes note during the coming years and realizes that the worm has turned – youth has taken over. It’s simply the way the calendar crumbles…in the Twilight Zone.[3]

In our culture that idolizes youth, what are the costs of this idolatry?  How do we truly appreciate a love that is based not on youth and vigor, but on wisdom, that is appropriate to our aging bodies? To quote again Kahlil Gibran: Love gives not but itself and takes not from itself, love possesses not nor would it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.[4]

Did Serling first hear these words quoted by Rev. Ernest Pipes, minister of the Unitarian (this was before merger with the Universalists) Community Church of Santa Monica, California? He corresponded regularly with Pipes about politics and the “state of humanity.”[5]

Serling was born in Syracuse, New York, on December 25, 1924. When two his family moved to Binghamton, New York, where he grew up. By remarkable coincidence, one of our new members, Jeff Schiff, was awarded the inaugural Rod Serling Memorial Scholarship, created by Binghamton Central High School to commemorate its illustrious alumnus.

Serling grew up in a relatively non-observant Reform Jewish home. His father, vice president of the temple, told his sons, “I’m not a very good Jew, but I think I’m a good person. If you want to be religious, that’s up to you. My own philosophy is, I take people for what they are, not where they go to pray.”

Serling enlisted during World War II. 101^st Airborne, he dropped via parachute during the invasion of the Philippines. Awarded the Purple Heart for severe shrapnel in his knee, he probably suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. On the G.I. Bill he enrolled at Antioch College, founded by Unitarian Horace Mann. While there he felt “the need to write, a kind of compulsion to get some of my thoughts down.”

He fell in love with Carol Kramer, a Protestant. Serling’s mother hoped he would marry a Jewish girl. Kramer’s father was even more outraged at the relationship. “I absolutely forbid you to marry that black-haired little Jew,” he railed. Carol, before their marriage, talked Rod into converting to Unitarianism, which was eased by his respect for Horace Mann, and the liberal, Unitarian traditions of Antioch College.

Committed to becoming a freelance writer, he had early success with three Emmys for early television plays: Patterns, 1955; Requiem for a Heavyweight, 1956; and The Comedian, 1957.

By the late ‘50’s the market for live TV plays was over. As I mentioned earlier, Serling realized that he could create a science fiction/fantasy series for TV that would be a vehicle for expressing his liberal social and political views. So he is celebrated for the five seasons of the Twilight Zone, winning him an additional two Emmys.

After the end of the series, Serling took a position teaching at Antioch. As he said, he needed “to regain my perspective, to do a little work and spend the rest of my time getting acquainted with my wife and children.” (The Serlings had two daughters.)

He wrote movie scripts including Seven Days in May, 1964, a passionate plea for nuclear disarmament. Of the movement he said, “If you want to prove that God is not dead first prove that man is alive.” Racism and anthropomorphism were themes in his adaptation of Planet of the Apes, 1968. He continued to write TV series, The Loner and Night Gallery, but was frustrated by his lack of control over the end result.

Along with his writing he participated in social activism, speaking on behalf of the ACLU and the UUA, working, as one example, against the election of Ronald Reagan as Governor of California. He wrote letters opposing religious conservatives, and was active in opposing the Vietnam War. In his address to graduating seniors at his alma mater in Binghamton, he said, “If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow [human beings.]” Relevant words for us in the year 2008, in the middle of yet another war.

Shortly before his death in 1975 – smoking all his life contributed to fatal heart disease – he was asked about reincarnation. He replied, “I don’t believe in reincarnation. That’s a cop-out….I anticipate death will be a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything.” Perhaps an image for a revised Twilight Zone?

What a rich life of engagement with the issues of his time, and with the perennial issues that confront us as human beings!

 

Of course, we Unitarian Universalists on this Heritage Sunday 2008 can be proud of our distant ancestors, the Emersons, Thoreaus, Fullers, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Starr Kings. But we can also be proud of our more recent ancestors like Rod Serling who contributed to popular culture the questions and lessons of liberal religion. He takes his place among other relative contemporaries, like Linus Pauling, the theoretical chemist and peace activist, who won two unshared Nobel Prizes, one in chemistry and one in peace. Our heritage is indeed rich. The legacy that is ours is enormous.

May these inspiring figures motivate our commitment, as we express in our Fellowship mission, to promote liberal religious and ethical values in the community at large.   May Rod Serling inspire us to act with conviction, living our faith in today’s world, as he did in an earlier generation.

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