The Twilight Zone Rod Serling's words: Episode "He's Alive''

[Ichingcarpenter]

''Where will he go next? This phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare. Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive.''

''He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because, through these things, we keep him alive.''

This episode aired 10 days after George Wallace's "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!" inauguration speech.

[Octafish]

2. Stuff like that doesn't get on tee vee anymore.

If it's not good enough for Roger Ailes, it ain't gonna get seen by Mr. Murdoch, OK?



FOX News' Roger Ailes is a Big Fan of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite NAZI filmmaker.

[deutsey]

4. Serling's moral view, I think, was shaped by his combat experience during WWII

Last edited Fri Nov 20, 2015, 01:45 PM - Edit history (1)

He served in the South Pacific.

Serling's combat experience affected him deeply and influenced much of his writing. It left him with nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life.[4] He said, "I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service. I think I turned to writing to get it off my chest."[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Serling#Military_service

At their best, I think his Twilight Zone episodes were like mini-morality plays, which is why I think attempts to revive the show have failed.

The revivals always seem to focus on the weird and creepy stuff in the old Twilight Zone but they lack that moral center at the heart of many original Twilight Zone episodes.

[suston96]

5. I binge watched......

...every episode available via Netflix and prior to Netflish when they ran the series numerically on TCM (I believe)

Very instructive.

Rod Serling was a creative genius.

[Doctor_J]

22. a lot of the sci fi writers couched their liberal politics in allegory.

Harlan Ellison is another example

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. You inspired me to go find that episode online and watch it.

While the episode's "twist" was pretty obvious from the get-go, overall it still speaks volumes about today and all the hatemongers in society, Trump included.

That one episode where the older Jewish gentleman is talking to the café owner across the street from where the Dennis Hopper character is giving one of his speeches and he talks about how people used to write him off as a joke, but no longer...that could be said word for word about Donald Trump these days.

Excellent acting by Hopper, by the way. It's a very modern 21st Century type portrayal....hard to believe it came out in 1963. It's also hard to believe that Dennis Hopper is no longer alive.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Rod Serling's script on Hitler telling Hopper's character what he needs to do

to attract the masses to his cause.

The Dark Figure speaks to Volmer

Let us start by your learning what are the dynamics of a crowd.

How do you move a mob, mr.Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?

Volmer: I don't know.


The Dark Figure: How? Join them first, mr.Volmer.

JVolmer: Join them?

The Dark Figure:

Yes, when you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a member of the mob.

Speak to them in their language, on their level.
Make their hate you rhate.

If they are poor, talk to them of poverty.
If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears.

And if they are angry, mr.Vollmer, if they are angry, give them objects for their anger.

But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, mr.Vollmer, is that you make this mob an extension of yourself.

Say to them things like things like "they call us hatemongers.

"They say we're prejudiced.

"They say we're biased.

"They say we hate minorities- minorities.

"Understand the term, neighbors: "Minorities.

"Should i tell you who are the minorities?
"Should i tell you? "We! We are the minorities!"

Shall i tell you who the minorities are?! We, we, we! Wearethe minorities!

Because patriotism is a minority.

Because love of country is the minority.

Because to live in a free, white america seems to be of a minority opinion!

That way, mr.Vollmer.


Start it that way.




Vollmer: I understand.

I think i understand.

[AlbertCat]

11. hard to believe it came out in 1963.

Not when you consider the zeitgeist of the early 60s... and thru the 70's.

That died with Reagan and the GOP "Greed is Good" meme...which (as they knew it would) appealed to the lowest common denominator in human character...after just a few years of the terrible sacrifices of having to wait in line for gas and stuff.

I miss the pre-Reagan years. But you can't go back.

You can go forward however, while jettisoning harmful behavior and renewing with a new attitude what worked well in the past.

But again, someone might have to pay more taxes (even tho' they are low now) or be unable to afford processed food heated up for them by someone else....and wait in line.... y'know, all those sacrifices.

[Fritz Walter]

8. Here's the IMDB link

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734572/?ref_=ttep_ep4

When I searched YouTube, I found excerpts from that episode and a review.
I'm also pretty certain that it's on Amazon Prime Video, if you subscribe to that service and are willing to pay $1.99.
Anybody on Netflix able to provide a link?

I love Rod Serling's intro to the episode describing the Dennis Hopper character as:

...A sparse, little man who feeds off his self-delusions, and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet.
And like some goose-stepping predecessors, he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting.
The something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon, he calls it faith, strength, truth.
But in just a moment Peter Vollmer (Hopper) will ply his trade on another kind of corner. A strange intersection in a shadow land called The Twilight Zone.

OMG! That describes tRump to a tee and (broken-)crosses it!

[RoccoR5955]

9. Bigoted idiots should shut their mouth! n/t

[Tommy_Carcetti]

10. Something else that struck me about the episode:

Dennis Hopper's character's cognitive dissonance, having looked up to the older Jewish man as a father figure while still neo-Nazi hate on the street corner at the very same time.

Pretty much the whole "I've got black friends" excuse rolled up into a nutshell.

[markbark]

12. You know what's REALLY fscked up?

When comparisons to Hitler/Nazis DON'T violate Godwin's Law

[sarge43]

13. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Paraphrasing "They pick the most dangerous enemy .. themselves."

[Doc_Technical]

14. I agree with you sarge43

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 — and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is — that these things cannot be confined — to the Twilight Zone.

[sarge43]

16. Beautifully summed, Doc.

It always starts with fear, fear of the unknown, the different, the other

Quoting another great writer, "Fear is the mind killer."

[Ichingcarpenter]

18. Yeah........ those were Sterling's words too

at the end of Nightmare on Maple Street.

I had just watched 'he lives' and of course it made me think as Sterling usually does and I saw that Trump meme plus knowing his other statements on Mexican rapists etc thought it was worth the message.

I really don't buy into Godwin's law because the reality of history and my research. Its normally not applied correctly anyway to most discourses.

The Bush family history should point one into the direction on NAZI and Fascist underpinnings within our national character..

To quote Serling again he might have well said it last spring because it still addresses our times as it did back then

“It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.''

from a Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970”

[sarge43]

21. Like Carl Sagan, a good man who left us far too soon. n/t

[FlatBaroque]

23. ...

[bobthedrummer]

15. K&R from Gauleiter WALKER'S Wisconsin-he's alive here big time

Other Gauleiters
http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/gauleiter.htm

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. It's available for free at Hulu....

http://www.hulu.com/watch/440821

[Ichingcarpenter]

19. All his scripts are available on line too

The Rod Serling Archives consist of television scripts, movie screenplays, stage play scripts, films, published works by Serling, unproduced scripts, and secondary materials.

The Rod Serling Archives were transferred to the Ithaca College Archives and Special Collections from the Ithaca College Roy H. Park School of Communications during the summer of 1997.



http://www.ithacalibrary.com/archives/serling/


The twilight zone scripts
UK site

http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-twilight-zone-1959

[sarge43]

20. Netflix is also streaming it n/t

[loyalsister]

24. I had to go watch it, and man was that creepy!

What an amazing talent Rod Serling was. Twilight Zone episodes are timeless examples of lessons we haven't learned.

[Omaha Steve]

25. Not to hijack the thread

I gave this a K&R earlier today.

Marta and I have 2 sites dedicated to the TZ 2002 & 2004 cast-fan reunions.

2002: http://www.steveandmarta.com/graveyards/tzcon2002.htm

2004: http://www.steveandmarta.com/tzcon2004.htm

And the 80's version of the show: http://www.steveandmarta.com/ntz1.htm

OS

[longship]

26. I support this pseudo highjack.

OS TZ links are well worth a click through. I have done so on more than one occasion, just to remember The Twilight Zone which I viewed in its original broadcasts.

So much great writing and cutting to the core social commentary.

This is when television took risks, and made profound statements, rare -- no, absent -- in these days on the big networks.