I have been taking in the New Year's "Twilight Zone" marathon. Every TV program, but especially those like "TZ" that are attempting to be "socially relevant," can't help but be a time-capsule. Many "Twilight Zone" episodes were preoccupied with nuclear war. Nuclear war never happened. We didn't even have a nuclear skirmish. Still, these nuke-obsessed episodes retain social relevance; not because of any nuclear war reality, but because they reflect how heavily the anxieties of the nuclear age weighed on Americans of the fifties and sixties.
This seems to be inevitable for a lot of artists who try to "push the envelope" on the issues of the day. They end up timestamping their work in a way that makes it painful to behold even a few years after the fact. The message always seems shrill and the language used to make it (dig that, hepcat!) ends up sounding preposterous. Have you read the cutting edge work of New Journalism icon Terry Southern lately? It has about as much staying power as an oyster on the planet Mercury. Meanwhile Tom Wolfe's work from the same era could have been written today. One overindulged in the trappings of the day, one didn't.
Look at music, in this case The Rolling Stones; which holds up better: Beggar's Banquet or Their Satanic Majesties Request? The cover alone should tell you.
Seriously, how much "radical," "socially relevant" sixties fare can you still stomach today? By trying so hard at the time to be epochal, by being too conscious of THIS IS THE NEW THING, MAN!, it actually winds up dating itself far more than the entertainment it was fighting to replace.
In a few years terrorism/homeland security obessesed shows like "24" will also provide us with a time-capsule. This anxiety is not a perfect comparison with the nuclear anxiety seen in "The Twilight Zone" though. Unlike "Islamofascism," the Soviet Union actually posed a threat.
Showing posts with label TWILIGHT ZONE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TWILIGHT ZONE. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Monday, January 3, 2011
Bemis and the Buttheads
One of the first "Twilight Zone" episodes I ever saw was the renowned “Time Enough At Last.” It is the one where Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a time-constrained bank teller who is always being “conspired against” by his wife and boss in his quest to find time for reading. Bemis survives an H-bomb blast (because he is sneaking in some book time in the bank’s vault), and in the resulting solitude finally finds enough time to read, read, read. That is, until his glasses break. “Time Enough” is one of the show’s best remembered episodes, and whenever there is a TZ marathon, I try to catch it.
For some viewers, one takeaway from “Time Enough” seems to be that it is a condemnation of anti-intellectualism; the tyranny of the anti-book rabble. After all, poor Burgess is callously denounced by his wife and boss for reading. Sounds like an open-and-shut moral.
The tirades of Mrs. Bemis are one thing (women live to corrode what little joy can be mined on this accursed rock). But as far as work goes, remember, Henry Bemis is a bank teller who reads on-the-job. An early scene shows how this on-the-job reading causes him to miscount change. Bemis’s hammy ogre of a boss summarily roasts him for being “a reader.” Bemis’s boss is right. Bemis works as a bank teller. That means cashing checks and taking deposits. It does not mean assailing short-changed patrons with lines from David Copperfield.
Calling Mr. Bemis on this dereliction of duty does not make Bemis’s boss an anti-intellectual or any other brand of villain. It makes him a guy who does his job, which is to supervise bank employees to ensure they perform their tasks and provide adequate customer service. A bank supervisor’s sole literary focus should be reading the riot act to bums like Bemis.
Had Henry Bemis been reading on his lunch break, and been accosted for being a reader, then yes, you could make the case that he is surrounded by anti-intellectuals. But being kept from reading the classics while being paid for work that has nothing to do with reading the classics hardly makes you a victim of those "illiterate," "unwashed" whatevers. Not in the 5th dimension or anywhere else.
For some viewers, one takeaway from “Time Enough” seems to be that it is a condemnation of anti-intellectualism; the tyranny of the anti-book rabble. After all, poor Burgess is callously denounced by his wife and boss for reading. Sounds like an open-and-shut moral.
The tirades of Mrs. Bemis are one thing (women live to corrode what little joy can be mined on this accursed rock). But as far as work goes, remember, Henry Bemis is a bank teller who reads on-the-job. An early scene shows how this on-the-job reading causes him to miscount change. Bemis’s hammy ogre of a boss summarily roasts him for being “a reader.” Bemis’s boss is right. Bemis works as a bank teller. That means cashing checks and taking deposits. It does not mean assailing short-changed patrons with lines from David Copperfield.
Calling Mr. Bemis on this dereliction of duty does not make Bemis’s boss an anti-intellectual or any other brand of villain. It makes him a guy who does his job, which is to supervise bank employees to ensure they perform their tasks and provide adequate customer service. A bank supervisor’s sole literary focus should be reading the riot act to bums like Bemis.
Had Henry Bemis been reading on his lunch break, and been accosted for being a reader, then yes, you could make the case that he is surrounded by anti-intellectuals. But being kept from reading the classics while being paid for work that has nothing to do with reading the classics hardly makes you a victim of those "illiterate," "unwashed" whatevers. Not in the 5th dimension or anywhere else.
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