They understood that we have deeply imbedded and growing conflict, and they did things to make that conflict deeper and angrier.Īn op-ed piece in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal by Gerald Seib entitled "Russia's Real Goal: Continue Democracy's Decline" made the point. They succeeded by creating new hashtags, starting new protest groups, and organizing protests. I have thought a lot about this episode with the recent indictments by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller about attempts by the Russians to make the polarization of our country even greater. Their observation is that they can do things which will cause earth people to kill one another. The last scene is a conversation between two aliens, who make the comment that people on earth are clearly so susceptible to paranoia and panic that these aliens feel that they really do not have to attack and fight earth people. They have caused the temporary changes to the lights and electric power system. At the end of the episodes, we see aliens who have come to earth in a space ship and who are above the neighborhood. ![]() ![]() This episode was about the interference with electrical systems in a neighborhood which caused the people in the neighborhood to panic, get paranoid, and eventually cause the accidental shooting death of one of their residents. Following is the Wikipedia description of the episode. As viewers, we watch the proverbial dominos fall.This is the title of a Twilight Zone episode which first aired on March 4, 1960. When the power goes out and the phone lines go dead and the cars won’t start, there must be a person at fault. At the urging of a little boy who’s read one too many alien comics, the adults on Maple Street start to look for an alien enemy among themselves. This commentary on human nature remains achingly accurate, especially at this point in history. In the vein of Arthur Miller’s witch-hunting play, THE CRUCIBLE (which premiered on Broadway nearly eight years before “Maple Street” aired) Serling explores how, as people, we can often be our own greatest enemies how in the face of things which can’t be explained (like a power outage), humans are quick to point fingers, blame and ultimately sacrifice each other. Like all the great episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, this is a one-two stomach punch – like a macabre Aesop fable. The reason “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is an exemplary script lies in how Serling takes us from terror (anticipation) to horror (realization). ![]() ![]() This is the place where Rod Serling takes us in THE TWILIGHT ZONE.Īccording to Devendra Varma, who was an expert in gothic literature, the difference between terror and horror is “the difference between awful apprehension and sickening revulsion.” This is to say that terror is the emotion we feel when we know something unimaginably awful is going to occur horror is the emotion we feel when we sit in the realization that something unimaginably awful has just happened. Things we can’t explain – aliens, monsters, apparitions, demons - are inherently terrifying because… if you can’t know it, you can’t beat it. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”įor me, what has always separated horror from, say, an average mystery or action story is this element just outside the realm of the knowable and the conscious.
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