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Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Leslie Feldman of Hofstra University reveals television's long history of weaving philosophical and political ideas into the plots of popular dramas.
Leslie Feldman is a professor of political science at Hofstra University where she teaches courses in classical political theory, modern political theory, and American political thought. She has published research on early-modern political figures such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, and in 2010 published Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling. She holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Dr. Leslie Feldman - Politics and The Twilight Zone
Though its final episode aired on CBS in 1964, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone remains groundbreaking and engaging to this day for the way it mixed fantasy and the supernatural with philosophical and political themes, such as capital punishment, the individual and the state, war, conformity, the state of nature, prejudice, and alienation.
Of course, science fiction stories that reflect on the human condition were not new in the late 1950s/early 1960s. This was already prevalent in literature - take George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. But Rod Serling was among the first to bring this type of storytelling to television - using aliens and machines to understand human nature. Episodes where space aliens extol "How to Serve Man" and where people tried to escape the threat of the Cold War by boarding spaceships to other planets reflected political concerns of the time, like nuclear war and post-industrial technology.
Today's television audiences - particularly fans of Lost, the new Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, might think the connection of science fiction and fantasy to social commentary is a current trend. Lost featured characters with the names of political philosophers - Locke, Rousseau, Hume and Burke - and explored the delicate balance between good and evil. But Lost and shows like it clearly have antecedents in classic television, employed not only by The Twilight Zone but also Star Trek and The Outer Limits.
Ironically, Lost and The Twilight Zone may have another connection. In 1969 there was an ABC show titled The New People, about college students who were stranded on an island after a plane crash. The first episode was written by none other than Rod Serling.
One would suppose that as people must deal with society's philosophical and political complexities, they can find solace in an old friend, The Twilight Zone, as well as the legions of stories and programs it continues to inspire.