Dawidziak - Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone

Rod Serling Courtesy SUNY Broome Community College

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To Becky,

who shares walks and talks, a sense of wonder and a sense of humorwith much love

Rod Serlings love of dogs (see Lesson 8) is wonderfully evident in this photograph taken by another writer named Serling, his daughter Anne. His friend is the family setter, Michael. Courtesy Anne Serling

Im talking about this past season some were dramatic and moving, such as Twilight Zone. When television is good, nothingnot the theater, not the magazines or newspapersnothing is better.

Newton N. Minow,

chairman, Federal Communications Commission,

May 9, 1961, speech

He dreamed of much for us, and demanded much of himself, perhaps more than was possible for either in this time and place. But it is that quality of dreams and demands that makes the ones like Rod Serling rare and always irreplaceable.

Gene Roddenberry,

July 7, 1975, memorial service for Rod Serling

That The Twilight Zone is damn near immortal is something I will not argue with.

Stephen King,

Danse Macabre (1981)

Everybody who does this well, which means fantasy television that has something to say, owes a debt to Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone. Theres TV that kills time and leaves you empty. And then there is TV that is nourishing and nurturing to the soul. Thats the type of television Rod Serling did better than anybody else.

Frank Spotnitz,

writer-producer, The X-Files,

2009 interview with author

It has forever been thus: so long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedomsall of themmay remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.

Rod Serling,

January 15, 1968, speech

When Mark asked me to write the foreword to his book, I was both honored and petrified. Honored to be asked and petrified that I had nothing I could add to a book that so clearly articulates the parables of The Twilight Zone and pays such heartfelt homage to my dads work and life. I would like to say that I wrestled with this quandary for days, but, truth be known, it was months. Then, like most ideas, it evolved iteratively until finally the fog lifted and I knewwrite about how Mark and I met and one of his very first questions to me: Why do you think your father wrote what he did?

Mark and I first connected through Charlotte Gusay, who was representing Marks proposal for this book. Coincidently, another writer friend, Mark Olshaker, and I were at the same time considering writing a similar book based on my experience with the Fifth Dimension, an elementary school program introducing fifth graders to The Twilight Zone . A series of telephone introductions and follow-up calls led to a midpoint meeting at my home to discuss working together on the project. Despite all our good intentions to push the project forward, life happened. Mark returned to his day job and working on another Mark Twain book; Mark Olshaker succumbed to the pressures of completing a two-book deal on criminal injustice with FBI profiler John Douglas; and I found myself submerged in writing a memoir about my father. But what remained was Marks questionsomething I was curious about as I explored both the personal and professional sides of my fathers life for the memoir.

So then, what, in fact, do I think about why my father wrote what he did? Before I answer, let me say that I am neither an academic nor a researcher. I am extremely biased; and my thoughts are based on personal experience and comments from those who knew my dad or were fans. That said, let me share with you what I have come to believe by beginning at the beginning.

My father, born on December 25, 1924, often referred to himself as a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped, even though he was raised in a Reform Jewish family. Growing up in Binghamton, New York, an enlightened and viable manufacturing hub, my dad was (for the most part) sheltered from the Depression. He was exposed to the industrial philanthropy of George Johnson, who donated Recreation Park (three blocks from my dads house), along with six carousels to the city and surrounding municipalities. Johnson felt carousels contributed to a happy life and would help youngsters grow into strong and useful citizens and believed carousels should be enjoyed by everyone and insisted that the municipalities never charge money for a magic ride. This enlightened and stable environment, along with the unconditional love of his parents, provided my father an idyllic childhood of riding bikes to the park; Saturday matinees; reading Amazing Stories, Poe, and Lovecraft; and forging lifelong friendships.

While the idealism of his childhood may in part explain his propensity for nostalgia, I think other childhood experiences are also important. Although always proud of his Jewish heritage, I suspect that my grandfathers philosophy of taking people for who they are, not where they go to pray resonated deeply within my dad. I also think the fact that my father was blackballed from his Jewish fraternity in high school for dating non-Jewish girls hurt him profoundly and was the genesis for his belief that prejudice is the greatest evil of all time.

My dad graduated from high school in January 1943 and within days enlisted, hoping to fight the Nazis in Europe. He ended up a paratrooper in the army (511 Airborne Division) and was dropped onto Leyte in the Philippines, where he witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. During this time he saw his friend decapitated by an air-dropped supply crate; narrowly escaped death, thanks to a buddys shooting an enemy soldier whose rifle was aimed directly at my dad; and wrote a short story, First Squad, First Platoon, which opens with a dedication to his unborn children:

Im dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories arent very well received at this point. Im told theyre outdated, untimely, and as might be expectedmake some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings dont like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking; protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism; and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their forgetting quite admirably.

But you, my children, I dont want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel and 88s and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb; a burnt patch of flesh; the crippling, numbing sensation of fear; the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy Peace in our time. A very well-meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing their rose-colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before.