by Gabriel Alejandro
"Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
-John F. Kennedy inaugural address (January 20, 1961)
The fifties’ last couple of years witnessed a shift in perspective that contrasted with the doom and gloom that had plagued the U.S. since the end of World War II and its subsequent lead-up to the Cold War. The transition peaked when a young Irish Catholic was nominated for the presidential ticket by the Democratic Party and later won the 1960 elections. A Harvard graduate, John F. Kennedy represented a “warmer” alternative to a nation whose domestic dispute resembled its foreign one; cold.
One of the main objectives in Kennedy’s domestic agenda involved the reconciliation between the arts and politics, a relationship that the past decade had thoroughly tarnished. Hollywood Blacklisting and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt had pushed many entertainment workers into exile during the forties and early fifties, leaving those who stayed behind without stable employment and in fear of persecution. But now, gone were the days McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and in their stead were Kennedy’s youthful and progressive prospects. This meant that every writer, actor, director, producer and composer could venture freely into their craft without worry of whiplash by the government which, in turn, had set a precedent for the American audience:
He [Kennedy] was…the first presidential candidate to mount both a literary and a television
[emphasis added] campaign for the office, the only one comfortable in both media, and
the perfect man for a time when Americans were teetering on a balance point between image and
word. (Thurston Clarke, Ask Not, 2010; P. 115)
Television, a medium that had been persecuted for its then-rapid widespread and informative capabilities, was becoming more and more common in every household. This, along with a young president’s embrace of the medium, catapulted the industry’s creativity into experimenting with never-seen-before themes and techniques.
One program in particular that emerged during this era was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Originally presented as a fantasy/science fiction anthology series, The Twilight Zone constantly touched on subjects that reflected the worries and aspirations of the times. The show’s first episode aired on October 2, 1959, three months before Kennedy began campaigning for the primary elections (January 2, 1960) and was cancelled in late January 1964, less than three months after his assassination (November 22, 1963). But the program’s five-year-run would be enough for it to leave its mark in television history. By exploring different aspects of the human psyche such as that of a soldier’s during war, the possibility of life in other planets, and giving new angles to historical events, The Twilight Zone ventured into territory that would have been deemed unsuitable for television would it have aired some years earlier.
In “Where Is Everybody?,” the first episode that formally aired under The Twilight Zone brand name, we meet an amnesiac Air Force pilot roaming in a deserted town. After much scavenging and self-questioning, the man finally collapses after running from a shop and into a street crossing pole. We then see that the man is not really in a desolated town but in a test chamber, and a group of military personnel observes the unfolding of his delusion. He is a test subject in a moon trip simulator, completely isolated in a town was just an illusion. After being carried out by medics, he gets a glimpse of the real moon and says, “Hey! Don’t go away up there! Next time it won’t be a dream or a nightmare. Next time it’ll be for real. So don’t go away. We’ll be up there in a little while.”
Aside from the nuclear tension that characterized the Cold War, the space race against the Soviet Union comes in close second. This competition would not have only granted technological supremacy to its victor, but it would have also awarded ideological superiority to the winning nation. The U.S. audience had been fantasizing about space travel since the early years of film and television. But for a while any public “space talk” was avoided amid fears of Russian spies acquiring classified information. That lasted until May 25, 1961, when Kennedy, before a joint session of Congress, gave his "Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs” speech in which he urged the Nation to set the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” A year later, on September 12, 1962, he gave another speech, later known as the “Moon Speech,” at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas. This time he expressed how the trip to the moon would spur an aftermath of technological innovations similar to previous achievements such as the printing press and the steam engine. Even though the goal was set to be long-term (before the end of the decade) and the Russians had the advantage, the Nation had been rallied up and felt that the task at hand was within grasp for the first time.
Other well-known episodes from the first season such as “Time Enough at Last” and “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (both airing between November 1959 and March 1960) also carried the spirit of the epoch in more than one form. In the first one we meet Henry Bemis, an avid reader surrounded by uncultured people. He is an admirer of Robert Frost (who, coincidentally, recited a poem during Kennedy’s inaugural) and is mocked by both his boss and wife for his passion for literature. The subject of anti-intellectualism was well-known at the Kennedy camp. A lover of words and history, Kennedy believed past administrations had strayed from establishing an intellectual core and compensated by opening the doors to intellectuals in his administration. Furthermore, in “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” the topic veers from current or future events into the near-past. Maple Street is your typical 1950s portrait of an American neighborhood until bizarre incidences take place after a shining object is seen in the sky. Since the residents do not know the cause of these occurrences, they begin to single out each other by creating conspiracies fueling the idea that a monster dwells among them. It is a clever reimagining of Communist paranoia and its blind fervor that stalked the government under Senator McCarthy. The episode ends with a conversation between the culprits, two extra-terrestrial beings who observe the events from afar, when one says: “… I take it this place –This ‘Maple Street,’ is not unique?” To which the other one responds: “By no means. The world is full of Maple Streets. And we'll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves. One to the other...One to the other...One to the other...” (The “monsters” in the title referring to human beings instead of actual monsters or aliens).
In conclusion, one could spend countless pages and ink counting the parallels between history
and fiction in every Twilight Zone episode. For many, Kennedy embodied the spirit of the people which sought to distance itself from the practices and ideologies of the past. This resulted in a large manifestation of arts and academic work in government affairs and vice versa. The constant mirroring and exposure of political subjects in television and movies resulted in the “de-stigmatization” of some elements but also in the further expansion of others. In one hand, the possibility of reaching the moon and its advances was tangible; but on the other, the bomb and other scare-tactic representatives were still ever-present in every household. Nonetheless, this did not halt the television and film industries from maintaining the flux of interesting proposals throughout the decade. And even though creativity persisted, the early sixties’ optimism, along with Kennedy, ceased on November 22, 1963.
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