In 1959, CBS aired the pilot for a science-fiction, fantasy, psychological-supernatural horror show that would go on for five seasons and won two Emmy Awards in Drama and a Golden Globe. Today, more than fifty years after its initial release, the show is often ranked as one of the best shows of all time. Do you know which TV series I am describing? Most likely not without some help, so here is the introduction. “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.”
Rod Sterling’s The Twilight Zone remains syndicated by CBS and lives on through reruns and on streaming sources like Netflix and Amazon Prime. The Twilight Zone undoubtedly fulfills an early example of post-modern horror, as the show depicts characters facing futuristic, paranormal, supernatural, or disturbing events and moral difficulties. The surprising twists and moral lessons that made the show famous defined an innovative new genre for television. Although there have been attempts to revive or reboot the show, they could not capture the same quality that made the original so successful. The Twilight Zone falls into that category of things that you only really understand until you experience it first-hand; something that cannot be described adequately to someone else without showing them.
Until recently, it was hard to find another example that fit neatly into The Twilight Zone’s unique genre and created a similar sense of psychological tension. One of the shows that has come close is Netflix’s Black Mirror, which we have discussed in class. Undoubtedly, many fans of the show use language like modern-day-Twilight Zone, or describe it as a technologically skewed version of The Twilight Zone, because the show is similarly difficult to describe without first-hand experience. We can see this description through blogs and news articles- here, here, here, and here (among countless other examples).
(As a side note, I think that any television show or horror work that Stephen King tweets about should automatically be qualified as a post-modern horror success- as seen in his tweet below)
Loved BLACK MIRROR. Terrifying, funny, intelligent. It's like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, only rated R.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 7, 2014
While there are many authors devoted to describing the particular brand of psychological horror shown in both Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone, as well as many shows trying to recreate their success, I want to focus on the aspects that differ between the shows. In trying to compare the two shows, I chose two episodes from Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone that focus on a similar theme, mainly class structures in society and the desire to “fit in” with others. I am going to describe the episode from The Twilight Zone first, move on to the episode from Black Mirror, and then look at how they interact.
Eye of the Beholder
Season two, episode six of The Twilight Zone focuses on a woman named Janet Tyler. We spend the first twenty minutes without seeing Janet’s face; it is covered in bandages. She lies in a hospital bed. As she starts talking to a nurse in the room the camera focuses on her covered face, and then moves to follow Janet’s hands as she talks. Janet begs the nurse to ask the surgeon to take of the bandages because she wants to see if the operation was successful. She cannot wait any longer, since this is her 11th time undergoing procedures on her face. Janet lives in an alternate reality, at an unknown time, where being ugly is outlawed and procedures are performed to make citizens pretty.
As you can understand after 11 surgeries, Janet must be restrained at times to let her face heal because she cannot wait any longer. If the operation turned out to be unsuccessful, she will be sent to live in exile with other undesirable persons.
Throughout the episode, before the bandages are taken off, Janet talks to anyone who will listen about how much she wants to be normal. She just wants to fit into society. She is not upset about the forced participation and mandatory procedures because she wishes to walk in the street without scaring anyone. Ostracized for her looks her entire life, Janet offers to wear a mask and stay indoors all the time, just so that she can live a normal life if the surgery is unsuccessful.
She befriends her surgeon and shares with him that her earliest memory is looking at a little boy and making him cry because of her ugliness. The surgeon comforts her and identifies with her. He knows that the chances of the surgery were slim and that she is likely as ugly as before.
Stepping back for a moment here, the film techniques, camera movement, jump cuts, and use of shadow to hide the faces of everyone except Janet is exceptional. By interacting with a protagonist whose face is covered, and making clever use of the black and white medium of television at the time, The Twilight Zone forces the audience to interact with an entirely faceless cast. For the first twenty minutes of the episode, we do not see anyone’s face. This seems normal at first, that maybe a reveal will come in the next shot, but as the episode progresses we begin to question the importance of personal appearance. At one point, Janet’s surgeon asks himself whether beauty is only skin-deep, and what it truly means to be beautiful.
The climax of the episode comes as the surgeon removes the bandages from Janet’s face. Slowly and methodically, this scene lasts for almost five minutes, until the final bandage is taken off and we see the results of Janet’s procedure. She is strikingly beautiful, and touches her nose and skin in excitement. She suddenly screams, however, and runs away when she gets to her lips and nose. As the surgeon turns on the lights, the twist of the episode is revealed. Beauty in this world does not match up to the audiences’ standard of beauty; what might be considered ugly for us is the definition of beauty for Janet and her society. Since uniformity and beauty are required of every citizen, she is destined to live in exile. She cannot undergo anymore procedures.
This episode reminds the viewer of Nazi Germany, where uniformity and conformity were praised. Where being different meant being dirty or inhuman. The leader shown on the television screens in the episode shouts how glorious conformity will unite the nation and praises the benefits of uniformity. As its title implies, Eye of the Beholder plays off the adage that beauty is subjective and only serves to create class and social tensions. The episode warns of what might happen if society becomes too focused on standards of beauty and the subjectivity of ranking others based on personal traits. It ends vaguely, as most post-modern horror works do, with Janet walking towards her new life in exile.
Nosedive
Black Mirror’s first episode in season three, Nosedive, has similar themes of segregation, class tensions, uniformity, and societal values. It follows a young woman named Lacie who lives in a futuristic world where you can rate others’ popularity on your phone. Your rating determines many different aspects of your life, including where you can live, who you can socialize with, what businesses you can shop at, and what discounts you can get. Lacie wants to move into a luxurious apartment, and can either pay a massive rent or raise her rating to obtain a discounted rent. She chooses to go to a rating improvement agency and gets life and networking coaching, attempts to socialize with higher rated people, and is eventually invited to speak at a wedding with people with top ratings.
We see as the episode progresses how such a future might be possible in real life, outside of the television show. The episode alludes to the ranking system that companies like Uber, Yelp, and even Netflix use in our daily lives. It depicts a society where every move is scrutinized, every word is parsed, and every hair must stay perfectly in place. Social values become integrated and forced upon everyone.
While the ending for Lacie is both tragic and liberating, because she frees herself from the vicious cycle of the rating system by destroying her score, the episode shines a light on the inherent class system that comes with society and the pressure we feel to fit in or be popular.
I looked further at research in social anxiety, the othering theory (that we instinctively find differences between groups of people), and the psychology of presenting your best self to society. In Mark Leary and Robin Kowalski’s 1995 book, Social Anxiety, the authors discuss how self-presentation behavior, along with impression management, influence interpersonal behavior as a basic necessity for social life (Leary and Kowalski 16). They write that there is nothing inherently manipulative in influencing other people, social influence is just an essential and valuable aspect of our daily lives. Particularly interesting to this episode of Black Mirror, Leary and Kowalski write that as long as people believe they are projecting the right kinds of impressions, they will be more relaxed and confident (Leary and Kowalski 19). Alternatively, when you think you are giving off the wrong kinds of impressions, then you are more flustered and anxious. They present a self-presentational theory of social anxiety, that social anxiety is a function of two factors: “the motivation to make a desired impression and the subjective probability of doing so” (Leary and Kowalski 19).
What does all of this mean for Lacie, though? As the episode starts out, Lacie has a good rating. She feels confident in herself and her public image, so is also confident in how she presents herself to the world. It is only when she feels an increased pressure to improve her popularity that she begins to doubt her ability to influence others. As her anxiety and frustration begin snowballing her rating lower, she creates this negative feedback loop that can only end in two options: becoming a social outcast and be miserable trying to climb back up the ranks, or choose to disregard the rating system and rid herself of the social anxiety it causes her.
Social Anxiety, Fitting in, and 50 Years of Psychological Horror
I guess it is both comforting and upsetting that social anxiety and the pressure to fit in was as prevalent in the 1960’s as it is today. Both Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone offer different takes on similar issues. While Black Mirror offered a futuristic, technology-based approach to the dystopian world depicted in Nosedive, The Twilight Zone presented the issues of segregation, popularity and beauty, and social anxiety in Eye of the Beholder with a science fiction and monstrous lens. Both Janet and Lacie face social pressures to conform and gain popularity among their peers.
Both these episodes might not be considered horror in its traditional definition, but engage in a type of post-modern horror called digital anxiety. Barry Grant discuss digital anxiety in his article “Digital Anxiety and the New Verité Horror and SF Films.” Grant describes digital anxiety as a stylistic approach that depicts the “monstrous in the mundane spaces we see every day in social networking, which also captures and disseminates globally daily atrocities beside which monster movies pale” (Grant 153). In both episodes, the anxiety is created when our normal perceptions about society or the world are flipped and perverted. While we may wish to be more beautiful or popular, these episodes show what society would be like if these social pressures ruled every aspect of our lives.
The larger message though, when both of these episodes are looked at together, is not simply that we need to worry less about our physical appearance or how popular we are (though that would definitely help many of us), but rather that humanity inherently creates these social classes and pressure. What is truly horrifying is that we can imagine both of these alternate realties coming true. While we might laugh at the pig-features of Janet’s world and scoff at the technological aspects of the rating system, these episodes make one realize that humanity is not above these behaviors. This subverts our comfort in our own lives, because while these episodes are just fiction, they shine a light on human nature that creates this underlying anxiety. Knowing that something depicted in these shows could happen in real life breaks down the comfort barrier between the viewer and the fictitious world.
Looking back, the similarities between Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone are striking. It is understandable now why so many viewers can only really describe one show with the other. They form a unique blend of drama, science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, and psychological horror, that creates and fits into a distinct genre.
Works Cited
Black Mirror – Nosedive. Dir. Jon Wright and Charlie Brooker. Perf. Bryce Dallas Howard. Black Mirror. Netflix, 21 Oct. 2016. Web. 1 Mar. 2017.
Grant, Barry. “Digital Anxiety and the New Verite Horror and Sf Film.” Science Fiction Film & Television 6.2 (2013): 153-75. Web. 1 Mar. 2017.
Grant, Drew. “‘Black Mirror’: A ‘Twilight Zone’ for the Modern Age.” Observer. Observer, 31 July 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2017. <observer.com/2014/07/black-mirror-a-twilight-zone-for-the-modern-age/>.
Leary, Mark R., and Robin M. Kowalski. Social Anxiety. New York: Guilford, 1995. Print.
Orange, Michelle. “Is Black Mirror the Twilight Zone of the Digital Age?” Vogue. Vogue, 01 Feb. 2017. Web. 1 Mar. 2017.
Paul. “Is Black Mirror Truly a Modern Twilight Zone?” Shadow & Substance. The Night Gallery, 19 June 2015. Web. 1 Mar. 2017. <thenightgallery.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/is-black-mirror-truly-a-modern-twilight-zone/>.
Sheffield, Rob. “How ‘Black Mirror’ Became the Technology Era’s ‘Twilight Zone’.” Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 31 Oct. 2016. Web. 01 Mar. 2017. <www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/rob-sheffield-how-black-mirror-became-our-twilight-zone-w446961>.
The Twilight Zone – Eye of the Beholder. Dir. Robert Enrico. By Robert Enrico and Rod Serling. Perf. Roger Jacquet and Anne Cornaly. CBS-TV, 1964. Netflix- S2E6.