Posted on 09/01/2010 7:54:36 AM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
In 1970 University of Kansas Professor James Gunn interviewed famed "Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling and what he said about how badly the subject of race was handled on TV in his day is particularly trenchant.
Gunn, a science fiction writer in his own right having won many awards for his work, asked Mr. Serling if he felt that any current television fiction was relevant to the human condition. Rod was discouraged that it was, especially where it concerns the issue of race.
"Most television fiction that I watch has very little relevance. I think it's one thing to say that we will now have a program called ModSquad, say, and we will have one black man and one oriental and one Hawaiian to show this marvelous melting-pot concept. But I think, Jim, that's altogether phony. I don't think that's… I think at best condescension and at worst exploitation. The fact is that we have so distorted the pure ethnic minority over the years by making every black man a banjo player, and a village idiot, and a coward, that suddenly we are going to reverse switch, he is now a brain scientist or an atomic scientist or any one of an equal distortion at the other end. Needless to say I'd much prefer the distortion on the good side of the scale… but all television fiction I find quite irrelevant and quite unrelated."That was a pretty dismissive view for Rod Serling to think of the medium that made him famous, but on the other hand it’s hard to argue with his logic. For all the ballyhooing about TV it has rarely been relevant to much of anything....
See this great video at Publiusforum.com...
IMHO Serling was tremendously insightful not only in the observations he made of human behavior, but in his ability to spin them into didactic fables and allegories.
Don't forget, some of the best episodes were written by (or based on stories written by) writers such as Ray Bradbury, George Johnson, Damon Knight and Jerome Bixby. Richard Matheson, a good sci-fi writer in his own, co-wrote many of the episodes with Serling.
Well yes, but he said this in the Dark Ages before we had Reality TV.
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