Passionately Against Racism: ROD SERLING
You don’t even have to read about his life to know that Rod Serling had a particular hatred for racism. In interviews with family and friends the topic comes up repeatedly. He served in World War II, in the Phillipines, aware of the price to ordinary people (his favorites in his writing) of totalitarianism (his favorite villain).
“These experiences potentially led him to spearhead episodes that were vehemently anti-Hitler, anti-fascist and anti-racist,” said Melissa Phruksachart, an assistant professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. [Marketwatch.com Sept. 21, 2018]
Here’s the thing about me and Serling. As is the case with Bradbury, Ellison, and a handful of others, he was deeply humane–he didn’t want people to suffer. I embrace that about him, and them. At the same time, I’m sure he would hate my politics.
And…it wouldn’t matter.
Today, it matters who you are associated with, who you vote for, who you work for, the common little things you say.
Serling, a committed Democrat and liberal, never (to my knowledge) used Republicans as villains or democrats as heroes. Because, I think, he was above that. He knew that today’s freedom fighter was tomorrow’s Castro.
In the Twilight Zone ep “The Obsolete Man,” Serling makes his most obvious case against The Controlling State.
This ep isn’t about “I’m a Democrat, and the Republicans are evil.” It’s about people. It’s a piece of fiction written by a man who had no problem working with people who weren’t from his political party. It’s about a man who gives his life over to The All-Powerful State, and in the end he’s still eliminated. Because he was imperfect.
This is a bugaboo of mine. I’m not a liberal, but I’ve lived in and around liberal cities all my life. Most of the people I’ve worked with were to my left, and it meant something to them. More than once, I’ve shared lunch breaks and nights out with friends who loved when I talked about science fiction and horror and fantasy stories that were really about scapegoating (“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin, one of the perfect stories), sexism (several stories by Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr.), race (the novels of Samuel R. Delany, the pop culture essays of the sadly recently-deceased Greg Tate). We talked about the Charlton Heston SF trilogy and how Progressive the films were, even coming from uber-liberal Hollywood.
Then, at some point, they’d get the look. Often their eyes dart back to give me another look, as if they just realized they were talking to an alien. Or a Nazi.
I’m not begging for leftists to like me — they’re the ones with the problem, not me. I’m not saying speculative fiction in general and Rod Serling’s in particular gives me a special Progressive I.D. card, because I’m not a Progressive.
I’m just a man who has always believed certain things are right and wrong, and most of the leftists I’ve worked and lived with simply don’t see that, because I voted for Him. Once they learn that about me, I’m subhuman.
That’s nothing at all like dealing with racism. But it is like the impact of reading a fantasy story that lets a reader know, for a few moments, what someone else’s life is like. Just a little taste of it.
I’ve had some of the same feelings in my own experiences as the outcasts in the stories of Harlan Ellison, or the complicated characters in the books of Octavia Butler.
It’s not about me, it’s about what they achieved, and what it made me feel as a reader.
Which brings us back to “The Obsolete Man.” Oh, stop, yes I WAS heading back here on purpose, and I didn’t forget.
“The Obsolete Man” is not about race, but Serling’s deep hatred of injustice seeps through this story of a white man in a white society being marked as The Bad One, The Unaccepted One. Metaphors are flexible. I can imagine a person of color watching this episode and Getting It.
“The Obsolete Man” is about being considered useless as a cog in society’s machinery.
It’s about freedom.
It’s about liberty.
It’s about the individual, living his life–‘his’, because TZ rarely featured women as the star, and almost never a person of color–and just by being himself, defying the State.
And…
It’s important.
“The Obsolete Man,” unlike so many filmed dramas of its time, is available to you on Blu-ray. It’s a ‘sci-fi’ story.
It’s also a message from a man who has been dead for almost half a decade, whose concerns about racism and the treatment of minorities — be they ethnic or intellectual — permeated so much of his work, even if it wasn’t About race.
“The Obsolete Man” is about the treatment of the individual by the State. And that’s something anyone can feel.
Maybe that’s the key, not insisting every story include you, but trying to challenge yourself and find a place in someone else’s story.
You should watch it. In this story not about race, you might come at the topic from the side, and understand what it must be like to be considered a non-person, one of the tools of racists.
