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More than sixty years after the The Twilight Zone debuted on television, the show remains a cultural phenomenon, including a feature film, three television reboots, a comic book series, a magazine and a theatrical production. This collection of new essays offers a roadmap through a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. Scholars, writers, artists and contributors to the 1980s series investigate the many incarnations of Rod Serling's influential vision through close readings of episodes, explorations of major themes and first-person accounts of working on the show.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
Ron Riekki
Submitted for Your Approval: A Host and His Series and Their Remarkable Afterlives-An Introduction
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Part I. A Dimension of Mind: Ideas, Philosophy, and the Original Series
Middle Ground: The Twilight Zone as Social Criticism
Valerie L. Guyant
Social Liberalism and Orthodox Theology: Ideas of God in The Twilight Zone
Brandon R. Grafius
Rod Serling and the Ambiguity of Being
Kevin Bolinger
The Twilight of Humanism
Alexander E. Hooke
The Strange Zone of Speculative Rhetoric
Jimmy Butts
Serling and the Bomb: The Twilight Zone's Nuclear Landscape
Molly A. Schneider
The Twilight Zone Goes to War!
Elsa M. Carruthers and Paul Popiel
Part II. "Remember that one episode?"
From Demonic "Opie" to Latchkey Kid: The Narrative/Character Shifts in "It's a Good Life" from Television to Film
Erin Giannini
"Stopover in a Quiet Town," the Horror Film, and Dread of the Child
Dawn Keetley
Grief, Loss, and the Unknown: The Hauntological Phantasm of Richard Matheson's The Twilight Zone
Melissa A. Kaufler
"It's simply out of my hands": Human Nature as Illustrated in The Twilight Zone's "The Shelter"
Michael Meyerhofer
Part III. The Twilight Zone in the Eighties
Twilight Zone: The Meta: Interior and Epiphenomenal Elements That Frame Twilight Zone: The Movie
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Twilight of the Vampires: The Twilight Zone, Vampires, America, and
Simon Bacon
If You Dream It, They Will Film
Paul Chitlik
My "If She Dies" Diary: A Writer's Personal Journey into The Twilight Zone
David Bennett Carren
Part IV. Comparative Zones
Strange Realities: Twilight Zone-sploitation in Encounter with the Unknown
Nicholas Diak
Get Out of The Twilight Zone: The Original TV Series and Newest Reboot Juxtaposed
David Melbye
Part V. Staging the Zone
From Curator to Co-Author: Examining the Narrative and Political Choices in Anne Washburn's Stage Adaptation of The Twilight Zone
William C. Boles
A Twilight Zone of Our Own: Production Is Storytelling
Steve Krahnke and Michael Aronson
About the Contributors
Index
About the author
Writer and actor Ron Riekki has won several screenplay awards including best sci-fi/fantasy from the International Family Film Festival, best comedy from the Los Angeles Film Awards and the Nuclear Pen Award from the GenreBlast Film Festival.Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., is a professional actor and director whose previous books have covered topics ranging from Star Wars to Renaissance faires. He is a professor and chair of the theater department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
