Book Review: Rod
Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination by Nicholas Parisi
by Eric Gilliland
Few figures have influenced the popular memory more than Rod Serling (1924-1975). His work continues to captivate the imaginations of millions in the decades since his passing. In our current era of uncertainty with a creeping authoritarianism seeping into the political discourse we turn to Serling’s warnings on the dangers of prejudice, demagoguery, and intolerance going unchecked. Nicholas Parisi’s comprehensive study covers Sterling’s wide-ranging work in multiple mediums that included radio, television, theater, and film. A volume of perceptive criticism with valuable biographical insights, Parisi traces Serling’s evolution as a writer and the themes he returned to throughout his career as a writer and public personality.
Serling grew up in in
Binghamton, New York and had a rather ordinary childhood, a place he would
often return to in his writing (The Twilight Zone episode “Walking
Distance” being an example). He served in the Pacific Theatre during the Second
World War as a paratrooper, earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. His war
experiences would influence his work which often dealt with the lasting
consequences of violence. Shaken by what he saw in the war, Serling dealt with
PTSD symptoms for the duration of his life. Aimless after the war he found
purpose through creative writing as a student during his years at Antioch
College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
After college Serling found
work writing scripts for local radio and television in Cincinnati. Parisi devotes
particular attention to a short-lived anthology TV series Serling authored
entitled The Storm, a precursor to The Twilight Zone. The
Storm revealed his interest in fantastical storytelling to address current
social issues. An episode entitled “As Yet Untitled” dealt with a Chinese-American
couple being persecuted after moving into a white neighborhood, which was based
on a real incident in San Francisco. Most of his early radio and television
work in Cincinnati only exists in script form that’s available at his archives
at Ithaca College and it is to the author’s credit for unearthing these key
works in Serling’s evolution as a writer.
From Cincinnati he moved
on to New York City and began writing for the television networks. He broke in
during the “Golden Age of Television” when live dramas were shaping the future
of the medium. If movie studios were still relying on big budget star driven
vehicles, television was moving in the direction of gritty socially relevant
stories that were giving voice to a new generation of writers, directors, and
actors. Patterns would be the work that made Serling a household name, a
stark tale of corporate intrigue presenting a grim vision of the American
dream, in Serling’s words, “an indictment of the supposed values of a society
that places such stock in success and has so little preoccupation with morality
when success has been attained.” Patterns would be made into a feature
film, as would his other teleplays Requiem for a Heavyweight and The
Rack.
Parisi also details
Serling’s battles with censors during his years writing for live television, with
“Noon on Doomsday” being a noteworthy example. Based on the 1955 Emmett Till case,
Till was a 14 year old African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi
while visiting relatives. When Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white
jury, it became a moment that would galvanize The Civil Rights Movement.
Serling was outraged at the triumph of racism and mob justice in America and
felt compelled to write a teleplay directly addressing the gross injustices of
the Jim Crow system. Sponsors and the network feared that such direct
references to the case would offend white Southerners and hurt advertising
revenue, so he had to water down the script into a vague story dealing with mob
justice set in New England with barely a mention of race. His struggles with
censorship led to the creation of The Twilight Zone, the legendary
anthology series that would give him complete creative control.
When The Twilight Zone
debuted on CBS during the fall of 1959 it would change television forever.
Serling’s creative breakthrough allowed him to explore social issues through
the lens of fantasy and science fiction. He wrote 92 of the 156 episodes,
supported by some of the strongest genre writers of the day including Richard
Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Bradbury. Serling’s opening and closing
narration for each episode allowed him to act as a presence outside of the
show’s universe. While the Cold War anxieties of the era are evident throughout
the run of the series, The Twilight Zone also dealt with issues of
history including The Holocaust in “Deaths-Head Revisited” and mob mentality in
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Noteworthy episodes also looked towards
the future and the changing relationship between humanity and technology.
The Twilight Zone
shaped the collective unconscious of the burgeoning boomer generation. Everyone
who came after, including Stephen King to Jordan Peele, have cited Serling as a
major influence. Like most anthology shows, the quality was inconsistent, but
so many episodes hold up as classics. It ran for five season and has remained a
staple of syndication, 24-hour marathons are an annual New Year’s Day tradition
on the Syfy channel. From clever parodies on The Simpsons to multiple
reboots, The Twilight Zone has never gone out of style.
Serling’s next TV project
was The Loner, an allegorical Western starring Lloyd Bridges that ran
for one season on CBS. Still largely unseen, The Loner was
finally released on DVD in 2016. Serling wrote 15 of the 26 episodes with the American
West serving as a backdrop to explore his recurring themes of intolerance and
the consequences of violence. Bridges played William Colton, a Union Captain
haunted by his experiences during the Civil War, he searches for meaning, often
finding himself in the role as peacemaker. Parisi compares the show’s
existential themes to The Prisoner, in any event, The Loner is a
must see for fans of Serling.
In the latter half of the
1960s Serling continued to work in film and television. He earned a
screenwriting credit for the classic Sci-Fi film Planet of the Apes and
the political thriller Seven Days in May. Various TV projects continued,
perhaps most famously “Carol for Another Christmas.” The Christmas season was
another setting Serling loved to write about. Airing on December 28, 1964,
Parisi called it the darkest interpretation ever written on the immortal Charles
Dickens novel A Christmas Carol. The stellar cast included Sterling
Hayden and Peter Sellers (a Dr. Strangelove reunion) and it dealt with
heady themes of corporate greed and nuclear war!
Night Gallery
would become another notable TV project. An anthology series that ran from
1969-1972, the pilot episode featured an early directorial effort from Steven
Spielberg entitled “The Eye.” Night Gallery emphasized horror and
fantasy with Serling hosting and writing about 40% of the scripts. But it would
prove be an unhappy experience. Without creative control Serling was chagrined
to stand by as his scripts underwent significant revision in some cases. Parisi
sees much to admire in Serling’s Night Gallery work, including special
praise the collection of short stories that adapted his episodes into print
form. After Night Gallery Serling remained a presence on television
(often as a narrator) and continued to write screenplays until his untimely
passing in 1975. In 2013 J.J. Abrams’s production company Bad Robot purchased
the rights to one of Serling’s unproduced screenplays “The Stops Along the Way”
about a hitchhiker aging from a young to old man as he travels across America.
Rod Serling: His Life,
Work, and Imagination belongs on the bookshelf of any pop culture devotee. Everything
Serling wrote is summarized and critiqued by Parisi, along with supplemental
chapters focusing on specific ideas in his work. For Serling, television was
never a place simply for mere entertainment, but one to expand the minds of
those willing to go along with him on the journey.
