Based on your viewing of The Outer Limits episode “The Bellaro
Shield” and understanding of Jeffrey Sconce’s essay on the show,
explain how The Outer Limits expresses and potentially
intensifies particular anxieties prevalent during the early 1960s.
Each episode of The Outer Limits begins with a voice attempting to control the audience, saying “For the next hour, sit quietly, and we will control all that you see and hear.” If an audience were to hear this on TV today, they would perhaps laugh it off, but in a time when TV was still new and consumerism was running television content, I would image this ‘control voice’ would be very troubling. Sconce furthers this by saying, “the intersection of the series’ highly self-reflexive commentary on television as a system beyond human control and its continuing narrative preoccupation with electronic technology as a gateway to oblivion suggest that television remained, even a decade after its introduction to the American home, a somewhat unsettling and alien technology.”
ReplyDeleteThe show intensifies this unsureness that the audience was feeling towards the television set. Especially after the quiz show scandals, TV’s creditability was being questioned. This episode is largely based on the idea of wanting power and wanting to control the world. Judith wants to gain notoriety by telling the world about the alien and the shield. She, however, is punished for her actions. Because she looks to take over by using ‘alien technology’ but is punished for it, perhaps is telling to just how untrustworthy audiences felt towards the artificiality of television.
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ReplyDeleteAmericans lived in fear of the power of both the Soviet Union and Cuba (amongst many other anxieties) during the 1960’s, a decade which harbored both the Cuban Missile Crisis and (a fraction of) the Cold War. Sconce’s essay notes that these large-scale worries, combined with smaller issues, led Americans to be vulnerable and easily frightened by things they saw on their televisions. The Outer Limits’ “consistently bleak tone” and “emphasis on relentlessly pessimistic social commentary” allowed the show to capitalize on television’s “intrinsic potential for horror.” The fact that the show was broadcast on television, and not shown as a film in theaters, meant that families were terrified in their own homes, and incapable of escaping the scenario. After viewing a movie, on the other hand, viewers can simply walk away from the screen and leave their worries with their leftover popcorn.
ReplyDeleteAn additional point the essay made that I found particularly amusing was the way that viewers’ suspension of disbelief was sometimes nonexistent. The essay outright notes that “[the] interruption in the routinized flow of commercial broadcasting always makes viewers take pause as they consider the possibility of an impending catastrophe.” In essence, The Outer Limits had the power to do for television audiences what Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds had on radio audiences. By reminding viewers that they were perhaps vulnerable to an other-worldly attack of sorts, The Outer Limits succeeds in reminding Americans that not only should they be afraid of known enemies like the USSR and Cuba, but that they should also be afraid of the unknown.
One of my favorite aspects of the reading was the idea that programs like The Outer Limits exploited the belief that television, along with other forms of mass, electronic communication, served as a type of wormhole or portal into a different dimension populated with monsters, demons, ghosts, and other “otherworldly” beings.
ReplyDeleteSuperficially, the audience of the ‘50s’ childish imagination regarding the mystery of television is endearing. However, this other dimension, labeled the “oblivion” by Sconce, also seemed to be an interesting and convenient way for discourses on the uncertainties of the time to be explored.
Sconce notes that real-world voids of Kennedy’s “New Frontier” were mirrored by the fictional ones portrayed in programs such as The Outer Limits: “the infinite depths of space, the emotional ‘limbo’ of suburban domesticity, and the specter of absolute nuclear annihilation.”
In the episode we watched in class, two of these oblivions were clearly examined. The husband’s laser is more powerful than he can imagine and is able to bring back a lifeform from outside our universe. This mirrors the belief that TV’s “window on the world” may actually have been a window from outside worlds to our world, as well. It also brought to attention the fact that we know relatively little about the universe and what it contains. At another point in the episode, the wife fires her husband’s laser gun, vaporizing her wine into nothingness. With the threat of “nuclear annihilation” ever-present on the public’s mind, this fear of being turned to nothing was not unfamiliar.
Television often has a way of reflecting how the American public feels towards economic, political, and social situations. In the 1960s, the new fantastic sitcom developed in response to a series of disillusionments about the 1950s, two of these being “the homogenized conformity demanded by suburban living and the seeming vulnerability of American technology in the wake of Sputnik” (Scone 25). I think that the episode of “The Outer Limits” that we watched, focused largely on the vulnerability of American technology. The episode beings with Richard attempting to build the shield in order to prove to his father that he is not a failure. This can be seen as reflecting America’s desires to prove itself after Russia’s attempt to win the space race with the launching of Sputnik. During the episode an alien appears, and Judith tries to shoot it but fails thank to the alien’s shield, undeterred, Judith tricks the alien into lowering his shield and then steals the shield and kills the alien. Judith takes the shield without entirely understating the technology of it. At this time, The United States was in a race with Russia to create, understand, and harness new technology in order to be the first in space. The capacity and usage of this new technology was difficult to comprehend and was not widely understood. Scone says that “The Outer Limits” recognized the new and mysterious territories of space exploration while at the same time suggesting that “America might find ‘The New Frontier’ itself to be a terrifying vacuum, an annihilating and discorporative void accessed through television” (Scone, 25). Judith is obviously afraid of the alien and afraid of the technology he posses. She wants to take what it has into her possession so that she might understand and harness the technology. Once she tries to use the shield it creates a vacuum and traps her inside. She becomes terrifying that she will be trapped forever and die inside. The alien eventually saves her; however, she remains convinced that she is still trapped and is doomed to spend the rest of her days stuck in that vacuum. “The Outer Limits” stands as a reflection of the vulnerability and fears of the American citizen during the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteAlthough created with the intentions of entertainment and mass communication, the television in the 1950’s American suburban home also acted as a catalyst in escalating the paranoia of the common American family. In the height of the Cold War, the televisions “window to the world” aesthetic broadcasted the tensions between USSR and United States directly into the American living room. They saw first hand as Kennedy made statements on-air to the American people during the Cuban missile crisis. As Sconce explained, these horrors that were broadcasting into the home were inescapable, no matter if they were real horrors or fictional. As compared to the movie theater, the spectator can watch a horror flick but has the courtesy of leaving the theater afterwards. In the home, these frightening images linger in the living space due to the “paranormal electric energy” emitted form the TV.
ReplyDeleteThe science of the television broadcast was new to the modern American family, and the existence of life within the screen baffled many. This “paranormal electronic energy” frightened Americans and the idea of a space of existence that was out of their reach and incomprehensible increased their anxieties of powers that they also believed could be watching them. It was believed that since they were watching these worlds on the television, what’s to stop the television from watching them? In the programming of The Outer Limits, these anxieties were reinforced with images of aliens appearing from a different place and time through electronic waves of energy. The aliens then witness first hand the imprisonment of the people, suffering from the monotonicity of suburban life. As in “The Bellaroo Shield” Sconce makes the point of using the episode as a metaphor of the entrapment of the modern housewife who is left in the home with household chores and the television while the husband makes their living. For this episode, the housewife becomes entrapped in a shield, given the name of her husband, and is not able to escape even when it is taken away. The television became powerful and its “control” over the lives of the people felt threatening.
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ReplyDeleteThe Outer Limits played on the fears of its audiences by presenting television as something mysterious and out of their control. Even before the episode’s storyline would begin, the voice-over would put the audience on edge by stating that the viewers should not try to adjust their television sets but that “We are controlling transmission”. The fact that the announcer did not explain who was behind this mysterious “we” probably did not alleviate any anxiety the audience was feeling. In his essay about The Outer Limits, Sconce discusses the fact that there was a relatively large amount of paranoia surrounding the idea of television in the 1950s and 60s. Television occupied a significant role in the household, where “the TV set became the most ubiquitous, obsequious, and yet imperious of technologies to occupy domestic space and childhood memory”, although Americans were unsure of the capabilities of this medium. “The Bellaro Shield” episode of The Outer Limits portrays these fears by including themes of entrapment and the desire to shield oneself from the outside world. Metaphorically, the Bellaro Shield acts as a sort of protection from other countries during the time of the Cold War but it also serves as a device to restrict housewives to their prescribed place in the home, just as Judith becomes trapped within the shield. This same idea can be applied to TV, where the strict societal expectations of women are laid out on programs depicting the “perfect” suburban lifestyle. The Outer Limits furthers these concerns by combining them with a fear of the unknown: outer space, aliens, and what human technology is capable of.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea that The Outer Limits intensified American national anxieties at the time of its air; it’s interesting to consider the full extent of television’s influence over the population which so readily and graciously welcomed this new technology into their homes. There is something distinctly Frankensteinian about this psychology, about television’s ability to tear at the blanket of domestic comfort and complacency.
ReplyDeleteThe writers of The Outer Limits certainly knew how to capitalize on the tensions of the Cold War. Playing on the ever-present peripheral fear of nuclear attack, the show’s original title was Please Stand By - a clear reference to network intrusions and “special reports” that so many feared would announce their impending “annihilation.” And although the program’s name was changed, the show itself still played off of and maximized such national fears by taking advantage of television’s place within the domestic sphere. This new medium’s place within the home, within the very heart of the middle-class, white American family, was self-consciously used to intensify the anxieties of the era. Suddenly, Americans did not have the luxury of walking out of a theater and returning to the comfort of their private spaces; for the first time, horrors exhibited in programs like The Outer Limits creeped into these private spaces, disturbing the idea of domestic safety. Moreover, the show often featured a television itself as a portal into other terrifying worlds - worlds inhabited by monsters, aliens, and other horrors. This sort of media reflexivity can almost be read as cruel, if not at least darkly comic.
As Sponce states, the program’s only recurring “monster” is the idea of “oblivion.” Oblivion, which can be historically read as being tied to nuclear destruction, probably resonated deeply within the American public of the 1960s - and as such, The Outer Limits likely did intensify the anxieties that plagued the Cold War era.
In the essay we read by Boddy (I believe) it sheds light on television’s ability to connect the viewer with what is on the screen in a way not seen before. Because of this unique talent, certain shows can evoke strong emotions from audiences, especially during a time when the American public was already paranoid about nuclear war and the spread of communism.
ReplyDeleteThe show “The Outer Limits” was able to play into those fears throughout its airtime. The episode we watched in class pretty clearly represents the potential fear of new technology and, in a way, exploration in space.
By using his ray gun, the scientist attracts the alien from outside our universe. That could be seen as a reflection of the potential dangers of continuing work with unfamiliar technologies. The same could be said of his forcefield. Things that are too complicated, too advanced, are best left alone. The best testament to this would be the state of the scientist’s wife. She was left in a state of.
This episode didn’t really hit on the threat of communism because the alien was peaceful. Commonly anything different was seen as a threat and therefore a communist. But I think it plays well into what Jeffrey Sconce said in his article about the show reflecting the fears and paranoia of the population at the time.
TV was seen by some as an invasion of the home. The Outer Limits explored the idea of invasion on a grander scale. The show plays on the fears people had, mostly in regards to technology and also the supernatural. Apart from the alien creatures, there are also futuristic weapons. The idea of powerful weapons really touches on the fears of invasion in regards to the cold war. In the 1960s, the United States would have been at the peak of Cold War tensions. The threat of nuclear war was thick in the minds of the American people.
ReplyDeleteThe Sconce article discusses the idea that people watching The Outer Limits occasionally suffered from fears of the supernatural becoming reality. Just as our generation had to learn that not everything you see on the Internet is true, Television was new enough at this time that people had not necessarily adapted the common sense that not everything on tv is in fact reality. If one thinks about the issue in this way, it makes sense why people watching The Outer Limits felt this way. It is similar to the effect that the Orson Welles ‘War of the Worlds’ radio broadcast had on the public.
As Danielle mentioned in her comment, the chilling opening narration from The Outer Limits played into the fears and questions of the American people during the 1960s. As Sconce states on page 22, this narration caused the audience to hand over "control" to their programming for an hour, and then it was returned to them at the end of their tale. This narration technique coincided with America's fears of communism, which had just made their way through the U.S. People were then faced with the realization that Russia had beaten the U.S. in the race to space. In The Outer Limits episode "The Bellaro Shield," the scientist forgets to turn off his new laser technology and accidentally intercepts an alien. The alien shows the scientist's wife his impenetrable shield, and she immediately realizes its defense possibilities when he explains that the shield could protect an entire city or country, and even Earth itself, just as audiences during this time would see the parallels between this shield and the protection they wish the U.S. could receive from the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteSconce also notes on page 42 that "The Outer Limits, of course, exacerbated such fears and did indeed suggest that earthling science could easily result in instability and disaster, as slow-witted humans ventured into a realm in which they had no business interfering." Again, "The Bellaro Shield"'s scientist accidentally forgets to deactivate a laser, and this results in a major catastrophe. This speaks to the fears of the time that mankind's development of the nuclear bomb would have no positive effects, and that we were getting involved in matters that we should have been avoiding.
The Outer Limits episode “The Bellaro Shield” did a very good job of highlighting a multitude of anxities felt during this early period of the 60 and late 50's. For many families the technology of television its self was very new and foreign and like most things that people don't understand it comes with a slight weariness. As well as us not having a general understanding of the universe we lived in the ability to scare people or cause a hysteria was quite easy. For example the war of the worlds broadcast by Orson Wells. Along with a fear of the supernatural people also had a fear of real life problems that were occurring in the form of the cold war. It was a time when America became very weary of not only foreign invasion but as well as danger coming in the form of spies. The episode Bellaro shield did a good job of personifying this paranoia in the form of the scientist wife. She became so rampant in her search to find the new thing to secure the company for herself and her husband that she went to horrible measures in oder to achieve it. But in her plotting and scheming she ended up in trapping herself in a box of her own misdeeds and phobias.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the history of television, the storylines of a particular era often correlate directly to the issues and concerns of the political and social culture of the time. The episode of The Outer Limits that we watched in class was a perfectly example of that, in its reflection of the viewer’s fear of the otherworldly and its acknowledgement of a pressing concern for domestic defense. In the essay by Jeffrey Sconce, he discusses the belief of the time that television could potentially be serving as a portal into another dimension, a dimension filled with monsters and aliens. As an integral part of the early Cold War, the ‘race to space’ was on many a viewers mind at the time this show was released, and the concept of otherworldly beings and monsters although farfetched was also seen as a new possibility that Americans could be confronted with. At the same time, another part of the Cold War that permeated American lifestyles was the nuclear arms race, and the impending fear of a nuclear Soviet assault on the continental US. The episode of The Outer Limits that we viewed addressed both of these - The desire for protection of the American homeland, and the fear of assault from aliens and intruders.
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