Dad’s 1972 commencement address to Ithaca College graduates
(shared by Anne C. Serling)
May28
beyond this point.
Tag Archives: rod serling
Aug12
on maple street.
one of my personal idols
brilliant writer and social activist, rod serling
wrote this story in 1960, as a prescient warning
—
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. – Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone episode: The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street-1960
Oct3
happy 62nd birthday, twilight zone.
The Changing of the Guard – 1962
(one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite shows by one of my favorite writers, rod serling)
OPENING: Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.
Professor Ellis Fowler is an elderly English literature teacher at the Rock Spring School, a boys’ prep school, who is forced into retirement after teaching for 51 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life.
Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann, with its quote “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Before he can follow through, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, several of whom died heroically.
The boys tell him of how he inspired them to become better men, and the difference he made in their lives. One posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Iwo Jima; another died of leukemia after exposure to X-rays during research into cancer treatments; another died at Pearl Harbor after saving 12 other men. All were inspired by Fowler’s teachings. Moved to tears, Fowler hears the phantom bell again, and his former pupils disappear. Now accepting of his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys, he listens to his current students caroling outside his home.
Closing: Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher, who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small scholastic lesson, from the campus of the Twilight Zone.
—
credits: imdb, twilight zone
Apr8
civilized.
one of my favorite people with a statement that still applies 60 years later
—
· “no moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact.
for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.”
-rod serling -1961
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photo credit: cbs television , twilight zone
Jan2
sci-fi or reality tv?
Rod Serling – working at home in Connecticut, 1956
anti-war and social justice activist, tv-writer, producer, narrator
and one of my idols.
—
*In 1955, the miscarriage of justice in the Emmett Till case proved a galvanizing point in the Civil Rights Movement. Rod Serling, a 30-year-old rising star in a golden age of dramatic television, watched the events play out in the news. He believed firmly in the burgeoning medium’s power for social justice. “The writer’s role is to be a menacer of the public’s conscience,” Serling later said. “He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus the issues of his time.”
Soon after the trial concluded, Serling, riding off the success of his most well-received teleplay to date, felt compelled write a teleplay around the racism that led to Till’s murder. But the censorship that followed by advertisers and networks, fearful of blowback from white, Southern audiences, forced Serling to rethink his approach. His response, ultimately, was “The Twilight Zone,” the iconic sci-fi anthology series that spoke truth to the era’s social ills and tackled themes of prejudice, bigotry, nuclear fears, war, among so many others. At this point in history, the censors didn’t know what to make of this genre and he was free to deliver his message in a new way.
—
in honor of Rod Serling on national science fiction day,
who understood the power of the arts
as a way to communicate important messages.
—
“there are weapons that are simply thoughts.
for the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.”
-rod serling
—
credits: Getty Images, *Smithsonian Magazine
Apr15
peep show.
the classic twilight zone episode “nightmare at 20,000 feet”
starring a very young william shatner
inspired this peeps scene.
the black and white effect is part of the work;
this was not altered after the photograph was taken.
original scene with shatner from the twilight zone classic.
—
credits: peep artists -allie berg and jonathan herr,
the twilight zone, rod serling
Jun28
imagination… its limits are only those of the mind itself. – rod serling
rod serling
one of my favorite writers,
a man who never let his mind limit his imagination.
little golden t.z. bedtime stories anyone?
wild dreams guaranteed.
—
image credit: the twilight zone
I didn't have my glasses on.... 