Based on your viewing of The Outer Limits episode “The Bellaro Shield” and understanding of Jeffrey Sconce’s essay on theshow, explain how The Outer Limits expresses and potentially intensifies particular anxieties prevalent during the early 1960s.
The Outer Limits had a significantly bleak tone in all 48 of its episodes that grew out of, as Sconce puts it, “its emphasis on relentlessly pessimistic social commentary.” Many aliens and freaks appeared on the show as vessels for this pessimism, like the alien in “The Bellaro Shield”, but Sconce states that “oblivion” was the only truly recurring monster in The Outer Limits, and this concept surprisingly resonated with the historical period in which the show aired. Sconce believes there are three looming “oblivions” of the New Frontier era: the infinite depths of outer space, the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity, and the specter of absolute nuclear annihilation. The Outer Limits expressed and intensified these anxieties during the early 1960s in many ways, often through episodes that were thought to be too disturbing for the family living room. The Outer Limits addressed and heightened fears of outer space at the time by simply showing aliens and otherworldly creatures be introduced to our society in a way that often ended in fear or disaster, like when the wife walked the line of death while trapped in the shield in “The Bellaro Shield”. The show first aired in the fall of 1963, six years before man even walked on the moon, and did nothing to help people learn about the infinities of outer space; it only caused nationwide feelings of fear to grow. Sconce refers back to Spigel regarding the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity, who stated that The Outer Limits aired in response to a series of disappointments in American life during the 1950s, chiefly “the homogenizing conformity demanded by suburban living and the seeming vulnerability of American technology in the wake of Sputnik.” Finally, The Outer Limits certainly intensified fears of total nuclear annihilation often through its opening credit sequence more than anything else. Having been released soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, the show’s played on the uneasiness felt across the country. By airing episodes that showed test drives of experimental aircrafts followed by crash landings or motionless human figures in a world where time stands still, The Outer Limits encouraged the worst fears of nuclear warfare. The creators of the show even wanted to call it Please Stand By, the familiar words spoken by panicked broadcasters when dealing with what viewers always assumed was an impending disaster.
Sconce is correct to point out that the very first thing the viewer sees on “The Outer Limits,” the opening sequence, is purposely designed to emulate the aesthetics of a national warning, the type of terrifying transmission that might signal a natural disaster in your area, or, this being the height of the cold war, something far worse. “The Outer Limits” is expert in playing on the popular paranoia of the time in which it was produced. One such paranoia, as Sconce describes it, is “the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity,” which was certainly a focus of the episode we watched in screening. In this episode, the barriers of the life of a housewife- devoid of ambition, creativity, and hope for the future- become material in the form of an alien shield, in which our protagonist becomes entrapped. Historically, science fiction has used theoretical technology to raise questions about our contemporary lives, and this show is no different. Just like Spielberg used a futuristic, mystical crime-predicting technology to make an argument about Due Process, “The Outer Limits” uses the alien shield as a means to critique postwar conformism and makes an arguably feminist argument about the limited role in of women in society at the time. It’s a genius formal move that intensifies these particular anxieties in two ways: removing the veneer of the relative comfort of domestic life, and shortening the amount of time our protagonist has left - whether you’re stuck there for 80 minutes or 80 years, the box still suffocates you.
The Outer Limits framed its tales of monsters, aliens, and mad scientists by casting television itself as a medium of the void, suggesting that its transmissions might expose the viewer to a horrifying oblivion. The electronically mediated visions of the void are the infinite depths of outer space, the emotional “limbo “of suburban domesticity, and the specter of absolute nuclear annihilation and all of them display a certain kind of potentially anxieties. The focus on the “otherworldly” threatened to exile the viewer to this vast “electronic nowhere that seemed to lurk behind the otherwise celebrated technologies .The Outer Limits also exploited the era’s emerging fascination with space and science to interrogate the bland “ideology of domesticity” idea. Its images of an electronic heaven became instead visions of terrifying isolation, rendering the comforting notion of the afterlife into the more ominous realm of the electromagnetic void. In the episode, the experiments with the newly possible weapon as well the high-powered electrical fields help to develop this anxiety. Moreover, intersection of the highly-reflexive commentary on television as a system beyond human control and its narrative preoccupation with the electronic technology as a key to oblivion suggests that television remained, even a decade after its introduction into the American home, a unsettling and alien technology and this is another anxiety prevalent during the early 1960s.
The sixties were a time of great confusion for the American public. With the help of television, people were allowed more access into viewing the changing social, political, and cultural climate within the world around them. Because of this, the American public had many overarching fear and anxieties surrounding the future. Thus, the television series The Outer Limits was created. In his article ‘The Outer Limits of Oblivion”, Jeffery Sconce explains that the show commercialized on these apprehensions by, “transform[ing] televisions ‘window on the world’ in to a window on the ‘otherworldly’ and threatened to exile the viewer to this vast ‘electronic nowhere’ that seemed to lurk behind the otherwise celebrated technologies of the new frontier” (Sconce, 23). The Outer Limits intensified fears through narrative science fiction storytelling focusing in one theme in particular: the unknown advances of technology, “the outer limits was almost always mediated by some form of paranormal electronic technology and centered most immediately on the American family” (Sconce, 23). This was a clear theme in the episode we watched in screening, “The Bellard Shield”. In this episode, a laser created by an aspiring scientist accidently brings an alien into an American family’s house. The Outer Limits thus takes this fear of technology into many different sub-genres of anxieties like surveillance, outer space, other dimensions, and time. Besides this “otherworldly”, themes, The Outer Limits also focused on the horror that can happen on earth within the domestic sphere, “the ‘domestic asylum’ of the American suburbs was a zone of torpor and constraint, an emotional void every bit as alienating as the electronic oblivion to be found in television” (Sconce, 34). This is also clear in the episode screened in class as what scone calls a “deviant housewife” is drawn to make immoral decisions because of her isolation as a non-active participant in the world outside her home. It was because of these changing ideals of life both inside and outside of the domestic sphere that The Outer Limits was able to intensify the American public’s anxieties.
The Outer Limits had a significantly bleak tone in all 48 of its episodes that grew out of, as Sconce puts it, “its emphasis on relentlessly pessimistic social commentary.” Many aliens and freaks appeared on the show as vessels for this pessimism, like the alien in “The Bellaro Shield”, but Sconce states that “oblivion” was the only truly recurring monster in The Outer Limits, and this concept surprisingly resonated with the historical period in which the show aired. Sconce believes there are three looming “oblivions” of the New Frontier era: the infinite depths of outer space, the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity, and the specter of absolute nuclear annihilation. The Outer Limits expressed and intensified these anxieties during the early 1960s in many ways, often through episodes that were thought to be too disturbing for the family living room. The Outer Limits addressed and heightened fears of outer space at the time by simply showing aliens and otherworldly creatures be introduced to our society in a way that often ended in fear or disaster, like when the wife walked the line of death while trapped in the shield in “The Bellaro Shield”. The show first aired in the fall of 1963, six years before man even walked on the moon, and did nothing to help people learn about the infinities of outer space; it only caused nationwide feelings of fear to grow. Sconce refers back to Spigel regarding the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity, who stated that The Outer Limits aired in response to a series of disappointments in American life during the 1950s, chiefly “the homogenizing conformity demanded by suburban living and the seeming vulnerability of American technology in the wake of Sputnik.” Finally, The Outer Limits certainly intensified fears of total nuclear annihilation often through its opening credit sequence more than anything else. Having been released soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, the show’s played on the uneasiness felt across the country. By airing episodes that showed test drives of experimental aircrafts followed by crash landings or motionless human figures in a world where time stands still, The Outer Limits encouraged the worst fears of nuclear warfare. The creators of the show even wanted to call it Please Stand By, the familiar words spoken by panicked broadcasters when dealing with what viewers always assumed was an impending disaster.
ReplyDeleteSconce is correct to point out that the very first thing the viewer sees on “The Outer Limits,” the opening sequence, is purposely designed to emulate the aesthetics of a national warning, the type of terrifying transmission that might signal a natural disaster in your area, or, this being the height of the cold war, something far worse. “The Outer Limits” is expert in playing on the popular paranoia of the time in which it was produced. One such paranoia, as Sconce describes it, is “the emotional limbo of suburban domesticity,” which was certainly a focus of the episode we watched in screening. In this episode, the barriers of the life of a housewife- devoid of ambition, creativity, and hope for the future- become material in the form of an alien shield, in which our protagonist becomes entrapped. Historically, science fiction has used theoretical technology to raise questions about our contemporary lives, and this show is no different. Just like Spielberg used a futuristic, mystical crime-predicting technology to make an argument about Due Process, “The Outer Limits” uses the alien shield as a means to critique postwar conformism and makes an arguably feminist argument about the limited role in of women in society at the time. It’s a genius formal move that intensifies these particular anxieties in two ways: removing the veneer of the relative comfort of domestic life, and shortening the amount of time our protagonist has left - whether you’re stuck there for 80 minutes or 80 years, the box still suffocates you.
ReplyDeleteThe Outer Limits framed its tales of monsters, aliens, and mad scientists by casting television itself as a medium of the void, suggesting that its transmissions might expose the viewer to a horrifying oblivion. The electronically mediated visions of the void are the infinite depths of outer space, the emotional “limbo “of suburban domesticity, and the specter of absolute nuclear annihilation and all of them display a certain kind of potentially anxieties. The focus on the “otherworldly” threatened to exile the viewer to this vast “electronic nowhere that seemed to lurk behind the otherwise celebrated technologies .The Outer Limits also exploited the era’s emerging fascination with space and science to interrogate the bland “ideology of domesticity” idea. Its images of an electronic heaven became instead visions of terrifying isolation, rendering the comforting notion of the afterlife into the more ominous realm of the electromagnetic void. In the episode, the experiments with the newly possible weapon as well the high-powered electrical fields help to develop this anxiety.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, intersection of the highly-reflexive commentary on television as a system beyond human control and its narrative preoccupation with the electronic technology as a key to oblivion suggests that television remained, even a decade after its introduction into the American home, a unsettling and alien technology and this is another anxiety prevalent during the early 1960s.
The sixties were a time of great confusion for the American public. With the help of television, people were allowed more access into viewing the changing social, political, and cultural climate within the world around them. Because of this, the American public had many overarching fear and anxieties surrounding the future. Thus, the television series The Outer Limits was created. In his article ‘The Outer Limits of Oblivion”, Jeffery Sconce explains that the show commercialized on these apprehensions by, “transform[ing] televisions ‘window on the world’ in to a window on the ‘otherworldly’ and threatened to exile the viewer to this vast ‘electronic nowhere’ that seemed to lurk behind the otherwise celebrated technologies of the new frontier” (Sconce, 23). The Outer Limits intensified fears through narrative science fiction storytelling focusing in one theme in particular: the unknown advances of technology, “the outer limits was almost always mediated by some form of paranormal electronic technology and centered most immediately on the American family” (Sconce, 23). This was a clear theme in the episode we watched in screening, “The Bellard Shield”. In this episode, a laser created by an aspiring scientist accidently brings an alien into an American family’s house. The Outer Limits thus takes this fear of technology into many different sub-genres of anxieties like surveillance, outer space, other dimensions, and time. Besides this “otherworldly”, themes, The Outer Limits also focused on the horror that can happen on earth within the domestic sphere, “the ‘domestic asylum’ of the American suburbs was a zone of torpor and constraint, an emotional void every bit as alienating as the electronic oblivion to be found in television” (Sconce, 34). This is also clear in the episode screened in class as what scone calls a “deviant housewife” is drawn to make immoral decisions because of her isolation as a non-active participant in the world outside her home. It was because of these changing ideals of life both inside and outside of the domestic sphere that The Outer Limits was able to intensify the American public’s anxieties.
ReplyDelete