The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

"Church Member Rod Serling"

This is an anniversary for me. It was ten years ago this month that I first came here. My first few times, Silvio Nardoni was at the pulpit and as he’s done so many times since then, he preached sermons about movies. I thought I’d stumbled into the First Church of Cinema and I liked the idea.

Who was Rod Serling? He grew up in pre-IBM Binghamton, New York. He was on the receiving end of at least one incident of anti-Semitism while in high school. Despite a lack of stature, just five-four, he grew up a tough, competitive kid as evidenced by his becoming a boxer and a paratrooper. In World War II he was seriously wounded by shrapnel and watched his best friend die. He returned suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, decades before the term came into use. He experienced nightmares, insomnia, and flashbacks for the rest of his life.

By the mid-1950’s, Rod Serling had become one of the two or three writers who had ushered in what has come to be called the golden age of television drama. In a space of three years he won four Emmys and saw some of his work, including “Requiem for a Heavyweight” reach the big screen.

What was Rod’s relationship to this church? Both he and his wife Carol had converted to the UU faith while in college. It bridged the gap between her Protestant background and his Judaism but more than that, it fit his liberal outlook. He sat in front on the Sunday following John Kennedy’s assignation and told Ernie that his sermon had made him feel better. Did he attend every Sunday? No. He had a hectic schedule that required him to turn out scores of scripts each year. By Ernie’s recollection, he was very generous. He also raised money by screening his work for the congregation and discussing it afterward; a tradition which has now been revived with this year’s “An Evening
with Rod Serling” Dining for Dollars.

On a number of occasions, he went to RE classes and discussed his work with young people. After all these decades, people who attended these discussions remember how stimulating they were. “He was a great listener,” I was told, “but more importantly, he challenged us to think in ways that we’d never done before.” Perhaps this was a foreshadowing of the teacher that he would become in his later years. More than one person told me that they felt changed by these conversations.

But why are we talking about Rod Serling today? Perhaps the answer is that he never went away. Turn on a television anywhere in the United States and you won’t have long to wait until you can view an episode of “Twilight Zone.” He wrote 92 of the episodes, adapted others, and had enormous input on every one of the 152 that were produced. They were Rod Serling-his hopes, his fears, his experiences, his dreams, even his nightmares.

An entire half century has gone by since it premiered. How man series have lasted that long? Okay, you can still get the occasional I Love Lucy, but how many times can you laugh at Lucy stuffing chocolate into her mouth or fighting with the woman in the grape crushing vat?

It’s often been noted that writers are dissatisfied with the world. As a badly wounded vet who’d grown up during the depression, he had more than sufficient right to feel as he did. Writers tend to react to this in one of two ways. Some create their own world and attempt to live there. J. K. Rowling is this kind of writer. Can anyone estimate the number of hours that she has spent at Hogwarts during the writing of her novels?

The other kind of writer expresses his worldly dissatisfaction by trying to change the world to something more to his or her liking. Is this pretentious? Only if the writer thinks they’re going to succeed, but can anyone argue that Twilight Zone was not an argument for a more humane world where the proper values prevail? Let’s look at a few episodes. “Eye of the Beholder” was about prejudice. “Execution” was about capital punishment. Ageism, “Trade-Ins.” Social conformity, “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You.” The list goes on and on and would include virtually all of the 152 that were produced.

But what was the world that Rod Serling was trying to bring about? Let’s See-the worth and dignity of the individual, a world without violence and War, without prejudice, where greed and rapaciousness are no longer dominating values. Does this sound like a belief system with which we are familiar? To state the obvious, it was the world that all UU’s wish to bring about.

Would it be too strong to say that Rod Serling was a propagandist for UU values? In my judgment, no, and I think it could also be argued that like only the greatest of propagandists, his writing was not perceived as containing any propaganda at all. His consummate skill as a dramatist and his brilliant usage of the muscular hand of irony, disguised his underlying messages to all but the most discerning of eyes.

To fully understand this feat, I think we have to look back at what television was at that time and how Rod Serling came to create Twilight Zone. In 1959, the year of its premier, television was dominated by detective and cowboy shows, where almost every problem was solved by the routine application of violence, sometimes in the form of fists, but more often firearms, hardly a fertile ground for someone like Rod Serling. He frequently found himself censored not only by the networks but by sponsors as well. With companies backing individual shows, the last thing that a manufacturer of say, cigarettes or flammable Chevrolet Corvairs wanted, was for their product to be linked to a controversial message-like being against global war or opposing racism.

But early in his career Rod Serling discovered that messages could be slipped in under of guise of science fiction. Somehow networks and sponsors alike were willing to overlook controversial ideas and themes, if it could be argued that it took place on another world or at some future time. It was seeking this liberation that led Rod Serling to create Twilight Zone and for the most part he found it.

Instead of the standard television fare with the climatic shootout and scenes of the hero from next week’s episode, Twilight Zone dealt with the imminence of atomic warfare, racism, totalitarianism, and virtually every other problem facing the world of that era. Was there a price to be paid for this liberation? Actually, there was. Science fiction has always been regarded as the ugly step-sister of literature, the domain of space pirates and monsters created of bad make-up and poorly done special effects, and one of the reasons why I believe him to be undervalued as a writer is this identification with what is still perceived as an inferior form.

Did Rod Serling understand that this would probably work to sully his own legacy? I think he did, he was far too intelligent not to have known it but it was a trade that he was willing to make in order to bring his UU vision to the world. And this sci-fi prejudice-I think he probably suffered from it as well. He thought of himself as just another person, there was no pretension, no ego that anyone could find, and when it came to evaluating his own work, he sold off for a pittance what has generated fabulous and untold wealth for corporations.

Here’s a big question, did he succeed? My answer would be yes, and let me explain. In the late sixties, psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists were all coming up with reasons why an entire generation had said no to war and no to racism and refused to go along as unthinking cogs in the economic machine. Various theories were advanced, some of which were downright funny. Benjamin Spock and the child rearing practices he advocated, were put forward as one possible explanation-exactly how this took place was never quite explained, but that didn’t stop it from being said.

Perhaps a better theory is that on every Friday beginning in the late fifties, children of nine through thirteen, ages when their adult values were being formed, were being exposed to a new reflection of the world. Whether it was being called science fiction or fantasy, it was dealing with the real problems of a world they would one day inherit, problems that no one else of that era seemed to be discussing.

Would Rod Serling have believed this argument, that he was at least partially responsible for the rebellion of the sixties? With his trademark modesty, probably not, but if for a moment he did, I think he would have regarded it as his greatest success and it would have made him happy.

Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Twilight Zone. It’s been on television continuously since that time. How much longer will it last? As Dick Cavett once said, “If there is any future time in which the Marx Brothers are not considered funny, the problem will be with the future and not the Marx Brothers.” Twilight Zone has survived because it appeals to our desire to correct the evils of the world. Unfortunately, the evils of a half century ago remain with us. Rod Serling’s work will last until we need it no more and someday, with no small effort from him, and more than just a little luck, we might possibly get to that place.

I’m going to end not with the traditional, so be it, but with the more hopeful, let it be so.

S. J. Guidotti