How “The Twilight Zone” Shaped TV Artwork

Paranormal Yakker

Interview on paranormal subject

Paranormal Yakker

How “The Twilight Zone” Shaped TV

December 10, 2024 • Stan Mallow

Rod Serling’s groundbreaking TV show “The Twilight Zone” changed the landscape of American pop culture and laid the groundwork for future cultural milestones like “Planet of the Apes”. Arlen Schumer, celebrated comic book illustrator and pop culture historian uncovers the profound legacy of Serling’s show in his interview with Stan Mallow on “Paranormal Yakker”.

The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, Arlen Schumer, The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone, Planet of the Apes, Visions From the Twilight Zone, Anne Serling, pop culture, Paranormal Yakker, Stan Mallow

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Hi everyone, I'm Stan Mallow, andwelcome to Paranormal Yakker.My guest on today'sshow is Arlen Schumer.He's an award-winning, comicbook-style illustrator, apop-culture historian,and a Twilight Zone scholar. ABCTV's 2020 calls him one of thecountry's preeminent authorities oncomics and culture.I'll be talking with Arlen abouthis book, "The FiveThemes of the Twilight Zone."Arlen Schumer, welcome toParanormal Yakker.Stan, thanks for having me on. I'mso excited to be here.The Twilight Zone an anthologyseries that focused onscience fiction, horror,and fantasy themes was agroundbreaking TV show. It ran forfive seasons between 1959 and 1964,and was created by Rod Serling, oneof the greatest television writersand broadcast voices of all time.October 2nd, 2024 was the 65thanniversary of thedebut of the show.Your book, Arlen, which examinesthe legendary seriesin a brand new way,was published October 2nd, 2024.Was that coincidence deliberate ororchestrated by Rod himselffrom the Twilight Zone in thespirit realm? I obviously don'tknow and won't ask, but whatI will ask, however, is when you,Arlen, first gothooked on the Twilight Zone.I think, Stan, the very firstvisual image I can recall seeing asa child, I must have been4 1/2 years old, was the blackand white eyeball of the TwilightZone in space, which wasthe 1963 opening. Gee, I became anartist and I ended up doing acoffee table art book on theTwilight Zone with that as itscover image. And now I have my newbook on the Twilight Zone out.And of course, October 2nd, how canI not have chosen that perfect falldate for the publicationdate of my book? And it's also thisyear, Rod Serling Centennial, niceJewish boy born on ChristmasDay.You, Arlen, are obviously abig fan of the Twilight Zone.You've written many articles aboutit, lectured about it, andpreviously wrote Visions from theTwilight Zone, abest-selling coffeetable book about it, which you justmentioned. What was the motivationor inspiration behind youwriting the Five Themes of theTwilight Zone?I had been workingon and off for literally thepast 30 years on capsuledescriptions of my favoriteTwilight Zoneepisodes. And over time,I kept expanding them as I wouldwatch them in multiple reruns allthe time. And I would thinkabout them and what they remindedme of and various connections withhigh culture, low culture,pop culture, fine art, thesurrealism that preceded theTwilight Zone, and televisionmovies and American pop culturethat have been influenced by theTwilight Zone. I've been doinga multimedia lecture and nowwebinar on the Twilight Zone asthat middle ground betweensurrealism and the American popculture that followed it. And thenwhen I decided I can expandthese and put them together as abook, that's what I ended up doing.I'm so proud of my book because,you know, I only write about 68 ofthe 156 episodes. I'm verycritical about the thingsthat I love, whether it's comicbook art history and the music ofBruce Springsteen. As much as Icriticize some of their works, I ofcourse extol to the highest theirgreatest works, but that'swhat critics should be doing andhistorians should be doing, isevaluating an artist's workusing as objective methods aspossible. And when it came toTwilight Zone, there were alwaysepisodes I were either emotionallyreacted to, intellectually reactedto, a great performance,a great concept, whatever makes youlike something and not likesomething else.You know, we all haveour favorite artists, but we don'tlike all of their works equally.There's reasons why we gravitatetowards some works than the others.And I think it's the job of thecritic and the story. Andthat's what they do. They arrive onconsensus every year. You know,there's the American FilmInstitute and the top 100 films andthe year end lists. Just becauseyou love something doesn'tmean everything you love is equallygreat. And it's the job of criticsand historians to makethose distinctions. What I've setout to do with the Twilight Zone bypicking the 68 episodesand dividing them up into theseoverarching themes of surlings thatI believe all of thegreat Twilight Zone writers likeRichard Matheson, Charles Beaumont,George Clayton Johnson, to namea few, they all wrote to thosethemes either consciously orsubconsciously. And by doing that,I'm staking a claim critically thatthese are the greatest episodes ofthe greatest televisionseries of all time. And they'rewhat I call the father of Americanpopular culture. You know,Stan, I know that sounds like agrand claim, but I say that in thebeginning of my book in thepreface, and it's the very lastsentence. And in between, I make mycase. And what do I mean by thefather of American popular culture?If you name any modern sciencefiction fantasy or horror productin the 21st and late 20th century,I can connect it back to TwilightZone in less than 6 degreesof Serling. And I'm making a jokeabout 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.But what I mean by that,and this is what I do in mymultimedia lectures that you canfind on my website and my YouTubeand Vimeo channels linked from mywebsite, I've done deep dives intomaking these connections.Look, there was a recent Planet ofthe Apes movie. Well, if you thinkback to what everybodyremembers about the original Planetof the Apes is that final scene ofthe Statue of Liberty onthe beach with Charlton Heston onhis knees. A lot of people don'tknow that Serling co-wrotethe screenplay with another writer,Michael Wilson. That ending isSerling's. And the way I know thatis that there's a Twilight Zoneepisode eight years earlier calledI Shot an Arrow into the Air.That's about American astronautsthat crash land on a desert planet.And like 10 little Indians,one goes rogue and kills thesurviving members. And at the end,he's searching for water. He'sthe only one left alive. And hegoes over a mountain ridge. Andwhat does he see signs toReno, Nevada, they had crash landedback on Earth without realizing it.The ending to Planet of theApes. You don't know that we're onthe Earth the whole time until thatStatue of Liberty ending.That was Serling taking thatTwilight Zone ending and putting itinto Planet of the Apes.That's just one example of so manymovies, so many television shows,so much of our modern Americanscience fiction, fantasy andhorror. Stephen King wrote anonfiction overviewof the science fiction,fantasy and horror fields calledDance Macabre came out in 1983,maybe. And he's got a wholechapter on the Twilight Zone. Andin it, he basically says that theTwilight Zone lit thesparks of our imaginations of meand my generation. And who does hemean by his generation? TheSteven Spielberg's, the GeorgeLucas's, the James Cameron's, theDavid Lynch's. Theywere all teenagerswhen the Twilight Zone originallycame out. That is what Stephen Kingsaid. Serling in the TwilightZone lit the sparks of ourimaginations to show us how theentrancingpossibilities of what theycould do. And that came fromTwilight Zone. Like I said, youcould point toalmost anything. I mean,look at the Chucky franchise, thedoll that kills everybody. Well,that comes out ofTawky Tina, the Living Dollepisode. You know, I'm Tawky Tina.I'm going to kill you. That's justone example. There's just so manyin both television and cinema andin so many areasof our pop culture.I was reading recently Stan, DonHenley of the Eagles was talkingabout their greatest song,Hotel California, their greatestalbum at least. And he said in aninterview that he and GlennFry wanted to start the song outlike a Twilight Zone episode thatbrings you into this enigmaticHotel of California. But the factthat he reminisce that that he wascognizant of the Twilight Zonefactor is just a little example ofthe Twilight Zone's influences sopervasive that it's almostinvisible. And yet I have a filefolder full of instances like thatthat you would never thinknecessarily to connect. That's theinfluence. And it's funny, Serlingdied in 1975 at the age of 50from all those cigarettes hesmoked. When they opened up hisveins on the operating table,they said he had the veins of an 80year old man. But he died in 75.That's the year Carrie came out,the year Jaws came out. StephenKing, whatever hewrote in 75. My point is,Serling died just as hismetaphorical children came toprominence inAmerican popular culture.Had Serling lived just five moreyears, he would have seen theincredible influence on Spielbergand Lucas and everybody else. Imean, Spielberg got the Jaws jobbecause of the TV movie Duelwritten by Richard Matheson, aTwilight Zone writer about DennisWeaver in a valiant beingchased by a Mack truck. And theproducers at Jaws were like, ifthat guy can make us that scared ofa Mack truck, maybe he can dopretty well with a mechanicalshark. But Duel was a Twilight Zoneepisode written by RichardMatheson. And that is the influenceof the TwilightZone in so many ways.David Lynch, the dark underbelly ofsuburbia that so much of his workis about. Who do youthink first exposed the darkunderbelly of American suburbia onAmerican television? Rod Serling.Episodes like The Monsters Are DoOn Maple Street that are relevantto what we went through in theCOVID lockdown with losingelectricity and all that stuff andpeople turning on each other.Episodes like The Shelter, where agang of neighbors thatpreviously loved each otherpractically kill each other, tryingto burst into the one neighbor whohad a bomb shelter when theyhear the air raid sirens that thebombs are about to drop. And asthey barge intohis fallout shelter,it's like January 6th. And soSerling was a visionary. So many ofhis episodes. He has anepisode about a neo-Nazi runningfor mayor, and it could have beenwritten yesterday. I sawpictures of Nazis marching inColumbus, Ohio. So this is anepisode from 1963 called He's Alivewith the Great Dennis Hopper as ayoung neo-Nazi. This was Serlingwriting of his time, but like allgreat art, it's timeless. And itstill speaks to us. The greatestTwilight Zone episodes stillspeak to us today. And in myessays, in my book, I try to pointthose connectionsout, how visionarySerling was. I mean, he cast blackactors in dramatic roles when therewere no black actors ontelevision at all. He cast women,independent strong women, notmarried women, not screw-ballcomedians, not domesticatedhousewives, independent women indramatic roles. Hehad two daughters ofhis own. Maybe that's why. Butagain, Serling was projecting. Oneof those women was a 20-somethingartist living alone in a New YorkCity apartment. This is 1961. Youthink there were any independentfemale artists in dramatictelevision shows other than thatTwilight Zoneepisode? No. And that'san example. Without Twilight Zone,Gene Roddenberry said Star Trekwould have just been a glimmerin his eye. And what is Roddenberryknown for? The diversity casting ofStar Trek in 1966.Who do you think influenced him indiversity casting? Rod Serling, bycasting black peopleand women in strong, independentroles. On so many levels, theTwilight Zone is a work of art,because that's the definition ofart. It's got to be of its time andtimeless. And the 68 episodesI write about in my book, I try andmake a point of that. Andtherefore, whenyou get to the end ofmy book and I repeat the assertionwith my last sentence that theTwilight Zone is the father ofAmerican popular culture, you'd bethe judge if I made my case via the68 episodes in between thepreface and my last sentence.What Arlen are the 5 themes you write about?Science and superstition,suburban nightmares, a question ofidentity, obsolete man, and thetime element. Now, if you'rean astute Twilight Zoneaficionado, 4 of those 5 havedirect Twilight Zone connections,meaning science and superstition.That comes from Serling's openingdescription of the Twilight Zone.It is the middle ground betweenlight and shadow, between scienceand superstition. So those are allthe science fiction episodes thatmost people associate when theydescribe the Twilight Zone.The layman will call it a sciencefiction show, but it was alsofantasy and there were some horrorepisodes as well. But in my book,through my essays, I try to bringout that above all,the Twilight Zone was surrealism ontelevision. And what I mean by thatis that surrealism isactually also celebrating itscentennial this year. It startedout as a manifestowritten by a French poet, André Breton,in 1924. The word surrealmeans, sur in French on top ofreality. The original surrealistswere poets and writers. They wantedpeople after World War I andthe horrors of that war, theywanted people to drift off in akind of a trance-like state andwrite what was called automaticwriting. The poets knew the artistsand surrealism eventually becamea visual genre more than a literarywriting genre. But they wantedpeople to do was step back fromtheir reality and look at it fresh.When something happens in your lifestand and you go, "doo doo doodoo doo" when something weirdhappens, when something makes youstep back from your realityand look at it anew, either indelight or in fear or who knowswhat, and you hum the Twilight Zonemusic. You are acknowledging amoment of surrealist experiencethat the originalsurrealists intended.If they could have looked in acrystal ball and seen the TwilightZone, they would have acceptedRod Serling as one of their own.All the greatest Twilight Zoneepisodes arepurely about the surrealabove on top of outside of realityand looking at it differently. Andthen when you come back toreality, you've learned something,you've seen something, you'vegained something, you've lostsomething, but you've been changed.That is the definition of theTwilight Zone. SuburbanNightmares is the only theme that Imade up on my own. When I think ofthe Twilight Zone, I think ofso many great episodes took placein average American post-warsurroundings. A bus station,a one-room apartment in the city.Incredible, what I call a kind of apsycho-American gothic in a way,that Serling keyed in on kind ofthese post-war American fears andneuroses being locked in adepartment store at night. I grewup as a kid in northern New Jersey,land of the original shoppingmalls, where one of I think mychildhood fears was, what if I gotlocked in the department storeat night when it was totally empty?Maybe I got that from watching arerun of that great TwilightZone episode with Anne Francis,where the mannequins come to life.The ultimate mannequins coming tolife kind of episode. But that'swhat I call a suburban nightmare.Then you get a question ofidentity. So many of the greatestTwilight Zone episodes are aboutpeople that are questioningthe very nature of who they are.There episodes where you knowwho you are, but nobody else knowswho you are. There's theseexistential crises that we all gothrough, where we don't necessarilyacknowledge them or share thembecause they're existential.They're scary.They make us confrontour reality, what I would call ourradical reality. There's a greatepisode where threeastronauts see their own deadbodies. Can you imagine if you sawyour own dead body? That wouldbe a pretty existential crisis. Ithink you'd be doing more thanhumming the Twilight Zone theme.That's where Serling and Companywent in so many of these episodesabout the very nature of identityitself. I think of all the 5themes, there are more episodes ofthe Twilight Zone in that themethan in any other theme. So thatwas a big part. What did America doin the 60s? It questioned itsown identity after the Kennedyassassination. What we know aboutthe 60s is what's Serling and theTwilight Zone forecasted in theearly 60s. The 60s began whenKennedy waskilled, but they weren'tthe 50s and they weren't what the60s became. Those early Kennedyyears are also the TwilightZone years. They're the years thatshowed a kind of a what if forAmerica. What if there wasn'tbigotry? What if there wasn'tracism? What if that's what theTwilight Zone was about? Thenthe 60s happened and the TwilightZone influenced the 60s generationbecause of that what if aspect.George Clayton Johnson, the greatscience fiction writer, talks aboutthat in my introductionthat the Twilight Zone jackedpeople up, he said, to anotherlevel ofconsciousness, of thinking.And that's a pretty heavy legacyfor the Twilight Zone.One of Rod Serling'sdaughters, that beingAnne Serling, who is an authorherself, wrote the forward to yourbook. That speaks volumes aboutthe integrity of it. When, where,and how, Arlen, did the 2 of youconnect with each other?Well, Anne mentions this right upfront in the forward. Yes, I amblessed that I know AnneSerling. I met her on a couple ofoccasions that she cites in herforward. The first time was in2008 at a Rod Serling symposium upat Ithaca where he keeps all hispapers and where he had a summerhome not too far from Binghamton.Oh, Ithaca is in Binghamton.Anyway, I delivered my multimedialecture there about the TwilightZone being that middle betweensurrealism and everything that cameafter. I didn't know she was in theaudience. I had never met herbefore. When I was done withthe presentation, she came down theaisle Stan with tears in her eyesand introduced herselfbecause my whole presentation isbasically Rod Serling as God. Shecame down with tears in hereyes thanking me for what I hadjust done. That's something I'llalways remember. And then I saw heragain five years later at anotherSerling symposium this time in LosAngeles. And we werewalking along and talking. And Ithink I let her know that I didn'treally have a father. My motherwas a widow when I was 4 monthsold and she raised my older brotherand I herself. So myfather was always a face in aphotograph. I think I found myfather figures in the American popculture I grew up with. Thesuperheroes in the comics I read insummer camp as a 5, 6,before I even learned how to read.They were like pseudo proxy fatherfigures. Serling himself wasa father figure, seeing him ontelevision with that commandingpresence of hisunlike any televisionicon before or since. And thegreatest broadcast voice of the20th century. There's no greatervoice than Rod Serling. So he was afather figure. I ended up workingfor my childhood idol,one of the greatest comic bookartists. He was 17 years older thanme, almost old enough to be afather figure. And eventually BruceSpringsteen, even though he's only9 years older than me,was a sort of father figure aswell. I think what happened is withTwilight Zone is that what I'vedone for Serling via my works, mynew book, my original coffee tableart book, all the lecturesI've done is what a son might dofor his father if his father wasRod Serling. I kiddingly toldAnne I'm the son Rod Serling neverhad because he had two daughters acouple of years older than me,but I treat Serling like the fatherI never had. So Anne said to me inresponse basically,Arlen, my father would have beenproud of the work you've done.Those two meetings, and I'vesince been in touch with her viaemail, she was the only choice towrite the forward. And I askedher and she agreed and she wrote ashort but sweet forward to my book.So just to be able toput her name on the cover and usethat in promotion, I'm very blessed. Sure. And like I said,it speaks volumes about the workthat she did that. The book designfor the five themes of theTwilight Zone was designed by youmirroring the black and white TVshow. And I compliment you forthat. And needless to say, your indepth and very readable essays areinsightful as well asenlightening. At curiosity, Arlen,how long did it take you tocomplete the book?Because I alwaysgo off on tangents, I didn'texplain the final two themes.Obsolete man, the fourth theme,there is an episode called theobsolete man, but one of Sterling'smain themes was the individualagainst the group, against society,against technological oppression,against a businesspressure, the individual and hisenvironment. Usually theobsolescence comes from,think Sterling by going through hisWorld War II experiences like thatwhole generation did,it made him much more aware,obviously of death and of life'sfiniteness. So many of his greatestthings are about men who are on thebrink of obsolescence, who don'tlonger matter in society.And that was an overarching theme.And then the final theme, the timeelement in Sterling'sdescription, the Twilight Zone wasas vast as space and as timeless asinfinity. There's 14episodes, I think, in that theme.And I think 13 of them are writtenby Sterling. So he was veryinterested in the past and thefuture, sending people into thefuture, sending people into thepast, dealing with both thecommonalities and the differencesbetween past and future. And thoseinclude his war experiences,2 episodes that took place duringWorld War II when he was stationedas a paratrooper in the PacificTheater. I think the singlegreatest episode ofthe Twilight Zone,as voted by the fans in a 2019convention in Binghamton, theepisode Walking Distance,it was the fifth episode to air in1959. It was voted the singlegreatest, not just time travelepisode, but single greatestepisode. And I write about it in mybook, I describe it as the CitizenKane of television, because whatmakes Citizen Kane the greatestmovie of all time, until Vertigorecently displaced it, was that itexcelled at every level offilmmaking craftsmanship 110%from the conception, thescreenplay, the acting, thelighting, the camerawork, the editing, themusic, everything coming togetherto make it Citizen Kane. Well,Walking Distanceis the Citizen Kaneof the Twilight Zone. Everything isabout it, is just perfect. And it'snot only the greatest timetravel story ever put to film, it'sbetter than any movie, it's betterthan any other Twilight Zonetime travel episode. And like Isaid, it's voted the singlegreatest episode. I don't know if Iconsider it the single greatestepisode, but it is the Citizen Kaneof television. Picking one episodeis like trying to choose yourfavorite child. I have about 5greatest episodes that I can'treally, it's like picking one ofthe 4 Beatles. You need themall, I can't justpick one. Those arethe 5 themes of the book. AndI've been working on these essayson and off for 30 plus years,knowing that I had a book contractlast year and I knew it had adeadline. That's when I sat downto watch, rewatch each episodefresh and take what my 8 gradescience teacher, Mr Chia Petta,called copious notes. Healways said, "Take copious notes."And I took copious notes of everyepisode as I was watching them. AndI allowed for new observations andthings I hadn't thought aboutbecause like any work of art, whenyou re-experience it years later,you see new things in it.You re-appraise things. And that'swhat happened with a lot of theseTwilight episodes that I felt Iknew like the back of my hand. So Itook copious notes. Ibrought in new observations. Iresearched various things that Iwanted to connect the episode to.I pulled all that together. I wrotemy essays. I edited them. I thendesigned them. I mean,I kerned every letter in this book.If you know what kerning is,deciding the space between letters.I also tried to get across thefeeling of the black and whitetelevision experience.Of course, the book had to be inblack and white. All the sourcematerials are black and white.What I also did was in graphicdesign terms, it's called when youghost an image behind the type.If you kind of can see this imageof a woman's face at a hospitaldoor, she's the morgue nursein the episode called 22 with aphrase, room for one more honey.But when you ghost an image inblack and white behind types, soyou can still read the type, Ithought this style was perfectfor the Twilight Zone because somany of the shows were ghost-likein their eeriness. So toread the book and have not only thetelevision images like that, butalso these grade backghosted images. And I set the bookin the original typeface that theTwilight Zone credits were setin called Bernhard Modern for youtypography aficionados out there.Should viewers ofParanormal Yakker want to buy the FiveThemes of the Twilight Zone andlearn about all the differentthings you're involved with, whatis your contact information, howArlen can you do that?You can go to my website,ArlenSchumer.com.There's not only a Twilight Zonepage, but there's a page devotedjust to ordering a copy of myhardcover book signed by me to you.Believe me, this will bethe greatest gift you can give toany Twilight Zone fan because ifI've done my job well, Stan,even the most ardent aficionados ofthe show that have seen everyepisode like I have 100,000 times,maybe if I've done my job well,even they will glean something.They'll think about something.They'll feel something about thisepisode that they may not have feltbefore. And that's thehardcore aficionado. For theaverage Twilight Zone fan, it's arich way tore-engage with the show.You know, I recommend people, theshow streams on Paramount + andsomewhere else, I think,for free. Watch the episode firstfresh. Form your own opinions aboutit. Then read my essayabout that episode. If I've done myjob well, Stan, like I said, Imight make you go back and rewatchthe episode to see what you mighthave missed from what I put in myessay. And the Twilight Zone is agreat television viewing, sharingexperience with your significantother. These episodes are aboutthe human condition. Men, women,doesn't matter who, they can getsomething in these episodes.We all know that we need atelevision shared experience withour significant others. And Irecommend watching the TwilightZone fresh, using my book as a kindof a viewer's guide. And Iguarantee you, double your moneyback if not satisfied, that if youfollow my regimen, you willend up with the renewed love andrespect and glory of the TwilightZone like never before.Arlen Schumer, I thank you forbeing my guest on Paramal Yakker.Yakking with you about the iconicTwilight Zone has been a wonderfulexperience. And a nostalgicone at that because it tookme down memory lane and reminded meof what an incredible show it was.And while I liked millionsof others, I was addicted to it.We all are, and we still are.