Publication date:
11 October 2010Length of book:
168 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
246x161mm6x10"
ISBN-13: 9780739120446
Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling examines the political themes in The Twilight Zone. In this unique show, Rod Serling used fantasy and the supernatural to explore political ideas such as capital punishment, the individual and the state, war, conformity, the state of nature, prejudice, and alienation. He used aliens and machines to understand human nature. While the themes in The Twilight Zone often reflected political concerns of the time, like the Cold War and post-industrial technology, the messages had broader political implications. This book looks at Serling's mechanistic view of the world and emphasis on fear through Hobbesian themes like diffidence and automata.
The marriage of science fiction and political theory is a long and complex one, but it has seldom been laid out in such detail and with as much analytical smarts as in Professor Feldman's study of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Both fans of this popular series and students of political theory will find much here about their main interest while learning new ways to think and talk about it. I was particularly struck by the great variety of examples of alienation in Serling's work cast in the light of Marx's theory of alienation. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.