Amanda Halley of The Ultimate Fashion History YouTube channel helped me better understand fashion with her constant reminder, "Fashion is not an island; it's a response." I'm one of those men who has lived 48 years in t-shirts and jeans (disregarding the few years in late elementary where I wore corduroy pants for some reason. I think that reason was that my mother didn't understand exactly how serious my inability to change my clothing style was and, in a major struggle to get me to not wear jeans to some family function, didn't realize she was constraining me to years of swishing corduroy pants once I accepted the change (I do remember how I got back into jeans though! While playing at my cousins, my corduroy pants zipper ripped (or the button popped?) and they just wouldn't stay up. So my aunt had some old jeans from Peter Martin (the neighbor boy from across the street) and said I could wear those. Of course, I adamantly refused to wear another boy's pants and decided to struggle through holding up my pants for the rest of my life. A little while later, my mother (she was there because it was probably Thanksgiving) came out with some jeans and said they were a pair I had left there previously. So I acquiesced and put them on, only realizing as I was putting them on in the bathroom that they were fucking Peter Martin's jeans and I had been had. But in a burst of maturity and insight into saving face that I can't believe came out of a youthful me, I made the cognitive decision to go along with the sham. And after that, I never wore corduroy pants again and it was jeans all the way down once more (sure, sure. As I got older, I wore a variety of different kinds of pants. But probably 95% jeans)).
That was a pretty good digression so let me remind you where we were: I've basically only worn t-shirts and jeans my entire life so Amanda Halley's The Ultimate Fashion History YouTube channel has taught me more about history in a year or so than I knew in the previous 47. And her quote, "Fashion is not an island; it's response," struck a chord with me because, as an English major, it's how I learned to better appreciate poetry. Or, at least, how I learned to better appreciate poetry that I did not like. It's one thing to read William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and think, "What the fuck? Stupid. Whatever." It's another to learn about the other artists whom Williams discussed poetry and their theories about what modern poetry should be, and how it should differ from the previous generation. Although I don't know much about that because after reading "The Red Wheelbarrow" and thinking, "What the fuck? Stupid. Whatever," I had no interest in learning more about William Carlos Williams. But even poems that people think they love as a stand-alone experience, like Yeats' "The Second Coming," cannot truly be understood without context and reading multiple essays discussing Yeats' secret language and ritualistic metaphors. Poems, like fashion, are not islands. Every single one is a piece of dialogue in a generational conversation. Good luck ever feeling like you really understand anything after accepting that fact.
Which brings me to this episode of The Twilight Zone, "Third from the Sun." While not as unfathomable as T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" without understanding the references or contemplating where Vivienne Westwood's punk aesthetic came from without knowledge of previous years and decades of fashion, "Third from the Sun" relies on the viewer understanding the context in which this story was told. Based on a Richard Matheson story (because of course it was), "Third from the Sun" is a modernist response to living in the nuclear age. Obviously we still live with the threat of nuclear war because genies and bottles and idiots and whatnot so the story doesn't need as much context as maybe some of the other The Twilight Zone episodes that haven't aged as well. But the way it's told exemplifies the needed subversive nature of Rod Serling's television program for 1959. It comes with a sort of safety valve that allows a viewer to remain blind to the criticism of the United States. I'm sure what Matheson and Serling do in this story has been done before and since but it struck me as quite clever, and made me realize that possibly the only other example of this cleverness that I can currently recall with my muddled and aged brain is the ending scene of Get Out when the police car pulls up as Chris kneels over the woman who betrayed him and she begins calling for help. Although that scene maybe doesn't have quite the same safety valve. In fact, it refuses the safety valve completely. That scene is all, "See how you felt when that police car pulled up, you white? That's it. That's fucking living in the U.S. as a black man." But it's still sort of the same visceral reaction that the creators are expecting the audience to have at the end of the story. I should probably explain what that reaction is in "Third from the Sun."
William Sturka helps build hydrogen bombs. One day after work, he learns that the bombs are going to be launched in 48 hours. The world is essentially over. He can no longer justify his career by pointing out he's just a replaceable cog in a gigantic war machine because that cog has helped bring it all crashing down. Luckily for him and his family, he has an escape plan! Unluckily for his daughter Jody's date and everybody else living on the planet, they don't have an escape plan! But that's okay because this is how stories work. The audience is given the main characters and encouraged to simply care about the main characters because caring about people who haven't even been written is a stupid waste of time. Sure, Jody's date exists but you never have to look at his face so who cares if he blows up or is later torn to pieces by the mutant post-apocalyptic zombie monkeys. This is about the Sturka family and how they will survive another day!
The Sturka escape plan is to take an experimental space ship to a planet they've discovered in a nearby galaxy. They've learned that the people on that planet are similar to them and even speak a language quite closely related to theirs. This brings up a lot of other questions that can't be answered in a twenty five minute television show so just shut up. Some other drama takes place with a bad guy who wants to stop them but none of that really matters. Okay, fine, it matters but in a way that I don't want to get into. It matters because it demonstrates wrong-headed loyalty to a dangerous government and obsessive patriotism and cigarette smoking men who just want to see the world burn. But the terrible man trying to stop them is really just an obstacle to be traversed so Sturka and his family have something to do for twenty minutes, aside from discussing their plans of stealing a government aircraft while playing Bridge or Pinochle or whatever stupid card game for couples they played in the 50s.
The main theme is that Sturka and his family are living in a world teetering on the edge of nuclear Armageddon and they're desperate to escape to safety. At the end of the episode, as they escape in their space ship, William and his friend discuss their destination. William learns the planet they're headed to is the third from its star and that it's called Earth. I think this is where I'd insert a gif of universe brain if I was that kind of Internet writer. I am not. Although since I'm more of a 'zine writer, I should at least be doing my own art for these reviews. Fuck. Now that I've thought of it, I've just made more work for myself for future reviews. Also, I think I'm going to turn these into physical 'zines.
So that's the twisty bit going on in this episode! The entire time, the audience is thinking this is a tale of Earth because, well, we're living in the shadow of complete and utter annihilation brought on by the whims of our leaders. So the big surprise is that this was a different planet entirely! But the part that I think is clever and subversive and based in the context and dialogue of the time is that it relies on the audience to understand it and make the mental leap of logic for one final gasp of awareness. They aren't going somewhere safe! They're headed right back into the same on-the-brink-of-disaster world they just left. Which is why it reminds me of the final scene of Get Out which relies on the audience's pre-conceived notions of police and violence against black men. I suppose in 1959, you couldn't watch this episode of The Twilight Zone and not gasp at the realization that this poor family hasn't actually rescued itself. They're still in danger because our world has become that dangerous place. We believed they were fleeing Earth because Earth has gotten as frightening as the world in this episode and Matheson and Serling double down by saying, "Ha ha! Nope. They're going to Earth!" Perhaps there's a bit of hope in the story in that we still have more time than 48 hours. But I don't think that's the point. And much like Get Out, even people who pooh-pooh Black Lives Matter protests, must have had a visceral reaction to the police car pulling up while the protagonist knelt above the bloody body of his fiance and tormentor. It's a scene that forces a person acknowledge, by their own reaction and assumption about what's going to happen, that, even if they will vocally deny that police violence against black men is an epidemic, they understand the truth of it. I can't imagine a person exists who could watch that scene and not immediately understand that Chris's life has gone from one dangerous experience to another serious threat to his life. Just another scene that relies on the context of the time, and dialogue across decades. None of this shit is an island. Like the jeans I've worn my entire life, it's simply responses all the way down.
Final Thought: I apologize for taking this review in two directions at once without properly knitting them together (the whole "it's a response thing" and the comparison to Get Out) but one came to mind as I was enmeshed in the other and, in the end, I don't have an editor and I'm not being paid for this. So if it's all poorly knitted together, I can only hope that you view it from the appropriate distance to hide its serious flaws. Thank you!
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