Based on your viewing of The Outer Limits episode “The Bellaro
Shield” and understanding of Jeffrey Sconce’s essay on the show,
explain how The Outer Limits expresses and potentially
intensifies particular anxieties prevalent during the early 1960s.
The Outer Limits generated fears of suburban isolation, government oversight, and nuclear destruction in the 1960’s. As we saw in our screening of “The Bellaro Shield”, the alien shield isolated the suburban housewife, acting as a symbol of her entrapment in the home. Further, the suburban nuclear family seemed to prohibit the wife from do anything outside of her role as mother and housekeeper, further emphasizing the symbol of the shield and presenting the concept of the “domestic asylum.”
ReplyDeleteThe show also played a major role of instilling fears of government surveillance. As the opening credits played, people were reminded of how their television was being controlled by a higher power. In addition, every family who has a television set now could feel there was a surveillance presence in their own home 24/7, creating new fears of how something is always watching them. In addition to the government spying, Sconce touches upon the “O.B.I.T.” episode, which reminded American’s of their distrust of one another due to the desire to spy on each other.
Finally, the show touched upon fears of nuclear destruction. As footage of the atomic bomb test site in the Yucca Flats became more publicized, American’s were now more afraid of nuclear weapons because of the unknown effects of such a danger. The obliteration in this footage was parallel to the episode Sconce talks about, called “The Premonition,” where the motionless frozen beings in the episode provoked a physiological connection to the “unnerving imagery” from the Yucca Flats footage. The Outer Limits reinforced the anxieties of the 60’s with its ability to create connections through the twisted symbolism within each episode.
Sconce's essay discusses several themes in The Outer Limits associated with fears of the American population during the 1960s. One major theme is the idea of domestic asylum, where in post-war years women are physically trapped in the home, and the television is hypothetically their only connection to the external world. The Outer Limits evoked fear in of these women, as horror stories of alternate life forms entered the confines of their own homes. Unlike the movie theaters, where women could go experience a horror film and then return to the comfort of their home, the horror was placed directly in their living room. Another associated fear is that of nuclear warfare. Sconce discusses how the "special reports" during the Cold War years, where the government gave updates on nuclear warfare, highly resembled the bleak tone of The Outer Limits. The similarities in tone and style created an association between the two, and thus enhanced feelings of anxiety about the show.
ReplyDeleteThe particular episode "The Bellaro Shield" presents a theme closely associated to fear in the domestic sphere. The compelling figure in this episode is Judith, a housewife whose character is compared to Lady Macbeth in encouraging her husband's career, but staying in her place as a passive domestic figure. She oversteps her boundaries in this episode, as she follows her curiosity with the alien figure her husband discovered, and finds herself trapped in the ailen's shield, where we fear her suffocation for most of the episode. Although she is released at the end, she is metaphorically punished by disobeying her domestic role, thus not only evoking a fear in the female audience of this particular episode, but also suggesting women should stay within their domestic sphere in order to ensure safety.
The main anxiety present in “The Bellaro Shield” is that of the housewife in her postwar America. This marked the period of movement from cities to suburbs, where the housewife was promised that by buying an array of goods she would live a happy life in the home. But this was just the popular way of looking at it. Instead, these women were trapped in their homes all day, expected to love cleaning by herself with all her wonderful goods. Sconce defined this as a “domestic asylum”, “a place of the insane”. This is shown in “The Bellaro Shield” by Judith’s captivity not only by the shield, but also by her role as a housewife. She would never have been considered for the promotion that her husband may receive, but she is the one that wants to pursue it. In the end, her aspirations were too much for a housewife and she became trapped in a real prison inside of her own home. The shield showed that even if a housewife may try to break free, she would never be able to. At the end of the episode, it appears as if the shield is gone. Judith still cannot get out, pointing further to the ideas of what a woman was allowed to do in the early 1960s.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sconce, fantastic family sitcom was developed due to a series of disappointments in the 1950s. For instance, in 1957, the Russians beat the U.S. into space with Sputnik. In addition, there was increasing fascination about space and science. On the other hand, from the 1950s to the 1960s, there was a shift from the nuclear family to isolated family. The middle-class mother was abandoned at home as the household keeper. They didn’t have to work and rarely had a chance to appear in the public. Overtime, abandoned housewife felt lonely and stressful, and eventually became crazy.
ReplyDelete“The Bellaro Shield” showed the process of how Judith, a housewife, became completely insane and mad for being trapped within the shield. Even though she was released from the shield, she continued to believe that she would be imprisoned within the glass forever. According to Sconce, this episode reflected the relationship of marriage, gendered ambition, and domestic asylum in the early 1960s. Judith was punished for her crazy ambition and for disrupting her role as a passive homemaker. The “fantastic” element of the episode, the weird alien and his technology intensified social anxiety because it led to a series of crisis that challenged the legitimacy of the social institution.
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ReplyDeleteThe Outer Limits reflects a few prevalent anxieties that arose during the early 1960’s. Firstly, much of the content and plot of the show emphasizes the domestic role of the housewife. The family structure at the time is dependent on a society that confines the woman to inside the home. She is a domestic, motherly figure attached to her wifely duties. When a woman steps out of this role, society’s strict structure is disrupted as shown in the extended metaphor weaved into the plot of the episode of The Outer Limits that we watched in class. When the wife in the show, the ambitious, driving force behind her husband’s intelligence, tries to take a leading role in their future, she gets herself into immense trouble. She locks herself unintentionally in “The Bellaro Shield”. This thus determines that if a woman is too ambitious and pushy, her domestic role will entrap her to where she truly belongs in the private sphere.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting discourse throughout the episode is the role of television and television surveillance in the private area of a home. People began to grow anxious of televisions’ pervasive presence in the home. The eerie introduction of The Outer Limits reminds the audience that with sense of watching TV comes a sense of ‘being watched’. This relates to a larger anxiety that the government could have more control than initially thought through these modes of entertainment.
Furthermore, television made the home a place of hypothetical situations and simulations that were inescapable. While before at a movie theatre, one could escape the ideas on the screen or stage before them, when one turns off their television, the images they witnessed often still linger in their very home. In a show like The Outer Limits this is especially frightening because allusions to problems such as nuclear warfare often appeared. Something like “The Bellaro Shield” seemed so appealing at the time because the audience watching was probably consciously or subconsciously worried by talk and press about impending nuclear doom and obliteration.
The Outer Limits stood out from other science fiction shows because its bleak tone characterized the series’ run. Even Twilight Zone, a similar science fiction show at the time, would “crack a smile” (Sconse). The outer limits played upon the then-contemporary fears of technology and what exactly lay beyond the TV screen.
ReplyDeleteThere was still some ambiguity to the technological nature of the television in the early 1960s (of course that ambiguity remains today, but not as severely). This caused some anxiety about how broadcasting actually worked—if television could bring images to the home, was it bringing images of the home to somewhere else? In The Outer Limits episode we watched in class, the alien used broadcasting technology in order to come to earth. This brought up the idea that broadcasting might be able to transfer more than just images; broadcasting could possibly transfer living beings as well.
In the early 1960s as well, America and Russia were in the midst of a space race. Korolev, the head of the Russian side of the space race, convinced Khrushchev to launch satellites by saying they could work as Soviet spies on the Americans- leading to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. This technique was used a couple of more times in order for Korolev to receive the go-ahead to launch satellites into space.
America was aware of this possibility. After the Cuban Missile crisis, America understood that Russia could be a threat. In fact, Kennedy ushered the building of bomb shelters (not that it would really protect anyone from a nuclear missile). Paranoia was real and very evident among Americans. Shows like the Outer Limit that played on these fears, especially explaining the possibilities of their likelihood (the alien using broadcasting, an already existing technology, to transport to earth) heightened the fears of already nervous Americans.