The Shelter
"…It is not meant to be prophetic; it need not happen. It’s the fervent and urgent prayer of all men of goodwill that it never shall happen. But in this place, in this moment, it does happen. This is the Twilight Zone…"
Was just kicking back a moment ago watching some bizarro-prime-time TV (5am), and stumbled upon a rare treat….classic episodes of the Twilight Zone. Now, just to put things into perspective, this is an ENORMOUS improvement on the usual bizarro-prime-time lineup, which mostly consists of every channel except the weather channel playing one of five two-hour infomercials; Chuck Norris’s Total Gym, Extenze Pills (for that certain part of the male body), Girls Gone Wild (for that same part of the male body), that one obnoxious dude in the headset trying to sell reusable paper towels (The Shamwow?), and last but not least, my own personal favorite, Time Life’s Country Gold Collection (I could seriously watch that one all night long).
After Rod Serling’s enchanting opening monologue, the episode developed into one of the slightly more serious and insightful ones…pursuing real and present evil, rather than some form of fictitious or fantastical phenomenon– the type of evil that made The Shining so brilliantly effective.
The episode opens with a group of friends, in their 30s and 40s presumably, at the tail end of a birthday party for their local doctor (who’s smoking a cigarette throughout, which I found amusing). They have a toast and take turns complimenting and expressing affection for the doctor, and all seems very cordial and friendly. Air raid sirens suddenly interrupt the party, and a voice on the radio warns that there may be an impending nuclear strike, and that all people should head to their bomb shelters or basements immediately. The doctor’s guests run in panic, and he takes his wife and son into his basement bomb shelter and locks the door behind him. Moments later his guests begin returning one family at a time, begging him to let them in, as the doctor was the only one who prepared a bomb shelter. He refuses to let anyone in, saying he only has enough food and water for three people, and in their panic his friends begin to tear one another apart, eventually breaking out into physical violence amongst themselves, and bashing the doctor’s shelter door in with a giant pipe used as a ram-rod. The moment the hatch door is broken open, while the doctor is crouching in front of his family brandishing a pipe of his own in self defense, the voice on the radio returns to tell the citizens that it was a false alarm, and the group is left staring at one another in shock and disbelief at what had just happened.
The moral of the story, of course, is that beneath everyone’s civilized persona and disposition there crouches a selfish and primal beast, awoken and revealed only in moments of life or death peril. The motives of the doctor’s friends were twisted, however…because of their friendship with him, they felt entitled to his bomb shelter, and apparently weren’t aware of the monsters they had become. So while the episode clearly wanted to make the argument that the evil was essentially our survival instinct, I’d like to make the argument that society was the actual culprit in that scenario…for if they had not felt entitled to his bomb shelter because of their socially constructed friendship, they would have accepted the fact that he couldn’t house them, and would have made their own private arrangements instead, as best they could, as individuals.
I find it particularly ignorant of people when they blame others for their problems. If someone specific bothers you, rather than think it’s because they aren’t doing something they should, or abiding by your personal standards that you feel should be universal, reconsider…chances are the problem is that you think they should be doing something a certain way, when, in fact, they owe you no such thing at all. It’s easier to change yourself, or your perspective, than it is to change someone else.
"How can I change the world, if I cant even change myself?"