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.
During the 1960s particular anxieties developed surrounding love, domesticity, television transition, and the concept of the unknown oblivion. After viewing The Outer Limits it is clear that the episode “The Bellaro Shield” is a commentary for many of these anxieties, but mostly deals with the idea of domesticity being alienating and lonely. In this episode, the female lead becomes trapped in a box-like shield invented by an alien species. Even when the shield is finally removed, the female lead believes she is still confined within its walls. This concept is similar to the psychological problems woman reportedly experienced after being confined to the home for an extenuated period of time. According to Sconce’s essay, “…married woman were far more likely to suffer from schizophrenic episodes than men…the common stage in the ‘breakdown’ of…housewives was ‘the increasing isolation of the wife from family and social relationships’”(33). This is similar to the breakdown the female lead has I this episode. Also, in the end it looks like she is trying to escape to confines of the TV set, for she is banging her hand against something that isn’t there. This part of the scene comments on the anxiety of the television being part of oblivion.
ReplyDeleteSconce discusses three social anxieties incited by the burgeoning technological, consumer-centric system of capitalism during the 1950'5s:
ReplyDelete- a fear of social isolation. although nuclear family units are a family, they are limited to their unit within the household. As the suburbs expanded, neighborly interaction decreased and family units grew increasingly isolationist and distant from their fellow citizens. The greatest victim of this isolation was the housewife, with no duties aside from tending to the house, housewives functionally became prisoners within their homes.
2. fear of satellite technology. exploration into space threatened previous beliefs that our planet and our race help special significance - the discovery that planet earth was merely a speck of dust in an infinite beach spread a sense of disillusionment towards any sense of social progress, as the realization that our existence in a cold universe was minuscule begged the question, "progress towards what?".
- finally, fear of the potential psychic dangers posed by wireless technology. Sconce notes apprehension towards television broadcast breakdowns. Historically, people expressed fears that communications technology may somehow have sapped a morsel of the participant's identity permanently, at personal cost.
The episode of "Outer Limits" we watched in class plays to all these fears. First, note the title sequence of the show itself, which implicitly highlights the dangerous potential of television to assume control of the viewer in the intimacy of their own home - a horrifying possibility. Second, the plot of the episode - a young couple who never leave their home, completely socially isolated, even from other family members. A housewife who demands social mobility, but ultimately, a life outside of the confines of the household, which she never seems to escape. Her attempt to break free from the shackles of social norms is to hijack alien technology from a race far more advanced than our own, but her ignorance of the power of this technology traps her into a corner of the house - and now, she is not only a prisoner of the house, but trapped in an even tighter confine within her existing prison - her own home.
“Tv exerted an unknown and ambiguous control over the American family” (Sconce, 25). The outer limits episode depicts the life of a lonely housewife who tries to get the attention of her husband by contacting alien lifeforms. Once she does that she traps him so he can’t get away. Later she becomes trapped through the same technology and she is unable to get out. Even when the shield goes down, she still feels mentally trapped, this is similar to how tv made women feel. While providing a window to the world, tv also was a way to get women out of the workforce and back into the house. Due to this many women experience immense psychological trauma since they felt trapped in the house. Tv added to the problems that they already had and gave them a twisted view of the world. It differed from the aura of movies because when people watch movies they can feel the emotion temporarily and then return to a space in which they don’t have that emotion. Having tv sets in the house meant that the anxiety and fears depicted on it, would stay and remain in the home.
ReplyDelete