Rod Serling's Twilight Zone offers a metaphor

[Steph Eigen]

Wow! This really impacted me.  I just saw this episode of the original Twilight Zone on a New Years marathon showing of the original series.  I had not seen it for years and years.  Here's the link to the episode, The Eye of the Beholder:

https://archive.org/details/TwilightzoneEyeofthebeholder

It was remade in the early 2000's:



I can't help but see the some of us suffering something analogous to the fate of the patient in the episode.  I'm curious if it strikes anyone else this way.

Steph

[JoanneB]

I can't say I fondly remember this episode, but I do remember it all too well from that night way way back when I was a kid. Back then I was THE outcast. The easy target. A stuttering mouth breathing big fat knuckle dragging moron. A few years later balding on top of that as this episode aired on Channel 11(?) at 11 or 11:30 after The HoneyMooners before it became Star-Trek rerun hour.

And YES, it affected me BIG TIME. An ugly duckling on both ends of the spectrum.

BTW The original Air Date was 11 Nov 1960. Twilight Zone essentially died in 1964 with Rod Serling giving up on it. It just wasn't the same after he left in it's assorted incarnations

[bluepaint]

theres a lot of imaginative stories in scifi or fantasy,  be it a certain episode like this or movie or book, that parallel those feelings , we associate them with our selves as being trans but they touch on those issues in whats accepted if your different from others , the odd one out , different from societies ideal of whats visually normal!


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[bluepaint]

I had seen the original version but i think they nailed it with this updated version, As a trans person and as a woman, I often thought of issues like surgery (FFS) and If we are conforming the cis society's idea of what is accepted, I have talked with some that so desperately want to change their faces (like the stories character) they are pushed to the brink bc they feel they cant live if they dont " blend in, pass" and I asked myself, should i be changing myself physically to meet their (societies) criteria or should I stand and change their criteria by showing them that regardless, I am a woman , tech a trans woman by birth but a woman nonetheless! If I was disfigured by an accident or by illness, would I be less a woman?
In different cultures or at different times through the ages, standards are and were different depending on what was considered " normal" for that society. I hear a lot overly defensive reactions when I bring this issue up, some say " its for me to feel better about myself" but if you follow that stream of thought, your really saying " I know whats accepted in society and I want to be that so that others accept me bc I look like more like the norm and so I will fit in and enjoy my life and so then I will be able to accept myself too if others do"! So what to say or think about the " in the eyes of the beholder" cautionary tale? These are my thoughts but we each must walk our own paths so no one person can define whats best for another but it is something to think about!
Blessings! Julie [emoji177]


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