themonstersaredueonmaplestreet
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a classic representation that television production work created over 50 years ago can stand the test of time and still hold relevance to deliver a message in today’s society. The Twilight Zone episode debuted on March 4th, 1960 and presents us with an interesting story. Taking place on Maple Street in a nondescript town that is supposed to give the viewer an eerie sense of familiarity, we are introduced to a normal neighborhood community that just so happens to have a strange “meteorite” like object (as some characters refer to it) fly over their houses.
Once the object flies overhead, the machinery and technology in the neighborhood begins to fail; the cars won’t start, the phones don’t work, and the power grid for the homes goes dark. Though there may be many different messages to interpret with this particular episode, I believe the main one to leap out at us is this: if technology fails us, we resort to our primal instincts and chaos ensues. This is evident when a young boy in the neighborhood hypothesizes that the object overhead is some sort of alien craft, and that the aliens won’t let any of them leave the neighborhood.
The boy goes on to mention that in a comic book that he read, only the aliens sent down before the spacecraft would be able to leave the town and that they would look and act just like one of them (humans). I would personally find this idea a farce, but the neighborhood entertains this idea after a man disappears to investigate the next block over and doesn’t return for hours. At this point, mass hysteria begins to take hold. The neighborhood becomes suspicious of their neighbors and begins to ostracize one another to figure out who the invaders are.
When one neighbor’s car starts on its own, the mob is quick to question why his car works but theirs don’t. Another neighbor points out that she often sees the man standing out in his yard late at night, gazing up into the sky as if he were looking
Once the object flies overhead, the machinery and technology in the neighborhood begins to fail; the cars won’t start, the phones don’t work, and the power grid for the homes goes dark. Though there may be many different messages to interpret with this particular episode, I believe the main one to leap out at us is this: if technology fails us, we resort to our primal instincts and chaos ensues. This is evident when a young boy in the neighborhood hypothesizes that the object overhead is some sort of alien craft, and that the aliens won’t let any of them leave the neighborhood.
The boy goes on to mention that in a comic book that he read, only the aliens sent down before the spacecraft would be able to leave the town and that they would look and act just like one of them (humans). I would personally find this idea a farce, but the neighborhood entertains this idea after a man disappears to investigate the next block over and doesn’t return for hours. At this point, mass hysteria begins to take hold. The neighborhood becomes suspicious of their neighbors and begins to ostracize one another to figure out who the invaders are.
When one neighbor’s car starts on its own, the mob is quick to question why his car works but theirs don’t. Another neighbor points out that she often sees the man standing out in his yard late at night, gazing up into the sky as if he were looking