From the outset, Rod Serling’s vision for The Twilight Zone was a specifically political one. Understanding that the tropes of the science fiction genre made it the perfect vehicle to slip pointed social critique past television’s censoring bodies, Serling was long interested in using the series to push back against social norms. With a body of work exploring men escaping to worlds of their creation as a response to emasculation, Richard Matheson was the perfect writer to help execute Serling’s vision.[1] Of the 16 episodes Matheson wrote for the series, “A World of His Own” (broadcast in the first season on July 1, 1960) is the one whose framework is most readily reflected in modern dystopian narratives such as AMC’s Humans and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. As a reaction to the era’s shifting cultural power dynamics between men and women, this episode establishes a template for male domination over the female body, both psychologically and physically, that is still obvious in satire today.
Posted on March 31, 2021
