I read the story “It’s a Good Life”, by Jerome Bixby before I saw the Twilight Zone episode. Perhaps it’s first-read prejudice, but I like Bixby’s concept of Anthony thinking people and objects into the cornfield better than Serling’s perception of his wishing them. Not magic, but the power of his mind—I found that much more effective. Then, at the climax of the story, the drunk, bitter guy was transformed into “something like nothing anyone would have believed possible”. How disappointed I was to find out that the show had defined that “something”.
So why was “think” changed to “wish”, and indefinable creature changed to…well, see it if you haven’t; it’s still a good episode, heh heh. But was it just dumbing down, the way “Philosopher’s Stone” became “Sorcerer’s Stone” and silver slippers became ruby slippers? And has anyone else read the story?
I haven’t read the story, but to a six-year-old child “thinking” and “wishing” could be pretty much the same thing. An adult might think, “I wish a 16-ton weight would fall on his head,” he’s not really wishing it to happen. A child will think the same thing, and it really would be a wish. In the case of It’s a Good Life, I think that “thinking” something bad happening to someone would show more “maliciousness”. That is, the child would know what he’s doing is wrong. By “wishing” something to happen, I think it’s not malicious.
I liked the jack-in-the-box. I thought it was a great image.
Yeah, but I thought “thinking” was more effective because it was cold-blooded, whereas “wishing” could be a whim—a child’s whim. The impression I got from both the story and the episode was that whatever Anthony was, he wasn’t really a child. I think maliciousness did come into it, to an extent.
Exactly. The TZ episode portrayed him as not mean-spirited. Personally, I find that more frightening than his being some sort of malevolent creature. With a “bad thing” you can often avoid pissing it off. With a child, you’re subject to his whims. I think it’s scarier when you don’t know what not to do. (Although the adults in the ep. seemed to have a fairly good grasp of it. But they were never totally sure.)
I read a Ray Bradbury story about a kid who’s sick in bed. He feels that he is slowly becoming something other than himself – I think it was likened to fossilized trees, where the thing looks like a tree, but is really stone. Over time the tree’s structure has been replaced by minerals. The tree no longer exists, but its form does. How does it end? (Complete spoiler below.)
The boy’s body is finally taken over. “He” no longer exists. The boy is gone and “something” that looks and sounds and acts exactly like him has taken his place. He says he feels fine and jumps out of bed. He shakes the doctor’s hand. He shakes his parents’ hands. Then he goes outside and some ants merely touch his foot… and die! The little boy smiles. :eek:
The story’s power was the same as in the TZ episode: Anthony wasn’t evil in either. He was amoral and terrifying, but everything he did was a good thing in his self-centered world. I don’t think anything he did was out of spite or maliciousness; he was either protecting himself or lashing out in unthinking, immature anger. (In the story, he even had some semblance of a conscience – he tried to bring back someone he had killed, but no one appreciated it.)
I agree that the story was stronger because Bixby left some of the things to the imagination. One of my favorite lines in the story was one saying how someone blamed themselves for what Anthony did to someone – and not mentioning what he actually did do. There were also several great references to “after what happened to x,” where “what happened” was never explained – which made them more terrifying.
But TV is a visual medium and just having the guy vanish would have had no impact. There is no way to portray “something like nothing anyone would ever believe possible” on the screen. Or, rather, no matter how you do it, you needed to show an image. The Jack-in-the-box was as good an image as anything.
I think, RealityChuck, that one of the things that made Anthony so horrifying in the story was that he had the perceptions of a normal child. The story emphasized he did like some of the townspeople.
Anthony is all grown up now and has a daughter. His mother, Agnes, finds out that her granddaughter has the same powers Anthony has and hopes that the daughter will wish Anthony away. But the plan backfires, and the daughter wishes everyone in Peaksville away. She and her father walk outside and she brings back the world, instead of just Peaksville.
Nothing I ever saw on THE TWILIGHT ZONE ever creeped me out as much as the jack-in-the-box in that episode. And that’s saying something.
By the way, I do know the reason for changing Dorothy’s Silver Shoes into Ruby Slippers: Technicolor! Silver shoes would have read as boring old white against the Yellow Brick Road. Ruby red was used for contrast.
