If you’re not familiar with the episode, you can read a synopsis here, although I strongly recommend actually watching the episode as it is much more chilling that way:
With no one ever daring to correct him, and possessing omnipotent power, we can easily expect him to be a pretty awful adult. But I kind of think a subtext of this episode is the opposite of the message we often get from fiction about the purity and innocence of children: namely, that children can be pretty awful and that it’s lucky for all of us that they don’t have too much power before they mature morally.
So I’d actually suspect that he might mellow out a bit as an adult, although it will still be pretty ill-advised to cross him. And as he enters puberty, another complication will be that anyone who becomes the object of his romantic/sexual desire will be in a very tough spot (this notion was effectively explored in last year’s movie Brightburn although the addition of Anthony’s telepathy makes it even more perilous as it’s harder to just “play along” if someone is viscerally disgusted by him.
I would think at the very least, he will become a little more reluctant to take actions that threaten the food supply* of the town, and maybe hesitate before sending people to the “cornfield” if he doesn’t want to run out of playmates. (I didn’t get the sense that his omnipotence extended to making this a round trip as opposed to a one-way deal.)
*Does Anthony himself need food to survive? I would think so but I’m not sure. Could he simply *create *food like a Star Trek replicator? If not, maybe the prospects for him (or anyone in the town) even making it long enough for him to attain adulthood are dicey.
Huh, I know they did a version in the '80s and then one again last year (or was it the year before?), but I wasn’t aware of that reboot.
Funny you should mention that, because what actually made me think of this was Mike Pesca saying in his latest Gist podcast that the way Bix and other experts at the daily briefings have to gingerly “handle” Trump reminds him of the way the adults in the Twilight Zone episode treat Anthony.
Well, Trump has sent a lot of people “to the cornfield”. And we haven’t heard from or about Sean Spicer (#LetHimMisspeak) since his bizarre Dancing With The Stars appearance, so…
Part of the plot was how easy it would be to kill him…even with his telepathy. In that ep, the dude turned into a jack in the box had him distracted and no one had the guts to move*
*Granted if you knock him out or kill him…what happens to the town??
Didn’t it almost seemed implied in the original episode that the school teacher or whoever lady that visited had a connection to him, almost like she might be able to tame his behavior in the long-run? I felt a vibe like that but if a kid like that really existed he would eventually tire of anyone and resent them and then bang, straight to the cornfield.
I probably didn’t see the TZ episode but I certainly remember the outstanding Jerome Bixby original. What happens with Tony? If he destroyed everything outside Peaksvile Ohio, I’d expect he explodes when puberty hits. Or he turns fenceposts and sheep into girls. Hilarity ensues.
Yeah, Charlie Evans or Kilgrave from Jessica Jones.
Grown up men-children with appetites and no ability - nor desire - to tame or control them. The ultimate solipsist. Nothing is real or counts except his own short-term wants.
Why would he develop emotionally? Everyone tiptoes around him and fluffs his ego for (quite legitimate) fear of his wrath, and venting his infantile temper gets him everything he wants with zero consequence. Of course, he is eventually going to banish everyone ‘to the cornfield‘ and be left alone to entertain himself, and without anyone to torment or do his bidding, he’ll just become frustrated and angry but without reinforcement he’ll never come to see the fault in himself. He’s the perfect narcissist but without an unlimited audience of new strangers to manipulate.
How would that happen? All his life he’s gotten to do or get whatever he wants whenever he wants without suffering any consequences. There’s nobody who’s sufficiently powerful to successfully defy him or even put up enough of a fight to make him later think twice about some of his decisions. The only hope is eventually he’ll get so bored with being nearly omnipotent and omniscient that he’ll withdraw into a perpetual state of apathy and lethargy thereby allowing the lesser beings around him to eke out a slightly less terrifying existence.
Right, but even kids raised by the best parents, with the ideal teachers, friends, etc., have very questionable moral outlooks at that young age, that simply require greater physiological brain development to outgrow. I take that to be part of the point of this episode: “think how scary it would be to place absolute power in the hands of a young child”.
It’s certainly plausible that Anthony’s having cowed the adults into praising him all the time could stunt his development and prevent him from getting to some of the higher levels, but I don’t see a reason to expect it to stay at the very lowest level as it appears to be in the episode.
Nature vs nurture argument. Can his brain change enough to grow a conscious? I vote no, but am unwilling to undertake a study.
Another example would be AM in the Ellison story “I Have No Mouth…”. Absolute power with no checks. And by the end of the story, only one person left to torment.
