How TV Expanded My Imagination

by Anthony Servante

Between the ages of six and thirteen, I watched a lot of television. It was my friend, my teacher, my mentor. My brothers played sports. I sat in the dark and took in the soft glow of the tube. It showed me other worlds both weird and wonderful. Below, I've listed the shows that hooked me and kept me hooked to this very day in my old age. I still watch reruns of these shows, and they still astonish me and make life seem timeless. I will discuss a bit about each show and what attracted my young mind to view it every week. 

Let's begin. 

The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone host, Rod Serling

"Where is Everyone?" The first episode.

In 1959 my three teenage aunts gathered around the television. It was ten o'clock on a Friday night. They were babysitting me. They were snacking on oranges. They turned on that big box with the small screen that showed black and white and gray images. I still remember the opening to that first TV show I remember fondly: The blurry sun sinking into that black line crossing the screen as that otherworldly electric guitar repeated the beginning of the show's theme song. Haunting, hypnotic music. Then the black and white imagery of the episode began. I was used to color TV by then. It caught me off-guard, made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't  stop watching. There was a lone man in an empty street who seemed to be looking for someone, anyone, but there was no one. This feeling of loneliness, too, frightened me, but kept me glued to the screen. I didn't understand, but I was engaged and engrossed. Each weekend my aunts would babysit me, and we'd watch the latest TZ episode. I also began to notice my teen aunts were scared of certain episodes. The ones with ventriloquist dummies frightened them the most. Those are the episodes I remember most. 

 

One Step Beyond

One Step Beyond host, John Newland.

The Bride Possessed, first episode. 

Same year, 1959, same scenario, different show. A black sky with plump stars speckled across its vastness, a blast of music that was short but scary, a well-dressed man with a friendly voice said something about strange forces. Then the story began. But it was that music, that eerie and haunting sound that told you that something scary was happening. When the music played, my aunts hid their faces behind their hands but kept their fingers open, somehow protected from what was about to happen. I was hooked. When the host reappeared and gave his "believe it or not" closing, I believed. There were strange forces at work in the light of day. 

Thriller

Thriller host, Boris Karloff.

First episode, The Twisted Image, 

starring Leslie Nielsen.

!960, Grandma joined her daughters for some TV viewing. She picked the show because that Frankenstein fellow was going to be on. I was waiting for the monster to appear; instead, I got Boris Karloff wearing thick glasses. He stepped in after the episode began and introduced the actors to appear. Then that criss-cross pattern blotted out our host and cut to commercial. For this seven year old, it wasn't so much scary as suspenseful. I kept waiting for the creepy parts but the story always verged on ghostly yet remained merely sinister. Not until "A Wig for Miss Devore" did the show turn horrific. It was a different kind of fascinating for this young child. 

Roald Dahl's 'Way Out

Roald Dahl, host of 'Way Out TV Show.

William and Mary, first episode of 'Way Out,

Starring Fritz Weaver.

!961 arrives, bringing Roald Dahl's 'Way Out TV Show. My aunt informs me that this is the guy who wrote Willy Wonka. Never heard of it. At the age of eight, I was reading Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, the horror maestros. But this Dahl TV show also had "horror" on its mind. I could tell the production was not up to par with the likes of One Step Beyond or The Twilight Zone, but the stories were memorable. The one with the headless woman is an episode I love to revisit. I would go on to read everything I could find by this guy, Roald Dahl. His stories would follow me into my old age. 

Chiller Theatre

John Zacherle, host of Chiller Theatre. 

First Horror Movie of the Week TV Show. 

1961 also brought Chiller Theatre, a weekly show that featured a recent 1950s Drive-In horror movie that bombed and went straight to TV. Many of these movies, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Plan Nine from Outer Space, and the like, were films my aunts took me to see at the drive-in, so I was amazed to see them on TV, but also annoyed because there were so many commercial breaks. The best thing about the show was the cringey but creepy host who commented on the movie and introduced the ads. This guy, Jack Zacherle, would be the first of many horror hosts that followed, including Sinister Seymour and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. 

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

Good Evening.

First episode, Piece of the Action, 

Starring Gig Young and Robert Redford.

1962 rolled around and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour TV Show began. In my old mind, I remember seeing Alfred Hitchcock Presents first, but that couldn't be, because I would have been two or three years old. My memory is not that good, but good enough to remember the hour version of the show. The introduction to the show began with a spooky Addams Family type mansion on a dark hill when that familiar music theme plays; creepy images float across the screen until the outline drawing of Alfred Hitchcock appears and disappears as a shadowy figure of our host transitions into Alfred Hitchcock himself, who then introduces the episode. I remember these stories went from macabre to mystery to outright horror. And they all had that Hitchcock twist ending that was so satisfying. The episode with the nurses and the one with the doll are the stories that stayed with me and I've covered both of them on my blog. 

The Outer Limits

The original image.

The Galaxy Being, starring Cliff Roberson

In 1963 I saw the first episode of The Outer Limits. I was ten years old. That was a monster. We had a monster of the week TV show at last. But not just a monster, because there was some incredible writing, amazing characters, and suspenseful storytelling. I was sitting alone in the front room, turned on the TV, unaware of what was on, and this science fiction show began. That introduction letting you know that they were in control of your television set for the next hour. I almost believed it. What they had control of was my attention, for the entirety of its short run. But that first night with the black and white show, and that monster, no, that "being" from another galaxy. This was next level watching for me. And I looked up every writer of every episode and read all the stories by them that I could find. Yep, Harlan Ellison. That's how I found him. 

Star Trek

Star Trek Enterprise, 1966.

The Man Trap, first episode of Star Trek.

In 1966 I turned on the first episode of Star Trek. I watched in the front room, in the dark, alone, a thirteen year old kid enjoying a color TV show for once. When that salt-eating monster appeared, I thought, Great, another monster of the week TV show. But I was wrong. It was more than that. It was an adventure show, a social commentary, and a cast of wonderfully drawn characters from all walks of life. Creatures from other planets who interacted with and joined the Enterprise crew.  Yes, there were the monsters, but we were the monsters to many of these creatures too. I remember trying to talk to my friends at school about the show, but no one watched it. I was old enough now to want to share my macabre TV viewing, but no takers. It became my private world, just like my horror books. It wasn't until college that I met like-minded friends. But between the ages of six and thirteen, it was the universe of horror and mystery that my aunts first introduced me to, and the universe that I have been expanding on beyond the age of thirteen till this very day. 

 

The Verse 

of 

Rhys Hughes

Six Characters in Search of an Executioner

Rhys Hughes

(1)

The first death involves a gallows that operates upside-down. The rope is one of those lengths of mystic hemp and human hair that jumps erect in the old Indian trick. So the executioner will have to be a fakir of sorts; probably a toothless ascetic with ribs like the bars of a cage and a matted beard. When he claps his hands together, the rope will spring into the air. But this is too barbaric for our purpose, so there will have to be modifications. Now the fakir pulls a lever and a series of weights are set in motion, wheels turn and fan belts whirr. A mechanical set of hands comes together with the required clap and tradition and progress are both satisfied.

As for the condemned prisoner, he is doubtless an insurgent or political rebel. Petty criminals are separated from their limbs and left for the crows in the barley fields. Religious dissenters are quartered in the circus. Republicans alone (and their anarchist brethren) are preserved for the noose. The affair is an outdoor event; all good spectacles are available these days for public consumption. It is the old excuse for a knees-up; songs and dancing and ribaldry. This fellow, our present doomed specimen, makes a noble speech about justice and morality. His tone is flat.

The drum rolls, the trumpets blare, the crowd throws rotten fruit and cruel jokes. The executioner pulls the lever, but nothing happens. One of the mechanical hands has been stolen. The other hand flaps aimlessly: the sound of one-hand clapping is finally revealed to be that of near-death. It begins to rain. An engineer is called. Later, in the puddle left by the downpour in front of the gallows, you can see a man who hangs the right way up, towards the stars.

(2)

In the second instance, there is a cannibal family somewhere remote who, for an unspecified and patently ludicrous reason, do not yet realise that cannibalism is not the norm. So they continue in ignorant bliss in their old crumbling mansion, snaring hapless travellers in nets laid across the road, and eating them, boots and all, in a stew (invariably a stew) washed down with Adam’s-apple cider, a godawful pun and a godawful drink. They are an odd family; one of them is certainly a vampire (the grandfather?) while the others are assorted horrors and cranks. They sleep during the day and, once again, believe it normal to dream in individual coffins, the lids screwed down tight.

One time, they receive a letter from Cousin Stefan, who says he is coming to visit. There is gaping panic. Cousin Stefan is a vegetarian. How can they possibly serve him person-broth? No, it will not do! They will have to make a special effort; Cousin Stefan is a respected relative they have not seen for more than a decade. After leaving the old country, he became a successful funeral director out East. So he has found his niche; and they must do their best to satisfy such an esteemed guest. Traveller-soup is out of the window; or down the sink rather, and Pa and Ma must put their heads together (not difficult considering they are unseparated Siamese twins) to find an alternative.

When Cousin Stefan arrives, in a turbocharged Hearse, Pa and Ma and vampiric Gramps and the little but horrible ’uns and the mythical pet (a cockatrice perhaps, whose look can kill) and Purdy Absurdy are standing on the dilapidated steps of the porch. They greet Cousin Stefan with a smile and mumble a few words in Hungarian to remind themselves of their origins. Cousin Stefan follows them into the house and, before long, dinner is served. Connected to a life-support unit by a score of wires and tubes, a suitable vegetable dish, in this case a crash victim, waits for grace and the sprouts and salt and pepper.

(3)

The third case is similar except that here we have Karl and Julia, who live on an abandoned farm after some global disaster has wiped out most of civilisation (or so they believe.) Nature is reclaiming the land. So Karl goes out hunting while Julia turns what he captures into sausage. They are not fussy, of course, so Karl brings back in his sack such delicacies as Robin, Panda, Rhino and Beetle. One day he says: “Jaguar in the hills. Heard it last night.” Language too has decayed and Karl was always terse at the best of times. He loads his rifle and adjusts his necklace of fish bones and scratches his greasy louse-ridden hair.

Julia gnaws on an old skull and snarls, her broken face writhing and contorting in a savage attempt to formulate an opinion. She snorts and throws the skull away with a menacing gesture and bares her rotting teeth. “Jaguar too noble to destroy. Karl leave it alone.” But Karl shakes his head. “Karl kill. Jaguar die. We eat.” Julia snatches up a femur from the rubbish-strewn floor and lunges at Karl, who grunts and moves out of range. Julia throws the bone at him. Karl disappears through the door.

Julia struggles with strange ideas. Why should anything be too noble to destroy? As she ponders, she hears a shot. Ten minutes later, Karl is back, holding up a sack. “Jaguar,” he says, beaming. He moves into the corridor and then into the room where he keeps his trophies. Meanwhile, Julia sighs and takes out her knives. There is a knock on the door. Two people are standing there, on the threshold. One says: “You must help us! Theres a madman out there, a madman with a gun.” And Julia nods sympathetically and invites them in. At the same time in the other room, Karl reaches into his sack and pulls out his latest trophy, which he nails to the wall next to the others: a gleaming chrome hubcap.

(4)

The fourth example concerns a depressed young man, Thomas, who takes himself to the edge of a sea cliff and throws himself over. What he is really trying to achieve is anyone’s guess, though the obvious shouldn’t be overlooked. He spins through space and loses consciousness; so relaxed is he now that somehow, miraculously, he survives the landing with no more than a dozen plum bruises on his legs and torso. Thomas is not to know this, however, and when he awakes he assumes he is dead. But he is aware of his surroundings, so he finally decides he must be a ghost. There is no other explanation. He stands up and brushes himself down and flexes his ghostly muscles.

It is necessary, he thinks, for him to adopt his role completely. He will become an evil spirit. He will do his best to harm people. So he makes his way back towards the nearest village and waits for his first victim. An elderly man, with a false leg, totters out of the post office, unsteady on a gnarled stick. Thomas kicks away the stick and when the man is on the ground he removes his false leg and proceeds to batter him to death with it. Next he wanders into YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE and forces a dozen stale scones into the maws of the entire cast of the local Amateur Dramatics Society’s production of Blithe Spirit. They choke slowly, spitting crumbs and turning blue in real deaths as corny as any they have ever acted.

Several outrages later, as he is in the not entirely unwarranted process of forcing the vicar to eat Mrs Featherstonehaugh’s pink poodle, collar, leash and Mrs Featherstonehaugh included, he is apprehended by a vengeful mob of cribbage-players, retired shopkeepers and ex-servicemen (medals all affixed to jackets at the shortest notice) who chase him out of the village and scream indigo murder. Thomas is surprised that they can see him, but isn’t concerned in the least. They hound him towards the very cliff he earlier had leapt off and this time he doesn’t hesitate: he is a ghost and ghosts can fly. It is a pity that he is now so tense, with anticipation, with triumph.

(5)

The fifth item is both rather more sombre and perverse. We have a loner who lives in a garret, or a bedsit, and who never speaks to any of the other tenants in the building. He has no close family (they have all died in mysterious, and truly grisly, circumstances) but he is deluged with Aunts. There is Aunt Emily and Aunt Theresa and Aunt Hilda and Aunt Eva. At the funerals of his mother or father or brothers or sisters, they each take it in turns to mumble such platitudes as “you have your father’s eyes” or “you have your mother's nose” or “you have your sister’s ears” or some such thing. The loner merely nods and purses his lips. Once back in his tiny room, he digs up the floorboards and removes the plastic bags concealed there. He is all despair. “How do they know?” he wails.

(6)

Now we are back in some grim cold city, ramshackle and asthmatic, during the depths of winter. A hunched figure moves out of the blizzard, wrapped tight in a threadbare cloak, complete with hood. He takes a tiny key out of his pocket and opens a door onto muted warmth and light. Surely this is the interior of a toy shop? There are puppets and automatons, wondrous animals suspended on cords from the ceiling, jack-in-the-boxes and life-sized dummies. With a contented sigh, the hunched figure throws off his cloak and rubs his hands together (fingerless gloves naturally) in glee. He has a parcel under his arm. Lovingly, he places it down on a chair and unwraps it. There is a mechanical arm, gleaming and strange in the faint illumination. The hunched figure takes it over to a puppet sitting quietly in the corner and fits it on carefully. Now the puppet is complete. Now it has two arms. The hunched figure winds this puppet up and, after this one, all the others. Soon the shop is full of dancing animals and people.

There is a sequence of savage blows on the door. The hunched figure pauses in his own dance and rushes to unbolt it. It is pushed open and three sinister men in heavy overcoats and pork-pie hats force entry. “Dr Coppelius?” they cry, “we have a warrant for your arrest.” They thrust a crumpled piece of paper under his nose. “We have reason to believe that you did today wilfully steal part of the execution apparatus erected by the city council for the punishment of lawbreakers. Namely, one mechanical arm. Because of this action, the sentence on an agitator had to be delayed by nearly two hours!”

Dr Coppelius allows himself to be led away in chains. His trial is brief and to the point in every respect. As an acknowledgement of his standing in the academic world, it is judged that to slice off his limbs and abandon him in a barley field would be inappropriate. So too the quartering in the circus and the public noose. He is given the rare honour of facing a firing squad. On the appointed day, shots cry out and ten bullets strike his heart all at once. Springs sprout and not a little oil trickles out of his mouth.

_____________________________________________

 

Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Red Rooms

Writer/Director: Pascal Plante

Fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is obsessed with the trail of accused serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, who allegedly filmed his brutal assaults on young girls and posted them on the dark web for the entertainment of anonymous enthusiasts. She sleeps rough outside the courthouse. At home, she uses her hacking skills to infiltrate the lives of one of the parents of the victims. She befriends Clementine (Laurie Babin), a lost, waifish Chevalier “groupie,” who is convinced of his innocence despite mountains of circumstantial evidence.

Red Rooms unfolds deceptively slowly, with drawn-out courtroom opening arguments interspersed with Kelly-Anne’s modeling sessions and her time sitting in the glow of the computer screen, ferreting out forbidden information, Wi-Fi and Ring camera passwords.

This is a paranoid psychological thriller of the first order. The alleged killer is a minor character with no lines. Kelly-Anne’s computer AI, which she must train not to be racist, not to encourage suicide, and to produce dad jokes on command, is onscreen more than Chevalier. The dark web looms behind everything. There are fascinating details about cryptocurrency and clandestine auctions. And what about the man who keeps looking at her in the courtroom? Is he a hacker, a detective tracking Kelly-Anne’s extralegal internet activities?

But more than a thriller, Red Rooms is also a study of obsession. Unlike Clementine, Kelly-Anne’s obsession isn’t based on a presumption of innocence—it’s a darker species of fascination. Kelly-Anne is spiraling. Where Clementine flinches and turns away, she stares. She seeks a missing video featuring the torture of the killer’s youngest victim. She finds herself thrown out of the courtroom and out of modeling gigs due to a shocking stunt she pulls in the courtroom, which is best seen in the movie and not described in a review.

The lead actors in this movie are excellent, and the direction and cinematography mirror the descent of Kelly-Anne, the musical cues, alternately melancholy and jarring, and the pacing, though some may find the latter slow, work in the film’s favor.

The ending, also best left out of this spoiler-free review, is not necessarily how one might have expected the story to play out, but it manages to be both satisfying and inconclusive at the same time.

Red Rooms is largely a French language film, and is currently streaming on Shudder.

 

Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Smile 2

Writer/Director: Parker Finn

I don’t remember the movie Smile (2022). I know that I saw it, I know that there was a clever and effective marketing campaign, and I remember the creepy, um, smiles. But that’s it. I cant’ remember the premise or many of the scenes.

At the time I wrote it off as forgettable. Prescient of me!

A couple of years go by. A sequel is threatened. It comes out. There is buzz around this sequel. Social media is full, when people bother to talk about movies, of people who hated the first one but loved the second one.

So, I signed up for a free trial of one of the hundred streaming apps available for SmartTVs and, God help me, I watched it. My hopes weren’t high, but they were higher than they would have been if not for the social media chatter.

(Side note: Even after watching the entirety of the sequel, I couldn’t remember the premise. I think it’s something about a demon that makes people smile creepily and then kill themselves in front of someone who then makes people smile and kill themselves in front of the next person, and so on.)

Somewhere after maybe a half hour into the movie, I paused it and wrote this on Facebook: “Finally a movie confronts the trials and travails of being an international pop star who sings terrible songs with cringeworthy choreography. So far this manages the achievement of being somehow worse than the first one.” “I’m sure,” I continued (sarcastically, and one does need to make that clarification these days), “it would earn every second of its two-hour run time.”

Said international pop star is named Skye Riley, because of course she is. Her drug provider is the unwitting recipient of the curse, and he passes it on to her. As she deals with fans and handlers and press and an over-attentive mother/manager, creepy things transpire. But first, we need an introduction to Ms. Riley. One of the worst things about this kind of movie is the music to which they feel they must subject the viewer. Let’s try to make pop songs, they say, I imagine, but make them even worse than actual pop songs, and we can all pretend they’re huge hits.

One of the creepy things is she’s watching a video sent by the drug dealer, and he’s talking about something grinning at him, and all that’s on the screen is a big stupid smudge that I guess we’re supposed to see what it is. Not even pausing, not even walking right up to the television, which I had to move a cat in order to do, helped with that one. Another scene, presaged by a lot of excited chatter on social media, had our heroine being chased incrementally through her rich-star apartment by a grinning dance troupe. They look like they’re about to break into the Thriller choreography. People apparently found this scene creepy. I found it silly. It could have been creepy; this was a lost opportunity.

I have to mention Naomi Scott’s performance as Skye. I can’t decide if it’s a brave, raw, ferocious performance, or the uncanny ability to pull frightened or annoyed faces and shout Fuck. When I’m feeling angry at the movie, I say it’s the latter, but I suspect that in reality it’s the former. She deserves a better movie.

 

NEWSFEED by Laurie Lipton

The Resistance has been Futile

by Jason V Brock

Massive wildfires fueled by climate change… Immigration at unprecedented levels… Rampant inflation, social collapse, unaffordable housing… The ongoing threat of emerging viral plagues… Radicals proposing existential questions about whether there are two, zero, or 72 genders… Venerated institutions ideologically captured by extremist theorizers… Catastrophic wars in Europe and the Middle East… The major threat of the specter of religiously motivated terrorism… Longstanding democratic traditions swept aside as autocrats seize control of the reins of power across the globe… The world as it had been suddenly dangles above a chasm of annihilation, besieged by Left- and Right-inspired anarchic assaults… Unchecked technological progress in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other areas feed social anxieties as the egos and bank accounts of Postmodernist Techno-Robber Barons swell to grotesque proportions… Meanwhile the screen-mesmerized masses seem anesthetized to the grave new world order in the offing…

Elements of the latest Hollywood blockbuster? A compelling mental exercise in the form of a new television drama?

Sadly, no. Welcome to our turbulent mid-decade: Call it the “Raging ‘20s”, a sort of ghastly mirror of the more prosperous Roaring ‘20s one hundred years prior.

There are several eerie parallels to the 1920s in the current epoch: Multinational warfare and its aftermath (namely World War I); a devastating global pandemic (the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Encephalitis Lethargica plague which followed in its wake); huge surges in immigration triggered by displacement due to war and other cataclysmic events both natural and man-made; clashes between political and social ideologies; rapid, technologically driven advances in modern life (e.g., automobiles, movies, aviation); as well as key social upheavals due to the advancement of women’s rights, relative tolerance of homosexuality, and the development of Freudian Psychoanalysis, among other movements and expansions.

Between the end of the 1920s and the start of the 2000s, the world was engulfed by several massive disruptions, to include the Great Depression of 1929-1939 (echoed in the Great Recession of 2008), World War II in the 1940s (which continues to generate geopolitical ripples in the modern world), the Cold War of the 1950s through the 1980s, and other huge changes socially (such as the Civil Rights Era in the U.S. and the Vietnam War), technologically (the Space Race and the Information Age), and in other ways (e.g., coups, assassinations, the decline of religious belief in the West, and so on).

In particular, the Information Age and the rise of the Internet have had a spectacular (even revolutionary) impact on every realm of human experience, from medicine and social interaction to politics and entertainment. After widespread adoption of computers in the 1980s, the Internet became the next frontier for the computing industry, fledging in earnest by the late-1990s. A few years later, social media became popular. After several precursor platforms, Facebook debuted to the general public in 2006. Then the Apple iPhone dropped in 2007.

In 2008, the Democrat Barack Obama was elected as the first mixed-race President of the United States, using online tools to great effect. This election seemed to signal a change in the way politics and humanity would proceed; a transnational liberal order had become the norm in the post-World War II Western democracies, foundationally established on the promises of security, prosperity, knowledge, and personal freedom from religious, political, and social strictures, the axis of which had long hindered personal advancement and human development. Other countries followed suit with their leadership choices. As these elements intertwined, there was at once a sense of great potential and profound concern regarding the way forward for humanity, though no one truly believed that the world would ever devolve back into the atavistic times of the pre-War period. In the years prior to 2016, there was a sense of the unfolding future as an inevitable leap from strength-to-strength, especially after the system shock of 9/11 in 2001, which heralded, at least for a time, a new phase of uncertainty for the United States not felt since the end of the Vietnam War. Post-9/11, while there were serious missteps along the way (the Iraq War), things appeared to have reached a newfound accord during the Obama years. Of course there were still problems in the world, as there always have been and always will be, but there was renewed hope that better times were on the horizon.

However, as Obama’s second term drew to a close, there was what seemed, at the time, to be a minor backlash to the rapid pace of change taking root in modern life. By the lead-up to 2016, a sense of equilibrium appeared to have at last been regained, albeit an uneasy one. During this time, it looked as though progress in every sphere—social, technological, entertainment, medical, and so on—could coexist with new advancements and understandings in other areas of life: the personal, the political, the world in general. Troubles may manifest, but they could be overcome with compassion, grit, and forward-thinking. Then Trump was elected in 2016, a surprise rejection of the status quo, represented in this instance by the Democratic candidate to replace Obama, Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In reality, while the first term of Donald Trump was disordered and ineffectual in many ways, his forceful nature seemed impervious to critique, and he was absolutely worshipped by his stalwarts. Trump was fast evolving into the Supreme Leader of a powerful cult of personality, one rarely experienced outside of religious figures described in antiquity. The closest analog to the loyalty he inspired (indeed demanded) in the modern era could be a facile comparison to Adolf Hitler, though Hitler was far worse with regard to policy and execution. Trump was more of a caricature in many ways rather than a tyrant for the ages. The resistance to Trump, and by extension what he appeared to represent—a return to less progressive notions about social structures and political policy—was vocal and determined, if perhaps overzealous in some respects. The far-Left—so-called “Progressives,” yet another nod to the Wilson-era 1920s—had by this point come to dominate the media (with a few exceptions, such as terrestrial radio and Fox News), academia, and other institutions, providing robust challenges to the Trump Administration and his policies in the courts, the media, and the streets.

One nexus of this resistance was located in Hollywood’s entrenched, deeply Blue entertainment industry. Almost since its inception, the entertainment industry as represented by the Hollywood studios and their output have been a major source of American soft-power throughout the world. America has been quite successful at the cultural exportation of its interpretation of American beliefs and ideals (at times even veering into government-sanctioned propaganda), even when on the ropes geopolitically. Over the years, Hollywood has grown increasingly liberal in its political views and willingness to risk alienating both audiences and powerbrokers within the industry with overt demonstrations of its orthodoxy, especially during Trump’s first term in office. During the period between 2016 and 2020, with the convergence of causes such as Black Lives Matters (BLM), the #MeToo movement, and others (many with early roots dating back to the 1920s and related social movements throughout the 20^th century and after), the industry seemed to have found a raison d'être in mocking and resisting Trump at nearly every turn.

Despite this, Trump appeared on-track for reelection.

Along the way, however, that all seemed to change; in 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump’s bungling of the pandemic response, as the dead piled up in mobile morgues and the virus raged, people appeared to have hit their limit with the chaos and division. Trump would be rebuffed in the 2020 election due to his poor handling of this disaster; at last, a sense of normality would finally see a return in the unlikely visage of Joe Biden, who cast himself as the anti-Trump: Calm, steady, consistent. Not one to accept defeat gracefully, Trump incited an uprising comprised of denials, lies, conspiracy theories, and seditious activities in the lead-in to the January 6, 2021 certification of Biden’s victory after Trump’s November 2020 loss. The certification was delayed due to the ensuing riots (understood now as the “J6 Insurrection”) at the Capitol, though the process was finally completed in the proper timeframe, resulting in Biden’s ascension as the 46th President, and Trump’s official defeat.

Biden’s presidency started well. Life returned to normal for most in many ways, though the post-pandemic had its challenges: Inflation, supply-chain issues, keeping the disease at bay, and trying to avoid a recession created by a once-in-a-century Black Swan Event. Trump was the past; Biden represented hope for the future.

Eventually, though, Biden would be seen as isolated, even incompetent to lead. Though metrics in the economic picture pointed at a strong recovery, the reality for many was lacking; perception and personal experience lagged behind the overall truth of the what he had accomplished given the enormity of the task at-hand; that noted, he remained opaque, and failed to capitalize on his strengths, instead being led by far-Left advisers into unforced errors about unpopular culture war issues, such as trans-care for minors or politically correct pronoun usage. This afforded a line of attack for the opposition. In a strange turn of events, he lost public confidence after his first debate with Trump and was forced to capitulate his nomination to his Vice President, Kamala Harris. She came out of the gate strong, but with an overreliance on the by-now waning powers of the Hollywood glitterati in the post-COVID, Tech Bro realignment of soft-power within the U.S.—itself a troubling indicator of growing technological hubris and vapidity—she failed to win the presidency.

As an aside, it isn’t a surprise that Hollywood has lost its potency in this harsh post-pandemic landscape; the strikes shortly afterward didn’t help, and neither did weathering sizable changes in media consumption along the way, most significantly the move from physical media to streaming platforms as the primary vehicle for content delivery. Coupled with the reality of rising production costs and the threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) looming on the digital horizon, a good deal of anxiety for artisans within the industry has likewise ground the moviemaking business to a relative standstill. The terrible Los Angeles wildfires this January only added further insult to injury for the beleaguered industry, causing many in the business to reconsider their unwavering allegiance to the policies and politicians who contributed to the disaster. Some even left the area; every Blue lost makes California Redder. Besides, given there are no more true auteurs, no real movie stars to power projects through downturns, the business is no longer the culture-driver that it once was, and has become just another adjunct to the Tech Industry at this point—soulless and fixated on “streams” or “views” rather than artistry and wonder; it has become mindless, boring, and safe.

Additionally, there seems to be no plan in place to answer the (predictable) superhero movie franchise collapse and the resultant vacuum produced, another outcome of the slow evaporation of monoculture owing to the Balkanization of this sphere because of a phenomenon that I deem the “Internet Flattening Effect”: This is a process that rounds off regionalism or other identifiable characteristics, rendering content or imagery into a deadening sameness, driven by computer algorithms designed to feed the end-consumer experiences defined by a plodding monotony rather than encouraging personal discovery. Compliance and consumerism are mandated; transgressiveness and invention are discouraged (unless they can somehow be ruthlessly copied and exploited as a financial tool). The consequence is a soul crushing conformity of content without insight or imagination: The arts have been commodified into a steady diet of psychogenic gruel. Politicizing content with overt messages of Leftist right-think have only compounded these problems within the film industry and closely follow similarly disturbing trajectories within the publishing and music businesses. The message appears to be that you must adhere to the groupthink, or risk being ignored, consigned to creative purgatory, or expunged from these spaces altogether.

Though Harris failed to connect with the electorate, in fairness, as a key player in the Biden Administration, she was part of a team dealt a bad hand from the outset. All of his administration made valiant efforts under difficult circumstances to keep America from plunging into a gulf of financial ruination, and largely succeeded; collectively they have many genuine accomplishments to their credit, though, in the end, it was too little, too late. People were exhausted and afraid. Nostalgic for a “simpler” time prior to the pandemic, Trump, a seditionist criminal, was re-elected in 2024. The damage had been done for many reasons, and psychic wounds are notoriously slow to heal. Minds, hearts, and lives had been damaged, lost. Too little social interaction dehumanized, and too much artifice deluded. The result has been a decidedly sideways careening into the abyss that always resides on either side of the narrow road from perdition, which increasingly looks like nothing more than a well-paved circle with no exit ramps.

And now?

Well, can you feel it? That shift?

It’s the disorienting perception of previous social conventions spinning off-axis into oblivion as a new center of political gravity careens into reality. I first noticed this shift as the election results came in on November 5, 2024. In truth, this shift signifies more a sort of boomerang effect coming into view than a sudden change or evolution, though the unexpected implosion of the far-Left extremes of recent societal discourse ultimately failing to overcome the inertia of their own ponderousness has felt at once predictable, startling, and in some strange ways, welcome. It’s almost as though this boomerang of common sense has finally returned to its sane home-state after miscalculated overreaches by the increasingly out-of-touch far-Left.

To their credit, while the Right may lie about policy aims, they rarely lie about who they are and what they are in favor of (preferring allegiance to leaders and an unwillingness to be perceived as “weak”). In this way, they aren’t hypocrites. The Democrats are the opposite: They are earnest about policy (preferring fealty to ideas, with little appetite for compromise on principles), wonks even, but they often appear to lie about who they are truly representing, which, more and more, seems to be out-of-touch elitist snobs in the Collegiate/Progressive Pipeline. They often resort to controlling, abusive behaviors, such as wielding blame, shame, and guilt to manipulate people—understood online as mob-like “cancel culture” or “deplatforming” and now more often associated with the Left—into doing their bidding. These tactics frequently edge into pseudoreligious, even extremist actions. Of course, tantrums rarely achieve their goals in the end; they push people away, in fact. They also lose elections.

Going back further, the shift actually began in the final weeks running up to the November U.S. presidential election; on the Left, where only a few months prior there was hope, momentum, and excitement, as the election sprinted to its finale, there was also—if one was paying attention—a strange undercurrent of déjà vu, even foreboding; already a sort of 2016 rematch, it began to feel as though it was becoming a replay, with likely similar outcomes. Then, on Election Day, came the stark, unexpected (though sensed) realities of defeat, status quo rejection (again), political redemption, and change.

But change into… what, exactly? Was it a return to some imagined past (“Make America Great Again!”) or an effort to move ahead?

As noted, people were growing nostalgic for the misremembered stability of a pre-COVID time under Trump; life then seemed easier, digestible in ways the far-Left had made ever more unpalatable. The negative aspects of Trump’s first term felt less intrusive, softer, ironically, than the harsh realities of the post-plague world. After the grimly ceaseless battering of the COVID-19 outbreak and resultant pandemic of 2020 and onward (still an existential threat, though better controlled now thanks to vaccines), beyond the pent-up frustrations of ensuing global lockdowns, school closures, political upheaval, inflation, and the general angst created by the menace of a deadly new disease, people were understandably feeling secluded and scared. As the virus enveloped the Earth, one way of asserting control of their lives was in speaking out from behind their devices; consequently, the Internet became both a lifeline and a fuse for long-simmering frictions to detonate as rivals competing for power boiled over from the online realm and exploded into the streets. Unrelated worldwide social protests—including #MeToo and BLM in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers—had galvanized the pre-2024 election politisphere into a perfect storm of hardened oppositional perspectives.

In this new organizational dichotomy, the rising “Alt-Right”—fomented in stateless online enclaves—was in fact little more than a reverse mirror-image of the burgeoning “Ctrl-Left”—itself a reaction to the perceived resurgence of so-called “fascism” due to a nascent worldwide rightward political lurch in the wake of the pandemic and its response. Sadly, neither image was a reflection of reality for the vast majority of people but instead represented the collective Jungian double-projections created by twisted ideologues at the fringes of socio-political thought; the moderate center was collateral damage in these cultural melees.

Elsewhere, and adding to this already combustible mix, the awful and starkly polarizing terrorist attacks perpetrated against Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 sparked more warfare and global unrest (prompting a paroxysm of outrage among youthful Leftists in the U.S. and other Western nations particularly), just as some aspects of normality seemed in-hand. This unprovoked, savage attack was yet another dystopian blow in a brief span of grim recent history, which also encompassed the brutal grind of the war in Ukraine, as well as surges in global migration post-pandemic. In aggregate, these events would have ominous implications for the Democratic coalition in the U.S., already fracturing into factions as a result of Trump’s first-term policies and the reactions to them.

Taken together, these events made clear that there was no refuge from the entropy of geopolitics whether within the U.S. or abroad. The democratization of a now-mature Internet has vastly increased interpersonal antagonism (via the virtual realm) even though people connect in the communal “meatspace” in ever-shrinking numbers—impacting shared live entertainment experiences, religious attendance, even romantic life. The Internet Flattening Effect also afforded formerly radical theorists and fringy, conspiratorial ideas to gain false equivalence with established science and personalities, calling into question recognized facts and priorities, further augmenting the chaos and turmoil of daily life on both the Left and Right.

Meanwhile, as literacy rates decline, ideologies (and paranoid mistrust) expand, both attributable to social media, mobile connectivity, and the Internet. Internally (the self), these forces synergize to promote half-baked, postmodernist theory-driven ideological considerations of established social norms regarding race, gender-identity, sex, class, and sexuality—including the speech around them—further eroding the boundaries defining community, morality, or what even constitutes a “person” or “woman”.

Externally (the community), insecurity regarding what defines the agreed upon borders between nation-states due to migration fueled by violent conflict, politics, climate change, and economic hardship, has ignited culture clashes between religiously conservative Middle Eastern immigrants and traditionally liberal Western ideals across Europe and the United States (increasing pressures in the latter with respect to South American and Mexican immigration). Wealth disparity has also increased exponentially around the world as a result of this upheaval and displacement.

In general, a sense of unease, even dread, permeates the air; mentally conjured images of virality and protean identity-loss inform the Roaring ‘20s Zeitgeist. In a span of roughly five years, it feels as though 15 years have passed. And in some ways this time compression illusion is real: Technology, medicine, and politics have leapt ahead, though these leaps seem to have prematurely aged those living through this period. The past has been torn down physically and mentally. The future has arrived. Nothing seems permanent or reliable. Things feel mutable, unstable. As demonstrated, even that dependable old source of American pride and soft-power, Hollywood, seems to have gone dark, unsure how to move forward, its influence in danger of shrinking to a point of singularity, as old models of doing business surrender to the dominant Tech-Industrial Complex, which has likewise consumed multiple other industries, from publishing and music to healthcare and retail. AI administrators seem poised and eager to reduce older systems into even further irrelevance, crushing humanity in the process.

With respect to the perceptible shift mentioned previously, I personally felt it building once more during the Trump presidential transition period shortly after the election was called; the balance appeared to tip decisively in his favor with the Inauguration on January 20 of this year, as Trump assumed full power once more. As he began signing stacks of Executive Orders (EOs) establishing new directions for the country while consigning other actions from his predecessor to the fabled ash heap of history, first at a televised rally, then at the White House, the political boomerang appeared to swiftly drag Overton’s Window back to the Right. For a brief instant, a few moderate majority political positions came back into at least momentary focus, both within the United States and globally. That proved to be short-lived, perhaps illusory.

As the cold light of the 2025 New Year fades and the closing festivities and recollections of 2024 begin their slow transition from the vivid colors of present understanding into the muted sepia of history, a gentle yet accelerating sensation of mental vertigo has crept in. The echoes of history resonate vibrantly in both good and bad ways; as the second half of the 2020s materializes, society is set to reorient itself in the wake of the tumultuous past decade or so. Western countries all over the world are now seeing Leftist ideals and institutions (as noted, once dominant in academia, politics, entertainment, the media, and other institutions) collapse, change focus, and reject this version of leftward extremism. The noose of leftist denunciation has abruptly relaxed, leaving many in shocked disbelief as the scaffolding around their pious trapdoor collapses underfoot; the condemned who dared not toe-the-line hover in stark, surprised disbelief at the strange reversal of fortune on display. As a consequence, many of these same countries have also ejected (or are about to) established leaders from their positions in favor of more realistic, though not uncontroversial in some cases, policymakers.

Traditional values, albeit perhaps too conservative in certain instances, have begun to rise across the board. It appears that transformation is the order of the day.

But, again, transformation into… what, exactly?

As the world’s economies collapsed under the onslaught of COVID and the attempts to contain the ensuing fallout, people increasingly felt disconnected and unmoored from the “before world” (which they yearned for, having missed out during the radical disruption and loss during that time)—though in reality this feeling was only a recent temporal displacement from just a few months prior, it felt as alien and weird to most as landing on a hostile, barren planet. Stress was high as norms were disturbed; mental health deteriorated as the crisis wore on, all driven by a horrific intrusion of mass death and injury into the placid routine of daily life. After all, the past and the future exist only as non-states in a collective mindscape. They do not exist in the moment; they are both imaginary realms, places which reflect current states of mind and understanding. We can imagine the future. We also likewise must imagine the past based on records and memories; though nothing to be or previously experienced is real, anticipation and aftereffects are still felt.

There is little comfort or sense to be made in this new paradigm: Trying to navigate these freshly delineated, hysterical spaces is rewarded not with esprit de corps, understanding, and decency, but instead by a rough, politicized trajectory fraught with emotional overreaction and terror. Nothing is easy, and the illusion of safety promised by seemingly limitless scientific and technological advancements has been suddenly and decisively curtailed in the near-term by one of humanity’s oldest and deadliest foes: A pathologically lethal virus of uncertain origin. Not since those modern-ancient horrors of 9/11 have things seemed so apocalyptic and disturbing: We have learned that death is one fateful short-term close-quarter gathering—even a single breath—away, and it could happen at any time and any place. Life is uncertain.

Meanwhile, the blue-collar class (ostensibly the Democrats’ “people”) and those on the Right (frequently demonized by the Left) have been on the hook paying a lot more for eggs, energy, and other staples, dealing with shortages, escalating housing costs, COVID-driven homelessness, deadly addictions, high crime rates, uncertain job prospects in the wake of automation (despite low unemployment), an ongoing immigration crisis, and a host of other problems. All while being lectured to by pretentious, well-off Leftist youngsters and (often) their parents about arcane notions rooted in Fourth-wave intersectional feminist theory, and instructed to “check their privilege” if white (though whites also include some of the poorest people in the country), or how they are “supposed” to vote if Latino, black, or some other minority (seeming to ignore their agency and right to self-determination).

Much of this points to class division (i.e., wealthy v. poor). The sufferings of ordinary folks don’t seem to register or even matter in light of these perceived “social injustices” (a debatable idea in and of itself), whether of the moment or from literal ancient history (surely this is what they actually mean as “privilege” [relitigating the past through a presentist/classist lens], though they cannot seem to grasp the irony). In this narrow worldview, the transgressions of minority-status people and groups are blithely dismissed as “historical trauma responses” (which I refer to as “Benign Othering”), while non-minority Americans are shamed, blamed, and scolded for nothing more sinister than wanting the best for their families and friends, or not being performative enough within the (limiting) oppressor/oppressed binary (to include moderate Democrats, Independents, and other Centrists). It also appears that civilization itself hinges on whether a woman can obtain an abortion whenever she demands it, that males are inherently misogynistic (and/or predators), and that “Zionists” are Untermenschen—this latter position neatly uniting the far-Left (e.g., college students) and far-Right (neo-Nazis) under the umbrella of antisemitism.

Of course, there is no compromise offered (i.e., Leftist fealty to ideas); one-sided and never content, the far-Left continues to move goalposts and pedal a victim-centric narrative that if you disagree you are ______phobic (e.g., trans-, homo-, and so on), racist, sexist, anti-Muslim (though antisemitism seems oddly acceptable to them), all of these, or something worse. As a result, there is a great deal of condemnation, either/or thinking, and contempt on display in their rhetoric and actions.

Who could have guessed that these arrogant strategies and alienating tactics would turn out to be excellent ways to lose elections?

A tough environment, to be sure.

And, granted, all presidents have difficult issues to contend with, but the things which eventually unseated Biden came from within his own party, a sort of modern Praetorian Guard evidently determined to overreach and allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Of course, as with most such collapses, there wasn’t one single, critical part that failed disastrously, but many small errors which compounded over time. The result in this case was a diminishing of actual and perceived value to the voters, which accumulated over time into an unstoppable, cataclysmic chain reaction, either real or intuited; given that perception is reality, similar accumulations risk becoming a threat to the overall Democratic Party ecosystem if not addressed directly and effectively. In the final analysis, despite the best intentions, the so-called “resistance” was not only overly confident, but has also been utterly futile.

This time, at the dawn of his second term, the response to Trump has so far been more muted. People voted for him in much larger numbers, including minorities; he narrowly secured the popular vote—which eluded him in 2016—in addition to the Electoral College, legitimizing his win. He has better focus, organization, and understanding of the machinations of governance now. People, including other world leaders, seem ready, after the pandemic, after the lack of empathy from the far-Left, after the collapse of “Progressive” ideology, after being instructed by elitists how to think, speak, and be, to give him a chance. Tellingly, voters this cycle came in greater numbers and from all walks of life: poor, rich, female, male, Latino, black, all religious faiths, Native Americans, young, old. Even some Democrats who didn’t care for Harris flipped (though my wife, Sunni, and I voted for her; we’re Democrats and Liberals).

So, what does this mean for the future?

Watching the Inaugural festivities, I had honestly hoped Trump could reform his worst inclinations and succeed in his new term, although I strongly disagree with most of his stated policies. There are a couple that I agree with, mostly pertaining to reining in the more ridiculous overreaches of the far-Left’s Orwellian tendencies to control thought and speech. More control over the Southern Border seems reasonable, given that terrorists could exploit an under guarded ingress into the country, though the idea of deporting every immigrant is unconstitutional, unsavory, and un-American (dangerous criminals and gang members seems a wise idea, however). As a sane Leftist, I am opposed to authoritarianism (including from the Left), and many of his EOs seem destined to fail or be overturned, as they rightly should be.

In an interesting development, the “Progressive” wing of the Democratic Party seems on a downward slope, a circumstance they have mostly brought upon themselves due to their bombastic, dysregulated, and pompous actions. They seem to have lost the plot about what we need to be working for, and very little of it resides in odious social theories. These elements should be purged from the Democratic Party, which has morphed into a negative, ultra-feminist cult, just as the macho Cult of Trump has psychologically captured the Right. The Democrats at the moment are not for people, they’re about people, and they are harmful. I will be curious to see how these things unfold, and while I don’t care for Trump, he has brought a measure of hope to many and has instigated a cultural shift that reads as a badly needed corrective.

Of course, the very day of his Inauguration, Trump once again showed his worst aspects. Signing a raft of Executive Orders that displayed a remarkable lack of understanding of the times we occupy and the needs of the American people. They were often mean-spirited and venal, with few upsides or relief for a pummeled electorate. His blanket pardoning of J6 rioters, for example, was a grave error and completely unwarranted. His understanding of tariffs (and economic policy overall) is embarrassingly limited. He generally displays little empathy for others, and wallows smugly in obvious intimidation, bullying, and cronyism, apparently relishing the suffering and anarchy he seeks to unleash. His Cabinet picks have been absurd, even dangerous at times, as though he is trolling the republic and wants to destroy the very country he sought to lead by shattering institutions, gutting programs, and relying on advisements not from policy experts and seasoned government officials, but the likes of Fox News pundits, rabid ideologues such as Steve Bannon, and billionaire Tech Industry narcissists like Elon Musk and his cohort. Thusly noted, with the Supreme Court and both the House and Senate (though only marginally) on his side, it appears we are all in for a bumpy ride—largely brought to us by dogmatically Leftist groupthink.

There is a political truism: You can’t govern if you don’t win.

The Democrats are in their wilderness period; they must look inward to understand how to proceed, and with a ruthlessly critical eye. As a political party, we can and should do better. And both parties are in dire need of overhauls with respect to the gerontocracy that has developed, to include operatives not only currently serving in the Congress and the SCOTUS (e.g., we need term and age limits, as well as enforceable ethical codes, among other things), but also restrictions on those running for President (again: age limits, ethical codes, and so on).

I predict that the first female President will be a Republican. I noted this on my own social media in the first week after the election. A few weeks later, former POTUS Bill Clinton said the same thing, so I feel my gut is on the right track. It’s sort of an “only Nixon can go to China” moment: Rightwingers will certainly vote for a woman; unfortunately, the Left keeps putting up unlikable, extreme, or uninspiring candidates (I wrote-in Bernie Sanders in 2016, as I disliked HRC), offering no compelling bipartisan option for them to consider. A female Republican would have broader appeal, and there is less mistrust that she would be some sort of radfem Trojan horse. The next candidate for the Democrats should probably be a moderate, Southern male, plainspoken and intelligent, not a radical reactionary. Someone like a modern-day Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. But they are few and far between. And even if they do present themselves, are the Democrats mature enough to look past their own ideological biases and purity testing?

Only time will tell.

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Pushcart Prize-nominee Jason V Brock is a writer, editor, filmmaker, composer, scholar, and artist. His fiction and nonfiction works have appeared in many venues (Weird Fiction Review, Fangoria, online, etc); his books include Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy (about horror and science fiction in culture), numerous anthologies, and two fiction collections. He has been nominated twice for the Bram Stoker Award, and his films (Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man; the Forrest J Ackerman documentary The AckerMonster Chronicles!—winner of the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Documentary in 2014) have garnered many accolades; he is finishing another about Fantastic Art. He resides with his wife and their reptiles in Vancouver, WA.