The Spa scene does a genuinely good job showcasing what many guys would probably do the second they could be "invisible", but it genuinely makes the women sympathetic and even he's disgusted by what he did because of how uncomfortable and afraid they are.
@PandawdyBob I have heard of Mormons doing something similar also, it is a fairly common control mechanism among cults and high control groups. The important message here is about a fear based imitative empathy as opposed to authentic human compassion. A person can be beat into acting good,but true good sometimes demands standing up even if it means a beating. The words "He will wear his invisibility as a badge of honor"(if i recall right) still bring a tear to my eye.
In regards to everyone who says that they would do whatever they want, and for those who are wondering why he didn't... there was still a government, even if he was invisible. The drones were watching his every move and the government had the power to force him to stop doing whatever he wanted. They would extend his punishment or increase the level of banishment, in a sense.
Yeah, but what about the rare examples of people who actually Don't care if people acknowledge them or not? This: 'invisible,' punishment may be quite poetic, but it just isn't practical. Besides, eventually there would be a best buddy who would see his/her friend get invisible, and decides they would rather spend the rest of their lives being invisible to everyone except each other, than shun his old friend. (Just like what happened at the end of this episode) Eventually more and more invisible people would ban together, until you've got hundreds of invisible people acknowledging each other, who honestly couldn't care Less, if their sentence got extended. Also... This is society now, huh?
One would feel obligated, given the fact he couldn't get medical help. That's the purpose of the story maybe; just because he is cold doesn't mean he is cruel. The system was cruel
@@tiya1250 Really, the only thing that stopped him was his own sense of guilt because he noticed how uncomfortable and even afraid he was making them. If someone who was a non-empathetic pervert was made invisible, what's stopping them from just walking into places like that?
This was the best episode of the 1980s series I remember seeing it for the first time during a Yankees Rain Delay. Also my first Twilight Zone episode. Didnt even know about the original series at that point in my life
* WOW! Excellent writing and thoughtful acting....thoroughly enjoyable! Very touching and thought-provoking! I had tears in my eyes at the end. This was one of the better episodes in my opinion. I just finished watching all three parts...but had to come back to this first episode so as to share the whole thing on my Google+ channel. So I will try to comment on all three parts! Thank you for sharing :)
this is a brilliant adaption of robert silverberg's wonderful short story.i grew up in a religion that practices a form of social shunning for ex-members,and this episode always highlight the true heartlessness that they practice in the name of love.
Very interesting premise. Spoiler: That is very sad when that kid looks away from him at the table. It's a very strange kind of solitary confinement. Sad.
Move to China, they have a social credit score there. Im sure your gona love the New World Order, Agenda 30, and the Great Reset. and living in a dystopian society.
The fault herein is that he isn't invisible, only everyone acting as if he is. If he were to have been made truly invisible, now that would've been a real sentence of loneliness.
in reality, people need to be seen and acknowledged to get anywhere in life, so to be ignored and treated like shit wouldn't be beneficial to you... but to that person in that episode, IT WAS because of the FREEDOM he now has because of it. It's not just about the freedom to do immoral things either, complete freedom like that is something I would do a lot with.
Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad. - Joseph Conrad
@PandawdyBob it is by Robert Silverberg,a classic sf writer. I have it in a collection,but i forget the title of the collection. I think the short story shares the same name.
After searching for a while I managed to find the source of that quote. It's from Conrad's novel 'Under Western Eyes' published in 1911. It's refers to the moral dilemmas experienced by its protagonist Razumov. Conrad happens to be my favorite author and 'Heart of Darkness' my favorite short story.
@PandawdyBob At the time Harlan Ellison was an executive producer on the show, and often either he or the original short story writers,or at least someone skilled in both modes of writing would do the adaptions. That said this is my favorite episode of the 80's Twilight Zone. And is indeed very faithful to the original. There is something to be said for reading Silverberg's skilled prose though.
Seeing this, I recalled some of Philip Larkin's poetry: "I lie and wait for morning, and the birds, The first steps going down the unswept street, Voices of girls with scarves around their heads.... Only hurrying and troubled faces, The walking of girls' vulnerable feet, The heart in its own endless silence kneeling."
(cont) how abuse is deterred, and to what sort of people it is assigned. The execution is slipshod in many ways, but I maintain that it is, at its heart, a workable and serviceable premise for a short story about isolation and abandonment by society.
yep. but at least in many cases, the depressed have people that love and care about them and are allowed to show it and talk to them. unlike in this case.
I think you right on that point. But I like the end of the story. This story told me about true love and care. :) If you have time, you may try to watch them all. You may like them.
...he freaks out. He starts smashing windows and starting fires, running down the street, screaming for someone to stop him. And THEN, he takes a gun, goes to a store, or a school, or something, and fires into the air, pointing guns at children and stuff. He is shot and nearly bleeds to death because nobody will give him medical assistance (well, now he knows what it feels like to be poor and uninsured). The episode would have gone from decent to memorable if they hadn't shied away from that.
For you peoples' information, I watched the whole damn episode ages ago, and I still agree with my comments here. It's not like watching the whole thing would've made me any less right. Entertainment and suspension of disbelief aside, the flaws in this episode as far as making sense goes are undeniable.
The more believable it is, the more captivating it is and the more you will care about the characters. If what is happening at the start is absurd and unbelievable then you will expect the rest of the show to be absurd.. which means youre not going to take what happens to those characters seriously, you won't care. It's best not to insult the viewer's intelligence by having the characters conveniently behave a certain way to avoid exposing the gaping holes in an episode that is watchable at best
Watching the whole thing doesn't change the fact it's not real punishment and that it is putting people in danger if he can dive over counters and slap people around and all they can do is ignore him. It's common sense.
To clarify before I leave, the thing I take the most blame for is the degeneration of this discussion into namecalling. I escalated it and it's my fault for this happening. This is a far greater problem than anything related to the nature of RU-vid posts.
Here's the thing, this guy gets pretty depressed after 1 day, I'd go to amusement parks or the movies or something. I could go onto a plain a see the world. This guy isnt using that marks power to its full potential
I don't know what more I have to say - I ACKNOWLEDGED that the execution was bad. As I said before, I now think LESS of this episode. I put forward about a million ideas that could make it better. Either you're not reading my comment all the way through, or you're reading an entirely different comment.
What a joke as a premise. A year of this, free to do whatever you wish, dine wherever you wish at no cost, acquire whatever you wish, work on whatever you wish, would be a dream vacation.
i'll have to finish watching, but so far it looks as if having this mark kicks ass!! you can do anything and no one can stop you. Can we say 'all the free food/alcohol/naked girls one can handle for a year'..
Of fucking course it does. When did I say I DIDN'T accept it? The fact that I acknowledge there may be some unknown explanation doesn't mean that I don't think there are any goddamned faults in the story. If it doesn't detract from the point of the story, then it's not a problem and I'm willing to forgive and ignore it. And it doesn't detract. "The Empire Strikes Back" has plot holes (Luke couldn't have been with Yoda more than a few days given the speed with which everything else happens).
We were intended from the beginning to socialize with others, in positive or negative ways. Even if u dont break emotionally, which I'd doubt. U would still need to be ur own company, it gets old quick. Also as you can see from this show noone is allowed to show u kindness, but wat rule is there if "Accidents" were to occur near u? Like those two crooks who ran him over. My point is that every1 needs some sort of company, too much time spent as an outcast can do horrors to the mind.
@SongsofInnocence Yes, I've gotta read that one. 'Under Western Eyes' is supposedly Conrad's great response to 'Crime and Punishment'. Does he outdo Dostoevsky? - quite probably. The only Russian author I like more than Polish Conrad, is Turgenev. But then I haven't read enough of either to make than statement very meaningful. If I could only pick one favorite author - I couldn't - and Conrad's tough to beat, just about the finest ever in the English language.
I'm not being condescending. I'm explaining my argument completely, just like you're doing. I never said the episode was great - merely fairly solid/decent. I can remember many episodes that were much better than this one. One thing I would've changed would be to add a scene where he tries to do exactly what you descibed (holds someone up at gunpoint), and stops because it's not in his nature as a character. They should've explained more about the nature of the punishment; how it can be abused
@emuholic he's being punished for being cold and aloof, not for a violent crime. if he had harmed others than the punishment would make less sense. but, its the TZ. Its another universe anyways ;)
Perhaps they could have even avoided this altogether by making the man's shunning by society entirely unexplained. It sort of smacks of a Diabolus ex Machina, but it might have that creepiness effect going for it. It's not so much the how as the what that's important.
Why SHOULD I have to check? The fact is, you were talking to me previously before switching and talking to someone else. Someone casually browsing through the thread would think that this was, indeed, a reply to me. And since that is what most people tend to do (not that it's a good practice or anything), it's best to prepare for the worst. I don't ordinarily have to open up EVERY comment in order to tell who a person is talking to, and neither do most people.
@freeofgreed They are just ignored by everyone in society the government still monitors them like everyone else. If you listened to the episode you would see that the punishment for talking to another invisible person is more time added to invisibility or worse.
Well, if the government is watching you 24/7, I imagine that's incentive enough not to do anything illegal. Even if they weren't allowed to do anything during the one-year period, I imagine they'd do something after your time was up.
dude, his not really invisible, just marked (scarlet letter reference?). If you dont want to watch the whole episode , at least watch more then 2 mins ;)
Wow I think that the "invisibility" is unique but it doesn't convince me thats it a bad thing, the benefits outwiegh the downsides too much. Also way are the 2 invisible men afraid to talk to each other. How can they get punished if they are already punished. Also the government also believes that the men are invisble, so it's not like they can give them another punishment.
In the end, it would have been better if they embraced this and, indeed, made it part of the point of the episode. What happens when people are ignored and generally treated like shit? We get things like gang violence and kids shooting up their schools.
I don't get it. How does everyone in the society know how to act when they see the mark, but the guy himself didn't seem to be able to wrap his head around it. Why are you going around talking to people when you KNOW you are invisible and can only get them in trouble?
Indeed, reading your comments, I now think less of this episode. But not for the same reason you do. What you view as a fundamental flaw in the premise, I view as an element of said premise that went unexplored. If the main character had indeed turned to violent crime as a means of getting attention, it would have been more memorable. Perhaps, instead of being hit by a car, he could have been shot in the back by someone who didn't see his mark.
Ultimately, it would have served as a way to better illustrate the plight of the marginalized and ignored (i.e. the poor). To explicitly have the character be an egotistical CEO would have made it even better. At first he steals things like Maseratis, money, and expensive suits, but is disappointed because these things no longer have the benefit of being social symbols because he is invisible. Then the episode continues as it did before until...
2) Your response to this situation has absolutely no bearing, whatsoever, upon what my response would be, and your perspective in this regard could not be used to determine what my perspective should be.
this isn't much of a stretch. the catholics and christians have both done this .but they used a big red mark or cross sometimes..in india they have untouchables,homeless people your never supposed to aknowledge
