Willoughby Syndrome
I decided, two nights ago, that what the United States suffers from is something I have dubbed "Willoughby Sybdrome" (apologies to Rod Serling). This was writer Serling's favorite episode from the first season of The Twilight Zone, and there is much to recommend it.
In brief, Gart Williams, a man torn between torture at work and torture at home, fallls asleep on his commuter train. On waking, he finds he is being offered the chance to get off the train in the idyllic 1880s town of Willoughby, where it is summertime (even though he fell asleep in the snowy winter), where children play in the town square, where everyone is happy because life is simple and good. Willoughby is everything his world is not.
His wife thinks he is crazy, his boss keeps pushing at work, and by the end he decides that Willoughby is the place to be. Sorry to spoil it, but I must to make my point. He, in a dream state, leaps from the train and dies by the tracks, where his body is packed into a hearse from the Willoughby mortuary, of which there is no evidence he has ever heard.
What is happening in this country is similar, and I fear it may lead to a similar end. Ever larger numbers of people are clamoring to a return to the values of old. "Family Values" is, of course, the favorite catch phrase. The problem is this: They never existed. June Cleaver—a happy one, anyway—is a myth. Those times and values people say they want never existed, much like the (twice) fictional town of Willoughby. People are trying to reshape our nation and culture to meet the impossible standards of a time that never was. There was no Rydell High School as portrayed in Grease. That 70s Show isn't the 70s that I or anyone I can find remembers. Let's hope the hearse was just a dramatic turn by our dear Mr. Serling.
posted by Andrew Purvis @ 4:01 PM
5 Comments:
I might be a little off here, but this might be a continuation of how so many people view television as real life. Many have gone from being able to realize that fictional entertainment is just that.
Add to that the outbreak of so-called "reality" shows, and things become even more difficult to differentiate for them.
However, perhaps there was one thing that the Cleavers had going for them that was accurate: They were married for long enough to end up sleeping in separate beds.
Isn't it wonderful how a television show from decades ago can so perfectly act as the analogy for a culture being eroded by people's inability to differentiate between television and reality? How perfect is that?
the prime minister here in Australia has your Willoughby syndrome. Nothing he'd like better than to ship us all back to the 1950s. (which would probably approximately coincide with 19thc century small-town USA, har, har.
I found your blog from a comment you left on David Morgen's. couldn't help noticing you have Fluffy As A Cat in your blogroll! amazing coincidence? Or do you have connections in Melbourne?
How interesting --- Don't think of "Willoughby" as a trip to the past ... think of it as a trip to values. You don't have to go backward in time to have respect for other people. I would bet the disenchanted views of the author are based on someone who has not been in the business world long enough to feel the burnout, or cynicism of the "successful crowd".
To each his own ....
I am often amused by those who leave comments without taking the time (having the ability?) to understand the posts to which they are responding. Indeed, "anonymous" seems not to have read my original post. I refer to traits of a Rod Serling episode with the purpose of illustrating trends I see in this country.
I would point to my fourth paragraph, in which I write, "people are clamoring to a return to the values of old . . . [t]hose times and values people say they want never existed." This is a reference to the linguistic turns used by those who favor such changes in American culture. Note, too, that this mentions "times and values" (emphasis added), so I never even suggest that it is all about time.
Nor would I call myself disenchanted. Indeed, I would ask the kind anonymous poster to indicate what, precisely, might lead him (her?) to consider such a reading. This post is not about feeling burnout or cynicism. This post is about the self-delusion that appears to be behind many calls for a change to "the way things were in the 'good old days.'"
I would bet that the unsuccessful reading skills of the commenter are based somewhere in a failure to pass a single literature course, or indeed any English course beyond the minimums placed upon his (her?) degree program. I would point to the improper placement of a period outside of a quotation mark and the use of four periods as an elipsis (a sentence-final elipsis is not properly followed by a period).
To each his own, indeed.
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