Behold The Woman
I just watched the famous Twilight Zone episode "Eye Of The Beholder." It's the one where a hideous woman hopes to change her looks through surgery. The bandages are removed and it's The Beverly Hillbillies' Elly May, Donna Douglas. Except in this alternate world, she's considered ugly and the rest of the hospital staff who seem bizarre to us are normal.
Like many Zones, the didacticism is laid on with a trowel. (It's actually worse than I remembered, with a fascist leader on TV going on about conformity.) But I have to wonder how it played the first time. (I can't remember my own reaction.)
A joke is only as good as its set-up, and the set-up here is awfully obvious. Before the bandages come off, the episode is filmed to make sure we never see anyone's face. It comes off as arty, and perhaps a comment on the patient's plight, but how could it not also give away the surprise. Was anyone fooled?
posted by LAGuy @ 1:19 AM
2 Comments:
Did you see the SNL parody of this episode. I believe Pamela Anderson was the patient. they show all the doctors and nurses with pig faces, but when they unwrap Anderson, the female nurses shrink back in horror, butthe male doctors can't stop saying "She is hot!" which pisses off the females who keep trying to say she looks different ("yeah, but she's hot!!"). I thought it was funny.
Yeah, I saw that. It was pretty good. There was also an episode of Night Gallery which had practically the same story told somewhat differently. A deformed guy is being transferred to an unknown but inhabited planet. It turns out they all look just like him, except their freaks who look like us.
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