Introduction

Abstract

This book analyzes the ways in which Rod Serling's Twilight Zone (1959-1964) provided an influential distillation of social criticism by connecting the series to contemporary social movements and works of social commentary. This work uses the series as a prism to understand the larger social milieu and intellectual thought of the postwar era, while also highlighting the constricting impacts that censorship had on American television. At a time when the Cold War was understood to be first and foremost a battle of ideas, psychological marketing promoted many different facets of the American Dream. While market researchers plumbed the depths of American minds and explored their subconscious desires and insecurities to better promote goods, homes, and jobs, American consumers were generally not as well-acquainted with understanding how psychological manipulations were impacting their rapidly changing world. Consequently, a fast-growing knowledge gap began to emerge between marketers and politicians on the one hand, and the consuming public on the other. The Twilight Zone, by focusing on the “dimension of mind,” worked to raise viewers' awareness of how their minds represented fiercely contested ground for marketers and postwar policymakers alike.