To Serve Man (The Twilight Zone): Difference between revisions
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In a scene from the 2005 animated comedy ''[[Madagascar (2005 film)|Madagascar]]'', the lemur king Julien XIII tells an assembly of lemurs how they have always been attacked by the fossa, causing a panic during which one lemur holds up a book entitled 'To Serve Lemur' exclaiming 'It's a cookbook!'.<ref name=esquire/> |
In a scene from the 2005 animated comedy ''[[Madagascar (2005 film)|Madagascar]]'', the lemur king Julien XIII tells an assembly of lemurs how they have always been attacked by the fossa, causing a panic during which one lemur holds up a book entitled 'To Serve Lemur' exclaiming 'It's a cookbook!'.<ref name=esquire/> |
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In his 2010 instrumental album |
In his 2010 instrumental album'[[El-P_discography|Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3]]'' producer ''[[El-P]]'' samples the audio from the Twilight Zone episode in the track "How To Serve Man". |
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In the April 19, 2018, ''[[Mark Trail]]'' comic strip, a pile of books is shown, prominently including ''To Serve Man''.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Allen, James |title=Mark Trail |url=https://comicskingdom.com/shared_comics/92e89b28-54ed-44d7-b216-d1440b102882 |publisher=Comics Kingdom |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024082526/https://comicskingdom.com/shared_comics/92e89b28-54ed-44d7-b216-d1440b102882 |archivedate=October 24, 2018 |date=April 19, 2018}}</ref> |
In the April 19, 2018, ''[[Mark Trail]]'' comic strip, a pile of books is shown, prominently including ''To Serve Man''.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Allen, James |title=Mark Trail |url=https://comicskingdom.com/shared_comics/92e89b28-54ed-44d7-b216-d1440b102882 |publisher=Comics Kingdom |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024082526/https://comicskingdom.com/shared_comics/92e89b28-54ed-44d7-b216-d1440b102882 |archivedate=October 24, 2018 |date=April 19, 2018}}</ref> |
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Revision as of 10:42, 30 January 2020
| "To Serve Man" | |
|---|---|
| The Twilight Zone episode | |
 Susan Cummings and Richard Kiel | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 24 |
| Directed by | Richard L. Bare |
| Teleplay by | Rod Serling |
| Based on | "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight |
| Featured music | Stock (from Jerry Goldsmith's scores for "Back There" and "The Invaders") |
| Production code | 4807 |
| Original air date | March 2, 1962 |
| Guest appearances | |
"To Serve Man" is episode 89 of the anthology series The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series). It originally aired on March 2, 1962 on CBS.[1] The episode was written by Rod Serling and directed by Richard L. Bare.[2]
The story is based on the 1950 short story "To Serve Man", written by Damon Knight.[3] The title uses dual meanings of the verb to serve: "to assist" or "to provide as a meal." The episode is one of the few instances in the series wherein an actor breaks the fourth wall and addresses the viewing audience at the episode's end. The episode, along with the line "It's a cookbook!" have become elements in pop culture.[4][5]
Opening narration
Respectfully submitted for your perusal – a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we're going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.
Plot
The episode begins with Michael Chambers locked alone in a spartan room with a cot. A voice offers him a meal, delivered through a small aperture in the wall, which he grimly refuses.
The setting changes to several months earlier, on Earth. The Kanamits, a race of 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) aliens, land on Earth as the planet is beset by international crises. As the Secretary-General announces the landing of aliens on Earth to the worldwide public at a United Nations news conference, one of them arrives and addresses the assembled delegates and journalists via telepathy. He announces that his race's motive in coming to Earth is to provide humanitarian aid by sharing their advanced technology, including an atomic generator that can provide electric power for a few dollars, a nitrate fertilizer that can end famine, and a force field that can be deployed to prevent international warfare. After answering questions, the Kanamit departs without comment and leaves a book in the Kanamit language, which leads to Michael Chambers, a US government cryptographer, being pressed into service.
Initially wary of an alien race who came "quite uninvited", international leaders begin to be persuaded of the Kanamits' benevolence when their advanced technology puts an end to hunger, energy shortages, and the arms race. Trust in the Kanamits seems to be justified when Patty, a member of the cryptography staff led by Chambers, decodes the title of the Kanamit book: To Serve Man. The Kanamits submit to interrogation and polygraph, at the request of the UN delegates. When declaring their benevolent intentions, the polygraph indicates that the Kanamit is speaking the truth.
Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the Kanamits' home planet, which they describe as a paradise. Kanamits now have embassies in every major city on Earth. With the U.S. Armed Forces having been disbanded and world peace having been achieved, the code-breaking staff has no real work to do, but Patty is still trying to work out the meaning of the text of To Serve Man.
The day arrives for Chambers's excursion to the Kanamits' planet. Just as he mounts the spaceship's boarding stairs, Patty runs toward him in great agitation. While being held back by a Kanamit guard, Patty cries: "Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship! The rest of the book To Serve Man, it's... it's a cookbook!" Chambers tries to run back down the stairs, but a Kanamit blocks him, the stairs retract, and the ship lifts off.
Chambers is in the shipboard room now, and is again offered a meal. He throws it to the floor, but a Kanamit retrieves it and encourages him to eat, to keep Chambers from "losing weight". At last Chambers says to the audience: "How about you? You still on Earth, or on the ship with me? Really doesn't make very much difference, because sooner or later, all of us will be on the menu... all of us." The episode closes as Chambers gives in and breaks his hunger strike.
Closing narration
The recollections of one Michael Chambers with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or more simply stated, the evolution of man. The cycle of going from dust to dessert. The metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup. It's tonight's bill of fare from the Twilight Zone.
Cast
- Lloyd Bochner as Michael Chambers
- Richard Kiel as the Kanamits (all of whom appear alike)
- Susan Cummings as Patty
- Joseph Ruskin as Kanamit voice
- Hardie Albright as Secretary General
- Theo Marcuse as Citizen Gregori (credited as Theodore Marcuse)
- Bartlett Robinson as Colonel #1
- Carleton Young as Colonel #2 (credited as Carlton Young)
- Nelson Olmsted as Scientist
- Robert Tafur as Señor Valdes
- Lomax Study as Leveque
- Jerry Fujikawa as Japanese Delegate (credited as J.H. Fujikawa)
Production
The arriving Kanamit ship is shown as scenes extracted from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but with different sound; the departing Kanamit ship is shown as a scene extracted from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, also with different sound.
Critical response
Marc Scott Zicree, writing in The Twilight Zone Companion, has criticized a cardinal plot point in "To Serve Man": "In the show ... a staff of cryptographers led by [Michael Chambers] Lloyd Bochner attempts to decipher the alien language as though it were some secret code, which is utterly ludicrous. Without some sort of interplanetary Rosetta stone, deciphering an unknown language would be impossible." Zicree also points out that the chances of the word "serve" having the same dual meaning in both English and another language, especially an alien one, are almost nil.[citation needed]
In 1997 TV Guide ranked the episode at No. 11 on its "100 Greatest Episodes of All Time" list[6] and in 2013 ranked the ending as the "Greatest Twist of All Time."[7] In 2009, Time listed the episode among the "Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes."[8]
Cultural influence
An unofficial badge of the 509th Bomb Wing based in Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. The text reads, "To Serve Man," and the caption below reads, "Gustatus Similis Pullus"—Dog Latin for "Tastes Like Chicken".[9]
The plot device of the alien cookbook is parodied in the segment "Hungry Are the Damned" on The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror" (1990). In the segment, the seemingly benevolent aliens Kang and Kodos are discovered to have a book titled "How to Cook Humans".[10] The humour is played up by a series of reversals in revealing the actual title of the book. What begins as "How to Cook Humans", through a series of repeated blowing of "space dust" from the book, becomes "How to Cook for Humans", "How to Cook Forty Humans", and finally "How to Cook for Forty Humans". Ultimately, the trope is subverted, as Lisa later comments on their suspicious attitude towards the aliens: "Truly there were monsters on that ship, and truly we were them."
In the 1991 film The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, a panicked crowd scene towards the end of the film features Terrence Baggett (played by episode star Lloyd Bochner) carrying a book entitled "To Serve Man" and exclaiming "It's a cookbook!"[11]
In the Futurama episode "My Three Suns", Bender is shown wearing an apron that says "To Serve Man".[12]
The American heavy metal band Nuclear Assault featured a song of the same title on their 1993 album Something Wicked. The lyrics focus around the same theme.[13]
American deathgrind band Cattle Decapitation has a 2002 album of the same name.
In a scene from the 2005 animated comedy Madagascar, the lemur king Julien XIII tells an assembly of lemurs how they have always been attacked by the fossa, causing a panic during which one lemur holds up a book entitled 'To Serve Lemur' exclaiming 'It's a cookbook!'.[4]
In his 2010 instrumental album'Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 producer El-P samples the audio from the Twilight Zone episode in the track "How To Serve Man".
In the April 19, 2018, Mark Trail comic strip, a pile of books is shown, prominently including To Serve Man.[14]
See also
References
- ^ Hunter, Rob (October 22, 2011). "Exploring The Twilight Zone #89: To Serve Man". Film School Rejects. Archived from the original on October 24, 2018.
The Twilight Zone (Episode #89): "To Serve Man" (airdate March 2, 1962)
- ^ To Serve Man at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Belasco, Warren James (2006). Meals to come: a history of the future of food. University of California Press. pp. 130, 358. ISBN 0-520-24151-7.
- ^ a b Guerrasio, Jason (December 30, 2014). "The 10 Most Shocking Episodes of The Twilight Zone". Esquire. Archived from the original on July 4, 2017.
- ^ Muir, John Kenneth (March 14, 2014). "Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV". Reflections on Film and Television. Archived from the original on April 28, 2017.
- ^ TV Guide Guide to TV. Barnes & Noble. 2004. p. 667. ISBN 0-7607-5634-1.
- ^ Roush, Matt (November 4–10, 2013). "Eyes on Surprise! The 60 Most Startling Twists of All Time". TV Guide Magazine. 61 (3187). TV Guide: 22–23.
- ^ Cruz, Gilbert (October 2, 2009). "Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes". Time Inc. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
- ^ Broad, William J. (April 1, 2008). "Inside the black budget". The New York Times.
- ^ Booker, M. Keith (2006). Drawn to television. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 67–68. ISBN 978-0-275-99019-0.
- ^ Duffin, Allan T.; Matheis, Paul (2005). The 12 O'Clock High Logbook: The Unofficial History of the Novel, Motion Picture, and TV Series. BearManor Media. p. 236. ISBN 9781593930332.
- ^ Booker, M. Keith (2006). Drawn to television. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-275-99019-0.
- ^ "To Serve Man, Nuclear Assault Album - Something Wicked". Genius.com.
- ^ Allen, James (April 19, 2018). "Mark Trail". Comics Kingdom. Archived from the original on October 24, 2018.
Sources
- Zicree, Marc Scott (1982). The Twilight Zone Companion. Silman-James Press. ISBN 978-1-9352-4717-3.
- Devoe, Bill (2008). Trivia from the Twilight Zone. BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-6293-3014-3.
- Grams, Martin (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. O T R Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703-3109-0.
