Twilight Zone and Textual Evidence

twilight_zone

Time Enough At Last

I used the above Twilight Zone episode to tie into my Cold War Unit.  We were discussing the impact of mass media on culture – more tvs, transistor radios, etc.  I remembered watching this episode as a kid and wanted to share it with my students.  It turned into a great skills-based lesson that only took about 35-40 minutes.

Student task-

Write down as many pieces of evidence you can that tells you something about the society in which this TV episode was made.

Evidence that we found:

Lack of diversity – actors/characters were all white

H-Bomb

Paper newspapers and reading paper books – students thought it odd how involved the main character was with reading paper items

Technology – caught reading books – today, people are caught on phones.

No dead bodies – TV was less violent than say, the Walking Dead

Smoking of cigarette

Tape/voice recorder

Payphone

Manual cash register

Fear of a nuclear holocaust