Marxist Critical Essay of Twilight Zone S3E01 "Two"

What is the cost of class conflict? How much are we willing to lose before we stop following ideologies that pit man against man, destroying society’s means of production, and leaving cities in ruin? The true cost of war’s false consciousness is a loss of empathy for others. Without empathy for others, humanity could destroy itself.

This is the message encoded into the classic Twilight Zone episode, called “Two” starring Charles Bronson (as seen in action movies like “Death Wish” or “The Magnificent Seven”) and Elizabeth Montgomery (who starred on the sitcom “Bewitched”). Producer Rod Serling’s sci-fi program this time takes us to a future world, where warring nations have destroyed much and it doesn’t seem anyone has survived the evacuation, occupation, fallout, or whatever happened before the start of the episode that left the landscape in such desolation. As the episode opens, she scavenges a long empty town for food.  Soon, we are introduced to him in his very different uniform from hers and the two clash violently as they have been trained and indoctrinated to do.  We find only two unnamed survivors seem to remain alive in this post-apocalyptic future, but they are soldiers from opposing sides who fight instead of cooperate. The conflict of these “two” is a metaphoric microcosm representative of any two warring powers or their representatives.

In this episode, we find evidence of a consumer society lying in ruins as the couple are seen in the remains of a once thriving city that was evacuated over 5 years before, in response to the invasion of enemy troops.  While alone she admires a pretty dress in the shop window, impractical for war, an aesthetic of another time. She is dirty and her uniform is inspired by Eastern European military attire from the Cold War era. She carries a rifle and several weapons like knives.  She is vigilant and a survivor.

In this society, false consciousness about knowing your enemy by the uniform they wear is a key tool for survival and for murdering in the name of the leader’s ideology. Nation boundaries keep rulers in power and language barriers sometimes limit economic possibilities. In truth, we are all humans who need shelter, food and love.  But these soldiers have been forcefed their nation’s doctrines. 

These two lonely souls meet in a restaurant kitchen, battle and she gets knocked out. He is war weary and after taking the food and leaving, he feels pangs of empathy and returns to share his meal and wakes her up. She is doctrinaire at first and refuses his aid, because she believes him to be the enemy due to his rebel uniform and language. He has begun to question the doctrine of his now absent leaders and a society that destroyed itself.

The us versus them hegemony tells them they cannot be friendly with the wrong side or cooperate to rebuild.  Inflexible ideas like only wearing your uniform and killing on command are rules specific to their society.  They have alienated themselves from their fellow man due to this false hegemony. But these paradigms begin to shift for them as the episode continues.  The war has alienated these two from not only the influence of their leaders, but from the rest of humanity as well it seems.

The old world’s class conflicts and warring nations only benefit the bourgeois leaders and leave the proletariat soldiers to clean up their messes or try to survive on what’s left. The fading materialism remains with the city, but there are no new products. The modes of production are unmanned and under-supplied. Class conflicts of invader versus locals, with clashing languages and uniforms eventually grind away the fat of materialism and the only valid conflict that remains in the mind of these “two” is dirty war versus a clean shaved peace.

The woman suspiciously follows the man as he enters a dusty barbershop. He tells her there is “no longer any reason to fight, no longer any armies, boundaries or noble causes” (Pittman 1961). Our bourgeois hero has proven egalitarian by sharing his food but he is still rejecting authority and selling individualism. He encourages capitalist ideologies like peaceful exchanges, normalcy, rebuilding and consumption. He is shown consuming food and seeking unique clothing, to distinguish himself as an individual no longer in the uniform of the masses. He becomes a “transformer of society” (Berger 2014).

Their old society was led by hierarchical elitists, but with the leaders absent, individuals begin to lead themselves. She plays the fatalist and ideologist who sees no evil, to his utopian who sees no good with the status quo we find them in. The leaders’ resources have been cut off in this desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape. These two lone survivors lack food and electricity. The hegemony of the leaders destroyed the old world, their propaganda polluting the empathy of their people for anyone not like them.  This leaves the rebuilding up to the proletariats and who they choose to collaborate with.

The leader’s ideology of blindly killing and destroying based on orders and to suspend empathy for other humans in the name of war poses was a serious risk with devastating consequences. The producer of the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, was a veteran of WWII, where he “was intimately acquainted with the horrors of America’s attempt to reclaim its Pacific colonies…. Serling's best friend… was decapitated in front of the future screenwriter by a ‘biscuit bomb,’ a food crate intended to nourish the life of the man it killed. Serling closed out the war living in the horror of occupied Japan where the American treatment of women, children, and the elderly contributed to the nightmares that plagued the author for the rest of his life. The towns that were not obliterated by the atomic bombs, or burned by American’s firebombing raids, were deeply scarred by famine. The U.S. naval blockade around Japan in the waning days of World War 2 was actually called Operation Starvation” (Goldstein 2014). With the producer’s background in mind, it become harder to suspend disbelief that this fiction could not prove prophetic. This episode acts as a warning to the viewer about a future that is not dissimilar from our military’s own past.

Our two main characters, a man and woman from different sides take a chance on empathy and clean up together at a barber shop. He encourages her to put on the pretty dress she had admired from afar earlier, and gets it out for her.  He encourages consumption of civilian attire as a symbolic rejection of the military industrial complex’s forced uniformity and ideological doctrines. He gives her the dress like extending the olive branch from one army to another as a sign of disarmament and peace, gruffly but with good intentions.

She goes into a building to change, then notices propaganda posters lining the wall of what once was a military recruiting office for a war against her home people. She becomes enraged at a propaganda poster, enflamed she tries to fit everything into her doctrine. She sets aside the dress and grabs her laser gun. She is doctrinaire and resumes the futile power struggle by running outside where the man awaits her, and she instantly shoots at him. He escapes her attack. She spends time alone, she returns to the barbershop seeking shelter from a storm. Perhaps there she begins to question the hegemony that said she was safer alone than with someone who didn’t share her country’s ideology.

In the last scene, he has changed into civilian clothes. He puts on a sports jacket and fun scarf around his neck. He will need his rifle to hunt food and has found a couple of mason jar canned peaches. His prospects are grim, but he has taken an optimistic, make-do attitude. He sees her approaching and recoils, yelling, “Go take your war to more suitable companions, this is civilian territory” (Pittman 1961). In this statement, he confirms that he feels this war is no longer his. The irony that there are no other companions for her to take the war to, is as evident as their isolation.

She pops out into the open and has put on the civilian dress. Her hair has been pinned up and she has cleaned the toil of war away.  He recognizes this as a symbolic gesture and they walk off into an unknown future as a pair, perhaps to rebuild and cooperate.  By rejecting the old world hegemony that caused destruction and giving into empathizing with each other, the two survivors provide a hopeful chance at rebuilding a new world together.

WORKS CITED

Berger, A. A. (2014). Media Analysis Techniques (5th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Goldstein, R. (2014, November 13). How a War-Weary Vet Created ‘The Twilight Zone’. Retrieved October 02, 2016, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/13/how-a-war-weary-vet-created-the-twilight-zone.html

Pittman, M. (Writer), & Serling, R. (Producer). (1961, September 15). Two [Television series episode]. In Twilight Zone. Culver City, CA: CBS.