The running men

From The Fugitive to The Immortal, Run for Your Life to Run Buddy Run, classic television has told the stories of people on the run—from the law, from criminals, from death itself. The Fugitive was praised for its decision to bring to an end the premise which had sustained the series for four seasons; in this era of closed-loop storytelling, which suggests that every series contains an overall arc with a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s difficult to imagine a series that doesn’t provide some type of closure—"The Day the Running Stopped." The notable exception to this, of course, is the final episode of The Sopranos, which ends with an abrupt cut to black, and leaves the viewer forever in the dark as to what happens next. Considering the hue and cry accompanying that ending, it's probably unlikely we’ll ever see an ending like that again, or at least one left open to so many possibilities.

In a way, though, there’s something fitting about those series for which no end is provided. I’m not suggesting they do this intentionally; usually, the decision is made for them, in the form of low ratings, stars ready to move on, or recalcitrant network executives. Still, it seems to me that perhaps leaving things open-ended isn’t really such a bad idea, at least in some instances. It forces both the show's viewers and its creators to consider the existential implications of life, and how their characters fit into that scheme. Viewers, for instance, are left to fill in the blanks after the ending of a show like The Sopranos, and in doing so, they not only display their perspective on what the show was all about, they also reveal a great deal about themselves and their own way of thinking: their values, their moral convictions, their philosophy of life. 

And what do those shows themselves tell us? In providing for an end to the four-season odyssey of Richard Kimble, Quinn Martin was following in the footsteps of Route 66, which also provided for an end to the journey—at least for Tod, when he decided it was time to settle down and marry Barbara Eden. (Smart man!) That suggests our heroes were not so much running away from something, as running toward something. Tod finds that, or at least thinks he has, but we’re not sure about Linc, let alone Buz. The question remains, though: if they were running toward life, toward something that they perhaps can’t define but will recognize when they see it, what are they running away from? A life without hope, without meaning, a boring, 9-to-5 job that provides security, whereas the adrenaline that is the spice of life comes from insecurity?*

*You could include Then Came Bronson in that discussion as well. And then, as someone pointed out to me, there's The Incredible Hulk, that most melancholic of superhero series, in which our tragic hero David Banner finds himself in a dual race, running not only from the pursuing journalist, but from himself as well.

l  l  l

Is The Immortal really running away from his pursuers, or is he running away from the burden of being immortal? The setup of having the hero pursued by the heavy was not only exceedingly conventional, it was probably necessary in order to get the show on the air. But there’s a twist to the convention: Ben Richards is useless to Jordan Braddock if he’s dead; Richards must be kept alive in order to produce the rare blood that enables him to cheat death, the blood that Braddock wants. If the implication is that Braddock wants to keep Richards alive, then it also follows that by running from Braddock’s henchman Fletcher, Richards is also running from eternity, or at least natural eternity. One could say that he is running from a false life, running toward death, or the possibility of death, which is the only way a man can truly feel alive. Think of this series in another way, one which probably never would make it to television, but is intriguing nonetheless: Ben Richards, unable to experience death in a natural way and unwilling to take his own life (because he still has scruples) dedicates his life to taking outrageous risks for the purpose of helping others. It could be anything from climbing a tree to rescue an old woman’s cat to dashing into a flaming house to rescue a small child. Perhaps he takes on the mob to save the life of a young man who’s fallen into debt, or offers himself as a human hostage to prevent an international incident. There are an endless number of ways to risk your own life, after all, and if you can’t do something good with the life you’ve been given, what good is it? 

I think you get the picture here. The most existential question of all is that of the meaning of life; while Dr. Richard Kimble hoped to get his life back after being exonerated of the murder of his wife, his real-life counterpart, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was never able to recover what had been his, and stumbled through years of wrestling professionally and drinking heavily before meeting a premature death. Sam Sheppard could not return to the life he once lived—but having died as a man, he continues to live as a legal precedent, and if that precedent (Sheppard v. Maxwell) makes a difference in the lives of others, perhaps even saving the lives of others by ensuring them a fair trial, could he be said to have died at all—or did he, in some mysterious way, experience the suffering of a life lost in order to provide life to others? Does that make him any different from our alternate version of Ben Richards? And what hope does that give Dr. Kimble? Unlike Sheppard, he was able to continue interacting with others during his journey, rather than spending years in prison—will the life of a successful pediatrician still appeal to him? 

Perhaps the most profound lesson we can learn is from the story of Paul Bryan, the protagonist of Run for Your Life. Like Kimble, he is running for his life, but whereas Kimble is trying to escape the death house, Bryan is attempting to outrun the disease that will claim his life in two or three years. We don’t see how his race ends; there was much derision over a series about a man with two years to live running for three seasons, but remember: television doesn’t measure time in the same way that calendars do. (Otherwise, M*A*S*H never would have lasted as long as it did—or the Korean War would have lasted a lot longer.) And, in fact, we never know what happens to Paul Bryan. Since Run for Your Life ends without an episode wrapping up all the loose ends, we don’t know for a fact that Bryan actually dies. His doctor did tell him to stay in contact, that advances in medical science are being made all the time. It’s unlikely, perhaps, but it could be that Paul Bryan beats the odds, that he hangs on long enough for his doctors to provide him with the treatment that cures him of his fatal illness. And then what? Having finally learned how to live a life of gusto (he’d told his doctor he hadn’t had a day off since law school), does he return to the world of a corporate lawyer, or does he continue living a life of adventure, as a latter-day Hemingway? And will he find the extra years he’s been given as satisfying as those years he’d lived when he had nothing to lose, and therefore everything to gain? Given time, would he have traded places with Ben Richards, living with an antibody that would likely have prevented his fatal illness, if it meant he wouldn’t have learned how to really live? That’s an interesting question.

l  l  l

The world today can often seem like a patient in extremely critical condition, but too stubborn to ask for the Last Rites. Under such circumstances, who wouldn't look to run? (Unless you're one of the ones causing the problems in the first place, in which case you're not only running, you want to bring everyone and everything along with you.) Trying to predict the future is often a fool's errand, and anyone looking for certainties right now is certain only of being a fool. 

In a sense, these running men are trying to both escape from and head toward the same thing simultaneously, as if they were caught on an endless treadmill comprised of an existential mobius strip. By ending the series without a conclusion, or leaving the viewer uncertain as to the rest of the story, the showrunners ensuring that everything will always be just out of reach; the man freed from punishment, the man free to experience death, the man hoping for a second act he hadn't realized he wanted. It is life that they seek, it is life from which they run. And that's appropriate, because after all, can we ever really escape what we’re running from? Can we ever truly arrive at what we’re running toward? In a way, the running never stops, and never can; we're all on a treadmill to eternity, running toward a goal we'll never reach. The second we reach the future it becomes the present, and the next second it becomes part of the past. Sportscaster Sid Collins famously said that we all speed toward death at the rate of 60 minutes every hour; we speed toward the future in the same way, but like death, we'll never truly experience it for ourselves. 

And that's why some answers are better left unsaid, and why it might not be so bad for a television series to end while leaving the question unanswered. For that unanswered question is the exploration of life itself, and what it means to be fully present in that life—as a participant, not merely an observer. 

In the meantime, we keep running, always running. TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!

When good comes from evil

Life, as I have remarked more than once, is at heart a human drama. And not just any drama, but one shrouded in mystery. Oftentimes, it seems as if the act of living provides us with more questions than answers, which is rarely satisfying to anyone; it is frequently that lack of answers that causes some people to conclude that there is no meaning to life at all, that it’s simply a matter of random chance that determines what happens to us. Why, we ask, do bad things happen to good people while good things happen to bad people? Why does God allow evil to exist in the world? It's a question that's shattered the faith of more than one person over the millennia, and continues to do so to this day—perhaps especially in this day.

Sometimes we find explanations to these kinds of questions difficult to come by, and often it's easier (and more effective) to illustrate a point than it is to explain it. Likewise, those illustrations will often come from unusual places; in this case, the classic Doctor Who episode "Genesis of the Daleks," which first aired in March, 1975. It is a brilliant science fiction story that deals, as sci-fi often does, with big issues thinly disguised in different wrappers. With "Genesis of the Daleks," we find as near as possible a perfect demonstration of the Christian explanation regarding the existence of evil, and what, in fact, it's good for.

"Genesis of the Daleks" begins with the Doctor (Tom Baker) being intercepted by a fellow Time Lord, who intends for the Doctor and his companions to take on a secret mission. As usual, the Doctor resents this interference by the Time Lords in his life, but his interest is piqued when he's told the subject of the mission: Daleks.

In short, the Time Lords plan to transport the Doctor, Sara Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) back to the planet Skaro at a time just before the creation of the Daleks. Once there, the Doctor's assignment is to prevent the Daleks from achieving their eventual domination and enslavement of the universe. To do this, he has three options: stop the creation of the Daleks before it can be completed; slow down their development if it cannot be stopped; or at the very least, determine what their weaknesses are, so that they can be better defended against.

As the story proceeds, the Doctor is left with a single choice: he can destroy the Dalek incubation room where the mutated creatures are being prepared for installation in their pepper-pot containers. Working quickly, he wires the room with explosives. And then arrives the moment we’ve waited for from the beginning of the story. The Doctor holds in his hands two wires: touch them together and the explosion will destroy the incubation room, destroying forever the Daleks and their reign of terror and death. And yet the Doctor hesitates.

“What are you waiting for?” Sarah Jane asks him. “You can’t doubt it.”

“Well, I do,” the Doctor replies. “You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks.” To Sarah Jane’s objection that this isn't how things work, the Doctor points out that the responsibility for this act rests on his shoulders—his soul, really, although he doesn't use that word—and no one else’s; he then poses a question of his own. “Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?”* It’s true that, as the Doctor says, “Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek” if he simply touches the two wires together, and yet – does he have the right? It’s not like killing a bacteria, wiping out a disease; this is an intelligent life form. If the Doctor does it, he becomes a perpetrator of genocide, no different from the Daleks themselves.

*That is, of course, the same argument made by Ezra Lieberman, Ira Levin’s Nazi hunter in his novel The Boys from Brazil. Kill all the Hitler clones Mengele has created—all of whom happen to be young boys, by the way—and you’ll prevent one of them from growing up to become another Hitler. Lieberman, like the Doctor, is unable to do it, and for the same reasons.

Ultimately, the decision is taken out of the Doctor's hands, through yet another plot twist. As the story ends, one of the Daleks inadvertently sets off the explosion. Although the room has been destroyed, Daleks outside the room continue to live, and the best the Doctor can hope is that they've bought some additional time to prepare for them—perhaps a thousand years or so. The Doctor and his companions manage to escape Skaro with their lives, which under the circumstances may be the best they could hope for. And yet there’s no doubt they’ve failed in the mission on which the Time Lords sent them, to prevent the genesis of the Daleks.

Or have they? “Failed?” the Doctor asks. “No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good.”

This is one of the pivotal moments in the history of Doctor Who. We already knew how it would turn out; the BBC isn’t about to kill off the cash cow that is the Daleks. But in resolving the situation, the Doctor, who in all of his incarnations has witnessed first-hand more Dalek-caused death and destruction than it would ever be possible for anyone else to experience, who knows the millions of years of “havoc and destruction” that awaits because of the Daleks, still remains confident that good will ultimately emerge from even the worst of circumstances. It is a profound statement; in effect, an explanation for the existence of evil.*

*Two profound statements, in fact, the other being the sanctity of life—even Dalek life.

Granted, there’s an entire theology dealing with good and evil—Original Sin, free will and the like. But in some ways the simplest answer remains the best, and this is what the Doctor presents. Note the force of his statement: some good must come from the evil of the Daleks. Planets and nations will come together as a result of them, and perhaps it will foster understanding between different races and species. People who would otherwise remain apart will meet because of them, and some of them will marry and have children, and some of those children might, propelled by the threat from the Daleks, come up with inventions that will greatly benefit the brotherhood of man. One need only look in our own time at the many scientific achievements that resulted from the space program, which itself was a part of a Cold War being fought against dictators responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. You can create your own scenarios, but the point remains the same.

Ultimately, all that's required to understand the nature of good and evil is faith: faith that evil is not the end-all and the be-all. Indeed, the Doctor's refusal to commit genocide, even in what would appear to be a good cause, speaks to the importance of one remaining true to himself, regardless of the costs. Christians might think of this as the sanctification of the individual, the ability to reach into inner depths that might not otherwise be exposed save the existence of such a threat. For a program such as Doctor Who, one that frequently looks at religion with a cynical eye, the message that comes from "Genesis of the Daleks" is a surprisingly affirming one.

But then we really shouldn't be surprised. It's a point I've made more than once here, that inadvertent prophets can be found in the unlikeliest of places, It also reinforces another point: the truth is always the truth, no matter how you package or present it. Bishop Sheen probably couldn't have said it any better. TV  

The running man

From The Fugitive to The Immortal, Run for Your Life to Run Buddy Run, classic television has told the stories of people on the run—from the law, from criminals, from death itself. The Fugitive was praised for its decision to bring to an end the premise which had sustained the series for four seasons; in this era of closed-loop storytelling, which suggests that every series contains an overall arc with a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s difficult to imagine a series that doesn’t provide some type of closure—"The Day the Running Stopped." The notable exception to this, of course, is the final episode of The Sopranos, which ends with an abrupt cut to black, and leaves the viewer forever in the dark as to what happens next. Considering the hue and cry accompanying that ending, it's probably unlikely we’ll ever see an ending like that again, or at least one left open to so many possibilities.

In a way, though, there’s something fitting about those series for which no end is provided. I’m not suggesting they do this intentionally; usually, the decision is made for them, in the form of low ratings, stars ready to move on, or recalcitrant network executives. Still, it seems to me that perhaps leaving things open-ended isn’t really such a bad idea, at least in some instances. It forces both the show's viewers and its creators to consider the existential implications of life, and how their characters fit into that scheme. Viewers, for instance, are left to fill in the blanks after the ending of a show like The Sopranos, and in doing so, they not only display their perspective on what the show was all about, they also reveal a great deal about themselves and their own way of thinking: their values, their moral convictions, their philosophy of life. 

And what do those shows themselves tell us? In providing for an end to the four-season odyssey of Richard Kimble, Quinn Martin was following in the footsteps of Route 66, which also provided for an end to the journey—at least for Tod, when he decided it was time to settle down and marry Barbara Eden. (Smart man!) That suggests our heroes were not so much running away from something, as running toward something. Tod finds that, or at least thinks he has, but we’re not sure about Linc, let alone Buz. The question remains, though: if they were running toward life, toward something that they perhaps can’t define but will recognize when they see it, what are they running away from? A life without hope, without meaning, a boring, 9-to-5 job that provides security whereas the adrenalin that is the spice of life comes from insecurity?*

*You could include Then Came Bronson in that discussion as well. 

t  t  t

Is The Immortal really running away from his pursuers, or is he running away from the burden of being immortal? The setup of having the hero pursued by the heavy was not only exceedingly conventional, it was probably necessary in order to get the show on the air. But there’s a twist to the convention: Ben Richards is useless to Jordan Braddock if he’s dead; Richards must be kept alive in order to produce the rare blood that enables him to cheat death, the blood that Braddock wants. If the implication is that Braddock wants to keep Richards alive, then it also follows that by running from Braddock’s henchman Fletcher, Richards is also running from eternity, or at least natural eternity. One could say that he is running from a false life, running toward death, or the possibility of death, which is the only way a man can truly feel alive. Think of this series in another way, one which probably never would make it to television, but is intriguing nonetheless: Ben Richards, unable to experience death in a natural way and unwilling to take his own life (because he still has scruples) dedicates his life to taking outrageous risks for the purpose of helping others. It could be anything from climbing a tree to rescue an old woman’s cat to dashing into a flaming house to rescue a small child. Perhaps he takes on the mob to save the life of a young man who’s fallen into debt, or offers himself as a human hostage to prevent an international incident. There are an endless number of ways to risk your own life, after all, and if you can’t do something good with the life you’ve been given, what good is it? 

I think you get the picture here. The most existential question of all is that of the meaning of life; while Dr. Richard Kimble hoped to get his life back after being exonerated of the murder of his wife, his real-life counterpart, Dr. Sam Sheppard, was never able to recover what had been his, and stumbled through years of wrestling professionally and drinking heavily before meeting a premature death. Sam Sheppard could not return to the life he once lived—but having died as a man, he continues to live as a legal precedent, and if that precedent (Sheppard v. Maxwell) makes a difference in the lives of others, perhaps even saving the lives of others by ensuring them a fair trial, could he be said to have died at all—or did he, in some mysterious way, experience the suffering of a life lost in order to provide life to others? Does that make him any different from our alternate version of Ben Richards? And what hope does that give Dr. Kimble? Unlike Sheppard, he was able to continue interacting with others during his journey, rather than spending years in prison—will the life of a successful pediatrician still appeal to him? 

Perhaps the most profound lesson we can learn is from the story of Paul Bryan, the protagonist of Run for Your Life. Like Kimble, he is running for his life, but whereas Kimble is trying to escape the death house, Bryan is attempting to outrun the disease that will claim his life in two or three years. We don’t see how his race ends; there was much derision over a series about a man with two years to live running for three seasons, but remember: television doesn’t measure time in the same way that calendars do. (Otherwise, M*A*S*H never would have lasted as long as it did—or the Korean War would have lasted a lot longer.) And, in fact, we never know what happens to Paul Bryan. Since Run for Your Life ends without an episode wrapping up all the loose ends, we don’t know for a fact that Bryan actually dies. His doctor did tell him to stay in contact, that advances in medical science are being made all the time. It’s unlikely, perhaps, but it could be that Paul Bryan beats the odds, that he hangs on long enough for his doctors to provide him with the treatment that cures him of his fatal illness. And then what? Having finally learned how to live a life of gusto (he’d told his doctor he hadn’t had a day off since law school), does he return to the world of a corporate lawyer, or does he continue living a life of adventure, as a latter-day Hemingway? And will he find the extra years he’s been given as satisfying as those years he’d lived when he had nothing to lose, and therefore everything to gain? Given time, would he have traded places with Ben Richards, living with an antibody that would likely have prevented his fatal illness, if it meant he wouldn’t have learned how to really live? That’s an interesting question.

t  t  t

The world today can often seem like a patient in extremely critical condition, but too stubborn to ask for the Last Rites. Under such circumstances, who wouldn't look to run? (Unless you're one of the ones causing the problems in the first place, in which case you're not only running, you want to bring everyone and everything along with you.) Trying to predict the future is often a fool's errand, and anyone looking for certainties right now is certain only of being a fool. 

In a sense, these running men are trying to both escape from and head toward the same thing simultaneously, as if they were caught on an endless treadmill comprised of an existential mobius strip. By ending the series without a conclusion, or leaving the viewer uncertain as to the rest of the story, the showrunners ensuring that everything will always be just out of reach; the man freed from punishment, the man free to experience death, the man hoping for a second act he hadn't realized he wanted. It is life that they seek, it is life from which they run. And that's appropriate, because after all, can we ever really escape what we’re running from? Can we ever truly arrive at what we’re running toward? In a way, the running never stops, and never can; we're all on a treadmill to eternity, running toward a goal we'll never reach. The second we reach the future it becomes the present, and the next second it becomes part of the past. Sportscaster Sid Collins famously said that we all speed toward death at the rate of 60 minutes every hour; we speed toward the future in the same way, but like death, we'll never truly experience it for ourselves. 

And that's why some answers are better left unsaid, and why it might not be so bad for a television series to end while leaving the question unanswered. For that unanswered question is the exploration of life itself, and what it means to be fully present in that life—as a participant, not merely an observer. 

In the meantime, we keep running, always running. TV  

Apocalypse Theater

How does one approach the end of the world?

The End of the World, capitalization required, isn't nearly as prominent a topic as the Post-Apocalyptic World. For one thing, The End doesn't come with zombies or vampires or other cool special effects. As Eliot says, it comes not with a bang, but a whimper. For another, it tends to be a very personal experience; everyone prepares for death in their own individual way, even (especially?) when one is surrounded by people.

Lois Nettleton faces "The Midnight Sun"

In The Midnight Sun, one of the most famous of Twilight Zone episodes, the earth is dislodged from its orbit and heads for a rendezvous with the sun. Rod Serling, who wrote the script, paints a grim portrait of life near the end: deserted streets, empty shelves, water usage limited to an hour a day, law and order essentially nonexistent. As the thermometer soars past 130°, our protagonist Norma collapses, only for us to discover that it has all been a fevered dream on her part. The earth is moving not closer to the sun, but away from it, and as the last survivors face their inevitable death from freezing, Norma has been dreaming of how nice it would be if it were warm. As I said, the end affects people differently.

The 1990s revival of The Outer Limits presented a story called The Inconstant Moon, based on a short story by Larry Niven, in which a professor of physics observes a blinding flash reflect against the surface of the moon, leading him to believe that the sun has gone nova, and that there are only a few hours left to live. Knowing the end is coming encourages him to confess his love to a female friend; they marry and prepare to spend the last night on earth together. The nova turns out to be "merely" a solar flare which, nevertheless, wreaks destruction and death, leaving the professor and his wife one of the few alive. The end of the world does not come for some without the promise of love.

In 1960, Playhouse 90 broadcast Alas, Babylon, an adaptation of the novel by Pat Frank, in which a nuclear war breaks out between the United States and the Soviet Union. As with movies like The Day After, the point of the story is how the survivors react in the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust, and the time prior to the war is given over to the crumbling geopolitical environment that leads to the inevitable nuclear confrontation. Having been tipped off to the pending war by his Air Force brother, Randy Bragg spends the waning days gathering friends and family around him, and taking what action he can to provide for their survival. His ingenuity, combined with the individual talents of those with him, enable them to hang on until the Air Force arrives the following year. America has won the war, but at a fearful price; for her 45 million survivors, it is the end of one world and the beginning of another.

A Canadian movie from 1998, Last Night tells of the imminent end of the world, scheduled for midnight. The cause is never explained, but the end has been some time in coming. At first society breaks down into panic and violence, but as the last night approaches, a modicum of civilization has returned. Patrick, a widower, attempts to help Sandra, a young woman looking for her husband, with whom she has a suicide pact. Her efforts having failed, she and Patrick sit on the roof, awaiting midnight, each holding a loaded gun to the other's temple. In the last seconds, they discard their guns and embrace in a kiss, as the world comes to an end. Love triumphs, not in the same way as in The Inconstant Moon, but affirming the importance, the need, for human contact and compassion.

For Ted Turner, the end of the world was part of his mission statement for CNN. He vowed that his news network would survive until the end, and, in fact, would be around to cover it, including a video of a band playing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the last thing to be broadcast on the network before the ultimate sign-off. That's another story, of course, but one has to admit that the end of the world as a period on a business plan is novel, if nothing else.

A revival meeting prepares people for the end in "On the Beach"

The premier end-of-the-world story is probably On the Beach, written by Nevil Shute in 1957 and given an adequate movie adaptation by Stanley Kramer in 1959. As in Alas, Babylon, the end is triggered by a nuclear war, but in this case the focus is on Australia, where the world's remaining survivors wait for the radiation to reach them. It is an extended meditation on the situation described in Last Night, an extended period of waiting (over a year), knowing that death is certain. Cars and buses are now pulled by horses; a necessary state of denial keeps people going from day to day, planting gardens they'll never see bloom and moving up the date of the fishing opener because the original date would have been—too late. In order to ease the suffering, the government has provided everyone with a suicide pill they can choose to take, rather than suffering the horror of death by radiation. Having preordained the ending, Shute concentrates on how each character faces the end. For Commander Towers, in charge of an American submarine, it means carrying on with his duty while buying gifts for his wife and son, both of whom are certainly dead back in America. He falls in love with Moira, a young Australian who has been drinking her way through the waiting; their love remains platonic, however, because is is, after all, a married man. As the end approaches, gasoline reserves suddenly become plentiful, and the final Australian Grand Prix is held, with many drivers choosing to die in reckless moves rather than wait for the world to kill them; Moira decides to make something of herself by taking secretarial classes, and Towers determines to take his submarine and crew out beyond the reefs, where he will scuttle it and the men will go down with the ship.

It is this, more than anything else, which echoes in what we've seen the last few days. Sporting events are canceled, stores and restaurants are shut down, schools are closed, people are laid off or told to work from home. It does feel almost as if one is expected to sit at home and wait for death. A statistician would point out that even the most dire prediction of two million American dead pales when compared to the death toll of On the Beach (100%) or Alas, Babylon (roughly 150 million Americans), but in some ways it's like a game of viral Russian roulette; the odds favor the players, but the house will still get its share, and nobody knows which is which.

Personally, I think that while those seeking to contain the virus—to "flatten the curve," so to speak, through the noxious term "social distancing"—while they mean well, and while they may well be right, we're losing something of our humanity in the process. Not our will to live, so much; if anything, it's symptomatic of clinging too tightly to life itself. Rather, I think we're loosing what it means to be alive, living and breathing social creatures. As we see in these examples, man has been created as a social creature, one meant to be with others, to love and be loved. For a people that have become obsessed with the phrase "quality of life," and have demanded the right to kill themselves if they find that quality to be sufficiently impaired, we seem to have become awfully lax in adhering to that in the face of this threat. Only the young seem to have continued to insist on living life their way, and while part of it is their derision for boomers, there's another aspect that suggests that they, however imperfectly, understand the importance of hanging on to routine, of actually living rather than merely existing.

Life is, after all, a risk. And in this surrealistic way of life, with deserted streets and closed buildings and people cowering behind curtained windows, helpless, intimidated by a media that acts as if panic is merely a selling point, it becomes more and more important for us to remember that. We are not living in those worlds; we're living in this one. Life is worth living, and live is to be lived. Remember: nobody gets off this rock alive.

t  t  t

Here's Bishop Sheen talking about "Fear and Anxiety," which you'll hopefully find helpful.


 TV  

When good comes from evil

L
ife, as I have remarked more than once, is at heart a human drama. And not just any drama, but one shrouded in mystery. Oftentimes, it seems as if the act of living provides us with more questions than answers, which is rarely satisfying to anyone; it is frequently that lack of answers that causes some people to conclude that there is no meaning to life at all, that it’s simply a matter of random chance that determines what happens to us. Why, we ask, do bad things happen to good people while good things happen to bad people? Why does God allow evil to exist in the world? It's a question that's shattered the faith of more than one person over the millennia, and continues to do so to this day - perhaps especially in this day.

Sometimes we find explanations to these kinds of questions difficult to come by, and often it's easier (and more effective) to illustrate a point than it is to explain it. Likewise, those illustrations will often come from unusual places; in this case, the classic Doctor Who episode "Genesis of the Daleks," which first aired in March, 1975. It is a brilliant science fiction story that deals, as sci-fi often does, with big issues thinly disguised in different wrappers. With "Genesis of the Daleks," we find as near as possible a perfect demonstration of the Christian explanation regarding the existence of evil, and what, in fact, it's good for.

"Genesis of the Daleks" begins with the Doctor (Tom Baker) being intercepted by a fellow Time Lord, who intends for the Doctor and his companions to take on a secret mission. As usual, the Doctor resents this interference by the Time Lords in his life, but his interest is piqued when he's told the subject of the mission: Daleks.

In short, the Time Lords plan to transport the Doctor, Sara Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) back to the planet Skaro at a time just before the creation of the Daleks. Once there, the Doctor's assignment is to prevent the Daleks from achieving their eventual domination and enslavement of the universe. To do this, he has three options: stop the creation of the Daleks before it can be completed; slow down their development if it cannot be stopped; or at the very least, determine what their weaknesses are, so that they can be better defended against.

As the story proceeds, the Doctor is left with a single choice: he can destroy the Dalek incubation room where the mutated creatures are being prepared for installation in their pepper-pot containers. Working quickly, he wires the room with explosives. And then arrives the moment we’ve waited for from the beginning of the story. The Doctor holds in his hands two wires: touch them together and the explosion will destroy the incubation room, destroying forever the Daleks and their reign of terror and death. And yet the Doctor hesitates.

“What are you waiting for?” Sarah Jane asks him. “You can’t doubt it.”

“Well, I do,” the Doctor replies. “You see, some things could be better with the Daleks. Many future worlds will become allies just because of their fear of the Daleks.” To Sarah Jane’s objection that this isn't how things work, the Doctor points out that the responsibility for this act rests on his shoulders – his soul, really, although he doesn't use that word – and no one else’s; he then poses a question of his own. “Listen, if someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?”* It’s true that, as the Doctor says, “Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek” if he simply touches the two wires together, and yet – does he have the right? It’s not like killing a bacteria, wiping out a disease; this is an intelligent life form. If the Doctor does it, he becomes a perpetrator of genocide, no different from the Daleks themselves.

*That is, of course, the same argument made by Ezra Lieberman, Ira Levin’s Nazi hunter in his novel The Boys from Brazil. Kill all the Hitler clones Mengele has created – all of whom happen to be young boys, by the way – and you’ll prevent one of them from growing up to become another Hitler. Lieberman, like the Doctor, is unable to do it, and for the same reasons.

Ultimately, the decision is taken out of the Doctor's hands, through yet another plot twist. As the story ends, one of the Daleks inadvertently sets off the explosion. Although the room has been destroyed, Daleks outside the room continue to live, and the best the Doctor can hope is that they've bought some additional time to prepare for them - perhaps a thousand years or so. The Doctor and his companions manage to escape Skaro with their lives, which under the circumstances may be the best they could hope for. And yet there’s no doubt they’ve failed in the mission on which the Time Lords sent them, to prevent the genesis of the Daleks.

Or have they? “Failed?” the Doctor asks. “No, not really. You see, I know that although the Daleks will create havoc and destruction for millions of years, I know also that out of their evil must come something good.”

This is one of the pivotal moments in the history of Doctor Who. We already knew how it would turn out; the BBC isn’t about to kill off the cash cow that is the Daleks. But in resolving the situation, the Doctor, who in all of his incarnations has witnessed first-hand more Dalek-caused death and destruction than it would ever be possible for anyone else to experience, who knows the millions of years of “havoc and destruction” that awaits because of the Daleks, still remains confident that good will ultimately emerge from even the worst of circumstances. It is a profound statement; in effect, an explanation for the existence of evil.*

*Two profound statements, in fact, the other being the sanctity of life – even Dalek life.

Granted, there’s an entire theology dealing with good and evil – Original Sin, free will and the like. But in some ways the simplest answer remains the best, and this is what the Doctor presents. Note the force of his statement - some good must come from the evil of the Daleks. Planets and nations will come together as a result of them, and perhaps it will foster understanding between different races and species. People who would otherwise remain apart will meet because of them, and some of them will marry and have children, and some of those children might, propelled by the threat from the Daleks, come up with inventions that will greatly benefit the brotherhood of man. One need only look in our own time at the many scientific achievements that resulted from the space program, which itself was a part of a Cold War being fought against dictators responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. You can create your own scenarios, but the point remains the same.

Ultimately, all that's required to understand the nature of good and evil is faith - faith that evil is not the end-all and the be-all. Indeed, the Doctor's refusal to commit genocide, even in what would appear to be a good cause, speaks to the importance of one remaining true to himself, regardless of the costs. Christians might think of this as the sanctification of the individual, the ability to reach into inner depths that might not otherwise be exposed save the existence of such a threat. For a program such as Doctor Who, one that frequently looks at religion with a cynical eye, the message that comes from "Genesis of the Daleks" is a surprisingly affirming one.

But then we really shouldn't be surprised. It's a point I've made more than once here, that inadvertent prophets can be found in the unlikeliest of places, It also reinforces another point: the truth is always the truth, no matter how you package or present it. Bishop Sheen probably couldn't have said it any better. TV  

Naked City and the existence of a man

It is our wont, in the Hadley household, to watch Naked City on DVD Friday nights. (Perhaps it also says something about our social lives that we spend Friday nights watching TV, but I'll let that pass for now.) And a couple of weeks ago, we saw an extraordinary episode; I know that I use this phrase from time to time, and perhaps overuse it, but in this case I thought it really was extraordinary, even as the episode was unfolding. It was called "Which Is Joseph Creeley?" and while sometimes the titles of '60s dramas get a bit pretentious, I thought this one meant exactly what it said, though we'll get to that in a moment.

It's an unusual episode in many respects, not the least of which being that of the Naked City regulars, only Detective Adam Flint (Paul Burke) and his girlfriend Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) appear in the episode; none of the other detectives are shown, or even mentioned in the opening credits - but then, this is not their story. The cold open gives us Adam and Libby headed up the steps to where some type of legal proceeding is being held. Adam is clearly tense, with Libby providing moral support. She heads into the courtroom, while Adam first detours to another room, where he meets with Joseph Creeley and Creeley's defense attorney. At this point we still have no real idea what the episode is about, except for this intriguing tidbit: Creeley tells Adam that if he, Creeley, is guilty, then he wants to be punished for it.

The story is dominated by Martin Balsam's performance as Creeley, a man who finds himself at a crossroads few of us should ever hope to face. He's on death row, awaiting execution for a murder committed during a botched robbery, when he collapses from what turns out to be a brain tumor. The doctor gives him two choices: undergo an operation to remove the tumor, which may or may not succeed, or do nothing and see whether it kills him before the electric chair does. Adam, who was the original arresting officer and has been guarding Creeley in the hospital, is thrown into the maelstrom when Creeley asks him what he should do. For Adam, life is precious because it allows for hope, and he urges Creeley to undergo the surgery even if it changes nothing in the long run. Creeley signs over a Power of Attorney, and Adam authorizes the surgery.

And now it gets interesting.

As it turns out the surgery is a success, with one caveat: in removing the tumor, the operation also wipes clean about ten years of Joseph Creeley's memory. He has no recollection of the crime, of his wife having divorced him, (or even having been married), of the circumstances that led him in desperation to the robbery that killed a man and left him on death row. It's as if his entire life ended ten years ago and has now started up again, with a giant hole in the middle. Furthermore, his doctor believes the tumor was probably responsible for his behavior up to and including the time of the robbery, which means he may not have been legally responsible for his actions.

All of this we learn from flashbacks generated by Adam's testimony on the stand, and now we understand just how we've gotten to this courtroom, on this date. Creeley's attorney has successfully won a new trial based on the doctor's opinion, and he's now going about demonstrating that there were two Joseph Creeley's: the one before the tumor, and the one after. He uses the testimony of people who have known Creeley throughout his life to demonstrate how his behavior had changed; a priest remembers him as a studious, polite boy; his ex-wife says that she divorced him because he was no longer the man he had been when she married him (a phrase which we often hear but in this case is meant to be taken literally), even Adam says that Creeley had the look of a wild man (i.e. crazy) when Adam arrested him.*

*Key point in understanding Adam: despite this wild look, Adam did not shoot (and risk killing) Creeley; he wouldn't take such action if he didn't have to, and in this case he didn't think he had to. 

The defense's insanity plea is an unusual one, in that the attorney suggests not only that Creeley was not legally responsible for his actions at the time due to the tumor, but that his memory loss (likely permanent) means he can never be that man, and that punishing him would be an injustice. The prosecution does not contest the notion that Creeley is a different man today, but their contention is that this is all immaterial: the Creeley who committed the crime did understand, for the purposes of the legal definition, the difference between right and wrong, and whether or not he remembers it today is beside the point as far as the administration of justice is concerned.* He calls as a witness the widow of the man Creeley killed, who herself was seriously injured in the attack, to share how her life has forever changed as a result of Creeley's actions.

*It's a line of thinking that invokes Dismas, the Good Thief who confessed the divinity of Christ on the Cross. Christ promises salvation for Dismas - but does not pardon him the from earthly punishment for the crimes he had committed.

Quite a conundrum, isn't it? As the defense attorney says in his closing summation, the jury has now heard two versions of who Joseph Creeley is. According to one, he's a man who poses absolutely no threat to society, who has no memories of the man he was, and who should be allowed to live to be the man he is today. According to the other, he's a man who robbed and murdered, who knew that it was wrong regardless of why he did it, and who now must pay the penalty. The question for the jury to decide: which of these is Joseph Creeley.

We never find the answer to that question; the episode ends with the verdict yet to be given. It's an appropriate way to end the story, I think, because the answer to this question really lies within ourselves, how we see and define the humanity of an individual.

Is it true that a man is the sum total of his memories? The philosopher John Locke used, as the criterion for personal identity (the self), not the substance of either the soul or the body, but the psychological continuity of consciousness - the memory. In other words, you are what your memory shows you to be.* Locke contends that you "are in truth only responsible for the acts for which you are conscious," which lies at the heart of the insanity defense, that if you are not aware (or conscious) of an act, you cannot be held accountable for it. Without that memory of who he was, he is not the same man. The court would, in effect, be punishing the wrong man for having committed the crime.

*Displayed in his analogy of "The Prince and the Cobbler," where a prince, whose soul (and memories) were transferred to the body of a cobbler (whose soul had departed), would continue to think of himself as a prince, even though he finds himself in appearance to be a cobbler. Think Here Comes Mr. Jordan, or its remake, Heaven Can Wait, as examples. This is, of course, the same premise upon which Doctor Who is based.

Against this, the argument can be made that Locke has no lock on the truth. In discussing the concept of "identity over time," the Catholic philosopher Peter Geach denies the idea "that there is a single absolute relation of identity rather than a host of relative identity relations." In other words, it is impossible to say that the prince is identical to the cobbler. "Instead there must be a concept of a kind of thing, a so called sortal concept, that serves to answer the question." We would have to ask: is the prince the same what as the cobbler? The same man? The same thinker? The same craftsman? The same husband? The same leader? Likewise with Creeley: Is he the same man? The same murderer? The prosecution might well contend that while he is not the same man, he is the same murderer, and must be punished accordingly.

It's no surprise that Naked City could generate this type of discussion. In the book The Philosophy of TV Noir, Robert E. Fitzgibbons labels Naked City as an example of a "relativist" television series, one that insists that there is no clear definition of the truth at any given time. Dr. Wirtz, Creeley's doctor in the episode, says as much: "Sanity is a relative term." Even when someone in the program does something we might define as "wrong," Fitzgibbons insists, the viewer "was left - indeed almost forced - by the end of many episodes to wonder whether perhaps these choices might not have been right in some way." The concept of moral relativism, expressed in this manner, dovetails with Locke's would-be insistence that Creeley today cannot be judged as if he were Creeley yesterday - because that man no longer exists at this moment in time.

So what does this all mean? There is no closure to this question, since we never see the verdict come in. Gilbert Ralston, the writer of this episode, almost certainly intended for the viewer to be the jury, and to let each one of us make the decision for ourselves. Although I am not a moral relativist, I find myself for the most part agreeing with Creeley's attorney that it would not be in the interests of justice to hold Creeley accountable for a crime which he has no memory of, which in fact he may not have been legally responsible for having committed in the first place. And yet justice does demand an answer; it's similar to a terrorist who commits suicide after having perpetrated his mass murder. We're left with an empty feeling, a sense that the circle has not been squared.

Ultimately, what I love about this episode is not just the lack of a neat conclusion, but that it dares to raise this kind of a question in the first place. Had the story ended with a jury verdict, we need not have agreed with that verdict to have been stimulated by the questions presented in the episode. Perhaps only The Defenders would have dared to go into this type of territory at the time; most of the discussions offered in contemporary television usually consist of straw man arguments that are eventually knocked down by the cast member acting as surrogate for the writer. I never got that feeling from "Which is Joseph Creeley?" Regardless of how Ralston wanted us to think about Creeley, and whether or not he should be punished, he gave us more than enough to chew on, more than enough for us to come to our own conclusion about just how it is that we define the existence of a man.  TV  

In “The Changing of the Guard,” The Twilight Zone explores the existential drama of Christmas

A LITERATURE TEACHER (DONALD PLEASENCE) FINDS HE IS NOW AN OBSOLETE MAN IN "THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD"     

At first glance “The Changing of the Guard,” the final episode from The Twilight Zone’s third season, would appear an odd choice to include in a Christmas blogathon. The episode only tangentially touches on the season, being set on Christmas Eve for no special reason other than its significance as the end of a school term. It wasn’t even aired during the Christmas season, but on June 1, and its author, Rod Serling, was a secular Jew. But that, as I say, is simply from a first glance. In fact, the underlying themes of the episode have a great deal to do with Christmas, particularly from the existential and spiritual sides.

A description of the episode is straightforward enough, so much so that the single-paragraph summary from the always-reliable Wikipedia will suffice:

Professor Ellis Fowler [brilliantly portrayed by Donald Pleasence] is an elderly English literature teacher at a boys' prep school in Vermont, who is forced into retirement after teaching for more than 50 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life. Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann. Before he can commit suicide, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all of whom are dead, some of whom died heroically. The boys each tell him that he inspired them to become better men. Deeply moved, Fowler accepts his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys.

There’s a temptation to play a story such as this as a sentimental tear-jerker, something that would fit in perfectly on The Hallmark Channel, and I’m sure there are many who’ve indeed shed a tear or two during the episode’s undeniably emotional close, in which Fowler realizes just how much he’s mattered to his students over the years. He is the best kind of hero (taking the word in its loosest definition) – an unassuming one, totally unaware of his impact, increasing his heroism in much the same way as a woman unaware of her natural beauty becomes even more beautiful, in a way that can’t be faked.

Read in this way, “The Changing of the Guard” certainly could be seen as Christmas fodder for today, seeing as how so many contemporary seasonal programs substitute sentiment for any real gravitas. (All that’s missing is a love interest, but then we’d be talking about Goodbye, Mr. Chips, wouldn’t we?) And yet, in the more sober world of The Twilight Zone, this is little more than a ruse, a façade for the true meaning of the story, lying just under the surface. For The Twilight Zone was one of the few television series that could do existentialism reasonably well, and the real impact from the story is an existential one, dealing with one of the most central questions of all: the meaning of life. And it is only within this context that one understands why we're watching it early on Christmas morning.

Existentialism and religion are anything but incompatible. In fact, the old Baltimore Catechism makes this one of its first, and most essential, questions. Why did God create you? It’s an existential question of the first order, one at the heart of us all, never far from the surface, and consciously or subconsciously we use it as a measuring stick when looking back on our accomplishments, from any point in our lives. As I mentioned in an earlier post, life is essentially a drama, not the concocted drama of a soap opera but the very real drama of man’s constant struggle for meaning in life, for the differentiation between good and evil, and the fulfillment of a destiny that is at once both human and supernatural. Certainly this is the case with Professor Fowler, who has looked at his lifetime balance sheet and found the deposits to be woefully low.

But Fowler is a melancholy figure, typical of so many of Serling’s protagonists, and while the Christmas season tends to exacerbate those kinds of thoughts, it’s reasonable to infer that Fowler is merely bringing to the surface a suspicion which has dwelt within him for years. He is, therefore, the individual representation of the “weary world” with its “sad and lonely plains” described in the lyrics to the carol “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” With this consideration, we’re now getting somewhere, closer to the reason why the setting of the episode is significant. Look at the third stanza of the carol, and see if you don’t agree that the words can be applied to Fowler:

          O ye beneath life's crushing load,
          Whose forms are bending low,
          Who toil along the climbing way
          With painful steps and slow;
          Look now, for glad and golden hours
          Come swiftly on the wing;
          Oh rest beside the weary road
          And hear the angels sing.

The message is clear: it is the song of the angels that will pull man from the “crushing load” of life. And is this not in fact what happens with Fowler, in the form of the visitation by the spirits of his former students? Each one of them comes bearing a message, one implicit in the lines of the Angel who greets the shepherds in the fields:  “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” And what are the good tidings which the Angel brings? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)

A visit from the spirits of the dead?

Rather than a fantasy, therefore, it’s not unreasonable to see in Serling’s script – and, keep in mind, Serling was a man sensitive not only to the imagery of Judeo-Christianity but one with a deep moral appreciation of those traditions, and the roles they played in then-contemporary culture – an allegorical representation of the Nativity story, one in which Fowler, as the weary world which awaits the birth of the Savior, is greeted by the supernatural appearance of his deceased students, to deliver the angelic message of hope.

Should this be dismissed as a mere science-fiction trope, the introduction of the fantastic which doesn't even attempt a rational explanation? I don’t see why – as someone once said in response to the question of whether or not a mysterious appearance might have been that of an angel, “Why not? Angels can do anything.” Well, perhaps not anything, but they’ve been known to assume various human guises, and since God desires nothing less than the salvation of all men*, it is wholly reasonable to assume this might have been some type of angelic intervention, meant to save the despairing Fowler from the mortal sin of suicide. At any rate, I’m content with that explanation, whether or not anyone else is.

*Again, from the Baltimore Catechism, the answer to the question of why God made us: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.

Christmas is, though many seem to have forgotten or chosen not to remember, a Christian holiday, one denoting the birth of a Savior Who was destined to die and rise again in order to redeem mankind from its sins.* Theologically, “The Changing of the Guard” fits perfectly into this, with its supernatural concept - God humbling Himself to become man, one of the most existential aspects of the Bible - that drives the context, which is why the episode more than justifies its appearance in our Christmas blogathon.

*If you think that a bit too grim to impinge on what is essentially The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, take a quick listen to the "Et incarnatus est" from Bach’s B Minor Mass. Translated from the Latin, "Et incarnatus est" comprises the first three words of the passage in the Creed which states, "and [Jesus] was incarnate by the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary, and was made man,” It is, of course, a joyous statement - but Bach chooses to present this music from the point of view not of those who would be saved, but of their Savior, the newly-born Christ, Who even then knew He had been born not just to die, but to suffer a horrific death – over which He would ultimately triumph. It is a remarkable bit of theology which Bach has incorporated into this short section, demonstrating that the Cross hangs heavy even over the Manger. 

There are, I know, many who will this an inappropriate piece to offer in this blogathon. They'll suggest that I’m reading too much into this story, that Serling intended nothing more than a message of hope when the world seems to be getting you down. And, of course, you’re entitled to that opinion. But as I’ve often stated, at this blog and elsewhere, there are layers upon layers of meaning contained in every act and work of art, oftentimes without the awareness of the person responsible for it. I have no way of knowing what Rod Serling intended with “The Changing of the Guard,” nor does it ultimately matter. That Serling was intellectually capable of desiring such a meaning we do know, though ultimately that does not matter either. What does matter is that it is possible to derive such a meaning, one that neatly explains the story and renders it plausible above and beyond its existence as a fantasy, and explains exactly why the story had to occur at Christmas as opposed to any other time of the year. Amazing how that all tends to work out, isn’t it?

So let’s just leave it at that, and call it good. As in, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

MeTV will air "The Changing of the Guard" at 3:00am ET on Friday, December 25. This post is part of Me-TV's Very Merry Blogathon, hosted by the Classic TV Blog Association. You can see the entire blog lineup here, and you can see MeTV's line-up of classic TV Christmas shows at its website. TV  

Christmas Classic: the secret life of Frosty the Snowman

FROSTY THE SNOWMAN LEADING HIS SMALL BAND OF DISCIPLES DOWN MAIN STREET

I first shared this story here three Christmases ago; it had originated a few years before that on the In Other Words site. It's one of my favorite pieces, not least because it comes not from me, but my friend Peter, and it has to do with his interpretation of the cartoon Frosty the Snowman, which I'd never much thought about except in a nostalgic way, as part of the memories of Christmases past. Even at that, I thought the plot was kind of thin. I mean, a kid thinking they can take a train to the North Pole on Christmas Eve? Without bringing any money? And then there’s the phony magician, the talking rabbit, and – well, you get the picture. You didn’t watch Frosty for the drama, you simply basked in its warm sepia glow.*

*Or at least the Christmas-card look that Rankin-Bass used, unlike their other stop-motion animated shows.

Peter is a pretty bright guy, so when he told me that contrary to my opinion, the story of Frosty could be taken as an allegory for the life of Christ, I was more than a little intrigued.

“What?” I think I said.

“Sure,” he replied, and proceeded to document the ways:

• His birth occurs in the dead of winter, much as Christ's birth is symbolized with the evergreen in winter (and obviously suggests miraculous life from a dead or virginal womb).
• Frosty always says, "Happy Birthday!" when he comes to life...strongly suggesting a birth... and the tradition of birthdays probably comes from the celebration of Christ's birth.
• Frosty’s self-sacrifice, going into the greenhouse to save Karen’s life even though he risks melting in the heat, much as Christ the Savior suffers and dies on the Cross.
• The resurrection – Santa opens the door to the greenhouse and the winter winds sweep into the room, bringing Frosty to life, in the same way that the Holy Spirit (often portrayed in the Bible as a wind) enters the Tomb.
• Frosty goes to the North Pole with Santa in his sleigh, as Christ Ascends into Heaven.
• Frosty returns every year with Santa (“I’ll be back again some day,” he sings in the song.) Christ, having been seated at the right hand of the Father, will come again in glory.

Interesting, hmm? Of course, Peter added, “some people will read that and think I'm making too much out of a thin connection. Maybe they're right, but I only say that to be polite. It would be too much of a coincidence, otherwise. It's obviously magicked-up (or kid-story-ified) to make into a neat little story for children, but the inspiration is obvious. The producers might not have wanted to make a Christian story, and that's certainly possible... however, they clearly used the Christ story as inspiration."

All of a sudden, the story starts to make sense, and what until then had been a fairly one-dimensional cartoon (literally, given that the rest of the Rankin-Bass cartoons were done in that three-dimensional animation) has become, in fact, a much deeper and more complex parable. Now, maybe this is like Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz in that everyone in the world already knew about this and I’m just finding out. I’d be interested to hear if anyone out there has noticed a similar religious vein to the story. And I’d have liked to be able to ask Arthur Rankin, Jr., the producer, if either he or Romeo Muller, the writer of the story, had any intentions of this. If not, of course, it’s just another example of the existential interpretation of a television show, not to mention how the Lord works through even the most common and ordinary means.