Of course we knew we'd encounter some pretty terrible movies when we launched this project: a series of essays on (horror) films in which images (e.g. video, photographs) threaten the boundary between what is "real" and what is "imaged." Our basic theme involves anxiety about the reproduction and power of the image in new media culture (television, Internet, viral videos, etc.).
The Twonky (1953; dir. Arch Oboler) is a pretty terrible movie, or, as Eddie so eloquently put it (several times), "it fucking sucks." Basically, one stereotypical nagging 50s housewife takes a trip to visit her sister, and she leaves her husband - professor of philosophy, Kerry West - a huge list of rules, and a brand new television to keep him company in her absence. As soon as she leaves, he throws away the rules, and goes inside to smoke a cigar and this is where things get, well, twonky (the term "twonky" is introduced by Professor West's friend, Coach Trout, who says the term means something - unknown, strange, and confusing). Right as he's about to light his cigar, the television (who has incredibly shapely legs, we might add) shoots a beam that lights his cigar for him. Then, when he tries to drink some coffee, the TV walks into the kitchen and zaps the coffee out of his hands, forcing him to adhere to one of his wife's many rules (no more than one cup of coffee a day; and we're supposed to think this guy is in academia?! lol). Then, THEN, the TV zaps clean all the dishes, and goes off to relax, we suppose, in the living room. Clearly, the TV is not only there to entertain the husband in his wife's absence; it takes the place of the wife, assuming all her duties.
And apparently, the one thing that most pisses off the TV is when its husband puts forward ideas celebrating the individual, freedom, and liberty. When he sits down to write a lecture on "Individualism," the TV zaps him. He picks up a book on the life Abraham Lincoln (code: freedom), and the book is zapped out of his hands. On Liberty? ZAPPED! But don't worry: the TV isn't against reading - that is, it's not jealous of another form of media. It's against certain themes, such as the freedom of the individual. After all, the TV doesn't mind it when Professor West begins reading a mass romance novel.
As you might have guessed by this point, the TV is no normal TV. But you probably didn't guess that it's actually a robot from the future that has taken the form of a TV, a robot that hates individualism and liberty, and that uses its robot powers to brainwash people into obeying its asinine rules (remember the wife's huge list?); it also forces people not to complain, and to slowly walk around like brain-dead zombies (but not flesh-eating zombies). Essentially, the TV does not project programs on its screen; rather, it programs human beings to obey its rules of domesticity. What's perhaps most interesting is that the TV does not program Professor West or others to take over the housework, but seems adamant about performing all domestic duties herself: for instance, the TV is the one that does the dishes, and when Professor West tries to shave himself, the TV zaps the razor out of his hand so that she can shave him. It's clearly not into straying from established, stereotypical gender roles regarding the domestic space.
This is one of many things that Twonky will do to you if you try to stop it: it will take an infantilizing picture of you.
So we have a TV that's replaced the wife, that insists on doing all the household chores and wifely duties, that forces its husband to obey all the house rules, and that's also a robot from the future that destroys the freedom of the individual on a mass scale. The film's so literal in its patriarchal hatred and condemnation of the stereotypical housewife that there's almost nothing to interpret. The TV clearly signifies male anxiety concerning the power of women in the domestic space, and fear that that power is growing, taking over the world, and rendering people brain-dead through its petty and endless rules.
We kept expecting that the way Dr. West would save himself would be by designating a room his "man-cave" and inviting over his friends for strictly-masculine beer, farting, and football.
Still, this movie does contain a number of familiar elements that we've found across the movies (so far!) selected for our project. These are (in no particular order):
UBIQUITY/FUNGIBILITY:
Like the subliminal messages hidden in TV signals in , or , which can be coded into any image, part of what is threatening about Twonky is that it can take any shape. And what shape does it take? A television set! - what could be a better disguise? The Twonky even uses a second TV as a decoy. Each of these stories suggests that there is something primordial, shapeless, infinite and yet singular, about the power of televisions. "Television" as a collective noun in English really captures just what's at work here: a force, a principle, a field permeating the human experience. The physical form of a TV is only an accident or a convenient disguise - what's really at work is something formless and unknown, perhaps unknowable. In a word: a twonky.
FLESHY MEDIA TECHNOLOGY:
The Twonky not only walks and talks, it also has extremely shapely legs. Like the gasping, moaning, throbbing, undulating television in Videodrome (not to mention the bleeding bubbling VHS tapes and guns alternately stuffed into Max Renn and grafted onto his hand), the television antagonist has traits of the antithesis of machines: living matter. Even more, in both movies the televisions are sexualized. This goes beyond mere perversity or the always-reliable fixating power of sex; sexy TVs threaten not only to entice like a siren, but even to unexpectedly reproduce like a dinosaur on Isla Nublar. The image will find a way.
ESCAPE FROM CONTROL ("BUT IT ISN'T EVEN PLUGGED IN!!!"):
The Twonky totally escapes control. Really it's never under control; it takes control. One could easily say "in future, TV watches you." Indeed, one of the core themes of our project is media devices and images escaping control, so this trait is shared to some extent by all our selections. But it does bear mentioning that shots of the TV's dangling plug, while some character breathlessly exclaims "it isn't even plugged in!", appear in both this movie and . Somehow we have a feeling we'll be seeing this one again.
THE TV MAKES ZOMBIES:
Like the Video Dead, in which an evil TV spews zombies straight through its screen, and Videodrome, in which Max Renn becomes a programmable killer after getting a few moaning, dripping VHS tapes stuffed into a slit in his gut, and like in They Live, where the populace of Earth is reduced to mindless consumers and working stiffs, the Twonky produces zombies as well. More specifically, it frequently reduces its opponents to drooling, pliable morons who have "no complaints" by zapping them in the face with a kind of squiggly humming ray. These victims wander around slowly, wide-eyed, mumbling in a monotonous loop about their lack of complaints. The catch phrase "no complaints," we think, suggests a fundamental dehumanization on par with the video dead's lack of souls, with their incomplete approximation of humanity. Isn't complaining, or, more poetically, resisting the world and pursuing plans and desires, the essence of being human? If someone has no complaints, no desire on a truly fundamental level, are they really a whole person? Maybe you said yes . . . but what if they wander around mumbling and staring like manatees?! The Twonky, like in many an uptight culture snob's nightmare version of television (e.g. Kill Your TV), fundamentally dehumanizes people.
TOTALITARIANISM:
Coach Trout (who is a football coach who has also studied theoretical physics and Freudian psychoanalysis) hypothesizes that the Twonky is from the future (because "space and time are curved") where a "super state" uses advanced robots to control everyone's thoughts and behavior. Similarly, in They Live aliens piggyback on Earth's TV broadcasts a subliminal message that orders people to reproduce, work, consume, and "sleep" (remain unaware of the truth). Also, in Videodrome, two groups struggle for control of videodrome signal: a shadowy cabal intends to use the signal to weed out undesirables, or possibly to "toughen up" North America for an implied race war, and a church intends to achieve some kind of transcendence for humanity through the signal. OK, so these last two aren't exactly totalitarian, but they do represent the trope of television functioning as a sophisticated device of social engineering. Significantly, the Twonky doesn't (only) use its powers to control behavior through brute force (shooting various beverages/books out of Professor West's exceedingly feeble grip), but also to manipulate mind and personality. The device is certainly powerful enough to enforce its will directly, but its dominion is intended to extend much further. The television's power to create such vivid sensations, feelings, and opinions in the viewer leads our movies to posit TVs as tools of dominance and influence.
THE CREDITS ROLL ON A PROTAGONIST SCREAMING IN THEIR HOSPITAL BED AFTER THEY THOUGHT THEY HAD DEFEATED THE TV BUT IT GETS BROUGHT INTO THEIR ROOM BY CLUELESS FAMILY MEMBERS:
There's not too much more to say about this one once it's been named, and the trope is hardly limited to movies about killer, zombie-excreting televisions. But we certainly found it striking that in The Video Dead, one of only three other movies on our list we've watched so far, the exact same closing scene was repeated. The return of an implacable but (supposedly) finally-defeated enemy is always terrifying in a special way, but in this context perhaps something more is at work: the increasing inescapability of screens. With the proliferation of TVs, to say nothing of laptops and smart phones now capable of playing, like, every TV show ever, television follows us everywhere. Wherever we go, it's there, waiting.
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