The Twilight Zone - I Sing the Body Electric

I just have to say that Syfy has done this episode of the Twilight Zone a great injustice. This was actually the first time I have sat through “I Sing the Body Electric” in its entirety. I’m glad I did because its depth is rent apart by choice editing decisions by Syfy for advertising content and time constraints.”Grandma” (Josephine Hutchinson), a robot developing AI is “chosen” by two out of three children of widower, George (David White) to be their female guardian and maternal presence throughout their formative years. Aunt Nedra (Doris Packer) arrives one day to let George have it over what she is seeing in his kids after the death of their mother. Nedra posits threats towards George if he doesn’t shape up and find them the proper maternal guidance and love. George’s son, Tom (Charles Herbert, BUCK in William Castle’s “13 Ghosts”), presents him with a magazine article about a company that produces what their family stands in need of. The children can pick the hair, eyes, limbs, etc. needed for their “new grandma”, and that turns out to be Hutchinson. While Tom and Karen (Dana Dillaway) are happy with this process, older sister Anne (Veronica Cartwright) resists, still grieving and hurt by the loss of their mother. It will take time and understanding, patience and temperance to get through to Anne that grandma won’t leave as she felt mother did.

I don’t know. I have watched this episode on Syfy for years and years (in the way-back machine to when it was Sci-fi Channel I could take you), but it wasn’t until I watched it in its fullest form that “I Sing the Body Electric” impacted in a resonating and emotional way as it did this morning. I was just overcome/overwhelmed with emotion. The loss of my father, I guess, sort of rose up in me as I could very well recognize Anne’s pain. Her inability, at first, to accept Grandma made sense…why should Anne give her heart over when it was broken by her departing mother? Wouldn’t Grandma just break her heart as well? I had a stepfather that tried to raise me so I can’t fault him for having trouble understanding how to be the missing father I so desperately needed while growing into a man. Anne was in her early development as a young woman so the need for someone to be there for her was obviously important. So the obvious resistance had its credence.

For Grandma, there appears to be something *more* than just body/mechanized parts designed by a machine inside a store, selected by “customers” to “be of use”. She seems to evolve, even perhaps containing the ability to love, as if a soul exists. By the end, Grandma has been a teacher of the children, support for them when they needed it, and a backbone as they grew into adults. As young adults on their way to college, Grandma’s time with them comes to an end and she must return to the place where she was made. She speaks of a “room of voices” where the time spent with humans during their life can be discussed and shared. I guess if anything I do hope Grandma gets her wish: life. She deserves it.

  

I would hate not to mention Cartwright’s performance. I’d be doing her a disservice. How she slides into the background (or attempts to do so) as her siblings embrace Grandma. How she won’t allow herself to give in as they do. Her reticence—better to flee from the offered affection, that big hug, the warm feels—is elaborated in a way that so many who lost their parents too young can consider quite palatable. It hurts so much, and that loss lingers so some manufactured “replacement”, assembled from a selection as if off a menu, isn’t always easy to accept upon arrival. Flying a kite way into the sky, creating marbles out of thin air, or cuffing your hands to produce vocal playback of what was said previously are amazing feats but Anne needs more…she needs assurance. So when Anne runs away and Grandma prevents her from being hit by a van, getting up off the street in one piece, this is the reassurance she needs. Grandma is still there, so Anne can officially embrace her. Cartwright communicates what many a child feels when mother or father is not around, gone and never to return. So when Grandma picks herself up out of the road and walks over to Anne to give her words of comfort and allow her to listen to words she said about her, this assures her that she will be loved and cared for. I guess the episode, through its message—as written by Ray Bradbury, using the premise of science-fiction and a story of loss as elements that won’t combust but cohere—spoke to me in a way I wasn’t expecting because for too long I’ve seen the Syfy version which deprived me of the particular parts needed to do so. Anne’s dilemma and how Cartwright performed it wasn’t lost on me. Right the opposite: her ache parallels others, similarly trying to make some sense of the loss. And to have that Grandma who can offer what is missing and know she won’t go anywhere gives Anne exactly what she so desperately needed…