The Twilight Zone - He's Alive!

I don’t really get political a lot on my blog. Politics seems to be such a polarizing, overarching aspect of most lives that leads to division and oftentimes madness. I read recently on a Reddit Twilight Zone thread when asked if Peele’s version is worth looking into and someone responded that he uses the original series to voice his liberal, leftist views. Then you come across “It’s Alive” and right here is Rob providing politics, a warning that seems to resonate…depending on whether or not you think he’s right or wrong. Of course some will say Hopper is Donald Trump. There I’m going ahead and getting this out of the way. White nationalism will be seen in what Hopper dolls out to folks in a community center, listening to “suggestions” from a shadowy figure we all know is Adolf Hitler. The crowds mock baby-faced Hopper (a far cry from the maniac in “Blue Velvet”), his eyes filling with tears, as he attempts to reach folks on the street with his rhetoric. The older German Jew that was kind to him when Hopper was a kid, played by Ludwig Donath, as Ernst, interferes when it appears he is about to reach an audience with his hate speech, bigotry, and hatred. There is this great scene between Ernst and a bartender, in a bar across the street from the center where Hopper and his “officers” (followers from the beginning) are blathering about their Hitler-influenced speech. Ernst looks over at the bartender and says this can’t happen again. It can’t happen again, can it? Many today feel it has. Another member of Hopper’s entourage must be martyred according to Hitler’s ghost (the ghost even leaves behind two hundred dollars for Hopper to pay for fees to keep speechifying in the center) in order to gain attention and further interest. Martyr to the cause. Eventually Adolf emerges from the dark, commanding Hopper to do his bidding. Hopper will be “steel”, no soft or sentimental…steel. An earlier scene has Ernst allowing Hopper’s Peter Vollmer to stay in his home, as many times before when he was the child of a broken family. Ernst is kind to him, will talk to him, even humoring him, pitying him. But this broken young man, looking for adulation, attention, devotion (yes, many might compare him to Trump…), can no longer be tolerated, so Ernst confronts the potential followers to his cause, verbally ravaging him in front of them all, as Peter’s men try to get him to shut the guy up before he loses the crowd. Well, Peter does and when Adolf’s ghost orders him to be steel and prove it to Ernst, the results lead to his inevitable downfall. Peter trying to evade the cops, Luger pistol in hand, is eventually collapsed in an alley, surrounded by garbage and garbage cans, chest wound bleeding on his fingers, as he wonders how he is dying considering he’s “steel”. I’ll just end it here. I agree with Serling that as long as there is hate, bigotry, and a desire to pull together a select group against everyone else, Adolf’s ghost will continue to remain quite active. Some might say that is as relevant today as it was then. You be the judge. 4/5