The Eye of the Beholder

"The Eye of the Beholder"
The Twilight Zone episode
The beginning of the end credits in the revised version, which is shown on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 42
Written by	Rod Serling
Directed by	Douglas Heyes
Guest stars	Maxine Stuart : Janet Tyler (under bandages) Donna Douglas : Janet Tyler (unmasked) William D. Gordon : Doctor Bernardi Jennifer Howard : Nurse Edson Stroll : Walter Smith
Featured music	Bernard Herrmann
Production no.	173-3640
Original airdate	November 11, 1960
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "The Howling Man" "Nick of Time"
List of Twilight Zone episodes

"The Eye of the Beholder" (also titled "The Private World Of Darkness") is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening Narration

Synopsis

Janet Tyler has undergone her eleventh treatment in an attempt to look like everybody else. The details of the treatment are not given, but Tyler is first shown with her head completely bandaged, so her face cannot be seen. She is described as being "not normal" by the nurses and doctor, whose own faces are always in shadows or off-camera.

The outcome of the procedure cannot be known until the bandages are removed. Tyler pleads with the doctor and eventually convinces him to remove the bandages early. After a climactic buildup, the bandages are removed, revealing to the audience that she is beautiful. However the reaction of the doctor and nurses is disappointment; the operation has failed, her face has undergone "no change — no change at all".

At this point, the doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital, whose faces have never been seen clearly before, are now revealed to be horribly deformed in the audience's perspective, with large brows, curled lips, and misshapen, pig-like snouts. Distraught by the failure of the procedure, Tyler runs through the hospital as the terrible faces of everyone she runs into, apparently the norm in this society, are revealed. Large screens throughout the hospital project an image of the State's despotic leader (sounding and making gestures like Adolf Hitler), calling for greater conformity. The whole world is apparently a dictatorship in the Twilight Zone.

Eventually, a handsome man afflicted with the same "condition" arrives to take the crying, despondent Tyler into exile to a village of her "own kind", where her "ugliness" will not trouble the State. Before the two leave, the man comforts Tyler with the "very, very old saying" that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

Closing Narration

Preview for Next Week's Story

Production

The episode was written by Rod Serling, who remade it as The Different Ones for his later series Night Gallery. The remade version involves a disfigured teenage boy who is sent in a spaceship to a planet where the inhabitants look like him.

It was directed by Douglas Heyes. His primary concern, when he was casting the show, was to pick actors with sympathetic voices: to achieve this he cast the episode with his back to the performers.^{[citation needed]}

The original title for this episode was "Eye of the Beholder." Stuart Reynolds, a television producer, threatened to sue Serling for the use of the name because at the time he was selling an educational film of the same name to public schools. Reruns following the initial broadcast featured the title screen "The Private World of Darkness." Because CBS consulted different prints over the years for syndication packages, the closing credits for this episode varies from one title to the other depending on what television station is using which package. In The Twilight Zone's original DVD release the syndicate version was marketed as an "alternate version".^[1]

This episode was re-made for the 2002-2003 revival of the series using Serling's original script, with Molly Sims cast as Janet and Reggie Hayes as the doctor. The make-up was changed to make the faces look more ghoulish and decayed with deep ridges. The projection screens were changed to plasma screens and the leader's monologue was slightly embellished.

This episode, much like other Twilight Zone episodes such as "Time Enough at Last" and "It's a Good Life", has been referenced and parodied on other television shows. A Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Pamela Anderson (credited as "Pamela Lee") parodied "Eye of the Beholder", with Pamela Anderson as the beautiful woman who wanted to be like everyone else (only in the SNL version, all the men didn't want her to change her looks because they thought she was "hot"). The suspenseful bandage removal sequence has been used on three FOX animated sitcoms: The Simpsons ("Pygmoelian" and "Gone Maggie Gone"), Family Guy ("He's Too Sexy for His Fat"), and Futurama ("The Cyber House Rules"). It was also used in the TV sitcom Third Rock From The Sun.

See also

• List of The Twilight Zone episodes

Notes

References

• Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition).
• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

• The Eye of the Beholder at the Internet Movie Database
• TV.com episode page
• Eye of the Beholder Review at "The Twilight Zone Project"