Monsters on Maple Street

The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream

By: David J. Brokaw

Narrated by: Jason Zenobia

Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

The media of the 1950s and 1960s promoted an idealized version of American life sustained by the nuclear family and bolstered by a booming consumer economy. The seemingly wholesome and simple lifestyles portrayed on television screens, however, belied a torrent of social, economic, and political struggles occurring at the time. By the late 1950s, television writers were increasingly constrained to distract audiences from confronting counternarratives to the Dream. Among the programs that railed against this trend was Rod Serling's television masterpiece The Twilight Zone. Now considered an enduring classic, the allegorical nature of the show provides a window into the many overlooked issues that plagued Cold War America.

In Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream, David J. Brokaw describes how the TV show reframed popular portrayals of white American wish fulfillments as nightmares, rather than dreams. Brokaw's close reading of the show's sociopolitical dimensions examines how the series' creators successfully utilized science fiction, horror, and fantasy to challenge conventional thinking – and avoid having their work censored - around topics such as sexuality, technology, war, labor and the workplace, and white supremacy. In doing so, Brokaw helps us understand how the series exposed the underbelly of the American Dream and left indelible impressions in the minds of its viewers for decades to come.

The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2023 The University Press of Kentucky (P)2024 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A beautifully written and masterfully crafted work of cultural history." (Stephen J. C. Andes, author of Zorro's Shadow)

"A fascinating study of Rod Serling's seminal television series..." (Nicholas Parisi, president of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation)