Thursday, September 27, 2012

Xenophobia On Maple Street?

How does The Twilight Zone Episode: The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street address the concept of xenophobia? What alarms you regarding the inhabitants actions and attitudes? How does this episode align or differ with stories we have already read? Other thoughts? Please respond by 2:30p.m. on Mon., October 1st, 2012.

20 comments:

  1. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street uses xenophobia for an entire plot. The residents of maple street started fearing each other because they wanted to find a logical explanation for the strange things that started happening. They were able to rationalize that fear by what the young boy had said and by pinning the blame on the neighbors who had small strangeness's about them. What alarms me about the residents of Maple Street was how easy it was to get them to turn on each other. Now I know that that usually wouldn't happen to that extent, but the problem is that all humans have that nature in them to disregard or even harm what they don't know about or have never seen before. I wouldn't like my neighbors coming to kill me because of some strange Asian tradition that my family does from time to time. The xenophobia parts relate to stories like Puppet Show and Muse, in that Puppet Show talks about the issues of xenophobia and Muse actually describes what happens because of xenophobia. I would just like to say that I have seen this episode like five or six times, all in different places.

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  2. The movie clip refers and addresses the concept of xenophobia because it only proves that people are scared of the unknown or something strange and foreign. they turned on each other because they were scared to know who was the alien and they destroyed each other homes and killed each other. they are all scared of aliens so they are xenophobic.

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  3. I think this Twilight Zone episode clip shows how using human nature someone can destroy our race by giving us an idea and then we tear ourselves apart based on what we think is true. In this film xenophobia is used by a far more advanced race of humanoids as a weapon. Based on some of the habits that some people do, the neighbors deduce that there are neighbors who don't belong and that are aliens. They soon use violence to try and end their fears. This reminds me of Muse, because the main characters parasite is frowned upon by his dad and the only option for his dad is to take violent action upon " Icky", the parasite, and kill it so his son won't be able to use it anymore. But the neighbors and the dad don't understand is what they fear. They might of acted different had they known what to think about their xenophobia.

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  4. The Monsters are Due on Maple Street revolves around the idea that xenophobia can cause hysteria. With hysteria, comes blame. Everyone involved wants someone to blame for their problems, also known as a scapegoat. As soon as one of the house's lights turn on, the residence of Maple Street turn on the owner of that house. During part of the story, one of the homeowners accidentally killed one of his neighbors, and then blamed a child so that he could be safe. This story would probably relate most to the Puppet Show, because the people of Cherrybell, AZ. don't want to interact with the aliens. However, in that story it doesn't revolve around the idea of hysteria, but in the American Literature classes, we are reading the Crucible and that really revolves around the idea of hysteria and wanting a scapegoat. In fact, on of the main characters, Abigail Williams, uses the hysteria to kill her neighbors intentionally.

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  5. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street represents the idea of xenophobia through out the whole story becauce it shows how the characters are scared of the unknown. When ends don't match up they are alarmed, and start pointing fingers because they don't know what else to do. They don't know how to fix things when they go wrong, which doesnt seem like it happens very often.

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  6. The Monsters are due on maple street shows xenophobia and scapegoating through the way of them singleing out a single person to blame for the power being out. The also pick someone who does somthing differnt then everyone else showing that they have xenophobia but when in reality it wasnt any of them. it just goes to show if your differnt then someone else they will judge you for said reasons

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  7. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street demonstrates xenophobia throughout the entire episode. It show how people fear the unknown, and so they begin to point fingers searching for someone to blame, creating cultural hysteria. This scares me because cultural hysteria can quickly become violent, as shown in the episode. In this episode, it only took the people a few hours to reach the point of killing someone. The idea of xenophobia doesn't really align with the other pieces in the extrapolation unit. That unit was more focused on a futuristic side to science fiction.

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  8. I think xenophobia is displayed on maple street because everyone is afraid of everyone else. The fear of the unknown is what drives all the characters to act out in the way they do. They don't understand what is going on so they start to point fingers and blame others for the problem at hand. Because they do not understand what is going on around them thy become fearful. The irony is that they are fearful of something that is unrealistic but yet they start to blame each other, destroying trust. Because they are afraid of the unknown xenophobia is created.

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  9. Xenophobia is shown throughout the entire story. Because every person on Maple Street fears what they do not know, order turns to chaos. In replace of what is unknown, people judge and make suspicions: "Prejudice can kill, suspicion can destroy." The people "pick out every idiosyncrasy of everyone on the street" because they are desperate to point a finger at someone else. Xenophobia causes this feeling of desperateness. At the end, the narrator explains that "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it is themselves." I agree with this statement completely because it explains perfectly how each persons xenophobia led to insanity.

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  10. Xenophobia is shown through this episode of The Twilight Zone because the residents of Maple St. become fearful of the unknown. They start to tear each other apart out of fear and the need for a scapegoat to blame for the unexplained. The first thing that happens when their power goes out, is they turn on the first person they can find that is out of the ordinary. This does seem to line up with the other stories of xenophobia we have read so far.

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  11. In the twilight zone, all of the neighbors on maple street show xenophobia. When unusual things occur, they franticly try to find answers. later in the story they begin to blame one aonother because they are desprate to find answers. The story potrays the idea that humans naturaly try to find answers for things they can not explane, even if the answers are not entirly logical.

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  12. In the Twilight Zone Episode: The Monsters on Maple Street, xenophobia is exemplified by the residents' reactions to a series of mysterious events. This episode shows xenophobia because the residents don't know what is going on, on their street and they want to get to the bottom of it. They start finding out strange things about each other that they use against each other by blaming them for the strange occurrences and sooner or later, everyone is being blamed. As humans we tend to blame others for things because of our own insecurities or the things that we are afraid of. There is a lot of xenophobia exemplified in our own, every day lives

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  13. In the Twilight Zone, weird things were happening that they couldn't explain. This caused them to be fearful of what they didn't know, which is xenophobia. The way these people reacted to their xenophobia was to immediately point fingers and put blame on anyone and everyone, which shows how negative some people react to things they can't explain. This is very similar to other stories we've read, where people have been mistreated because they are a certain way that scares others. The idea of Icky scared that father, so he negatively reacted to the idea of it.

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  14. This Twilight Zone episode shows that when people think that there is a hidden terror, they will suffer from paranoia, will lose trust for others, start pointing fingers and blaming each other, and if the fear is extreme, they will become savages and start killing others. This episode relates to Muse because several people feared Icky and the father ended up killing it.

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  15. This Twilight Zone epiosode shows xenophobia, all of the nieghbors they do not know what has caused the power outage and they blame the person they dont know the most because they have the least trust in the person. They also react in a way so they are not accused to be the uinknown cause so they point figners.I do not know any other stories that we have read yet that this connects too.

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  16. Xenophobia On Maple Street?
    How does The Twilight Zone Episode: The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street address the concept of xenophobia? What alarms you regarding the inhabitants actions and attitudes? How does this episode align or differ with stories we have already read? Other thoughts? Please respond by 2:30p.m. on Mon., October 1st, 2012.

    The Twilight Zone episode addresses the concept of Xenophobia when the townspeople are afraid of an intrusion of "aliens" into their small town when small, strange occurences begin to happen. It is alarming that the town takes what the little boy read in a fictional story to be the explanation for all of these events. They have no other leads to turn to, so CLEARLY aliens are living inside one of them and are causing all of this un-normality. It is also disturbing when the townspeople start to show signs of mob behaviour as they advance on the one neighbor who's car started. The townspeople people are afraid of what's unknown, but they take what one person says about it as fact. This is similar to the short story "Puppet Show", when the General believes the words to be true of the first AND second puppet. Of course the general had a better reaction than the townspeople, who ultimately destroyed themselves...

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  17. I think that Maple Street gives a good example of xenophobia, in the sense that it contains many of xenophobia's well known characteristics. It portrays humans as fearful of anyone who they can convince themselves is foreign or different. Even if one of these neighbors was an alien, they wouldn't necessarily be hostile, or even dishonest. The humans' willingness to shoot one of their own, on the chance that they might be an alien just goes to show how paranoid they had become over idle speculation. I also noticed that as the story progressed, the characters became more and more willing to accept outlandish and insane theories. At first, they were skeptical of the theory that the strange occurance was and alien invasion, to the point where they not only believe that aliens are invading, but that the majority of their neighbors were also aliens. The writers also put the interesting twist of the the aliens discussing strategy against humans to show a kind of disgust at xenophobia, and the irrational approach that many people take to life.

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  18. When we watched Monsters on Maple street, it gives a great example of Xenophobia because the people living on maple street have been so enclosed and used to their everyday life and the people around them that they don't want anything different from their daily routine coming. When the boy says all the stuff about the alien, they all believe it because they don't know what to believe and they just want an answer. It alarms me about their attitude is that they aren't sitting down and thinking logically they are just running around like chickens with their heads cut off and not thinking straight but at the end where he kills a fellow neighbor everything goes haywire and it shows how humans can react when they are confused of something out of the ordinary. This aligns with some of the stories we already read because when something out of the ordinary comes everyone reacts differently, like for example in the story Muse, no one took the time to understood what was going on with the parasite.

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  19. When We Monsters on Maple Street, I felt that is was very accurate when is comes to Xenophobia. Those people had become so ingrained in their everyday life that the moment a time came to change, the didn't know how to react. All it took was the little boy mentioning one word about aliens and then everyone panicked and started accusing each other of wrong doings. It sort of reminded me of a horse and when the blinders are put on; these people just could not see reason and in the paid the price for it by bringing on themselves their deaths when in the end, they didn't need to panic.

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  20. This episode of Twilight Zone was a good example of xenophobia because it showed how a small problem could cause people to turn against people they know because of small differences that they don't understand.The town assumes that the power outage is because of aliens that want to take over just because they are unsure. For all they know the aliens could be friendly but they don't care because of preconceived notions. It is similar to Planet of the Apes because the apes treat humans like they are unable to think because of preconceived ideas.

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