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- Jan 19, 2018
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A perfect example I have of why this happens lies with Rod Serling.
In the 1950s, Serling - a fledgling television show writer at the time - heard about the infamous story of Emmett Till, an African-American boy who was lynched for just looking at a white woman. He decided to write a teleplay based loosely on the story and pitched it to television networks.
…and then when he mentioned it in an interview, people were furious. Thousands of angry letters and calls came from white supremacist organizations looking for blood, and television studios refused to air Sterling’s teleplay because they didn’t lost views from any portion of their audience - even the racists. Sterling’s teleplay was edited and sifted through with a fine-toothed comb until pretty much every actual discussion of racism was gone.
So when Mr. Serling got the opportunity to head his own television series, he did a different approach. The Twilight Zone was a science-fiction anthology that discussed things like race, war, prejudice, violence, politics, and the whole of human nature through allegories and parables. Television studios were less likely to censor it because who would read that much into a silly show about aliens?
So to answer your question, consider this: if it was about an actual trans person transitioning, would you have picked it up?
