Watch the Episode here: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi3772491545/
The episode is based on a short story by Charles Beaumont called, "The Beautiful People."
![[Image: N12LJLY.jpg]](http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj205/Pushingtheenvelope/TZ-TOS/S5/N12LJLY.jpg)
"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" is a Twilight Zone episode about a dsytopian future society, in the year 2000, where everybody is required to undergo "The Transformation" whereby they pick from a limited range of physical appearances that forever alters their physical appearance. Not only that, but it alters the mind to be more socially aware and concerned with adhering to social norms; it lengthens the lifespan and makes the person immune to disease. The reason for "The Transformation" is about creating a utopia of social harmony, with no conflict.
The episode opens with a young woman, Marilyn, and her mother talking about The Transformation." The mother speaks glowingly about it, saying that it made her beautiful and made her life worth living. Marilyn protests and other people try to convince her of the positive nature of "The Transformation." Her uncle tries to convince to change, scolding her for listening to her father and reading the wrong books. Her friend fails to persuade her as well, right before which Marilyn's mother says she is due at "Culture class."
They go to a psychologist, who examines Marilyn, claims she is smart and well-adjusted. He drops this important quote:
Marilyn then goes to a Mustapha Mond inspired character, another psychologist by the name of Sig. He explains to her that men, much wiser than us, decided "The Transformation" was the best salve to cure inequality and hatred in the world. He states that eliminating physical ugliness and deformities is the first step at eliminating hatred. He goes on to twist her responses in order to stomp her out and force her to transform.
She mentions Shakespeare & Dostoyevsky as men who wrote about real human relations. He coldly tells her that those books were banned long ago because they did nothing but foster conflict amongst people.
She is escorted out of the room by a nurse who informs her, "We are not going to hurt you, but only help you."
She is knocked out my some sedatives and her mother and friend come to visit Marilyn. Marilyn has figured out that she will be transformed without her consent and she relays to them that autonomy is an illusion. She repeats of a maxim of her father:
Marilyn has the terrifying epiphany that they don't want equality, they just want everybody to be the same. Her mother leaves and her friend starts to talk about her father. She asks about Marilyn's subsequent fathers. Her friend boasts she has over 10 fathers and she claim to her some of them more than her biological Dad. Her friend inquires as to Marilyn's thoughts about her nine subsequent dads while calling her biological Dad "dull."
Marilyn reacts badly, stating that nobody seems to understand that she loved him. She confesses her father committed suicide because his identity as a man was the most important thing in his life. Marilyn implores her friend:
Her friend responds:
In her existential terror, she runs away from her room, only run into a room where her handlers remark to her that everybody comes along consensually. She undergoes a transformation to look just like her friend.
![[Image: tumblr_lj5t2bUv7R1qexhseo1_r1_500.gif]](https://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj5t2bUv7R1qexhseo1_r1_500.gif)
Serling ends with this:
This episode, from my perspective, is a goldmine for analysis and isn't just prophetic but borderline transcendent.
Considering my own life, this episode has always struck a deep cord with me. Reconsider my analogy of you childhood dying in a fire, with a loved one holding the door shut as you die in this episode. Marilyn experiences that with somebody she loves - that does not love her. Her mother is supremely interested in herself, as she talks so much about her beauty and what people think of her. Marilyn's mother clearly regards her as somebody who just needs to conform to social expectations and heap her worship upon her. Marilyn desperately desires to be her person, but is not allowed that by her mother or society.
I have seen this in my own life. Every child who is born to a narcissist is always supremely hopeful for going to school, where you think you will able to act out what you cannot around your narcissistic parent - but you are dead wrong. There are clear rules for behavior that shunts every child into the same role - of the dutiful student who performs for the teacher, in the vain hope of catching their approval. Personally, I lost tons of weight and was referred to a sleep specialist as I was unable to sleep. Of course, my mother is an expert at social manipulation and my five-year-old self was forced to shoulder the burden for my inability to conform and adhere to dictated sleep schedules. Much like when Marilyn has the epiphany that she has to conform, I had a moment as a child when I realized that.
It is one of my most burning memories. I slept a decent bit that night, but I was completely unfeeling the next day. I recall my mother remarking on my lack of emotion. I said I was fine. I spent my whole day repressing my emotions, engaging in a supreme level of emotional indifference. I was polite, but cold; cordial, but detached.
![[Image: trg-image00000009.jpg]](http://www.gingeroffershope.com/therapy/codependency_files/trg-image00000009.jpg)
I couldn't keep this facade up and eventually cracked. My nascent narcissism was dashed on the coasts of my codependent reality. I couldn't pretend to be somebody who I was not. While I was an inverted narcissist, I still could not deny myself even the most self-serving expressions and experiences of emotions that a codependent has. A complete lack of emotions and ability to love is key to understanding narcissism. Narcissists are often great at feigning them, if they sense they need to be expressed socially. They are great at feigning in order to lure codependents in romantically. Narcissists are simply experts at denying emotions of all stripes and learning to express those emotions through their denial of them.
Marilyn repeatedly implores if the people around her love and have emotions. When talking about her father's depression, her uncle retorts, "But he was handsome!" Marilyn gives him a desperate look that implies she understands being attractive won't heal the pain inside. That might be the most fundamental insight to narcissism. I talk endlessly about narcissism, but a key point to understand is that it is based out a supreme level of self-hatred. I recall my own sister, who has become a narcissist, and her evolution over time. Just like Marilyn, she just submitted to the dominate psychology - I will love myself at the expense of others with no regard to them. It is terrible psychology, but understandable.
This is where love goes to die. Marilyn's relationship with her father is ruthlessly questioned and stomped out. Just like my relationship with my father, it is subject to intense narcissistic scrutiny and, as such, discarded with prejudice. My mother understood my Dad valued himself as an intellectual and, to this day, plays us off each other in order to keep us off balance as possible. I resist as much I can, but my Dad can only do so much. His woman knows him inside & out.
It is the same in Marilyn's life. She is attacked from many angles: your father was dull, reading those books is not approved of by society - don't you want to be better? Her only positive relationship is cut off with ruthless abandon because it threatens the narcissistic imperative: the denial of human emotions.
What Marilyn represents, to narcissists, is the real world of human emotions. The whole gamut: happiness, sadness, anger and love. That is threatening not because narcissists don't have emotions, as narcissists have every human emotion, it is just that they immediately repress those emotions and blame others for their feelings. Marilyn's anger is amusedly, for the most part, tossed aside. They regard her as a child who hasn't really understood reality. Truthfully, they are valuating her as not a narcissist who hasn't understood the superiority of narcissism.
When, at the end, she approaches the mirror and is in awe of herself, everybody looks on approvingly. Marilyn has become just like them - completely in love with herself. Narcissists approve other narcissists. Marilyn will go onto to live life of supreme superficiality, in love with her beauty, her social comportment and her seamless ability to blend into society.
![[Image: images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuiYCZlR9b2nPpoBNpGQb...aL7xGF9SXp]](https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRuiYCZlR9b2nPpoBNpGQb_9giN4M5k7BOarqcgYhaL7xGF9SXp)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...edited.jpg
Take this haunting piece by The Last Psychiatrist. The nemesis in this Twilight Zone episode is society at large who forces you into loving yourself above all else. In Marilyn's case, she had no choice but to conform. The super-state assured that much. She would become a dutiful cog, with or without her consent.
Still, though, think about you. Are you a cog? Are you forced by society to stare endlessly into your reflection in a pool? What do you think that reflection would say about you if it could?
What if you died tomorrow? Honestly, would it matter?
Why? Is that because society has dictated terms of personal success to you? Why do you accede to those terms?
Questions aside, society does little to help men become men who are proud of themselves in a healthy way. When considering whether the pool you gaze into values you the same way you value yourself in your head is little more than bringing the fantasies of your life into the reality of your life. The happiest people are those whose reality reflects their perception in their head.
Considering the value society gives you, remember that healthy people do consider social values. They fundamentally value themselves for what they have done to advance their personal values. Narcissists spend their life fulfilling social expectations in order to get other's approval. Healthy people determine what is important in their life and do what they can in order to effectuate that vision in accordance with their reality.
The most important takeaway from this piece is to learn to become your own man, to learn to think apart from approval figures. I haven't watched any major news-outlets in over six months, nor have I just subscribed to one outlet's views. Men need to stop listening to major media outlets whose goal isn't to help men become better men, but to become better customers - which is inherently narcissistic, as they draw you in and then prey on you.
I will end on this personal story.
I was cleaning my old room the last time I went home and I uncovered an old Batman figurine when moving furniture around. I had the windows all open, with the blistering June heat enveloping the room. I fucking hate AC when hard work for some reason. There I was, all alone, holding this faded Batman figurine in my hand in the blazing heat of summer. I could feel the tears brimming on the edges of my eyelids as I thought about my childhood. I could recall so many times I wanted to escape so badly into the worlds I constructed in my head. There was always the hero and the villain - and the villain always lost.
Never in my life. The villain - the narcissist - always returned. The hero always lost. I recalled the dutiful submission a young boy must always obey when dealing with a parent. The dreams of utopia are left behind the dusty confines of a nook behind a bookcase.
That Batman figurine represented the hope of young boy who wished, desperately, to escape his narcissistic bondage. He couldn't. The best he could do was dream away in the geographical confines of his own bedroom. He would read, he would play, but it was always about escaping reality. His isolation became his narcissistic pond.
Boys grow into men and there I was, holding an artifact of my past. The figure was old, faded and clearly had been gnawed on by mice. Still, it represented my childhood - something to be left in the past even though I never got to experience it.
The past is best left in the past. We cannot change what happened to us or what we have done. I will never be able to just be a child in my life, nor will I be able to have a true parent. I can't change that.
What I can change is myself. I recall holding that Batman figurine in my hand and tossing it into a trash can. I lowered my head for a minute, as those figurines helped me get through childhood so much. Still, I was now a grown man, training wheels mean nothing. I had much more to worry about than some dilapidated comic book figure.
Later that night, after moving all my furniture, I was drinking more than a few beers with my girl. I lit up a hookah and thoughts hit me straight-away. She questioned me outright and I said, "Why are we here?"
She responded, "I know you better than that. What happened today?"
My eyes got blurry from the tears.
"I realized that I have no home."
We exchanged a bit more before she fell quiet when she pulled in a hit of the hookah. She responded:
"Why don't you feel you have come home?"
I thought about it for a bit before taking the hose. I said:
"I never had a home."
The episode is based on a short story by Charles Beaumont called, "The Beautiful People."
"Number 12 Looks Just Like You" is a Twilight Zone episode about a dsytopian future society, in the year 2000, where everybody is required to undergo "The Transformation" whereby they pick from a limited range of physical appearances that forever alters their physical appearance. Not only that, but it alters the mind to be more socially aware and concerned with adhering to social norms; it lengthens the lifespan and makes the person immune to disease. The reason for "The Transformation" is about creating a utopia of social harmony, with no conflict.
The episode opens with a young woman, Marilyn, and her mother talking about The Transformation." The mother speaks glowingly about it, saying that it made her beautiful and made her life worth living. Marilyn protests and other people try to convince her of the positive nature of "The Transformation." Her uncle tries to convince to change, scolding her for listening to her father and reading the wrong books. Her friend fails to persuade her as well, right before which Marilyn's mother says she is due at "Culture class."
They go to a psychologist, who examines Marilyn, claims she is smart and well-adjusted. He drops this important quote:
Quote:Quote:
Nobody has been forced to take "The Transformation." The problem is to discover why you don't want it. And then to make the necessary corrections.
Marilyn then goes to a Mustapha Mond inspired character, another psychologist by the name of Sig. He explains to her that men, much wiser than us, decided "The Transformation" was the best salve to cure inequality and hatred in the world. He states that eliminating physical ugliness and deformities is the first step at eliminating hatred. He goes on to twist her responses in order to stomp her out and force her to transform.
She mentions Shakespeare & Dostoyevsky as men who wrote about real human relations. He coldly tells her that those books were banned long ago because they did nothing but foster conflict amongst people.
She is escorted out of the room by a nurse who informs her, "We are not going to hurt you, but only help you."
She is knocked out my some sedatives and her mother and friend come to visit Marilyn. Marilyn has figured out that she will be transformed without her consent and she relays to them that autonomy is an illusion. She repeats of a maxim of her father:
Quote:Quote:
When everybody is beautiful, nobody is.Without ugliness there is no beauty.
Marilyn has the terrifying epiphany that they don't want equality, they just want everybody to be the same. Her mother leaves and her friend starts to talk about her father. She asks about Marilyn's subsequent fathers. Her friend boasts she has over 10 fathers and she claim to her some of them more than her biological Dad. Her friend inquires as to Marilyn's thoughts about her nine subsequent dads while calling her biological Dad "dull."
Marilyn reacts badly, stating that nobody seems to understand that she loved him. She confesses her father committed suicide because his identity as a man was the most important thing in his life. Marilyn implores her friend:
Quote:Quote:
Can't you feel anything?
Her friend responds:
Quote:Quote:
Life is pretty, life is fun. I am one and all is one
In her existential terror, she runs away from her room, only run into a room where her handlers remark to her that everybody comes along consensually. She undergoes a transformation to look just like her friend.
Serling ends with this:
Quote:Quote:
Portrait of a young lady in love, with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These and other strange blessings may be waiting in the future, which after all, is the Twilight Zone.
This episode, from my perspective, is a goldmine for analysis and isn't just prophetic but borderline transcendent.
Considering my own life, this episode has always struck a deep cord with me. Reconsider my analogy of you childhood dying in a fire, with a loved one holding the door shut as you die in this episode. Marilyn experiences that with somebody she loves - that does not love her. Her mother is supremely interested in herself, as she talks so much about her beauty and what people think of her. Marilyn's mother clearly regards her as somebody who just needs to conform to social expectations and heap her worship upon her. Marilyn desperately desires to be her person, but is not allowed that by her mother or society.
I have seen this in my own life. Every child who is born to a narcissist is always supremely hopeful for going to school, where you think you will able to act out what you cannot around your narcissistic parent - but you are dead wrong. There are clear rules for behavior that shunts every child into the same role - of the dutiful student who performs for the teacher, in the vain hope of catching their approval. Personally, I lost tons of weight and was referred to a sleep specialist as I was unable to sleep. Of course, my mother is an expert at social manipulation and my five-year-old self was forced to shoulder the burden for my inability to conform and adhere to dictated sleep schedules. Much like when Marilyn has the epiphany that she has to conform, I had a moment as a child when I realized that.
It is one of my most burning memories. I slept a decent bit that night, but I was completely unfeeling the next day. I recall my mother remarking on my lack of emotion. I said I was fine. I spent my whole day repressing my emotions, engaging in a supreme level of emotional indifference. I was polite, but cold; cordial, but detached.
I couldn't keep this facade up and eventually cracked. My nascent narcissism was dashed on the coasts of my codependent reality. I couldn't pretend to be somebody who I was not. While I was an inverted narcissist, I still could not deny myself even the most self-serving expressions and experiences of emotions that a codependent has. A complete lack of emotions and ability to love is key to understanding narcissism. Narcissists are often great at feigning them, if they sense they need to be expressed socially. They are great at feigning in order to lure codependents in romantically. Narcissists are simply experts at denying emotions of all stripes and learning to express those emotions through their denial of them.
Marilyn repeatedly implores if the people around her love and have emotions. When talking about her father's depression, her uncle retorts, "But he was handsome!" Marilyn gives him a desperate look that implies she understands being attractive won't heal the pain inside. That might be the most fundamental insight to narcissism. I talk endlessly about narcissism, but a key point to understand is that it is based out a supreme level of self-hatred. I recall my own sister, who has become a narcissist, and her evolution over time. Just like Marilyn, she just submitted to the dominate psychology - I will love myself at the expense of others with no regard to them. It is terrible psychology, but understandable.
This is where love goes to die. Marilyn's relationship with her father is ruthlessly questioned and stomped out. Just like my relationship with my father, it is subject to intense narcissistic scrutiny and, as such, discarded with prejudice. My mother understood my Dad valued himself as an intellectual and, to this day, plays us off each other in order to keep us off balance as possible. I resist as much I can, but my Dad can only do so much. His woman knows him inside & out.
It is the same in Marilyn's life. She is attacked from many angles: your father was dull, reading those books is not approved of by society - don't you want to be better? Her only positive relationship is cut off with ruthless abandon because it threatens the narcissistic imperative: the denial of human emotions.
What Marilyn represents, to narcissists, is the real world of human emotions. The whole gamut: happiness, sadness, anger and love. That is threatening not because narcissists don't have emotions, as narcissists have every human emotion, it is just that they immediately repress those emotions and blame others for their feelings. Marilyn's anger is amusedly, for the most part, tossed aside. They regard her as a child who hasn't really understood reality. Truthfully, they are valuating her as not a narcissist who hasn't understood the superiority of narcissism.
When, at the end, she approaches the mirror and is in awe of herself, everybody looks on approvingly. Marilyn has become just like them - completely in love with herself. Narcissists approve other narcissists. Marilyn will go onto to live life of supreme superficiality, in love with her beauty, her social comportment and her seamless ability to blend into society.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...edited.jpg
Take this haunting piece by The Last Psychiatrist. The nemesis in this Twilight Zone episode is society at large who forces you into loving yourself above all else. In Marilyn's case, she had no choice but to conform. The super-state assured that much. She would become a dutiful cog, with or without her consent.
Still, though, think about you. Are you a cog? Are you forced by society to stare endlessly into your reflection in a pool? What do you think that reflection would say about you if it could?
What if you died tomorrow? Honestly, would it matter?
Why? Is that because society has dictated terms of personal success to you? Why do you accede to those terms?
Questions aside, society does little to help men become men who are proud of themselves in a healthy way. When considering whether the pool you gaze into values you the same way you value yourself in your head is little more than bringing the fantasies of your life into the reality of your life. The happiest people are those whose reality reflects their perception in their head.
Considering the value society gives you, remember that healthy people do consider social values. They fundamentally value themselves for what they have done to advance their personal values. Narcissists spend their life fulfilling social expectations in order to get other's approval. Healthy people determine what is important in their life and do what they can in order to effectuate that vision in accordance with their reality.
The most important takeaway from this piece is to learn to become your own man, to learn to think apart from approval figures. I haven't watched any major news-outlets in over six months, nor have I just subscribed to one outlet's views. Men need to stop listening to major media outlets whose goal isn't to help men become better men, but to become better customers - which is inherently narcissistic, as they draw you in and then prey on you.
I will end on this personal story.
I was cleaning my old room the last time I went home and I uncovered an old Batman figurine when moving furniture around. I had the windows all open, with the blistering June heat enveloping the room. I fucking hate AC when hard work for some reason. There I was, all alone, holding this faded Batman figurine in my hand in the blazing heat of summer. I could feel the tears brimming on the edges of my eyelids as I thought about my childhood. I could recall so many times I wanted to escape so badly into the worlds I constructed in my head. There was always the hero and the villain - and the villain always lost.
Never in my life. The villain - the narcissist - always returned. The hero always lost. I recalled the dutiful submission a young boy must always obey when dealing with a parent. The dreams of utopia are left behind the dusty confines of a nook behind a bookcase.
That Batman figurine represented the hope of young boy who wished, desperately, to escape his narcissistic bondage. He couldn't. The best he could do was dream away in the geographical confines of his own bedroom. He would read, he would play, but it was always about escaping reality. His isolation became his narcissistic pond.
Boys grow into men and there I was, holding an artifact of my past. The figure was old, faded and clearly had been gnawed on by mice. Still, it represented my childhood - something to be left in the past even though I never got to experience it.
The past is best left in the past. We cannot change what happened to us or what we have done. I will never be able to just be a child in my life, nor will I be able to have a true parent. I can't change that.
What I can change is myself. I recall holding that Batman figurine in my hand and tossing it into a trash can. I lowered my head for a minute, as those figurines helped me get through childhood so much. Still, I was now a grown man, training wheels mean nothing. I had much more to worry about than some dilapidated comic book figure.
Later that night, after moving all my furniture, I was drinking more than a few beers with my girl. I lit up a hookah and thoughts hit me straight-away. She questioned me outright and I said, "Why are we here?"
She responded, "I know you better than that. What happened today?"
My eyes got blurry from the tears.
"I realized that I have no home."
We exchanged a bit more before she fell quiet when she pulled in a hit of the hookah. She responded:
"Why don't you feel you have come home?"
I thought about it for a bit before taking the hose. I said:
"I never had a home."
