For Want of a Better Estimate, Let’s Call It the Year 2000: The Twilight Zone and the Aural Conception of a Dystopian Future

This paper examines the aural conceptions of futuristic dystopias in episodes of The Twilight Zone, focusing on one specific episode, season five’s “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You.” I examine how the music director of CBS conceived of the future, aurally representing these episodes as having an affinity with the premise of Brave New World by reusing its radio score by Bernard Herrmann. As a result, I will explore the use of the radio score in the episode and the ways in which dystopian futures were aurally represented in the series

I Am Big, It’s the Pictures That Got Small: Sound Technologies and Franz Waxman’s Scores for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Twilight Zone’s “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” (1959)

Franz Waxman composed over 150 film scores, the most famous of which is Billy Wilder’s film noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). The film plot bears a striking resemblance to Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Twilight Zone, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959). Waxman, composer of the film, was approached to compose a score for a television episode that was what many term a shortened version of Wilder’s film for the small screen, but with supernatural elements. This article serves to remedy the dearth of literature on this topic and to form an examination of the ways that Waxman conceived of music to accompany films with similar themes but on different screens. Through this comparison of the two scores, a clearer picture of Waxman’s approaches to composing music for moving images will be presented

To sleep perchance to sing: the suspension of disbelief in the prologue to Francesco Cavalli's Gli Amori d'Apollo e di Dafne (1640)

In the newly popularized genre of opera during the seventeenth century, the allegorical prologue was commonly used as a preface from about 1600 to 1670, with no fewer than 98 opera prologues composed throughout Venice during this period. These prologues, often sung by allegories and/or characters from myth, set the stage for the proceeding drama. In the prologue to Francesco Cavalli’s 1640 opera Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne, its characters, the gods of sleep and dreams, set the stage for an opera that revolves around a dream. This article explores the act of wishing the audience peaceful and pleasant dreams by using oratory as a method that the allegorical figures use to sing the audience a lullaby. The purpose of this lullaby is to instigate the suspension of disbelief required to allow the story to gain the audience’s credibility. This article will show how Cavalli’s opera does so uniquely by spatially extending its effects outwards onto the audience rather than only onto the characters onstage

First Mathematics, Then Music: J. S. Bach, Glenn Gould, and the Evolutionary Supergenius in The Outer Limits' "The Sixth Finger" (1963)

In a 1963 episode of The Outer Limits called “The Sixth Finger,” Gwyllm Griffiths (David McCallum) volunteers for a scientist who has found a way to advance man’s evolution by over one million years, thereby creating human supergeniuses with an aptitude for rapid learning and enhanced mental capacity. The final script was ten minutes too short for its time slot, so the production team had to come up with an inexpensive way to fill that space. Since Gwyllm has mastered mathematics, series co-creator Joseph Stefano felt that the next logical step would be mastery of music. Stefano immediately wrote a five-page insert in which Gwyllm plays several preludes and a fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I since he felt they represented musical genius. The production team chose Glenn Gould’s then-new recording of the pieces, notable for Gould’s rapid performance speed. Gwyllm then mimed playing at this accelerated pace to represent his sudden musical adeptness. Studies have been conducted on Bach as a musical genius, the virtuosity necessary to play his music, and Gould’s virtuosic, intellectual performances of Bach’s music, but none have examined all three in tandem, especially in the context of a television episode. This essay discusses Bach’s music as an embodiment of virtuosity and as a cultural representation of genius in “The Sixth Finger.” The choice to use Bach’s music in the visual context of television adds another dimension to the concept of genius, exemplifying both virtuosity and a specific composer whose music transcends time

The Face That Launched A Hundred Arias: Helen of Troy and the Reversal of a Reputation in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera

One of most enigmatic figures in mythology is Helen of Troy. The portrait that ancient authors and scholars alike paint is that of a woman with an uncertain history and a name marred by generations, both contemporary with her life, as well as those contemporary with ours. Each of these stories has an agenda in that each writer means to portray Helen in a certain light: none of these works manages to keep a neutral or ambivalent tone in Helen’s depiction. Since the story of Helen’s life is so ambiguous, classical scholars tend to be uncertain as to the veracity of the adventures that each author has Helen embark upon and exactly which of the accounts, if any, are true. As a result, many of these accounts cause a high level of duplicity among scholars, since she is often subjected to both blame and praise. Regardless, all of these sources send the same message: women are dangerous and are not to be trusted, and that they are responsible for all that is wrong in society. Helen, of course, is, and rather unfortunately so, the archetype. In contrast, seventeenth-century Venetian opera portrays Helen quite differently, usually as a victim of circumstances beyond her control. This treatment differs from the way the ancient writers depict her. This article examines the various portrayals of Helen in ancient and early modern writings, and compares them to seventeenth-century Venetian operatic portrayals. The origins and reasons for this phenomenon are also investigated

All of Mulberry Street Is a Stage: Representations of the Italian Immigrant Experience Through Community Theater Performances of the Italian-American Sceneggiata

During the rise of Italian immigration to the United States between 1870 and 1930, the sceneggiata, a musical theater genre popular in Naples, began its tenure in the theaters located within predominantly Italian neighborhoods of the United States. The sceneggiata revolved around specific Neapolitan songs and was one of the few types of entertainment available to Italian-American immigrants in their new homeland. . I propose that the elements of Italian immigrant identity found in sceneggiate allowed these works to serve as a means to showcase popular Neapolitan songs and to allow the immigrants to retain their culture and Italian identity in their new land while struggling to build new identities as Italian-Americans

Music for Murder, Machines, and Monsters

The re-use of storylines from radio plays on early television was not uncommon; indeed, much of the television programming of the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of repurposed radio scripts. Columbia Presents Corwin 'Moat Farm Murder' (Bernard Herrmann, 18 July 1944) was among the many radio programmes from the 1940s that had music featured in The Twilight Zone. Of the radio plays to feature music in the series, 'Moat Farm Murder' provided more cues than any other CBS radio score. Cues from 'Moat Farm Murder' are found in eleven episodes of The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959–1964). The use of music from radio dramas and their re-uses in television has thus far not been examined. This essay looks at the composition of the 'Moat Farm Murder' radio score and Corwin's collaboration with Herrmann in it, as well as the re-use of radio music in The Twilight Zone. Through this case study of 'Moat Farm Murder', better knowledge of how the CBS Stock music library was used, in tandem with the way in which other similar network and production company cue libraries worked

No time like the past: Hearing nostalgia in The Twilight Zone

One of Rod Serling’s favourite topics of exploration in The Twilight Zone (1959–64) is nostalgia, which pervaded many of the episodes of the series. Although Serling himself often looked back upon the past wishing to regain it, he did, however, understand that we often see things looking back that were not there and that the past is often idealized. Like Serling, many ageing characters in The Twilight Zone often look back or travel to the past to reclaim what they had lost. While this is a pervasive theme in the plots, in these episodes the music which accompanies the scores depict the reality of the past, showing that it is not as wonderful as the character imagined. Often, music from these various situations is reused within the same context, allowing for a stock music collection of music of nostalgia from the series. This article discusses the music of nostalgia in The Twilight Zone and the ways in which the music depicts the reality of the harshness of the past. By feeding into their own longing for the reclamation of the past, the writers and composers of these episodes remind us that what we remember is not always what was there

Minimally Perturbing Fluorescence Probe Pairs for the Study of Protein Folding and Misfolding

The development of new methods that provide mechanistic information on the structural dynamics of proteins represents a significant challenge in the field of biochemistry. Fluorescence spectroscopy is a highly sensitive technique that is ideally suited for monitoring protein movement in situ. However, the most commonly used fluorophores generally yield poor structural resolution, due to their relatively large size compared to the protein of interest. Research in our laboratory has demonstrated that a thioamide, a single atom-substitution of the peptide backbone, is capable of quenching a wide array of fluorophores in a distance-dependent fashion. We have shown that thioamide quenching of tyrosine and tryptophan can be used to monitor biological interactions, such as ligand binding to the protein Calmodulin (CaM). To expand the utility of the thioamide group as a spectroscopic probe, our laboratory has developed semi-synthesis techniques for its installation into full-length proteins. Having validated thioamide quenching of intrinsic protein fluorescence in our model system, we then applied this technique to monitoring the misfolding of the amyloidogenic protein α- synuclein (αS), implicated in the pathogenesis of Parkinsonâ??s Disease. In order to determine which of our spectroscopic pairs best behaves in accordance with our theoretical models, we also examined thioamide quenching of Cnf using our CaM model system. For intramolecular studies with Cnf/thioamide FRET pairs, we combined unnatural amino acid mutagenesis with native chemical ligation to access double-labeled αS using a minimum of chemical synthesis. We have also shown that we can combine unnatural amino acid mutagenesis with expressed protein ligation at methionine to incorporate the probe pair in an entirely traceless manner. Using thioamide/Cnf FRET of our constructs, we were able to monitor conformational changes of monomeric αS with unprecedented structural resolution. In addition to our work using thioamides, we have also developed efficient strategies for producing variants of singly and doubly-labeled αS containing red-shifted fluorophores for fluorescence polarization (FP) and other FRET based assays, respectively. Most recently, we have shown that we can use site specifically labeled αS in conjunction with FP to glean mechanistic insight into the processes of aggregation and disaggregation. Ultimately, these labeled constructs will allow us to study these processes in vivo

Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy Reveals Efficient Cytosolic Delivery of Protein Cargo by Cell-Permeant Miniature Proteins.

New methods for delivering proteins into the cytosol of mammalian cells are being reported at a rapid pace. Differentiating between these methods in a quantitative manner is difficult, however, as most assays for evaluating cytosolic protein delivery are qualitative and indirect and thus often misleading. Here we make use of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to determine with precision and accuracy the relative efficiencies with which seven different previously reported "cell-penetrating peptides" (CPPs) transport a model protein cargo-the self-labeling enzyme SNAP-tag-beyond endosomal membranes and into the cytosol. Using FCS, we discovered that the miniature protein ZF5.3 is an exceptional vehicle for delivering SNAP-tag to the cytosol. When delivered by ZF5.3, SNAP-tag can achieve a cytosolic concentration as high as 250 nM, generally at least 2-fold and as much as 6-fold higher than any other CPP evaluated. Additionally, we show that ZF5.3 can be fused to a second enzyme cargo-the engineered peroxidase APEX2-and reliably delivers the active enzyme to the cell interior. As FCS allows one to realistically assess the relative merits of protein transduction domains, we anticipate that it will greatly accelerate the identification, evaluation, and optimization of strategies to deliver large, intact proteins to intracellular locales