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List the words and phrases in the episode that you found significant. Be sure to identify the person who utters those words. (For example: Tyler: “Who decides what is normal?”) What does your list suggest about the way difference is understood in this society?
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Who in Janet Tyler’s society determines what is “normal”? Who is “beautiful”? What is “rational”? What is the source of that power? Why is “ugliness” a crime? While this show is fiction, it raises important questions about images in our own society. Where do we get our ideas about beauty? How do we learn what is “normal”? What part does our family play? Our peers? What is the role of the media? To what extent do media images shape our standards of beauty? To what extent do those images reflect the views of society as a whole?
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Our standards of beauty, ideas about difference, even notions of what is normal are shaped to a large extent by culture—the attitudes, values, and beliefs of a society. To find out how standards of beauty have changed over the years, you may wish to check movies made in the 20th century. Works of art can also offer clues to standards. So can toys—particularly dolls. For example, what do “Barbie” dolls suggest about our standards of beauty? What does your research suggest about the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? About the way standards change? What events or ideas may have prompted those changes?
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Describe the relationship between Janet Tyler and the doctor. Why does the doctor seem to have so much power and Tyler so little? Who do you think has power over the doctor?
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Medicine is generally viewed as a healing profession and science as a body of knowledge that advances society. What is being “healed” in this society? How is society being “advanced”? What does the episode suggest about the relationship between physicians and other scientists and the society in which they live? For example, what does the episode suggest about the way physicians and scientists promote the values of their society? What does it suggest about the way the values of the larger society influence their work?
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Because Serling’s programs were science fiction, he had more freedom to deal with the issues of social injustice. To what social inequalities might this episode refer? How would you adapt the “Eye of the Beholder” for today’s world? What changes would you make in the story?
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