Not-mare at 20,000 Feet
I finally watched the thing that got me scared to fly in the first place
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Hello Sternal Journalists!
We are finally back on the Sternal Journal’s (loose) Sunday schedule and I (even looselier) promise that here is where we will stay!
To piggyback off of last SternJourn’s meditation on what it’s like to feel like to overcome a crippling fear knowing full well that it could cripple again, I decided to dive deeper into retrospecting upon my fear of flying all the way to the beginning which was…
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet! This was, of course, the Twilight Zone episode starring a young William Shatner as a businessman who has recently overcome a fear of flying after a panic attack during a flight sent him to a sanatorium to a year. For whatever reason, this sanatorium was very for away and he has to mmmmgulp FLY HOME.
Nervous but ready to tackle his fear for real, Robert (Shatner) settles in and looks out the window to fins that… a monster is on the wing of the plane! Of course it flies away whenever someone else comes to see what Robert is talking about. And of course it begins to tamper with the engine.
In the end, (spoiler alert) Robert all too easily snags an air marshall’s gun and opens the emergency exit to shoot at the beast. He almost is sucked out the window (one assumes it was some amount safer to open the emergency exit at 20,000 feet of the 60s rather than today’s 30,000 feet—also was obviously a little easier back then to steal an airplane gun), but is pulled back in.
The plane makes an emergency landing and, though he’s presumably being wheeled back to a sanitorium, the camera pans out and we see that the damage to the engine was REAL. Rod Serling’s outro monologue confirms that everyone realized he had been telling the truth. SPOOOKY.
Now here’s the thing: until today, I had never actually seen Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. I was obsessed with The Twilight Zone as a child, yes, and would watch it on TV Land whenever I was at my grandparents’ house (as I didn’t have cable—booo), but as it was the 90s, only some episodes aired. The rest, you just had to wait around for.
So if an episode of Twilight Zone I was already watching had aired, I would ask my grandparents to describe other episodes they did remember (I know this sounds like it was 85 years ago, but I swear it was only 25). One of said episodes was Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
That’s right. I had only had this thing described to me and it made me absolutely terrified to fly. When I finally got on my first flight to visit family in Greece, I’m pretty sure I begged for us to be in the middle row so that there would be no chance of me peeping out of a window.
Anyway, with my newfound (and perhaps fleeting) relative calm surrounding air travel, I thought I’d finally check out the thing that officially kicked off my fear of flying.
Here are my thoughts, pretty much in the order I had them, but of varying importance and scope:
Robert’s shifty nervousness as he gets on the plane is completely relatable. I realize some stories are timeless.
Robert then lights a cigarette and his wife tells him, “Don’t smoke that now! Wait til the plane takes off!” So not all parts of all stories are timeless. Also, it had never occurred to me that you were only allowed to smoke during certain parts of flights.
The seats are REALLY big. Not sure if this is just how it was on TV or how all flights were back then.
Robert mutters to himself, “I had a teensy-weensy breakdown, but now I’m cured,” and we are back to relatable.
It was written by Richard Matheson, who also wrote I Am Legen. Cool!
It was directed by Richard Donner, who also directed Goonies and Lethal Weapon 1-4. COOL!
So the plot starts to pick up, but just before Robert sees the monster, they establish that this plane is FLYING THROUGH A THUNDERSTORM. That is what I would be worried about.
Especially because the monster shows up, and this isn’t some Godzilla-Mothra flying beast situation. It’s basically a reject Teletubby who can barely keep his footing. I’m going to show you a picture of the monster now, but I promise it isn’t scary:
I mean, it looks like he’s taking a dump and maybe that’s the reason he was ripping a panel off the wing: just an air-beast making a hole to put his dump in. Point being: not scary. But you know what is scary?
The rain! I mean, it’s really coming down. And there’s lightning! They can hear the thunder inside the plane and see the lightning nearby, and Robert’s not worried about that at all!
However, the monster has an incredible sense of comedic heightening. First, he appears. Second, he does a jump scare where he pops his face up against Robert’s window. And finally, he goes for the wiring in the plane’s engine. Rule of threes and everything!
I learn that maybe the monster is good at this because that’s he was made for. Robert says, when trying to describe it to someone on the plane, “What did they call them during the war, the pilots? Gremlins! Gremlins!” This was a crazy fact to learn and I could maybe write a whole Sternal Journal about it.
I thought gremlins were either made up for the 80s movie, or like some centuries-old folklore. But no. Gremlins were creatures made up sometimes between World War 1 and World War 2 and blamed for various malfunctions of planes or other military logistical stuffs. Here’s a poster using “gremlins” as a reason to remember to wear safety goggles:
Look at those dandy little fellas. Anyway, he only mentions the gremlin thing once, but I thought it was interesting that this story about irrational fear was inspired by a mythological creature that was essentially made up to boost morale in the face of accidents and human error.
So much of irrational fear stems from lacking control over ones situation, but in its original form, the concept of gremlins was created to give someone the comfort of knowing some things are out of your control (even when they aren’t necessarily! Screw a piece of machinery on the wrong way? It can feel much better to blame it on a gremlin than to have to admit that it was in your control and messed it up).THIS makes me thing about how irrational fears are sort of narcissistic. When Robert says to a flight attendant (re: the monster) “He jumps away when anybody looks, except for me,” I was reminded of how when I was always convinced my plane was going to crash, I was basically thinking, “Well, I know thousands of planes have taken off and landed without issue in the past few days, but I’m going to be on this plane, so this is a special case and that’s why I’m sure of my certain doom.” It’s all a little me-me-me.
When Robert grabs the sleeping air marshal’s gun, it’s a little too easy but honestly? Probably realistic!
Even though it should technically trigger traumatic memories, watching a Twilight Zone episode mostly triggers memories of sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table and eating Snackwell’s sandwich cookies in ice cream while binging Gomer Pyle and Hogan’s Heroes and Twilight Zone (Again, I swear this was two-ish decades ago, not nine or ten)
In the end, because the show implies he was right all along, I don’t really know if I vibe with the message, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s kinda satisfying to know that this story that, in description only, kicked off a fear that I’ve become intimately familiar with enough that it is sort of a piece of who I am; and then when I finally watch it, I feel seen in the depiction of someone living with that fear?? Talk about DOO-doo-DOO-doo, you know what I mean??
Anyway, somewhat abrupt ending this week, but that’s how it goes sometimes here in… The Sternal Zone.
Recommendations
Gremlins Were a Pilots Worst Enemy. Article. If you were intrigued by the Gremlin stuff above, this has more info (a lot of which appears to just be scraped from Wikipedia, but still fun). Also the Roald Dahl connection is cool.
Post Malone Tiny Desk. YouTube Video. Depending on who you ask, Post Malone is extremely underrated or a little overrated. But he’s at his most unifying when he strips it back and reminds everyone he’s a thoughtful musician with an incredible voice even when it’s strained as in this NPR mini concert.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Television Episode. I did actually enjoy it and it’s available for free on Paramount+ and Freevee!
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Movie. Okay, I actually fell asleep while watching this on the plane but I loved what I saw. It felt like a Judd Apatow movie shot like a James Bond movie (I’m sure people will get upset at those comparisons, but that’s what it felt like to me! Those are good things! I plan to finish it!)
Okay, that’s all, Sternal Journalists! Much love!
Julian