ABSTRACT
At the risk of dating myself, I wonder how many of you remember the Twilight Zone episode entitled “It’s a Good Life,” in which Billy Mumy plays a little boy named Anthony who possesses special powers to do just about anything he wants. Being an omniscient child, the things he took delight in were, in equal measure, facile and horrifying. Mirroring his insecurities, he demanded complete and unwavering assurance from the adults trapped in his unwitting web of tyranny that everything he did was the most marvelous, beautiful, funny, or intelligent thing that any of them had ever seen. And if anyone questioned his actions or broke under the unrelenting pressure of maintaining this delusion, they were either transformed into some pitiable deformed creature or “sent to the cornfield.” We never do find out what the threat of being sent to the cornfield actually means, but by his subjects’ terrified and sycophantic exclamations of “That’s a good thing that you done, Anthony, real good!” each time he does something terrible, we know that it must be something truly awful.
