MovieChat Forums > The Twilight Zone (1959) Discussion > Is everyone living in Ridgeview, Ohio en...

Is everyone living in Ridgeview, Ohio enslaved by the Mystic Seer?

posted 7 years ago by AngularTurnip (3337)
4 replies | jump to latest

Is that why everyone in Ridgeview stays in Ridgeview: waiting for the Mystic Seer to give them permission to leave? It seems the episode isn't ruling out that possibility.

Great episode. So many different way of looking at it.

[–] Tristan_Booth (405) 7 years ago

Presumably, someone on the staff of the diner needs to refill the machine with messages and collect the money (unless it really is magic and creates its own messages, and the staff are aware of this). If it's not magic, the person or people who maintain the machine would not be ruled by it because they see the inner workings of it.

[–] JR-TV (102) 7 years ago

I don't think that all or even most of the people of Ridgeview are enslaved by the mystic seer. I think just the couple at the end are. Most people who went to the diner wouldn't have put enough pennies in the seer to see how accurate it is in predicting the future.

[–] strntz (12225) 7 years ago

I don't think that all or even most of the people of Ridgeview are enslaved by the mystic seer.

Yep.

Capt. Kirk admitted he was hopelessly superstitious, and I would assume anyone who would interpret those very general answers to being specifically targeted to them would have to be as well, even if the Seer *was* real. How many people would be that superstitious in that town, and even if there were more than a handful, how many would find out about the Seer?

If we really think about it, there's nothing in the story that would indicate that the Seer was anything more than a penny amusement machine. The answers *were* general, just like the ones that those TV charlatans who say they communicate with the dead are. You can argue that those people were only trapped by their own imaginations.

[–] [email protected] (148) 7 years ago

I don't believe The Mystic Seer is mystical either. I do believe, however, that like an entire nation fearing Jesus or Allah, the townsfolk might be fettered by their dread of the Seer, and the answers it offers, even if those answers have no basis in the supernatural at all.