handle the truth || 'Terror at 5 1/2 Feet'

you're not deceptive

Laura Gilbert

Nov 25, 2022

Milhouse: Actually, Bart, you’re kind of creepin’ me out.

‘Terror at 5 1/2 Feet’, ‘Treehouse of Horror IV’, The Simpsons

But what is truth?

Is truth unchanging law?

We all have truths

Are mine the same as yours?

‘Trial Before Pilate’, Jesus Christ Superstar

I am a woman of my word. To make up for two newsletters without even a mention of a certain iconic yellow family, this edition is basically one long Simpsons’ reference, as I take the opportunity to face a childhood fear.

I’m like one of the grown-up kids from the Loser Gang in It, but without any potential threat to my life or person.

Today, I’m going to reacquaint myself with a certain gremlin on a certain bus.

‘Terror at 5 1/2 Feet’, one of trifecta of ‘Treehouse of Horror IV’ (1993)1 tales, is largely a satire of The Twilight Zone’s ‘Terror at 30,000 feet’. But we aren’t going to talk about the source material all that much, because this is my newsletter and my means of coming to terms with my spooky past. Besides, I daresay The Simpsons’ antagonist in the more frightening of the two. Observe:

I digress.

The plot of ‘Terror at 5 1/2 feet’ can be summarised as follows:

Ten-year-old Bart Simpson awakes from a night of uneasy dream [singular] where he sees a ‘vision of [his] own horrible, fiery death’. In this state, he boards his school bus, and soon after sees something disturbing outside his window: a gremlin2 messing with the vehicle and making threatening gestures. Bart tries to point the monster out to others, but no-one – neither his fellow students nor the adults – sees the gremlin or heeds his warning. His repeated cry for action results in him being grabbed and restrained by Principal Skinner. A helpful German exchange student3 loosens Bart’s bonds and the plucky lad tacks decisive action: he opens the bus window and with some lit dynamite (I think it's dynamite?) set the monster on fire. The gremlin falls from the bus, and is found by devout Christian and owner of the Leftorium, Ned Flanders.

Once the bus comes to a stop, everyone can see the damage that has been caused by the gremlin. Bart was clearly telling the truth. Nevertheless, he is straight-jacketed and wheeled into an ambulance that will cart him off to a mental institution. The boy thinks that, at least, he’ll be able to get some rest at last. But there’s a final twist: the gremlin is at the window, holding Ned Flanders’ severed head. The nightmare hasn’t ended. It’s beginning all over again.

This isn’t the first Simpsons episode to deal with false accusations of madness (see ‘Stark Raving Dad’ [1991]), and the series will return to the theme of facts being rejected because they are inconvenient (e.g. ’Lisa the Iconoclast’ [1996]) or appear outlandish (e.g. fellow ‘Treehouse of Horrors’ story, ‘Citizen Kang’ [1996]). The Simpsons recognises that the truth is not always, shall we say, fully accessible. There is no guarantee people would recognise the difference between a fact and a lie.

I’d like to take a moment to jump from 20th century Fox to ancient Greece and consider the mythical figure of Cassandra. Cassandra, daughter of King of Troy Priam, had a particularly cruel fate. Adonis gave her the gift of prophecy, on the proviso she would sleep with him. When she decided not, he corrupted her gift. In the version of the story I heard, Adonis does this by spitting in her mouth, an image so visceral I can’t help but share it, whether via a newsletter or at a friend’s birthday party last Saturday. The symbolism, I suppose, is probably to do with sullying the tongue - the instrument of speech - because afterwards Cassandra’s gift because her curse. She can speak about her visions of the future but no-one will believe her.

Bart, like Cassandra, can clearly see the danger threatening his people. Bart’s warnings, like Cassandra’s, are disregarded. Separated by continents and millennia, the two ill-fated characters are used to explore today’s primal horror: that of not being believed.

It isn’t an irrational thing to fear.

There are several layers to this. First, there is a concrete danger to not being believed. Considered the lowered stakes of ‘Terror at 5 1/2 Feet’ vs ‘Terror at 30,000 Feet’. It is very difficult to deal with a gremlin at 30,000 feet, as you can hardly brake when you’re so high in the sky to shoo the monster away. But it’s quite easy to stop a bus, get everyone to disembark, and address a gremlin situation. The fiery demise Bart sought to avoid could easily have been avoided, without the need for him to mess with dynamite, if the responsible adults on the bus had trusted him.

If your truth is not believe, there is the possibility that your bus will crash, or your city will fall, or your attacker won’t be held accountable for their crimes, or a virus could spread unnecessarily or – you get the idea. Truth serves a practical function. If we aren’t believed, people can make decisions based on lies, or mistruths, and these ill-informed choice hurt those they seek to help. This can happen in a courtroom, in the Houses of Parliament, in a school, in a conversation between lovers. The possibility of truth losing out poses a genuine threat to our selves, our relationships and our futures.

There is also (as ever) a matter of identity. Bart’s schoolmate Ralph Wiggum, unable to see the gremlin, tells our hero “you’re deceptive”. Disbelief in the truth can lead to people being branded as “mad” or a “liar”. In addition to the injustice of these accusations, people labelled as untrue or insane will be treated as what they are not rather than what they are. As we’ve noted before, it’s hard to insist on a sense of self others reject.

Beyond the outputs and outcomes and other project management speak of specific episodes of disbelief, there is also the greater, existential threat at play when an individual is distrusted, especially if this distrust becomes routine (as it is for children who grow up in truthless households, or partners stuck in abusive relationships). These people can be trapped in a world where reality has no bearing, their words and actions little impact. A place where it is impossible to connect to another, because there is no common language – no common truth – to appeal too. Somewhere very isolated, and without hope, since so much of our hope is bound up in a faith that we can communicate with one another and that values – like honesty – have inherent value.

In short, a terrifying place, where the truth cannot set you free.

When the bus stops in ‘Terror at 5 1/2 Feet’, and the actions of the gremlin are made clear, Bart feels vindicated. We hear this exchange between himself and Principal Skinner:

Bart: Look at the bus! I was right, I tell you! I was right!

Principal Skinner: Right or wrong, your behaviour was still disruptive, young man. Perhaps spending the remainder of your life in a madhouse will teach you some manners.

Seymore Skinner’s words are sinister. You see, we might fear being distrusted – because other’s disbelief can hurt us, warp us, trap us in a Kafka-esuqe nightmare – but what we see in this tête-à-tête is even worse.

The principal sees the truth, accepts it, and decrees that it doesn’t matter. His rejection is deliberate: honesty ranks lower than decorum. This is no longer a matter of he-said she-said, but he-said who-cares. Skinner chooses to occupy a post-truth world, one where you can justify the wrongful imprisonment of a child based on a vibe.

Our fear of being disbelieved assumes that people give a fig about the concept of the truth, even if they can’t recognise it. Skinner’s words justify the adding a second primal horror to this newsletter: the fear of the truth being deemed irrelevant.

If we entirely give up on distinguishing fact from fiction, what possible hope can we have that things will get better, that justice will be done, that reality is means something – anything more than a ‘meh’?

Pontius Pilate sings in Jesus Christ Superstar4, "we all have truths". Which is correct, in a way – we have differences in belief when it comes to the best economic way forward, or ethics, or the value of slashers as art – but we can't let sophistry disguise the fact that there is also fact5. Things that happened. Things that are. Vaccines work. A man committed fraud. There is a gremlin on the bus.

Lionel Hutz (in his real estate agent phase) famously said “there’s the truth…and the truth”. He meant that there is bitter truth and pleasant lie: one sells houses, the other doesn’t. Medicine, too, can be bitter. But it is a damn sight more curative than a sachet of dibdab.

Anxieties around being disbelieved are valid, but we can’t give up on the truth. If a ten-year-old can have that level of courage in his convictions, we mustn’t simply wait for the bus to crash.

You can handle the truth.

NEXT TIME

It’s beginning to look a lot like krampusnacht! Fire up the Netflix, because we’re going to be taking a little look at Krampus (2015).

A FUN RECOMMENDATION

I’m probably not going to cover it in one of these newsletters, but I urge you all to watch the original Slumber Party Massacre (1982) then tell me when you’ve done so and we can have a chat.

Hey, you made it to the end! This newsletter goes out to the millennial who have shown a specific appreciation to Simpsons references – including Steven, Adam, Michael, Neil, Annie – and to the others who’ve validated this project even a little. Until next time: believe in yourself.

it's kind of a primal horror

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