A Midnight in Willoughby: Common Themes in Popular Culture The Twilight Zone is well known for being a highly renowned element of popular culture that has inspired countless other TV shows and movies since its debut. One of the many films inspired by the series is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. The film is inspired by an episode of The Twilight Zone called "A Stop at Willoughby" as both plays revolve around a middle-aged man who is desperate to escape the pressures of modern life. Both stories focus on a theme in which the various protagonists find their own types of fantasy lands that take them back to an era before their time, seemingly void of all responsibilities. The common theme of "A Stop at Willoughby" and Midnight in Paris is timelessly relevant in popular culture because of its social commentary and relatability. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay "A Stop at Willoughby" and Midnight in Paris, share their theme of wanting to escape modern stress by venturing into the past, creating it is timelessly relevant to popular culture because of its social commentary. Both stories criticize the present for being too stressful and driving the main characters into crisis. In "A Stop at Willoughby", the audience is introduced to the main character Garth, as he experiences a particularly bad day in his career as an advertising executive and also sees the pressure his wife puts on him at home. The entire episode revolves around Garth as he struggles to cope with the pressures of modern life, his only temporary escape being the fantasyland he travels to on his train home from work. The social commentary in this episode aims to draw attention to the fact that modern life makes people unhappy. Garth's escape is returned to a simple town called Willoughby which he finds when he falls asleep on the train. At the end of the episode, we see Garth make the choice to stay in his fantasy, which leads him to escape reality by jumping off the train to go to Willoughby, thus ending his life. This is an important critique of modern society as the audience sees Garth stifled by his modern life centered around his career and the demands of providing for his wife, and from there it is easy to understand why Garth ultimately chooses his fantasy over the realities of modern life. . This theme is still relevant in popular culture today, as social commentary about the negative effects of modern society is still extremely relevant and shows no signs of changing. Fifty years after this episode of Twilight Zone aired, this theme is still present, as seen in the film Midnight in Paris. Similarly, in Midnight in Paris, the protagonist Gil also faces professional pressures and additional relationship stress that causes him to yearn for escape. to finally send him into the past via a magical car ride through the streets of Paris. This film explores more deeply why the protagonist is obsessed with escaping into the past instead of just looking at how modern pressures push him there. Throughout the film, Gil spends most of his time trying to access his fantasy land of the past, which for him is Paris in the early 1900s, until he learns at the end that the only way to fix your reality is to change your way of living. lives there. Instead of embracing his fantasy like Garth, Gil decides to abandon the way he.