The People story
The People is a 1972 television film, broadcast as an ABC Movie of the Week on January 22, 1972. It concerns a young teacher who goes to a remote area to work with a group of individuals who have isolated themselves from civilization and maintained an independent community, vaguely similar to the Amish or a religious commune.
11 total · 7 major · 4 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| belonging | major | Melodye felt unwelcome in Bendo after coming there to teach at the schoolhouse, but by the end of the story they made a point to make her feel welcome, and even held her wedding. The story concluded with the people of Bendo feeling that Earth was their home, too. |
| extraterrestrial being | major | It turned out that the people of Bendo were actually aliens who had come to Earth as refugees. |
| folk belief | major | Melodye insisted that the talk of mind reading and levitation was just superstitious nonsense, but then she observed these phenomena with her own eyes. |
| retarded aging effect | major | The people of Bendo didn't age at an appreciable rate and were free of illness. |
| teaching occupation | major | Melodye Amerson moved to the remote village of Bendo to be the teacher at the schoolhouse there. Her teaching in the schoolhouse was amply featured, and she acknowledged to having of love for her profession. |
| what is good and evil | major | Melodye's ideas of what was moral conflicted with the villagers. The villages were stoic and anti-pleasure seeking, but Melodye took efforts to try and open the children's minds, and show them that the things they had been taught to be wrong, like music and the taking of pleasure in life, was in fact good. |
| xenophobia in society | major | The aliens were taken for witches when they first came to Earth and persecuted accordingly. As a result, they felt the people of Earth were full of hate and fear, so they had isolated themselves in Bendo. But Melodye convinced them with her words and deeds that the people of Earth had some good in them after all. |
| father and daughter | minor | Sol Diemus and Karen Diemus. |
| mind reading ability | minor | Aome Bendo villagers, including Valancy Carmody, had the ability to read minds. |
| romantic love | minor | Melodye married Dr. Curtis out of the blue at the end of the story. |