In a writeup about a new ‘Walking Dead’ videogame, the NYT talks about putting ‘guilt’ back in killing Zombies.

Sadly, tragically, that might pass for good Zombie press, at least from the mainstream media:

But what zombies! Taking an ax to the reanimated corpse of a character’s brother in the streets of Macon, or deciding whether to give a gun to a woman who was bitten and now wants to kill herself before she is reborn — these moments have more sadness and subtlety in them than other games muster in 40 hours. The creatures in The Walking Dead are designed to be killed by your hand, but — for once — you’re not quite meant to have fun doing it.

Sigh. It really doesn’t sound like the reviewer had trouble finding the ‘fun’ though, does it?

Look, “CHRIS SUELLENTROP”, of the NYT. Let’s talk a little, shall we?

The Zombie Rights Campaign has been trying to shame people into thinking about Zombie Rights, such as, say, the right not to get shot, for three years now. We think it’s very important. We’re glad that you’re at least willing to entertain the idea now.

However, you might want to actually explore those feelings with a bit more sensitivity, because your article? It does not come off as Zombie Friendly, or even Zombie Tolerant.

As for Zombies being the ‘new Nazis’, that’s more than a bit misleading. Sure, Nazi Zombies in videogames are relatively recent, but they’ve been in movies for decades. ‘Zombie Lake’, ‘Hard Rock Zombies’, etc. Arguably Nazi Zombie movies go all the way back to ‘King of the Zombies’, in 1941.

As you can see, this is a very long-running and hurtful slander-by-association, and one we’d like to dispel. Zombies are not, by and large, Nazis, and Nazis, by and large, were not Zombies. It’s a fantasy cooked up by a handful of filmmakers and videogame programmers, with no historical basis in fact.

Werewolves get a bit of the same treatment, it must be said.

Still… at least there’s a seed of potential here.

We’ll keep an eye out for future, and hopefully even better, coverage of Zombie media in the New York Times.

Tags: Journamalism, Mainstream Media, Movies, Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.