What’s Up With Japan: Thriller Mashup Edition
I’m not going to get all high and mighty defending the Michael Jackson video for Thriller, even though it did playfully poke fun at the rampant stereotyping of the Differently Animated, and showcased, for example, some high points in Zombie choreography. It’s funny and unconventional, deserving of some praise to be sure, but it unfortunately did not succeed in battling back the rising tide of Anti-Zombie violence on screen, and didn’t so much strive to humanize the Differently Animated as humor-ize them, if that makes sense.
But I guess the mere existence of a Zombie media product of considerable staying power that doesn’t involve bullets flying and bodies dropping offended someone across the Pacific a bit too much, and so we got this:
At the recent Hot Toys ten year anniversary exhibition in Tokyo, a what-if style diorama was on display that combined Michael Jackson Thriller with a two-story Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan, playset and figures.
On the second floor, Resident Evil’s Jill shoots zombie Jacko’s head plum off, while on the ground floor, a horde of Michael Jackson zombies takes great interest in a ravaged Sheva.
I ask again, in all sincerity, ‘What’s up with Japan?’ From pushing Anti-Zombie ‘heroes’ into games featuring iconic Western comic book characters to churning out an endless series of radically violent Living Supremacist games (even shovelware like bad ports to the iPhone or gambling games where the payoff is violence against the Undead) to inspiring a series of American movies that degrade the audience and, really, the entire medium of film, all we see coming out of Japan recently is hatred for the Differently Animated.
But is it really necessary to be so petty as to go after Thriller? To, in essence, plant the flag of Resident Evil’s violent hegemony on pop music videos from the 80s?
I’m appalled. Shocked and appalled. Where does it end, Japan?
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