The news that Glee will be performing after the Superbowl only makes me want to flee into a bunker deep underground, far from the range of any television signals, but this part of the story is interesting:

You’ve already heard the Glee cast put their jazz hands all over Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” – but the zombified football number isn’t the only song on the show’s Super Bowl episode, “The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle”. The members of New Directions also perform Lady Antebellum’s Grammy-nominated “Need You Now” and The Zombies’ “She’s Not There”, while the Warblers’ keep up their streak of turning female-voiced pop hits into a cappella triumphs with Destiny’s Child’s “Bills Bills Bills”. Listen to the episode’s set list below!

We here at the ZRC are wary of anyone adapting ‘Thriller’. ‘Thriller’ was, in its own way, an important cultural milestone for the Zombie Rights movement, because even as it indulged in some stereotyping of the Differently Animated, it also humanized and even romanticized being Undead, at least a little. In ‘Thriller’, Zombies aren’t confined to flesh-eating or shambling about; to the contrary, they are able to perform complex synchronized dance numbers, and nobody is actually eaten at all.

The importance of that step forward, dated as it may seem today when compared to more modern Zombie Friendly works, makes us wary of any loose, pop-adaptation, especially in today’s rabidly Anti-Zombie media climate.

The Horror Society reminded us recently just how visually daring the video actually was, featuring Zombies who might not be the most photogenic, but had a lot of heart. Will broadcast television even allow a non-conventionally beautiful Zombie on in primetime, or must one have basically ‘normal’ skin tone and all one’s limbs intact to be beamed into America’s living rooms?

I guess we’ll wait for the Glee thing to show up on youtube to make a final judgment. I’ll be spending ‘Superbowl Sunday’ in the bunker.

Tags: Music, Television

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 at 10:26 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.