Yeah yeah, I know it was a dream sequence, and clearly over the top at that, but we still have to deal with the fact that, in our society, it’s still considered acceptable for a doctor to, say, unload round after round from a pump action shotgun into Zombies rather than treat them as human beings, let alone patients.

It’s true that the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ sequence plays with the tropes of the genre quite a bit, including the ludicrous reaction of bodies to shotgun shells, which send them careening though the air. Hasn’t anyone in an action movie heard of Newton’s Third Law? If the blast from a shotgun was powerful enough to send the person being struck reeling, then it would impart the same force upon the person firing it, unless somehow dissipated.

(Some guns do dissipate their recoil forces somewhat by, say, diverting the gas generated by the gunpowder)

I can assure you, I’ve fired a few guns in my day (at soda cans, not the Differently Animated), and the recoil is significant, but not even a tin can, which merely weighs a few ounces, goes flying quite like *that*. Action movies, and the Anti-Zombie ones among them, need to go back to Physics 101.

Given the flip remarks, the semi-demonic appearance of the ‘Zombies’ and the spooky atmosphere of the decaying hospital, I think this House segment leans more toward Euro-Zombie bashing or splattery Raimi slapstick than mainstream American tropes. Is that a reference to the character’s international upbringing, a coincidence, or perhaps a side effect of wanting to tap into an Evil Dead/demonic flavor of the Differently Animated. Ash is also a smarty-pants sarcastic jerk, after all.

At any rate, the clip is offensive and disturbing. Doctors should have a cooperative and compassionate relationship with the Differently Animated, not an adversarial one. Zombies are people too, and, occasionally, might even be patients too. We should expect medical practitioners, even fictional ones, to keep this in mind.

Shame on you, Dr. House, even though you don’t exist. Shame.

Tags: Television, Zombie Flavored Creativity Substitute

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 12:55 am 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.