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Posted By John Sears on January 16, 2011
The superlative Michelle Hartz has suggested that the ZRC might want to set up a chapter within popular gaming platform World of Warcraft, given that one of the main player factions is already Undead.
Intriguing idea, though my worry is that it would be so time-consuming that our real-world advocacy would necessarily suffer, unless I also take up amphetamines at the same time.
Something to ponder though.
Posted By John Sears on January 16, 2011
It just wouldn’t be a week monitoring the pop-culture/journalism feeds without another piece that combines ivory tower cloud-talking with dubious historical analysis to frame a piece expressing befuddlement with, and general distaste for, the presence and popularity of the Differently Animated in media:
What are we to make of AMC’s The Walking Dead? The question is perhaps overly vague, so I should clarify: if we proceed from the truism that filmic monsters express certain fears and anxieties in the cultural imaginary, what are the walking dead of The Walking Dead telling us?
The question proceeds in part from the unavoidable sense that we seem to be approaching zombie exhaustion—a critical mass of the living dead on film, television, prose fiction, and video games. If we start from 1932’s classic White Zombie (not the first zombie film ever made, but as good an arbitrary starting point as any), between 1932 and 2002, there were 224 films produced featuring zombies or the living dead—which gives an average of just over three zombie films per year during that period.1 Since 2002 however those numbers have snowballed. 2003 saw twenty-six zombie films; 2004 and 2005 thirty-eight and thirty-nine, respectively; and those numbers continued to rise, topping out in 2010 at sixty-nine films, for a total of 378 films over the past seven years—an average of fifty-four films per year. And that doesn’t include the predictable glut of prose fiction about the living dead or gimmicks like Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice with Zombies; nor does it include such video games as Left for Dead. At what point does this trend exhaust itself?
We’ve been over this turf before; indeed, this article relies heavily on the same tired ‘count the number of Zombie movies produced and listed in a year, ignore the number of films made in total or the relative percentage of films’ analysis that we previously discussed.
Honestly, if someone tries to compare the era when a handful of big Hollywood studios made everything that was called a ‘movie’ to the era when half the high school kids in America can shoot, edit and self-publish their own films in high-definition (using cameras that fit in their back pockets) as if they’re remotely equivalent, instead of completely different creative worlds?
Just walk away. It’s not a serious conversation. This is equivalent to looking at the market for leaded gasoline in the 1932 vs 2010, then concluding that nobody drove last year because nobody bought leaded gas.
*rolls eyes*
I would legitimately be interested in a serious and thoughtful analysis, comparing market share, percentage of published films, perhaps self-reported data on interests in various film genres (assuming it exists over that long of a period) and the like, to seriously and legitimately answer the question of how popular, in a historical context, Zombie movies really are.
I haven’t SEEN that analysis yet; instead we get stuff like this, or the io9 piece I dissected a few months back, which cram a bunch of lists from Wikipedia into a blender, ignore the ongoing transformative results of the technological singularity we all live inside, and pretend an apple isn’t just comparable to an orange, it IS an orange, just an oddly crunchy one.
Next up, we get a riff on how Zombie movies are becoming more and more respectable, at least in terms of mainstream taste, as they are accepted into the worlds of high brow television, major hollywood features, etc.
Not exactly a breathtakingly original line of thought, and it’s clearly patronizing to the independent film; in fact, the article entirely ignores the contemporaneous arthouse/indie horror film circuit and its contributions to the Zombie film genre. Nothing whatsoever is said about movies like Cabine of the Dead, George’s Intervention, Closure, Lonely, Slices of Life at all.
*shrug*
Finally we get to my personal favorite portion of these navel-gazing articles, the Grand Theory of Zombies and What They Mean:
That being said, perhaps the innocuous nature of the zombies in The Walking Dead is not merely a reflection of the genre’s new excess, but of excess more broadly: the embodiment of the nightmare of detritus, surplus, the indivisible remainder. Zombies are, after all, quite simply dead that won’t stay dead; and not only will they not stay dead, they want to turn you into one of them, and will keep coming, mindlessly, inexorably, until you destroy their brain. That, in a nutshell, is the Romero conception, and while it may suffer variations on that theme, it has become more or less the norm—which is to say, we don’t often see voodoo-raised zombies any more. Zombies and their rage-infected fellow travelers exert the fascination they do because they are the ultimate embodiment of what Julia Kristeva figures as “abjection”—the abject, she says, has the singular identity of “that of being opposed to I”; it is something inescapably Other, that which is excess to us. It is that which is “ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.”
Actually a lot of what most people think is attributable to Romero isn’t his at all; many popular Zombie tropes come from Russo, O’Bannon, Fulci, Peter Jackson, Boyle, Snyder or others. On the surface Kirkman’s particular ‘Zombies’ are largely Romero-esque, but in some important ways they differ, particularly in the manner that Romero flirts with the idea that he hates humanity even more than Zombiekind, whereas Kirkman’s allegiance is pretty clearly with his (flawed, largely interchangeable) protagonists. Romero has in the past made Zombies into characters, if not very pleasant ones; for Kirkman and The Walking Dead that’s as absurd as worrying about the characterization of individual raindrops in a thunderstorm.
Moving beyond that, and simplifying the lit-crit language a bit, Zombies apparently represent The Other, which we can’t accept and integrate, nor can we completely ignore.
Yeah. That’s helpful and specific, and not at all completely based on the author’s personal feelings and prejudices about the Differently Animated. Really. Completely solid, objective reasoning.
Oh to have a desk to bang my head upon.
To recap Flowtv and Christopher Lockett:
1) There are more Zombie movies being made today (when everybody and their brother has a camera) than in the 30s
2) Mainstream media is paying more attention to Zombies, therefore they’re closer to real ‘art’
3) Zombies represent The Other
To quote the inestimable movie Airplane, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”
Posted By John Sears on January 15, 2011
This is an oldie but a fascinating case study in how an attempt at Zombie Friendliness can go off the rails and become… well, something very different. It’s also necessarily pretty heavy on spoilers, so if you wish to avoid that, just skip to the last paragraph for our rating.
Some background: “My Zombie Lover” is a first season episode of the “Monsters” television series, which ran from 1988-1991, first on NBC and then on the Sci-Fi Channel, and currently runs sporadically in re-runs on an NBC horror-themed network called Chillers. “Monsters” was a sort of spiritual successor to “Tales from the Darkside”, which would have set off a warning bell for me had I known before watching the show (so perhaps it’s best I didn’t know); Tales was of course produced by George Romero, and we know how, despite moments of Zombie Friendliness (like Creepshow), Mr. Romero has managed to make himself the greatest public foe of the Zombie Rights movement to date.
So “My Zombie Lover” showed on a major broadcast network, and had the opportunity to reach a large audience that might otherwise eschew media about Zombies, whether positive or negative in its depiction of the Differently Animated.
The premise of the episode is a bit odd; it concerns an African-American nuclear family living in some undisclosed American town with an unusual character. As the episode starts, the father is boarding up the house’s windows in preparation for Zombies (as opposed to, say, getting some cookies and punch ready). Discussions with the rest of the family reveal that, one night of the year and for reasons nobody understands, the recently dead rise from their graves in this town and, supposedly, try to eat people. The family patriarch revels in the opportunity to do his ‘civic’ duty and shoot said Zombies with his trusty rifle, while his wife dotes on him and his eldest child apathetically decides to stay behind on the couch.
Intriguingly, the youngest child, a boy named Bradley, is a Zombie Rights Activist and opposes the annual massacre:
Bradley may be the first prominent, mainstream media acknowledgement of the existence of a Zombie Rights movement, so this could be very historically significant.
At any rate, once the parents and Bradley have gone off to the annual Massacre, the father to shoot, Bradley to picket, and the mother presumably to keep them away from one another, their eldest daughter hears a knock on the door and finds a friend and former classmate on the threshold, seeking, in essence, a date. The problem being? He’s a Zombie, and she’s been taught to hate and fear all Zombies.
*dramatic music*
Things move on from there in a fairly promising direction, as Zombie and Living person come to an understanding, but toward the end of the episode things take several sudden and bizarre turns for the worse. For some reason our Zombie protagonist remembers that he has a desperate hunger for human flesh (which had gone unmentioned previously) and bites his would-be-girlfriend. They reconcile, mostly, after arguing about this (understandable; it was poor manners on a first date especially), and she goes upstairs to conveniently allow a Comedic Mishap where the rest of the family returns home, sees her gone and a Zombie in her place, and assumes she has been devoured.
This leads to a Dramatic Mishap; the daughter is shot, dies, and then, because it’s still The Night of the Dead, revives as a Zombie. There are a couple of clunky but uplifting speeches about being Tolerant of Others, and the ZRC would have been happy to endorse the admittedly uneven result, except for a final, ‘humorous’ denouement, where it is heavily implied that the two Zombies are going to devour young Bradley alive, because young children are annoying.
Or something.
Bradley is by far the most interesting character in the episode, which is odd since there are actual Zombies. He’s a motivated Zombie Rights activist, but taking a somewhat unusual tack, and quite different from our own. Bradley feels that the rights of the Undead are being violated, that they are being punished without due process and persecuted. He makes it abundantly clear after his sister has become a Zombie herself that he personally dislikes Zombies and doesn’t want anything to do with them; his objection is more procedural than empathy-derived.
This is actually a fascinating parallel to the history of Civil Rights based upon race here in the United States; within the Abolitionist movement there were groups and individuals who simultaneously opposed slavery and opposed integration, or at least thought it was completely impractical to implement integration. Instead these abolitionists favored emigration or colonization, and this led to the disastrous project that was the founding of Liberia on the west coast of Africa as a place to ‘drain off’ America’s population of emancipated slaves.
So Bradley, ironically an African-American himself, is a Zombie Colonialist. He doesn’t want them shot, he just wants them to go somewhere else; despite being an advocate for Zombie Rights, he is intolerant of Zombies themselves.
As I said, a fascinating historical parallel.
Unfortunately taken as whole the episode of Monsters was not, and perhaps could not be the Zombie Friendly television masterpiece that we’d have desired. Who knows what is to blame. According to Wikipedia the series tried to distinguish itself from its Romero produced predecessor by focusing on horror-comedy, and so the ‘wacky’ ending which completely undermines the premise may have been tacked on to complete the formula.
Thus the ZRC reluctantly awards this promising failure a Zombie Neutral rating, for at least attempting to grapple with, if not vanquish, the forces of Anti-Zombie prejudice, even as it falls prey to some prejudices itself.
Better luck.. well, not next time, the show’s been cancelled for twenty years. Better luck to any future successors.
My Zombie Lover is embedded below in two portions from Youtube.
(Part 1)
(Part 2)
Posted By John Sears on January 14, 2011
We’ve been looking for Zombie Friendly music for some time, and when we find it the ZRC always does our best to promote this relatively rare commodity. Naturally when we heard about a ‘Zombie Musical’ up for free viewing, we jumped at the chance to watch.
Unfortunately this so-called ‘Zombie Musical’ is another four minutes of Zombie Apocalypse hysteria inflaming Youtube mischief, more along the lines of ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ by Kirby Krackle than Dr. Cancer and the SKAmbies or Rainbow Destroyer.
Just check out some of these lyrics:
That summer morning was a nightmare
Flesh-eating Zombies were everywhere
I woke up quick that morning
Only to find Zombies horde-ing
My Mom’s guts and my Dad’s brains
They were sipping from my Step-brother’s veins.
Aside from seeming confused about the difference between Zombies and Vampires, along with the nature ofgerunds, what we have here is the same old Romero Zombie Apocalypse scenario.. which is made rather explicit by a segment of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ that is actually shown during the musical.
Just in case you’ve forgotten that ‘Night’ is in the public domain.
For a short Youtube video there’s a surprising, some might say ‘shocking’ amount of violence against the Differently Animated, in between the stereotype mongering and music of course; it was no doubt hard work to fit all the mayhem in, but somehow they persevered.
On the whole, to paraphrase the old saw, sure Z-Day: The Zombie Musical is a rabidly Living Supremacist attempt to set the inherently antisocial behaviors of George Romero’s early films to a new media musical format, but at least the portions are small!
Not recommended.
If you still have to see it despite our warning, we’ve included an embedded version below.
Posted By John Sears on January 14, 2011
Thanks to Jerry Murdoch on Facebook I got The Cure’s song ‘Friday I’m in Love’ stuck in my head this morning.
Here, you can get it stuck there too:
In an attempt to get it back out of my brain, I rewrote the lyrics to be about something more interesting: Zombies.
I don’t care if ghosts are blue
Wolfman’s grey and mummies too
Sparkly Vamps I don’t care about you
It’s Zombies, I’m in love
Ghosts you can just fall apart
Wolfman, mummies break my heart
Sparkly Vamps? don’t even start
It’s Zombies, I’m in love
Succubi wait
And demons always come too late
But Zombies never hesitate
I don’t care if ghosts go black
Wolfmen suffer flea attacks
Sparklies? Never looking back
It’s Zombies, I’m in love
Ghosts you can hold your head
Wolfmen, Mummies stay in bed
Sparkly Vamps you burn instead
It’s Zombies, I’m in love.
Succubi wait
And demons always come too late
But Zombies never hesitate
Grey-green up to the eyes
It’s a wonderful surprise
To see headstones move and bodies rise
Throwing out your frown
And just smiling at the sound
And as sleek as a shriek
Lurching round and round
Always take a big bite
It’s such a gorgeous sight
To see Undead in the middle of the night
You can never get enough
Enough of this stuff
It’s Zombies
I’m in love!
I don’t care if ghosts are blue
Wolfman’s grey and mummies too
Sparkly Vamps I don’t care about you
It’s Zombies, I’m in love
Ghosts you can just fall apart
Wolfman, mummies break my heart
Sparkly Vamps? don’t even start
It’s Zombies, I’m in love!
(Please note that any negative feelings toward Wolfmen or mummies are merely to adhere to the original song’s structure and meant as a light-hearted jest. Sparkly Vampires on the other hand, suck and should be hated.)
Posted By John Sears on January 14, 2011
At least they’re not trying to hide the Anti-Zombie agenda with this book, entitled ‘Ten Little Zombies: A Love Story’:
Description: When being chased by ten little zombies (no matter how cute they are), your only option is to systematically destroy them one by one, or else become zombie number eleven. In this love story wrapped in a tale of zombie mayhem, a resourceful couple flees from and picks off their undead pursuers with fast-paced ingenuity and an entertaining range of zombie-thwarting tools. As the zombies shuffle and stumble their way toward a variety of gruesome ends, our heroes must come up with new ways to escape sticky situations and stay together. This darkly funny illustrated tale think Bunny Suicides meets Edward Gorey meets Hallmark celebrates the romantic side of a zombie plague, with plenty of BRAINS and a lot of heart.
The book was written by one Andy Rash, who apparently thinks Home Alone was the all-time high point of the comedic arts.
What, may I ask, Mr. Rash, is wrong with being the 11th Zombie, precisely? I wasn’t aware there was a strict quota system in place. Or rather, is a strict quota system, regulating the Unlives and numbers of the Differently Animated your goal? Do you want to set up reservations? Perhaps a nice internment camp in the West? Something scenic and above all, isolated from good and normal Living people?
Somehow this setting, where two unhinged nutbags on the run (from Zombies and hopefully the law) commit numerous acts of premeditated violence, somehow that’s supposed to be romantic. I guess there *is* some precedent; I mean, Bonnie and Clyde are seen as romantic, right?
You know, discounting the mayhem.
That’s the fundamental difference though. When we romanticize past couples steeped in violence, we tend to mentally erase the acts of depravity; here, because that depravity is directed against Zombies, it’s somehow ok.
Well it’s not ok with the ZRC.
Posted By John Sears on January 13, 2011
I was recently linked via Zombie Universe to this talk from 2009 by one Dr. Steven Schlozman, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, as well as practicing childhood and adolescent psychology and lecturing at Harvard’s School of Education. A prestigious individual talking about an important and widely neglected, when not actively maligned, community, here and around the world.
How does he frame this landmark speech? Does he discuss the psychology of being an oppressed and persecuted class? Or perhaps delve into the issues that drive people to produce Anti-Zombie propaganda, and others to endorse it and take it up as their own cause?
No, none of these approaches were taken. Sadly, Dr. Schlozman spends his lengthy address talking about the psychological functioning of the Romero Stereotype Zombie, an entirely fictional creation by a uniquely disturbed (and disturbing) filmmaker and all-around Anti-Zombie mastermind.
Entitled ‘The Neurobiology, Psychology and Cultural Overtones of the Zombie Film Genre’, Dr. Schlozman’s speech prefaced the screening of Night of the Living Dead for the “Science on Screen” lecture series at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Given the title and the obvious focus on one particularly unfortunate yet still historically significant film, we at the ZRC were willing to grant a great deal of leeway and listened to the entirety of Dr. Schlozman’s address. Would he deconstruct the myths and hatred surrounding this seminal work, the way modern film scholars sometimes discuss, say, ‘The Birth of a Nation’?
Once again, sadly, that was not the purpose of this talk. Instead, Dr. Schlozman seeks to extract, from Romero’s own self-contradictory and confusing series of Anti-Zombie films, a sort of Unified Theory of Zombie Prejudice, and along the way, an arbitrary standard of what is, and is not, a Zombie, utilizing a combination of observations of the films and his own personal preferences and theories.
Although the discussion was framed as being limited to Romero’s oeuvre, it becomes clear that, like many ‘Zombie Enthusiasts’, Dr. Schlozman draws most of what he considers to be a Zombie in general from Romero, and specifically, from earlier Romero films (Night, Dawn, Day, but not Land, Diary or Survival). That’s not a bad idea if you want to maintain consistency, but it misses out on the gradual evolution of even Romero’s retrograde depiction of the Differently Animated. For example, in Land of the Dead, Zombies are shown organizing an amphibious invasion of an armed and defended island, launching a retaliatory strike, and then organizing a safe and swift withdrawal from combat, all while limiting themselves to a roughly proportional response. These are highly sophisticated maneuvers that, it must be said, superpower nation-states often find themselves unable to achieve.
Those later, somewhat less unkind depictions would severely undermine the core of Dr. Schlozman’s theory for ‘Zombie Neurobiology’, which basically consists of the notion that Zombies have suffered severe damage to several regions of their brain, which result in the stereotypical behaviors Romero often depicts. Dr. Schlozman proposes that Zombies lack ‘executive functioning’ due to a disconnect between the center of primal desires in the brain (like fear, lust, rage) and the frontal cortex, the area governing higher thought. He theorizes that the stereotypical ‘zombie gait’ is due to damage to the cerebellum, and that the seemingly insatiable hunger of Romero Zombies is due to damage to the ventro-medial hypothalmus, which governs the feeling that one is full after eating. (He notes, but fails to connect, the fact that in lab animals such damage apparently leads to hyperactive metabolisms and feverishness; Zombies, by contrast, are usually predominantly ectothermic, even in films).
(A good summary of his theory of Zombie neurobiology can be found here from io9).
Of course, as mentioned above, this explanation falls apart even limited to Romero’s films; for Romero, Zombies are capable of learning, planning, and evolving, even educating themselves over time; they actually have quite sophisticated ‘Executive functioning’, as mentioned above, by “Land of the Dead”, as they outfight and outwit an entire, heavily armed ‘Survivor’ population with relative ease.
They also possess the capability, even for Romero, of limiting their ‘insatiable’ hunger. Witness ‘Bub’, in ‘Day of the Dead’, who is capable of refraining from eating a living human directly in front of him, and seemingly mourns over his murdered Mad Scientist/mentor, without eating him, then going so far as to purposefully exact revenge upon his mentor’s killer (whose identity he had to first deduce).
I’d call that ‘Executive functioning’.
Of course, one can chalk those inconsistencies up to George Romero as much as anyone. Perhaps his position vis a vis Zombies is softening with age, or perhaps, as more than one aficionado of his movies has speculated, Zombies within the Romero-verse evolve over time, gradually becoming more ‘human’. Who can say? It’s not hugely relevant to the target audience, ever eager for more violent Anti-Zombie ‘fun’, and it’s not hugely relevant to The Zombie Rights Campaign, at least until Romero’s position has evolved to a point where he’s willing to consider non-violent solutions (at a bare minimum).
It is however worthwhile to point out to fans of these works, who often allow this cinematic formula to define their conception of the Undead, that it, in fact, has changed greatly over time both from our perspective and within the chronology of the Romero-verse.
Perhaps more useful to The Cause were Dr. Schlozman’s observations on both why the Survivors in these films so frequently turn upon one another, and why Zombie movie fans care for the films the way they do. Dr. Schlozman speculates that empathy, which may be neurobiological in origin (see his discussion of mirror neurons), is constantly frustrated in Survivors both by the presence of nearly psychotic fellow Survivors and by the Differently Animated, who, by appearing quite similar to Living people while acting very unlike them (in Romero movies, many comics and much of the post-Romero fiction) cast the brain into confusion and anger. Eventually, he believes, there comes a point where Survivors snap and attack the Differently Animated to vent their primal inability to cope with the new state of the world.
Could this be true, within the fictional settings described? It’s not really our place to say; our concern is with the implications for the real world. If Dr. Schlozman is correct, then violence against the Differently Animated is inevitable unless reconciliation is reached between the Living and the Undead. Fortunately, this is precisely our goal, and hopefully his as well.
Dr. Schlozman also has something interesting to say about the relationship between a fan’s enjoyment of these movies and his or her own sense of empathy:
Schlozman suggests that mirror neurons also help explain the popularity of the zombie genre among the living. While watching these movies, “we like the permission to look at these things that look human – but aren’t human – and have utter and complete permission to blow their heads off.” In other words, we get off on the thrill of guiltless violence. We enjoy a brief vacation from empathy, and take our crocodile brains out for a spin.
…
But the fun lasts only up to a point. As the movies progress, Schlozman says, we start to feel uncomfortable with the loss of our humanity-that we are “so willing to forsake those mirror neurons.”
The cost of the ‘fun’ to be found in oppressing the Differently Animated is the sacrifice of one’s own humanity, a piece at a time.
Not a shocking conclusion for the ZRC, but many people would surely be surprised by it.
What, in summary, can we learn from this presentation?
1) That the internally inconsistent or evolving Romero canon is still used to this day to define, and redefine, the Differently Animated despite our best efforts
2) In the event of an actual ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ the Survivors are essentially doomed to failure in any prolonged military struggle due to psychological breakdown
3) The perverse enjoyment of Anti-Zombie films exacts a terrible cost upon real-world Living viewers, who suffer wounds to their own personal sense of empathy and their connections to their fellow humans, both Living and Undead alike
While we firmly disagree with the actions in point 1, points 2 and 3, we would hope, lend weight to The Zombie Rights Campaign’s strategy of nonviolent, peaceful engagement between the Living and Differently Animated communities. After all, if the body of work found in Anti-Zombie film, and the observations of modern neurobiology teach us anything, it is that without such engagement with our fellow human beings, we are surely doomed as a species, Apocalypse or not.
Posted By John Sears on January 13, 2011
Recently we’ve talked about how Zombie Walks shouldn’t be an exceptional experience but an ordinary part of daily life. Ironically, it seems there are those out there in the Anti-Zombie film industry who agree, looking to tap into this burgeoning part of the movement – to reduce casting costs and provide footage for one of their slick video hate fests:
Horror author-turned-filmmaker John Skipp has been prepping Rose, his 3D zombie puppet musical, and he’s turned it into a full-on horror community experience by calling on fans and zombie walk groups everywhere to contribute.
Basically, Mr. Skipp is looking for contributions from the Zombie Enthusiast community to bankroll his film, and Zombie Walk people to act as extras in said film, which has a unique (if extremely distasteful) premise:
The plot in Skipp’s words: “Rose is a super-hot, hilarious ex-mental patient with a cable access puppet show in downtown LA. But now it’s 48 hours into the zombie apocalypse so she’s running rescue stations and musical numbers round the clock, trying to keep people’s hope alive…and periodically pausing to pulverize the skulls of the zombies trying to bust down her door.
Ahh yes, the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’, our old foe, here with us once again. From the days of Romero and his newsreel-esque depictions of a war against the Differently Animated that occurred only in his fevered imagination to modern, high-budget, ‘high-concept’ Anti-Zombie fare from Zack Snyder and Danny Boyle, this trope has persisted down through the years despite, well.. the fact that Zombies seem to have no intention of, or ability to, cause an ‘Apocalypse’.
Yet how does the world of film choose to reflect that reality, to adjust to the continued coexistence of Zombies and Living people? Why, by doubling and tripling down on the same tired message: that Life and Unlife are a zero-sum game, and whenever Zombies succeed, Living people fail.
Such a dispiriting and hateful message it is, too. Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t we just accept our differences and live in mutual respect and understanding?
Why is a pulse required for friendship? Do you need to check a person’s respiration and core body temperature before you allow them some sympathy?
John Skipp says ‘Yes’, and while you’re at it, could you chip in some time and money to help him beat up on the Differently Animated in his shiny new project?
We here at the ZRC trust you will see the wisdom in opposing, rather than supporting, such a production, at least until Mr. Skipp et al see the error or their ways. Maybe a script revision is in order? Could the Zombies be invited in for tea and peaceful negotiations?
We live (and Unlive) in hope, as always.
Posted By John Sears on January 13, 2011
Maybe I’m being a bit oversensitive, but I still feel there needs to be some pushback on the notion that Zombie Walks are some sort of exceptional event rather than the Differently Animated embracing and exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
Witness this newspaper piece on the controversy over whether Grand Rapids should allow a downtown motorcycle rally:
“Zombies are OK but motorcycles are not?”
That’s how one MLive commenter kicks off fun, fruitful debate about whether Grand Rapids should host a mid-July River City Bike Week.
In urging Grand Rapids to “invite this group with open arms,” commenter Cynical patriot notes that downtown embraces a Zombie Walk and other quirky gatherings by event planner Rob Bliss.
‘Cynical patriot’, while the ZRC has no opinion on this particular motorcycle event per se, your comment is in fact a blatantly false comparison of apples to oranges. Zombie Walks may be special occasions today, yes; but they shouldn’t have to be. Zombies, like anyone else in this nation of ours, have the right to walk the public streets and mingle and communicate with one another, as well as with members of the Living Community. That is a fundamental, Constitutionally guaranteed human liberty.
Motorcycles, fun and fuel efficient though they might be, are not a fundamental human liberty, one which is required as a bare minimum for meaningful participation in public life.
Let’s try to keep this in mind when we talk about Zombie Walks in the future, shall we? Sure, they are fun and informative events, but on some level, the day when we no longer need to declare a special event, but rather can see Zombies walk freely and openly amongst the Living?
That’s a far greater occasion than any ordinary Zombie Walk could ever be.
Posted By John Sears on January 12, 2011
It can be hard to evaluate an ongoing work, which is why, for example, I tried to be very careful with our recent review of the first episode of ‘Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?’ not to imply an endorsement of the show as a whole simply because of one episode in a series. Likewise, a creative work could initially appear to be Anti-Zombie only to turn the tables on its audience and firmly establish itself as Zombie Friendly in the third act (like the second Atomic Age movie did).
However, sometimes it’s pretty obvious where something’s going, and at the point someone’s attacking Zombies indiscriminately with a broken bottle, you pretty much know the score. Thus, ‘Flight of the Living Dead’.
Have you seen ‘Snakes on a Plane’? How about ‘Night of the Living Dead’? If so… you pretty much know where this is going. It’s the Zombie Apocalypse and a number of passengers on a flight to London are about to be trapped on board with some very regressive Zombie stereotypes who naturally want to eat them alive.
(Romero-stereotypes, not Russos, f you’re interested. They don’t talk, but shamble, and they don’t go after brains, just everything.)
Protagonist Kat opens the comic late for a flight because she’s trying to take art knives of some sort, possibly x-actos, onto the plane in a carryon bag. Thus we know we’re not dealing with a genius. She ends up sitting next to the man who was in the next security line over, who has been attacked by a ‘homeless person’ outside the airport. We know this because he loudly shouts it over and over again, which is also behavior that might draw some well-warranted attention in an airport.
Somehow, the TSA gives these two a pass to board a commercial airliner. Shocking, I know, that anything could fall through the cracks of our stalwart security state apparatus, but in all fairness they were probably busy x-raying some nefarious looking breast milk.
Once on the plane Kat gets to know the man who was attacked, and displays, you guessed it, his highly suspicious and nasty looking bite wound on one of his arms. From there, he quickly becomes a ‘Zombie’, attacks a flight attendant, who goes largely untreated for an hour in the cockpit until she also becomes a ‘Zombie’, bing bang boom, Zombie Apocalypse on a Plane.
The plane crashes and that more or less brings you up to date with the current published portion.
Honestly, if you’ve seen one hateful Romero-esque Zombie Apocalypse stereotype, you’ve more or less seen them all, and the ‘Snakes on a Plane’ riff doesn’t make it novel enough to stand out for me. Call me jaded if you like.
The Zombies are of course treated very badly and portrayed in the harshest possible light, and so, our dim-witted knife-toting airhead protagonist, with her obvious propensity for violence, is the designated heroine.
I mean, seriously. After the plane crash, what is the first thing she does?
She takes a broken bottle and lashes it to a stick/broom handle to form a crude but gruesome melee weapon.
(This sort of behavior is not a healthy sign)
Yes, that’s a normal and understandable reaction to a plane making an emergency water landing. Time to make our own pole-arms, using whatever happens to be on hand!
*eye roll*
In conclusion, judging from what’s gone so far I think it’s safe to make a snap judgment and declare that Flight of the Living dead is firmly in the Living Supremacist camp. Zombies are an even bigger threat to air travel, it says, than borderline psychotic weapons fetishist nerds, poorly trained airline staff or the laughable state of airline security.
We heartily disagree. Zombies are people too, and that means they should have full, fair and equal access to air travel like anyone else. As unpleasant, grueling, expensive, tedious, time-wasting and borderline fascistic as it is to board a plane, it should still be the right of every Zombie to get a flight to their destination without prejudice, harassment, or, and this should go without saying, some dingbat attacking them with a broken bottle on a broomstick.