Posted By John Sears on December 22, 2010

The ZRC had a brief but productive dialogue with author Jonathan Maberry back in October of 2009 on the topic of Zombie portrayals and the Zombie Apocalypse… or so we thought. His latest book about Zombies, Rot and Ruin, is out now and on the ZRC’s review pile, but I’m not here to talk about it; I’m here to discuss a rather unfortunate interview he gave recently with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Hey, who says the holidays aren’t scary?” says Bucks County author Jonathan Maberry, whose latest book is Wanted Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters and Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil (Citadel Press), with coauthor Janice Gable Bashman.

“Let’s face it, A Christmas Carol is a pretty scary ghost story. The Grinch is a monster story. A lot of holiday stories are frightening.

“A lot of holiday stories build on fears of all kinds to make the characters [and the readers and viewers] feel weak, lost, vulnerable, helpless . . . and yet hopeful. So, instead of a gun-toting hero rushing in to save the day, we have Santa, or a reformed Grinch, or a collection of well-intentioned ghosts. . . .

“Some of the best horror stories aren’t about monsters, and zombie stories are definitely not about zombies. Not the good ones, anyway. They’re about people who . . . escape and/or overcome a great and terrible event. They’re survivor stories. Some even have happy endings. Of a sort.”

Maberry’s first zombie novel, Patient Zero, was all about preventing a zombie apocalypse.

“My most recent, Rot & Ruin, deals with teenagers growing up in a post-zombie apocalyptic world and discovering that they may have a real future. One worth living.

“So . . . hope? Yeah, good holiday gift.”

(emphasis mine)

This is one of the unfortunate notions that we have to confront most often here at the ZRC and so it truly saddens us to see yet another author apparently subscribe to the idea that Zombies can’t be characters, that they’re only fit to be plot devices.

Zombies are, as we often say, People Too, but even if you didn’t believe that, you could believe they were *characters*. Zombies are always getting the short end of the stick even compared with other ‘monsters’. Dracula is definitely a character, for example, whose dubious humanity is key to his allure and menace. Werewolves are usually seen as not only characters but people suffering from an unfortunate malady, suitable for compassion. Even your rubber-suit monster types often get a poignant moment here and there, a backstory about radioactive waste disturbing their slumber at the bottom of the Pacific. But Zombies?

Well, the story’s not ABOUT them, is it? Not if it’s a ‘good’ one, anyway. Supposedly.

We beg to differ, as you no doubt imagine. The ZRC has seen many stories that are, in fact, about the Differently Animated. George’s Intervention was a fine independent film where the titular protagonist is a Zombie; the excellent and ZRC recommended ‘Dead Eyes Open‘ has a largely Differently Animated cast. Even Victorian Undead had a Zombie Moriarty who was… well, basically Moriarty as a Zombie, but that certainly qualifies him as a character, and the story was about his efforts at world domination, not shambling and brain eating. I, Zombie is an ongoing comic featuring a Zombie who does the Scoobie routine, solving mysteries; Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name features a stalwart Zombie narrator.

I could go on, but you get the drift; there are many well-crafted stories, Zombie Friendly or otherwise, where Zombies are pivotal characters.

So shame on Mr. Maberry for furthering this harmful meme, and here’s hoping that his latest book has a better attitude toward the Differently Animated than the man himself seems to, at least when talking to the Media.

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Books, Comics, Journamalism, Mainstream Media

Posted By John Sears on December 22, 2010

This story is baffling on a number of levels. Marvel, who we’ve had a few friendly jousts with in the pasts here at the ZRC, has decided to capitalize on the current Zombie-hating mania with yet another of those ‘Insert Zombies into Public Domain Work Here’ titles, this time utilizing Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as the basis for ‘A Zombie Christmas Carol’.

Only… they’re releasing it, tentatively, in Spring 2011:

Format and release date aren’t clear at this point, either — Marvel says “spring 2011,” but apparently it won’t start until at least April, as the comic did not appear in the publisher’s March solicitations, released today.

A Christmas Carol comic book… released in the spring. Hmm. I have no idea what to make of that timing. Did someone just think this up and they couldn’t make the end of year deadlines? Is there a printer on contract who had hours to burn? Why not wait until Winter 2011 to release it? I mean, who releases A Christmas Carol stuff around Easter?

Marvel, apparently. From the teaser art it looks like they’re going the standard ‘Zombies are bad, scary, yet darkly humorous’ route their company has routinely employed.

I guess, mysteries aside, one thing is clear: thanks to Marvel there will be a tiny piece of Christmas in July for Living Supremacists. God help us every one indeed.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on December 21, 2010

Well, not quite.

If you read the article, what they’re really talking about, yet again, isn’t Zombies, or a religious component to Zombiism, or even the spiritual beliefs or lack thereof of the Zombie Community. Rather, here again, it’s Zombies as a symbol. In this case, a symbol of spiritual emptiness:

Murphy, the author of “Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead,” says Americans’ appetite for zombies isn’t fed just by sources such as the AMC hit series “The Walking Dead” or the countless zombie books and video games people buy.

Our zombie fascination has a religious root. Zombies are humans who have “lost track of their souls,” Murphy says.

“Our higher spirit prevents us from doing stupid and violent things like, say, eating a neighbor,” Murphy says. “When we are devoid of such spiritual ‘guidance,’ we become little more than walking bags of flesh, acting out like soccer moms on a bender.”

The idea that Zombies are akin to drunken soccer moms is a new one, I’ll give Murphy that.

On the other hand, Murphy’s assumption, here unchallenged, that a ‘higher spirit’ both exists in humans and prevents them from engaging in stupid, violent behavior seems.. childishly naive. I mean, he is aware that we as a species have been engaged in near-constant violence and depravity since the very beginnings of recorded history, right?

This ‘higher spirit’ seems pretty unreliable. Scratch that; it seems *extremely* unreliable. Hence why we need laws, systems of justice and an equitable society (which we here at the ZRC strive to obtain for Zombies and Living people alike).

CNN then talked to a philosophy professor by the name of Stephen Joel Garver who says that Zombies represent

“human desire at its more unconstrained: ravenous and relentless.”

before plaintively, if rhetorically asking if there wasn’t any higher realm of God or morality we could use to protect ourselves from ‘the darkness’.

They follow this up by talking to an English professor named Rebeccah Borah from Cincinnati who says that not only are Zombies beyond redemption but that the only appropriate course of action is genocide:

“It is you versus them, and the more of an anti-zombie zealot you are, the better for all concerned,” Borah says. “Take them out as fast as you can at all costs because – former loved ones or not – they are the damned and you don’t want to catch it from them.”

Damnation is contagious now? That’s… ok, not completely new; the theme’s come up before, whether in Salem’s Lot (with Vampires) or films like Demons and Evil Dead. Of course, the fundamental question of justice comes into play when a person can be damned purely by circumstance, whether it’s hitting a tape recorder’s play button or moving to a town in Maine. In fact, the universe starts to seem entirely capricious and cruel in those circumstances.

So, in a nutshell, CNN asked an author capitalizing on a snarky, ‘self-help’ book for the Undead (that seems from its promotional materials to perpetuate negative stereotypes about the Differently Animated), and two professors, one of English and one of Philosophy, about the spiritual implications of Zombies. You know who they might have asked?

No, I’m not going to say ‘a Zombie Rights activist’, though I could have provided some useful balance to a piece like this. How about: a Zombie!

Yes, it can be hard to find someone who’s Differently Animated and wants to talk about religion, but I could have put CNN in touch with some people. Baron Mardi in particular, being both a Zombie and a practitioner of Voodoo, would be an ideal choice to discuss Zombie Spirituality.

CNN didn’t talk to a single advocate for the Undead, or a member of their community in good standing. Why? I can only imagine it would have undermined their intended theme, which is ‘Zombies Bad, Living people good, Spirituality, Yay!’ or something along those lines.

Fairly repulsive really.

More interesting, if still unfair to Zombies, is a short piece linked from the CNN article at Religion Dispatches.org, called ‘Toward a Zombie Theology‘. While still pandering to unfair stereotypes about the Differently Animated (and using The Walking Dead as a source material, for crying out loud), the piece attempts to address the dilemma that Zombies might pose for a traditionally dualistic religiously inspired worldview:

So does this leave theology out in the cold? The dominant theological understanding for anthropology in Christianity is still dualistic, a synthesis of the physical body and an immaterial spirit or soul, but in recent years those advocating a monistic view of human nature have arisen, articulating a perspective they call “nonreductive physicalism.” This view, advocated by scholars like Fuller Seminary’s Nancey Murphy, recognizes the significance of the cognitive neurosciences that have cast doubt on philosophical and theological concepts of the soul, but argues for human significance and the divine as opposed to materialist interpretations in the field.

In other words, the crux of the problem is the same whether you adhere to the outdated notions that Zombies are inhuman eating machines or a more enlightened view such as our own: since so much of what we consider to make a person a person stems, demonstrably, from empirical sources, what implications does that have for religion? In the traditional view of Romero style Zombies, this seems to argue against the existence of a soul, since parts of a person remain after death; from our take, since the person remains whether alive or dead unless physically destroyed, it also seems that the body is the crux of the issue, and not an undetectable energy of some sort that traditionally is viewed as leaving after life expires.

Again, however, it might be nice to ask a Zombie, theologian or no, for their perspective on the matter. At least this piece poses thoughtful questions rather than inciting the reader to violence. (Cincinnati Zombies should watch out for this Professor, she seems dangerous).

Yet again we see the media failing to serve one of the most vulnerable populations in America, and yet again, as we have so frequently seen, the Academy fails the Differently Animated, both in terms of intellect and reasoning, and in terms of empathy.

So sad.

Category: Zombie Media | 3 Comments »
Tags: Academia, Journamalism, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 20, 2010

I can’t think of any other particularly good explanation for his continued abuse of the term ‘Zombie’ in talking about whatever persistent untruths are bugging him (today) about his chosen profession, Economics.

A field which seems to be slightly less scientific than, say, Baron Mardi’s magic sombrero ritual to raise the dead.

We’ve previously seen how the so-called Liberal Blogosphere is fairly redolent with intolerance for the Differently Animated here and here.

Other than a catchy and defamatory term, do these instances have anything in common, are they in some way Zombielike? No, not really. As previously discussed, ‘Zombie’ banks are much more like Vampires, in terms of the raw mechanics, though that too is unfair to our Undead allies in the non-Sparkly camp. I mean, Vampires have style. Vampires can be sexy.

When’s the last time anyone thought their credit card company had style, let alone sex appeal? The very idea repulses me.

Now we’re on from bashing ‘Zombie banks’ to ‘Zombie ideas’. That, as I mentioned on Twitter, is an even more inane construction. Ideas cannot die, so they cannot rise, and therefore cannot be Undead. Accepting the slightly broader, Differently Animated Construction, ideas are not animated, and therefore cannot be ‘Differently’ so. An idea is an idea is an idea. ‘Zombie’ is not a synonym for ‘discredited’. Don’t believe me? Check your dictionary. It’s not in there.

Now that we’re seeing the classic semantic drift of bigotry, in which gradually the hated race or ethnicity or, here, Living/Unliving Status, becomes responsible for all of a chosen bigot’s woes. First, it’s just that the guy with the darker skin, or lacking a heartbeat, gets the better cubicle at the office. Next it’s his fault your daughter got pregnant and your son’s dropping out of college to join a band. Finally, there’s a grand conspiracy to bring down your personal ethnic group by shadow manipulation of international finance, or perhaps, a Zombie Apocalypse.

Can’t these people see how their hatred and small-mindedness blinds them? I expect better out of Nobel Laureates myself.

For shame, Paul Krugman, and for shame on the New York Times for continuing to provide him a platform for his Anti-Zombie hate.

Category: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism

Posted By John Sears on December 19, 2010

Just a quick update to show that the bright sun is having a rather deleterious effect upon all the neighborhood snowmen, including our Zombie individual.

As you can see, he’s developing a rather serious… slant.

I guess dark, sunlight absorbing coloration might have been a bad move. Huh. Next time maybe a powder blue-grey Zombie like Romero defamed in Dawn of the Dead? Would people even know what the snowman was supposed to represent?

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie Art

Posted By John Sears on December 19, 2010

Our worthy adversaries over at Zombie Universe alerted the ZRC to this distasteful and highly disturbing image:

Wow, huh? In case of Zombies you need a handful of guns, knives, utensils and Spam?

The first thing that strikes me about this tableau is that it’s hateful, fearful and offensive. The idea of greeting Zombies with violence is hardly new, but putting your bigotry on prominent display, behind glass? Stunning.

The second thing that strikes me is that I see several guns but no extra ammunition. Even assuming those guns are loaded (which is a catastrophically unsafe state of affairs), the hypothetical Zombie Apocalypse ‘survivor’ (aka Killing Machine) would be out of ammunition before they made it to the county line. (If they live in a city, change that to ‘before they got three blocks over’.)

Then there’s the First Aid Kit. That’s… a pretty sad, tiny little thing. I bet it holds like four bandaids and a couple cotton swabs; hardly what you want in a real emergency.

Naturally the setup includes a copy of Max Brooks’ answer to the Anarchist Cookbook. Someday I want to show images like this to Mr. Brooks and ask him how he sleeps at night, having disseminated so much hate so widely, and inspired so many ardent, deranged fans like whoever spent a good deal of time making their own Anti-Zombie emergency kit behind glass.

Yikes there are some scary people out there.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Products, Books, Max Brooks, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 19, 2010

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this site describing Plants vs. Zombies PVC figurines.

First, are these things actually authorized, or is this some kind of bootleg? Google results seem inconclusive.

The selection of Plants and Zombies is somewhat odd, too. Gargantuars I get, Squash have a fun character design, sure… but no Sunflowers? Even after the iconic youtube commercial featuring them?

Added bonus to whoever came up with the idea of using PVC, with all its known health risks, to make toys modeled on an Anti-Zombie game like Plants vs. Zombies. Now you can damage your mind *and* your genetic integrity at the same time! That’s what we call efficiency, here at the ZRC.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Toys, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on December 18, 2010

You really do have to see the pictures to believe it. A creative and yet sadly misinformed individual out there did a Zombie Apocalypse themed gingerbread house, right down to the vehicular mayhem, angry hordes of Zombies and Living people defending themselves with whatever’s to hand.

And according to the baker in question, it’s almost entirely edible.

I’m just stunned. Such dedication and so much creative energy went into making an Anti-Zombie… dessert?

Wow. I guess I’m going to have to hone my baking skills to compete with the Anti-Zombie community.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Products

Posted By John Sears on December 17, 2010

Popular webcomic and apparently Zombophobe site Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal recently posted a comic (or series of charts, depending on your definition of ‘comic’) simplifying the ‘Zombie Movie’ genre into chart form while glibly passing on the usual stereotypes about the Differently Animated.

You know the ones I mean. “Zombies eat brains. Zombies are a disease that if left unchecked will devour humanity. Zombies want to eat your face.”

I don’t know what’s worse, the vicious stereotypes about Zombies or the overuse of charts. Just kidding; it’s the stereotypes. But still, reducing a complex subject about the depictions of a large and diverse group of people, or even merely two genres of film, to 3 charts a piece? You lose all the nuance. With romantic comedies, granted, it’s less important, but I happen to believe that we need to understand the at-times subtle differences in hateful vision between a Romero and a Russo, in order to know how best to counteract their prejudices.

For example, the idea that Zombies are fixated on brains? That’s from Russo’s Return of the Living Dead. It has nothing to do with Romero’s body of ‘work’. You can’t very well point out to Mr. Romero that he’s wrong about the brain fixation, when it was never his schtick to begin with. It would just be foolish, and it’s best not to look foolish before, say, hotel security hauls you away and confiscates your signs and literature.

Hmm. That reminds me, it’s about time to book ZRC convention appearances.

So to sum up: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal passes on, and apparently condones, the vicious Anti-Zombie stereotyping present in mainstream cinema, without presenting any positive, Zombie Friendly alternatives. For shame! While Zombie Friendly products are still a distinct minority, they do exist and are growing in number year after year, in part due to strenuous advocacy work on behalf of the Differently Animated.

Work like we do here at the ZRC.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to browse the convention schedules.

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Comics, Movies, Public Appearance, Romero, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 17, 2010

Google has alerted me to the filming of a new and supposedly more socially-conscious Zombie movie being shot now in Georgia:

MACON, Ga. — First “The Walking Dead” swarmed Atlanta. Now the zombie apocalypse is infecting Macon.

Shooting is underway in Macon for the film “Followed,” a socially concious monster movie in which zombies symbolize society’s disadvantaged and oppressed.

…

The film is based on a short story by Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Will McIntosh.

Another local news story gives some additional background including brief talks with some of the actors:

Ivey is best known for her role in the 2008 hit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and says shes thrilled to take on this new role.

She plays a mature but opinionated professor.

Ivey says this film’s fast-paced action keeps her on her toes.

…

Producers say the zombies aren’t spilling blood, gore, or guts.

Instead, they say the movie focuses on zombies following wasteful consumers, pushing them to better treat the environment including recycling.

You ever get that sinking feeling in your gut when you read about an adaptation, where it feels like the people making the movie are just using the source material to apply a thin gloss of novelty to their standard tropes? I’m getting that feeling now.

When I told the Art Director about the ‘Followed’ movie and the synopses offered up by these sites, she was puzzled, and pointed me to some of the Zombie fiction anthologies I’ve yet to review for the site. As it turns out, she’d read ‘Followed’ in one of them, and so I sat down and read it, and started up the larger anthology to review for the ZRC. A couple of thoughts:

1) ‘Followed’ isn’t really about being an environmentalist, or even being socially conscious per se. In fact, the story in ‘Followed’ is more or less about the inevitability of harming others despite our best efforts to avoid it, and about the way that people reward themselves mentally for the steps they take to minimize harm to others, and the self-worth that a person can feel they’ve earned for being fortunate enough, and wealthy enough, to live a green lifestyle.

In other words, at no point do Zombies urge people to recycle.

2) There’s no ‘action’ in Followed: the Short Story. There’s a brief scuffle in an office. That’s it. I really hope this isn’t going to end up as an action flick, where the main character, a young hipsterish professor in the original story, flips out and guns down the Differently Animated John Woo style.

3) ‘Mature but opinionated’? Yeah. That feels like code words to me. There’s a line in the Funimation dub of Shin-Chan that features Hiro trying to compliment his wife to get out of some trouble or other, and he says she’s (paraphrasing here): ‘A strong, mature, independent woman and other words that don’t mean “bitch”.’

From a ZRC perspective, ‘Followed’ is a problematic story, even more-so because it’s being presented as socially conscious fare. In the ‘Followed’ world, essentially, if you cause the death of another human being, even partially, even indirectly, even with no knowledge of doing so, they rise as a Zombie, track you down, and…. stare at you. Apparently, forever. Society has adapted to this by… doing nothing, really. People ignore the Zombies, avoid looking at them, gently move them out of the way. Apparently Amnesty International cares about them, but that seems to be about it.

Somehow I don’t think a society as hopped up on Anti-Zombiism as ours would react so peacefully and accomodatingly to Zombie Stalkers. If there are two things I’ve learned many people don’t take well in my days working for the ZRC, it’s criticism and Zombies. Combine the two and, tragically, I forsee violence, not acceptance.

Then again, perhaps Mr. McIntosh is supposing the widescale success of the Zombie Rights movement? ‘Followed’ does take place in the relatively near future. Hmm.

Bottom line though, the story is all about the Living People. Zombies, though not treated to violence, but aren’t treated as individuals either. They are apparently forced into involuntary Undead servitude by some cosmic force to act as Unliving testimonials to the accidental or deliberate cruelties of the human race. They’re not people; they’re shambling scarlet letters, here to reveal your secret misdeeds. Only, as one might predict, this is somewhat less than effective, given that larger society doesn’t care about the same misdeeds as the Zombie animating force seems to. (Think PETA protestors without pulses or paint buckets and you’re getting the drift.)

Given that, the ZRC would have to rate the original story as Zombie Neutral. Living humans clearly regard the Zombies in ‘Followed’ with revulsion, and they’re not treated as people. On the other hand, the Differently Animated are serving a role on behalf of something akin to divine justice, acting like Furies or angels, a task classically ascribed to the forces of Good or Justice. So it’s a wash really.

If you’d like to read ‘Followed’ for yourself, you can read it in the same anthology I’m working through now, ‘The Living Dead’, available on Amazon.

Starts on page 405, I believe.

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Movies, Social Justice, Zombie Fiction