Posted By John Sears on October 26, 2010

The ZRC has a bit of a mixed relationship with Flickr. On the one hand, they provide a fantastic image hosting service that greatly simplifies the process of providing you, the loyal Zombie Rights reader, with illustrative examples of our campaigns. On the other hand, well… look at how they treated the subject of a Zombie Walk in Toronto.

Hosting these fantastic images demonstrating the peaceful presence and activities of a much-maligned minority group is a terrific contribution and aid to The Cause. But Flickr couldn’t resist slipping in a little editorializing of its own here:

Just in time for the upcoming Halloween, a zombie walk just took place in Toronto. You can see the photos featured above and more impressions from the event that will give you the creeps by doing a tag search for torontozombiewalk2010.

Why should this lovely and peaceful social gathering give us ‘the creeps’, Flickr? Just because the participants happen to be Zombies?

How prejudiced indeed.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on October 25, 2010

After receiving multiple informant tips about Sears running a big Zombie themed promotion online, I went to the site today expecting a casual re-skinning job, the sort of thing many sites do for a brief holiday advertising event. Instead I found a fairly deep multimedia experience, with layers upon layers of Undead related content. For this promotion, Sears has a twitter feed, a youtube channel, a flashy sub-section of their main website, even a service to recommend products for Zombies to purchase.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Sadly, that suspicion turned out to be correct, for this site is, upon closer examination, not designed to cater to an underserved portion of the populace but rather to exploit harmful stereotypes about them to sell home products.

In truth, they’re not exactly subtle about their negative perspective on the Differently Animated. For an example, check out some of the graphics they use to build the website.

Note the harmful stereotypes Sears is peddling about the Differently Animated customers they’re supposedly targeting with these ads. Honestly, is there any more cliche and bigoted assertion about Zombies than the notion that they all ravenously, and ceaselessly crave human brains?

Is Sears aware that this particular trope originates in fiction, specifically the odious Return of the Living Dead, and is a gross distortion of the actual relationship of Zombies to human brains? (Yes, some Differently Animated individuals require nutrition derived from brain, but this hardly defines them as fully realized individuals. Brain of one type or another, particularly from cattle, is eaten all around the world, yet you don’t see French people defamed for their cuisine)

Sears is even floating the idea of a specific Zombie language, ‘Zombian’, which is made up of groans and slurred words, many of which sound like ‘brain’. I don’t have a clue what they’re trying to say here; that Zombies are only able to communicate in stereotypical movie Zombie ‘speech’, but that this constitutes a language, so it’s not all bad? Talk about a mixed message. For the record, Zombies speak the same languages as the rest of humanity, and we don’t need to make up some faux linguistic discipline to isolate them.

The site is laden with features exhibiting this same attitude of casual defamation toward the Differently Animated, always emphasizing their alleged differences with the Living, rather than the host of similarities, shared hopes, dreams and ambitions they possess alongside their traditionally animated counterparts.

In particular, they prominently showcase a recommendation feature, allegedly intended to help Zombies find products they would enjoy, after filling out simple survey of sorts. However, examine the options they present here to the Differently Animated:

Yes, once again, all Zombies insatiably crave brains, and Sears alleges, most of them are pretty unpleasant to be around as well. This is supposed to encourage Zombies to spend their hard earned money at your store? Somehow I doubt it.

If you complete the process of telling Sears what sort of ‘Zombie’ you happen to be, with what socially undesirable traits, you are sent to a screen something like this one:

As you can see, Sears doesn’t actually have products in mind for the Zombie community; rather, they want to exploit the image of Zombies, in this most sensitive time of the year no less, to sell generic consumer goods with no particular bearing on Zombie life.

It goes further; in addition to the website, Sears is also running a ‘zombieshopper’ Twitter feed to push their goods and spread awareness of the campaign to sell furniture by bashing Zombies. Here you can see a representative sample, illustrating the kind of marketing push they have in mind.

“Zombies eat people, Zombies love brains, Zombies have to wear a disguise to POSE as members of the human race. ” Sears is striking savage rhetorical blows against the Differently Animated, peddling Anti-Zombie hate, and to what end? To promote their holiday sales rush?

It even extends to a series of Youtube videos mocking the Zombie community as patrons. The most famous of these is the ‘Fitness for Zombies’ video, giving a hard sell on exercise equipment to the Undead patron… in part by selling them on extraneous features like heart rate monitors.

Seriously? You’re trying to sell Zombies heart rate monitors? Are you even paying the remotest attention when you make these videos, Sears?

Appalling. Here the venerable department store had a chance to be bold, innovative and at the same time work toward a noble humanitarian goal, helping raise public awareness of the Differently Animated and striving to increase tolerance and understanding at the most trying time of the year.

Instead they crack cheap Anti-Zombie jokes and sell mixers. Utterly disgusting.

(All images belong to Sears and are used here in the spirit of journalistic criticism)

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 3 Comments »
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Posted By John Sears on October 25, 2010

Making this a brief post so I can get back into delving deep into the Sears website to learn more about their Zombie promotion, but I did want to share a few of the photographs taken at the big Horror Society Film Festival on Saturday night.

It’s hard to overstate the classic movie palace beauty of the Portage Theatre; this is a fantastic venue for film viewership. Take a look at this classic architecture.

In the overview piece that I put up yesterday, I mentioned that the ZRC had the opportunity to attend a very interesting Q&A session for Slices of Life featuring much of the cast and crew, including director Anthony Sumner. Here’s a shot from that session showing the great turnout they got for the session from their talent.

Dr. Calamari eventually showed up after causing some mayhem, allegedly, on the roads between Chicago and Bloomington. He was especially proud of his snazzy new suit, and felt the need to pose for the camera.

The ZRC was fortunately able to harvest his natural showmanship for a good cause, namely showing off our protest signage made to show solidarity with the exhibition of A Serbian Film.

More pictures are available at our flickr page for this event, which you can reach here. Mostly it’s just some test shots in low light; the new camera, despite being identical hardware, seems to have slightly different firmware than the last so I played around with settings a bit.

Either that, or I’ve forgotten how to use it in a few scant weeks, which, let’s be honest, is a distinct possibility.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Horror Society, Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on October 25, 2010

Multiple trusted ZRC sources have alerted us to the big online promotion department store heavyweight Sears is currently engaged in, viewable at www.sears.com/Zombies

I’m going through the site now, and will have impressions in greater depth up soon.

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

Posted By John Sears on October 24, 2010

I spent a large part of this day sleeping off the driving, and then we had a desk to assemble for the Artistic Director to draw more Tims upon (whether she likes it or not), so it’s been a light day around the old ZRC compound, agitation-wise.

However, I can now present a quick overview of the Horror Society Film Festival, as well as a few choice shots from our new ZRC recording device extraordinaire!

It’s nice to be able to take pictures again.

Once again, this relatively mild October weekend found the ZRC going to the Portage Theatre in windy Chicago for a day of films and frivolity, interrupted only briefly by a trip to IKEA for the art director’s new office furniture that ballooned into a three-hour purgatory of traffic jams and detours.

Ahem. I’m a little bitter.

The rundown (detailed reviews of Zombie-relevant films to follow later)

TXT: The Movie
The latest from the man behind great indie film The Landlord, TXT was described after the film by creator Derek Dziak as a slasher film in the style of Airplane. Bizarre bloody slapstick, nothing to do with Zombies, but some truly great sight gags throughout reminded me of why I love really good horror comedies. Watch for a great appearance by First Jason frontman Ari Lehman.

Cabine of the Dead
–Not Zombie friendly at all! Completely unlike my fond hopes of earlier posts for a tale of Zombies denied public services by a fearful and prejudiced human, this is a Zombie Apocalypse flick gussied up with French art film trappings and the twist of being stranded in a phone booth, leaving many younger audience members no doubt asking: “What’s that strange glass box he’s stuck in, and why does it have a giant cell phone glued to the inside?”

I jest.. slightly.

Lonely
–Billed as a story about ‘even’ Zombies needing love (thanks for the concession!), Lonely features a pair of characters wandering the abandoned streets, engaged in the same activities, one human, one a ‘Zombie’. This might be endearing if it wasn’t clear with every scene that the ‘Zombie’ is meant to be a crude and horrifying mockery of human existence, failing comically at mimicking the actions of the Living. The surprise ending doesn’t help much.

SubHub
–A mock commercial for a product to turn disloyal or inattentive husbands into dedicated Zombie love-and-chore machines, SubHub is transgressive film at a minimum, featuring as it does… how to put this… Living-Undead carnal relations. While Zombie hubby comes off better than Living Hubby, I’m not sure if this is an avenue toward greater Zombie acceptance that the ZRC wants to pursue.

There’s a joke in here about it being unfair to exploit Zombies in *marriage* but I’m going to forgo attempting it as a gesture of good taste.

Chopping Mall
–Oh wow. This might be the ultimate 80s horror flick. One part Terminator, one part Dawn of the Dead, five parts earnest stupidity, three parts unnecessary female nudity, featuring adorable killer robots. Not to be missed. Has absolutely nothing to do with Zombies; so what? You’ll laugh until you cry.

Slices of Life
–A new anthology/compilation series from director Anthony G. Sumner, featuring ZRC friend and ally Marv Blauvelt in a key and classic Dual Citizen role, Slices of Life is actually quite the movie – pity it falls prey to using the ‘Zombie’ label as an epithet in one segment, W.O.R.M.

Does W.O.R.M. actually feature Zombies? I’m agnostic on the question. The nanotech spawned creatures strongly resemble the criminally-underseen (at least in America) Demons, the classic Argento-Bava movie that can serve as a handy touchstone, not to mention hyperstylish exemplar, of the blending in European horror films between religiously inspired creatures and Zombies. I wouldn’t be inclined to call them Zombies at all, except that the film does itself, both in promotional materials and in the form of a newscaster within the segment who uses the term.

Given an opportunity I’ll see if any of the cast or crew can clarify the matter for the ZRC.

Outside of W.O.R.M., Slices of Life features a number of very successful reimaginings of classic horror tropes tied together with an atmospheric and ingenious framing device. If, in fact, it does feature somewhat negative images of highly-atypical Zombies, then it’s minimally offensive and goes down as an enjoyable experience in spite of that.

A bonus, as this was the World Premiere of Slices of Life, it was accompanied by a lively Q&A session afterward, with questions fielded by the cast and crew. One of the best Q&As we’ve attended, as a matter of fact, informative and funny.

A Serbian Film
–I blogged about this film previously, and urged people to see it in support of free expression, greatest tool in the Zombie Rights arsenal. After having viewed this serious, brooding, artful and truly horrifying piece, I can offer it a heartfelt recommendation on critical grounds too. A Serbian Film plumbs depths of disgust and, well, horror that most films in the genre would never dare to imagine, in pursuit of a serious discussion about the nature of victimization. The film’s screenwriter had this to say about the themes of the film:

“This is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government… It’s about the monolithic power of leaders who hypnotize you to do things you don’t want to do. You have to feel the violence to know what it’s about.”

I’m not sure, after having seen it, if this is self-justification, historical revisionism/apologia about the collective responsibility of Serbian society for the hellish violence of decades of bloodshed, or an honest discussion about the nature of guilt under truly despicable coercion. What A Serbian Film is not, however, is crass, or exploitative, or meaningless, or even damaging to your ‘soul’, except in that it might reawaken and deepen an understanding of just how twisted and wicked people can be to one another. I think that’s an awareness adults have a duty to cultivate anyway.

It is deeply unpleasant to watch, of course. If it wasn’t, either there’d be something wrong with the viewer or the filmmaker.

Every adult, and every fan of intellectually stimulating theatre, every student of the human condition, could probably gain from seeing this film. On the other hand, if you do, it’s only fair warning to say the things you see will be very hard to put behind you, and people of good will may not be able to physically sit through the entire film.

If you’re up for the challenge, and get the opportunity, by all means go. I’m deeply and sincerely grateful to the Horror Society for giving us the opportunity.

That’s it for the quick overview of the Horror Society Film Festival. Pictures and more in-depth reviews of Zombie related films to come in later posts, plus some ZRC news about The Dark Carnival Film Festival and other events to come.

Thanks to Dr. Calamari, The Dark Carnival Film Festival, the city of Chicago and most of all, a very special thanks to the Horror Society for having us. It was a blast and a learning experience.

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Euro-zom, Horror Society, Movies, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on October 22, 2010

Did you know that there’s a haunted house on Navy Pier in Chicago called ‘The Fear’?

If so, did you know that it’s a horrible outrage against the Differently Animated?

You see, the theme of this haunted house is that various Undead or ‘monstrous’ entities were captured and have now been put on display for the amusement and terror of haunted house patrons.

Here you can see the despicable, Living-Supremacist manner in which they regard Zombies:

CAPTURED : CHICAGO

Space radiation, Voodoo spell, scientific mistake or… who cares? They eat people, crave brains, and no matter how slow they move, they always catch you. Look around you, they’re everywhere. Whether it be in the mall, the streets, or the cubical next to you, the only difference is which one is more dead than the other.

Truly this ‘amusement’ facility is a travesty and a severe blow to cordial relations between the Zombie and Living communities in Chicago, one of the most progressive places on Earth with regards to the Differently Animated.

I learned about this haunted house via the Horror Society, which has obtained some free passes that will be given away at the Horror Society Film Festival (that you should really be attending yourself if you live in the general Chicago area).

I have no idea how many spies, Bothan or otherwise, were required to obtain these vital intelligence gathering passes, but we at the ZRC hope they are put to good use; perhaps even utilized for a rescue mission.

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Horror Society

Posted By John Sears on October 22, 2010

The Zombie Rights Campaign will be making its annual protest appearance at Freakfest, the official, soulless marketing term for Madison’s enormous annual Halloween costume contest/party spectacular.

You can check out the Freakfest lineup here; this year for a musical act they landed OK Go, which is actually pretty awesome.

If past years are any indication it will be a wild yet friendly bacchanal of drinking, elaborate costumes, Anti-Halloween protesters and bored cops on horseback. The ZRC will attend as per usual with our signs and literature, although last year we barely managed to get signage in through security (apparently picket signs are close to weaponry), so no promises we’ll be able to get the signage in this time; the pamphlets should be easier.

If you’re in the Madison area you should seriously come out and join the fun; it’s a great time and a unique experience. How many Halloween parties get 45-50k guests attending?

At least one, and that’s why we’ll be there.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Music, Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on October 22, 2010

There has recently been some controversy over the upcoming Horror Society Film Festival, which the ZRC will be attending tomorrow starting at 2 pm at the lovely Portage theatre in Chicago.

Oddly enough, this controversy has nothing to do with Zombies, which might mean that we need to redouble our efforts a bit. Instead, it is over the showing of an edgy new international movie called ‘A Serbian Film‘, which is being shown shortly after midnight, after the World Premiere of ‘Slices of Life’, the new anthology piece starring longtime Zombie supporter Marv Blauvelt, amongst many other talented folks.

A Serbian Film has been dogged since the very beginning with controversy over its graphic and disturbing depiction of sexual violence. In countries with weaker free speech protections it has even had trouble being legally exhibited, famously being de facto banned at the Frightfest festival in Westminster after the local film censor board played games with granting it a certification (you may remember similar games played against a Zombie film in Australia, as highlighted here by the ZRC)

The content of this movie, which I have not yet seen, has taken on a nearly legendary status, and the film is being ascribed almost mystical powers to disturb the audience. A famous review born out of the SXSW Film Festival screening of A Serbian Film compares watching the movie to going to war, or perhaps having your ‘soul’ itself raped. At Cannes, where it was shown to potential distributors, one supposedly became so upset that they tried to leave and fainted instead, injuring themselves in a fall.

We here at The Zombie Rights Campaign can’t help but compare these experiences with a disturbing movie to the struggles Zombies experience with movies year-in and year-out. A Serbian Film may well be graphic and disgusting, perhaps crushingly bleak and morbid; but can the experience of watching it really be that much worse than the experience of a Zombie who has to endure Dawn of the Dead? Is there any chance that A Serbian Film will have the toxic and pernicious effects on society, or even a tenth the negative impact of Night of the Living Dead, the Romero-Russo epic of fearmongering against the Differently Animated?

And yet, you’ll notice that the Zombie community does not call for censorship of these films, and the ZRC does not demand their suppression by the state or anyone else. Rather, we here at The Zombie Rights Campaign see exhibitions of these movies as a chance to do our most important work and make contact with the public, educating and enlightening those who would otherwise be further indoctrinated against the Differently Animated.

Free speech is critical to our mission, and key to bettering Zombie lives. If contentious issues like Undead Equality were settled by simple majority consensus, then the Zombie haters would have already won, and your hardworking ZRC would be out of business for good. Instead, we can compete freely in the marketplace of ideas, working to change minds rather than dictate their contents.

Hence our steadfast refusal to call for censorship. Yes, the ZRC might protest your Zombie movie. We might picket outside your theatre, and hand out literature to educate your audience about the true nature of the Zombies you defame. We will not, however, try to prevent you from having your say, because your exercise of free speech helps protect our own.

For these reasons The Zombie Rights Campaign is taking the very unusual step of recommending attendance of a particular film unrelated to the Zombie Rights movement per se, and sight unseen at that. All fans of free speech and advocates for Undead Equality in the Chicago area should make a special effort to come out and see A Serbian Film at the Horror Society Film Festival tomorrow. Do it for freedom of expression, for the First Amendment, for artistic freedom, and of course, do it for the Zombies.

Category: ZRC News | 2 Comments »
Tags: Movies, Public Appearance, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on October 20, 2010

It’s important to have role models, and in a society biased against your very existence, positive examples and outstanding individuals can go a long way to salve wounds and clear the air of prejudice and misunderstanding. For these reasons, each year the Zombie Rights Campaign tries to highlight a select group of Undead individuals from a variety of fields who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to educate the public and change the negative perception of the Differently Animated.

Many of the nominees are figures in the media; some are fictional, and some are bravely standing up, despite the dangers, here in the real world, day after day. All have earned our respect, notice, and above all our thanks.

So without further adieu, here are the nominees for The Zombie Rights Campaign’s Zombie of the Year 2010:

(more…)

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 3 Comments »
Tags: Zombie of the Year 2010

Posted By John Sears on October 19, 2010

This comic from VG Cats sums up one of the biggest problems we here at the ZRC had with the Dead Rising Case Zero prequel: it just doesn’t work from a dramatic perspective. You’re ostensibly playing as a loving father trying to keep his daughter alive, and yet the game also pushes you to conduct gruesome, time-wasting experiments upon the unfortunate local population of Differently Animated.

Somehow it just feels insincere when one minute your objective is to obtain the life-saving drug Zombrex, and the next minute you’re detoured from obtaining said drug to construct a beer helmet.

So kudos to VG Cats for putting this criticism into the form of a humorous comic. Such art enlightens us all.

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Comics