Posted By John Sears on October 6, 2009

Ahh, it’s good to be back in Madison, land of beer and cheese.

The Zombie Rights Campaign, as previously announced on this blog, journeyed 400 miles to the South last week to visit The Dark Carnival film festival and spread the good word about Zombie Rights. After a day off to recuperate, our office is open again today to continue that noble cause in our hometown.

We accomplished a great deal, I think, and had meaningful interaction with a great many citizens. The ZRC screened almost all of the Zombie films at the festival, and we had a very successful protest at the special Night of the Living Dead event Thursday evening.

More detailed posts, with lots of pictures, will follow shortly. Thanks for your patience, Zombies and Zombie-allies!

Category: The Dark Carnival | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Romero, The Dark Carnival

Posted By John Sears on October 2, 2009

First, the ZRC would like to apologize for the relative paucity of updates over the last two days. Things have been an utter madhouse.

We have had some camera issues that have led to a delay in posting a lot of great first-hand documentation of our struggle for Zombie Equality here in Bloomington. Thursday night had a lot of bad feeling and some hostility, as you might expect, when we picked the public exhibition of Night of the Living Dead. A more detailed post on that will be up later. On the plus side, we got some real positive feedback and response, and a lot of support from the living community of Bloomington for our cause.

Friday saw the screening of George’s Intervention, an almost kindly portrayal of the living dead and their struggles. We will be reviewing this film in detail.

That’s all for now; when the ZRC returns to Madison this Sunday, expect a plethora of in-depth posts and dozens, perhaps hundreds of photographs to go up on Flickr.

Thanks again, and pleasant dreams from the Zombie Rights Campaign.

Category: The Dark Carnival | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Romero, The Dark Carnival

Posted By John Sears on September 30, 2009

The ZRC’s two selected representatives have arrived in Bloomington and checked into their hotel safe and sound. As yet there are no angry mobs, as well as a distinct scarcity of flaming torches or shotgun-toting hillbillies, so things are off to a fair start.

Tomorrow is the big day, 7 pm EDT on the warm and booze-soaked (unofficially) campus of Indiana University, where The Dark Carnival is showing the infamous Romero propaganda piece Night of the Living Dead, aka the lifeist Birth of a Nation. Fortunately the ZRC will be there to provide context and a cheery, upbeat counter-perspective, embracing the differences between our living and unliving fellow citizens. Hopefully, a good time will be had by all.

We hope to see you there!

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Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on September 26, 2009

We’ve been thinking a lot about language here at the ZRC lately; specifically, the language relating to the Undead and their long-denied struggle for acceptance and equality.

When the living talk about Zombies, they often use terms like ‘rotting corpse’, ‘living dead’, ‘shambler’, ‘slow-walker’ and the like, expressing their disdain and intolerance. But even the term ‘zombie’ carries with it enormous emotional and cultural baggage and is used as an epithet, often against the living themselves. So how do we maintain a civil tone?

The ZRC has developed a few simple guidelines for discussion and interaction that will hopefully allow us all to have an informative and constructive conversation without hurting feelings, causing offense or being misunderstood.

1) Acceptable/Preferred terms
When discussing actual, intelligent, diverse individuals who just happen to be reanimated corpses, the ZRC prefers that you use the word ‘Zombie’ with capitalization. This helps to indicate that the person is part of a minority, but no less valued, class of human being, a group on par with an ethnic or religious identification. Similar terms include Undead American and/or Differently Animated.

Examples:
Undead-American (or Undead-Canadian, Undead-Frenchman, what have you, depending on nationality)
Differently Animated
Zombie

2) Less Acceptable terms
There are many words that are used to describe the Undead that, while not intentionally hurtful, are nevertheless out of date or carry too strong a negative connotation, and so the ZRC suggests that they not be used. For instance, the term ‘Living-Impaired’. The ZRC does not endorse the term ‘Living-Impaired’, as it implies that the Undead all aspire to a state of Living, and that being alive is automatically preferable to being Undead.

Examples:
Living Impaired
Reanimate

3) Unacceptable Language
These are the words that are outright offensive and derogatory to the Zombie population, and the ZRC strongly urges that you not use them in everyday conversation.

Examples:
Tarman
Shambler
Lurch
Stench
Walking Dead
Living Dead
Stinky
Ghoul
Slow-walker

The ZRC wishes to thank all of our readers for their heartfelt cooperation in opening a productive and friendly dialogue on the issue of Zombie Rights.

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Posted By John Sears on September 26, 2009

The new Woody Harrelson movie Zombieland comes out next weekend, October 2nd, when we will be down at the Dark Carnival at our first big ZRC public appearance. The store will go live very soon, there are 4 more zombie comics in the ZRC’s HeavyInk subscription queue *and* several zombie movies to watch out from Netflix.

We aren’t even into October and already it’s a very busy fall season for The Zombie Rights Campaign.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics, Movies, Public Appearance, The Dark Carnival

Posted By John Sears on September 25, 2009

I apologize for the lateness of this review, but as seen in the previous post, the ZRC has been quite busy with travel plans.  We shall bring the fight for Zombie Rights to the grey, damp Autumn campus of Indiana University in a mere five days.  Can you feel the excitement?

On to the topic of the day, however: the second issue of the special Marvel Zombie event, Marvel Zombies Return.  This issue features Iron Man, and more of Marvel’s trademark gory Undead-bashing, unfortunately.  Details below the cut.

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Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics, Review

Posted By John Sears on September 20, 2009

Attention all Zombies and Zombie-allies!

The Zombie Rights Campaign is pleased to announce a major public appearance in Bloomington, Indiana.  Prominent ZRC members will be in attendance for the 3rd Annual Dark Carnival Film Festival, a week long horror entertainment-fest.   The ZRC will be on hand to observe human-Zombie interaction, promote Undead Tolerance, and where necessary conduct direct action and protest to raise awareness of the plight of Zombiekind.

Of particular concern for the ZRC in this year’s Dark Carnival is their Thursday night screening of legendary Anti-Zombie film Night of the Living Dead.  Night represented a new era in lifeist prejudice and spawned an entirely new set of hurtful stereotypes against the Differently Animated, and the Zombie Rights Campaign is deeply concerned that any such public exhibition of the film risks inciting further Anti-Undead feeling in the living community.  Therefore the ZRC will be on hand, with literature and good spirits, to present a more balanced and positive view of the ‘Living Dead’ than arch-foe of Zombie Equality, George Romero.

Also of note during the festival are several Zombie themed movies and shorts, even a Zombie music video called ‘Zombie A Go Go”.  The ZRC will make a point of screening all Zombie and Zombie-related films to judge the current level of tension between the communities of the Living and the Differently Animated.

So feel free to join the Zombie Rights Campaign, from September 30th – October 4th in lovely Bloomington, Indiana, for four days of awareness-raising fun.

More information on The Dark Carnival at www.darkcarnivalfilmfest.com

A complete list of all submitted films can be found at http://darkcarnival.bside.com/2009/films

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on September 17, 2009

We’re approaching Halloween, and that means it’s a dark time of year for Zombies and their allies.   The anti-Zombie films are sliding into your local multiplexes, costume stores are full of Zombie props, and the anti-Zombie videogame industry is gearing up for the Left 4 Dead sequel.  It’s a tough time to confront lifeist prejudice.

So it came as no surprise when the latest Marvel Zombies comic came to the mailbox of the ZRC this last week.  Recently we had a chance to peruse its pages, and… well, it’s not pretty.

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Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: Review

Posted By John Sears on September 11, 2009

In our continuing quest for a positive depiction of the undead in our media, the ZRC consumes a great deal of various entertainment products.  We see movies, watch television, read novels and, yes, comics.  As many of our readers are no doubt aware, there has been an enormous surge in popularity for comic books dealing with the undead in the last few years.  Equal to their popularity, however, has been the level of viciously anti-Zombie prejudice found in these books.   We at the ZRC have longed for a pro-zombie comic for some time, but have searched in vain.

Until, perhaps, now.

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Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics, Review

Posted By John Sears on August 31, 2009

So the chairwoman of the ZRC had to catch a flight today for her day-job, and was sporting her personal copy of the prototype ZRC shirt (which you get a sneak preview of here), which led to an eye-opening discussion about the cause of Zombie Rights when she checked in at the ticket kiosk.  Apparently the kindly woman behind the counter had not only never heard of the cause of Zombie Rights, she had no idea what a zombie was, and hadn’t even seen any of the often hateful and almost universally inaccurate Hollywood movies portraying the undead.

It just goes to show how pervasive ignorance about the undead is in our modern society, and serves as a useful reminder that it is that same ignorance that is our worst enemy in the quest for Undead Equality.

I think we should look at this as the proverbial glass-half-full situation, however.  Yes, this woman had never heard of the undead or their struggle, but she had also never been indoctrinated by the likes of George Romero and Tom Savini.  She was a blank slate on the entire issue before this afternoon, and now, thanks to a simple t-shirt, has been made aware of a larger and more diverse world.

I think we can all be proud of that.

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