Posted By John Sears on October 15, 2011

Every time I think I can’t detest ‘The Walking Dead’ more as an exemplar of everything wrong with our crass, violence-drenched anti-Zombie media, they manage to find a new way to offend me.

Case in point, the way the show cashes in on PRODUCT PLACEMENT in its gruesome, savage pageantry, and how many sleazy corporations want to cozy up to them to do it:

BING, the two-year-old Microsoft search engine, has paid for product placements in movies including “Source Code” and television shows including “The Vampire Diaries” and “Hawaii Five-0.”

But when the search engine pursued a placement in “The Walking Dead,” the AMC drama whose second season premiere will be shown on Sunday night, the suggestion met the same fate as countless zombies on the show: it was shot down.

“The thing is that it’s a post-apocalyptic zombie concept,” where all power grids have been destroyed, explained Melissa Wasserman, the vice president of advertising sales marketing at AMC. “So people aren’t using their computers or phones in the show.”

…

Not all product-placement proposals for the zombie show are dead in the water. Because it is set in the present with the apocalyptic events having unfolded recently, the cars are of a recent vintage, which turns out to be convenient for Hyundai, which will be featuring a Tucson model in episodes of the coming season. Hyundai will give the actual car featured in the show away through a sweepstakes contest.

Pizza Hut, which advertises on the AMC show, also had internal discussions about integrating the brand in its plot.

“Maybe we could have had a scene where they ducked into a Pizza Hut restaurant to plan an attack or an escape,” said Chris Fuller, director of public relations for Pizza Hut, which is owned by Yum Brands. “But we didn’t feel like an on-screen integration was right for us.”

Yes, the marketing departments of some of the largest companies in the world have not so much crawled down into the gutter of ‘The Walking Dead’ as belly-flopped there, betraying both their complete lack of understanding of anything resembling art or narrative and the crassness of their attempts to ply their goods to Americans.

Read the NYT piece as an indictment of all the parties involved: AMC for considering this, the companies for attempting to pander through the show, and a media culture that facilitates this sort of operation.

Microsoft, Hyundai and Pizza Hut, the three companies featured most prominently in the NYT piece, have clearly decided that they want no custom from Zombie consumers or their allies in the Zombie Rights movement. I say whenever possible we grant their wish.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Advertising, Mainstream Media, Robert Kirkman, Social Justice, Television

Posted By John Sears on October 15, 2011

Sometimes the worst thing is when someone purports to be on your side all the while snickering and undermining your cause.

Case in point, an article that’s being passed around quite a bit to the ZRC from Cracked.com, which is allegedly about helping Zombies survive a Zombie Apocalypse:

New and potential zombies are a demographic sorely underserved by today’s Internet advice distributors. So, after consulting with the wildest-eyed experts we could find, Cracked has come up with the following guide for how to zombie to the best of your ability, and achieve full un-life self-realization.

Because finding or even reading this guide may pose difficult following the zombification process, we recommend you memorize all these steps now, before disaster strikes. Alternately, keep a copy close at hand, and should you suffer an infectious bite, staple a copy of this to your chest for ease of reference in your new undead state.

See, right off the bat the whole thing reads like a backhanded compliment. Har-har, Zombies probably can’t read, and you might want to staple useful info to your chest because as a Zombie you’ll be a scatter-brained monster, etc.

It goes on like that a lot, actually:

To find friends, attend places where there are likely to be other zombies — malls, deserted gas stations, cemeteries — and mingle. Don’t worry if you’re shy, or have confidence problems — you will have similar interests as these unpeople. Simply start a conversation politely by saying “Blaaarrragh.” Listen attentively and gauge the other zombie’s response — depending on whether they say, “Blaaaaaarrrgh,” or shuffle a bit to the left, you’ll be able to see whether this zombie wants to be a friend (both those actions indicate that yes, he does). Repeat as necessary until you are popular, or the hunger gets too much.

This is helping? Seriously?

No, this is ‘humor’ at Zombie expense. Jokes relying, in fact, on spreading the most harmful (and frequently juvenile) prejudices about the Differently Animated. It isn’t funny, it’s just hurtful and sad.

For shame, Cracked.com

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Journamalism

Posted By John Sears on October 13, 2011

Don’t get me wrong; this is not one of those cases where a developer or publisher just splashes some Anti-Zombie violence into a game or book or show to boost ratings; ‘The Lord of the Rings’ definitely, and prominently, featured Undead antagonists.

Sad as that was.

It also features some quasi-protagonists in the form of an army of the dead who fight alongside the good guys to save civilization, if only because they were forced to as some kind of karma thing. It was a start, I suppose.

Still, times change, and now there have been a slew of videogames based on the book series, and is it just me, or does this latest one seem particularly hard on the Differently Animated?

Lurking in the forgotten tombs of Barrow-downs, dwelling amongst the fallen dead, the Barrow-wights wait under reign of the Barrow-wight Lord. Revealed in this new video, the Barrow-wight Lord has overtaken this sacred Ranger burial ground. He uses magic and minions most foul to spread the rule of evil in the darkness and death of his lair.

The battle cry of the dwarf, the sword of the human, the staff of the elf – all must be used to best this most despicable boss and its hordes of skeletal servants. The Barrow-wight Lord uses his powers to pit man against man, friend against friend – only the strongest of Fellowships will best him.

See, I just don’t think this sort of unalloyed Lich bashing is called for. This is 2011, people! We should try to see Lich conversion for what it is, a personal decision of each adult who delves deeply enough into necromancy, or perhaps cuts a deal with a hollow suit of armor with a bad attitude.

We shouldn’t demonize people for their Unlifestyles.

Food for thought as we examine games based on the property going forward I think.

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

Posted By John Sears on October 13, 2011

Being October now we’re seeing an awful lot of events like this one come up, sadly Anti-Zombie:

For the past six months, Metzger has held down her administrative duties at Davis, as well as a part-time job at Naro Expanded Video in Ghent and a demanding gig as a community organizer of sorts.

Last year, inspired by a similar event in Raleigh, N.C., she organized Survive Norfolk, a zombie-themed game of tag in Ghent. She advertised it on Facebook, hoping maybe 100 people would come. More than 1,700 showed up. The buzz went well beyond Hampton Roads. USA Today profiled the Norfolk native. She has also been named one of Hampton Roads’ Top 40 Under 40 by Inside Business, which honors young businesspeople involved in community service.

…

This year’s Survive Norfolk will benefit local charities: d’Art Center, Hermitage Museum, Hope House Foundation and Lee’s Friends. Participants will be able to buy game armbands, $10 a pop, via the Survive Norfolk website, www.survivenorfolk.com.

Metzger is already thinking of another event that could involve the community. For a few years now, there has been something of a zombie buzz in pop culture, but if Metzger decides to organize another game of tag, she says the theme will have to change. “To keep people’s interest, it’s not always going to be zombie-themed,” Metzger said. “I also don’t want to get pigeonholed to doing a foot race game of tag. … ”

Sadly, Ms. Metzger is contributing herself to the pigeonholing of not just an event – but an entire population. While some might think that the ongoing Undead cultural renaissance of our current age is a case of ‘buzz’ or a fad of some kind, we, dear readers, know the truth: Zombies are finally claiming their rightful places in our culture and society.

Even if in the meantime they have to deal with some public co-option of their movement in ‘games’ like ‘Survive Norfolk’.

Observe, for instance, the rules which offensively divide players into, you guessed it, Zombies and ‘Humans’.

As if Zombies are not human!

Then they proceed to put the old slipper in while the Differently Animated are down:

All participants start out as Humans, obviously. Try your best to complete the game intact. If you’ve decided you cannot bear the thought of a zombie-filled world, you can be preemptive and come in zombie attire.

…

Humans

Your objective is to hit all 4 checkpoints and make it to the End Point within two hours all the while avoiding getting turned into a Zombie.

How you survive is up to you.

…

Zombies

Your objective is to track down and eat as many Runners as possible via two-hand tag.

Happy hunting!

Yes, because all Zombies want to do is track down and EAT people. They can’t participate in a game beyond being the slavering, fiendish, basically mindless wall of antagonism that drives the player characters toward their goal: avoiding members of another culture they are unfamiliar with.

Or in this case, mostly a bunch of small-minded Living individuals play-acting as being Zombies. Greenface, anyone?

Wow.

As you might have guessed, the ZRC condemns this event and all it stands for, and awards ‘Survive Norfolk’ our lowest demerit and mark of shame, the Living Supremacist ranking, for its cruel and dehumanizing segregation of Zombies in such a public forum.

For shame.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Public Event, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on October 12, 2011

This is just bizarre.

Basically, Australia’s had a lot of natural disasters lately. Last year, it seems, a lot of Aussies in turn used social media, Facebook and the like to get updates on public safety related information, rather than legacy media like TV broadcasts and radio.

All well and good so far.

To facilitate this use of the internet for public safety, the Queensland cops have in turn created a web portal that has links to their social media and that of their various public safety partners. Basically you can load one page to see what’s currently on fire/flooded/being attacked by angry koalas across the whole area.

Again, all well and good.

However, it was felt that stress-testing the site was necessary, given the rather high demand placed on their Facebook pages last year, so the Queensland law enforcers decided to create a fake emergency of sorts to crank up the page hits: a Zombie Apocalypse, set on World Zombie Day.

Oh my:

We’ve dealt with floods, a cyclone, bushfires – even a couple of earthquakes – but now Queensland should prepare for a possible zombie attack, police say.

Police plan to test a new disaster information website on Saturday, World Zombie Day, “by helping Queenslanders survive a possible zombie attack”.

Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett says the aim is to get as many people as possible to visit the Qldalert.com page in one day, to replicate the traffic that would be experienced during a disaster.

The whole exercise feels kind of surreal to be honest. I mean, there was an actual press conference about this site launch, peppered sporadically with Anti-Zombie hate speech:

Tying it to World Zombie Day is a particularly low blow, given that WZD is a consciousness-raising event that tries to use public spirited Zombies and their allies to collect food for the needy.

Exploiting a charity? For shame, Queensland. For shame.

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

Posted By John Sears on October 12, 2011

Submitted for your bemusement:

Zombies Lick My Screen 1.0 – iPhone/iPad app

[prMac.com] Montreal, Canada – Hungry zombies want to lick your screen.
They’re gross. They’re hungry. And they’ll lick your screen clean to the bone.

Tap the screen and one of the four zombies will lick away whatever you have displayed. It’s gross and fun. (Some might even say scary.)

You can even send ‘Lick-o-Grams’ to others using this app where the Zombies lick away until an image is revealed.

Riiiiiiiight.

On the other hand, it seems to be a light-hearted and not-designed-to-terrify app. If they put out an Android version I’ll probably give it a look.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on October 10, 2011

We’ve put something like 50 hours into the super-huge and expansive latest entry in the Fallout franchise over the last few weeks here at the ZRC, and it’s been quite the adventure. A full review will arrive.. eventually. This game is so huge it’s hard to say when that will be!

So far, however, despite a relative dearth of Zombies (called ‘Ghouls’ in the Fallout universe) in the early hours of ‘New Vegas’, we’ve seen a number of fascinating portrayals of the Zombie population in the game.

For example, in ‘New Vegas’ you have a Zombie religious leader (ok, it’s a bit of a cult, but not an evil one) named Jason Bright. The complexity and nuance afforded this character, not to mention the idea of Zombie religious factions themselves, is highly unusual in our blood-drenched Anti-Zombie media.

Also noteworthy, and making me particularly giddy today, is a Ghoul Super-Scientist adventurer by the name of Keely.

Part Indiana Jones, part Dr. Venture, all Zombie. Outstanding.

As I said earlier, a full review will appear eventually, but it’s hard to see how anything could derail this Zombie Friendly train. Bethesda has apparently done it again!

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

Posted By John Sears on October 10, 2011

We’ve previously discussed this game, but the fundraiser is running down and yes, it is fully funded, but they’re still promoting new ways to get players involved in Anti-Zombiism:

Notable Reward: $20 – You can call up a hotline to have your best zombie impression recorded for in the game. Also a spot in the game credits.

Oh GOOD. Interactive Greenface competition. That’s very helpful.

Sigh. The fundraiser ends on October 10th, apparently. And then begins the war (against this particular instance of hateful propaganda gaming).

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

Posted By John Sears on October 9, 2011

This story is very sad, even if it happened a long time ago:

Two early medieval skeletons were unearthed recently in Ireland with large stones wedged into their mouths — evidence, archaeologists say, that it was feared the individuals would rise from their graves like zombies.

…

“In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves,” Read told Discovery News.

Revenants or the “walking dead” tended to be people who lived as outsiders in society, according to Read.

The two Irish men could have been considered potentially dangerous people, such as enemies, murderers, rapists or they could have been ordinary individuals who died suddenly from a strange illness or murder.

Anything outside the norm would have caused the community to fear that these people could have come back to life to harass their loved ones or others against whom they had a grudge.

The poor, harassed and potentially Zombie individuals were buried sometime in the 700s, their bodies cruelly mutilated with large rocks shoved in their mouths, apparently to deter them from coming back.

And frankly, who’d want to come back from the dead if this is the way you’re going to be treated?

Who shoves a giant rock in someone’s face? Yeesh!

Needless to say this is yet another tragic example of the very long history of persecution the Differently Animated have faced down throughout human history – and of course yet another example of how, no, not everything relating to Zombies comes from George Romero (who wouldn’t make a film for another 1200 years, give or take).

Poor, ancient Irish Zombies. We’re here.. well, in their memory at any rate.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Academia, Euro-zom, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on October 9, 2011

Just to show that the ZRC goes after friends and foes alike with neither fear nor favor when it comes to our core mission, we must again point out that the apparently Anti-Zombie movie ‘As Night Falls’ starring our ZRC pal Deneen Melody amongst other talents is screening at an upcoming film festival in Massachusetts:

As Night Falls
Sunday Nov. 6th 2:30pm – Film Block 11

Killer Film Fest Online – Block 3
October 26th 7:00pm – October 30th 11:00pm

Yes, it also will apparently screen online for those who cannot attend in person; details here.

Clearly this news hurts us, and the larger Zombie Community can rightly take offense, but the ZRC still feels that the outreach we’ve put in with the indie horror community has paid great dividends. We should applaud those who, like Ms. Melody, are willing to engage with our work rather than hiding from constructive criticism.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies