We hope you'll find this blog an educational, entertaining, and inspiring source of information, whether you're recently undead, a long-time member of the differently animated, or a still-living friend of your fallen, yet risen again, brethren. Everyone with an interest in zombie rights is welcome!
In America, immigration is a charged topic and framed mostly along the lines of people coming across from Mexico, legally and illegally, along with policy questions over H1-B visas that rankle the tech sector in particular, mostly out of proportion to the relatively small number of visas actually granted. Periodically measures come up attempting to normalize our immigration policy with Mexico, but mostly over the last decade we’ve been militarizing the border, sinking lots of money into various kinds of fences and generally trying to pretend that our half-baked ‘solutions’ to a problem that stems in no small part from trade policies enacted under NAFTA to begin with are working.
I bring this up to analogize for our largely American audience; Europe has been facing a similar crisis of identity over its own immigration policies of late. Waves of far-right politicians, often openly-Fascistic, have been gaining significant ground in European nation after nation. Americans think of Europe as a hopelessly left-wing socialist dystopia, and to some extent that’s true (except for the dystopia or hopeless part), but on immigration policy Europe has a far-right extremist fringe to rival anything America’s Minuteman movement has to offer.
Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”, Chancellor Angela Merkel says.
She said the so-called “multikulti” concept – where people would “live side-by-side” happily – did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate – including learning German.
The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.
A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was “overrun by foreigners”.
…
In her speech in Potsdam, however, the chancellor made clear that immigrants were welcome in Germany.
This is going to end terribly well, I can just tell.
Even the Scandinavian bastions of liberalism haven’t been spared the creep of neo-fascism, as a fascinating NYT piece from February explored the rise of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee fervor in Sweden, a country which once encouraged immigration for labor, then abandoned immigrant favoring policies when said labor was no longer needed… but kept taking refugees for whom it had no jobs or apparent plan.
In the grand and unfortunate tradition of using Anti-Zombie movies to explore contemporary social dilemmas, some enterprising Swedes have made a Zombie Apocalypse film that is a *very* thinly veiled take on the Scandinavian aspect of this conflict, entitled Zombie 261:
Landskrona, Sweden, 2013. A ship crashes into the harbor dock. Police enter the wreck – and are attacked by the infected crew. Bitten policemen fall in a coma – and wake up as rabid monsters.
The disease spreads like a wildfire. Everyone tries to escape.
But the city is quarantined – the military erects a concrete wall around the city. The few non-infected – Swedes and immigrants alike – take shelter in the citadel.
As the infected try to claw their way into their sanctuary, the non-infected have to decide who the worst monsters are: their former enemies inside – or the infected on the outside.
As the tension inside the citadel escalate to boiling point, the non-infected, in order to survive, have to decide if they view their former enemies as monsters – or as brothers and sisters; if they see each other as immigrants and Swedes – or as fellow humans.
Yes, it’s time to rally all the Living people of Sweden together against those awful, awful Zombies. Truly a heartwarming tale of how you can unify a divided populace behind mutual hatred of someone else.
Which is a bit like the story about the old woman who swallowed a fly…
You can see the trailer here, which makes the Anti-Zombiism of the movie unfortunately very obvious. The question left for the ZRC seems to be, once we watch the final full length picture: Anti-Zombie? Or Living Supremacist.
We’ve talked about automobile advertising here before on the ZRC blog, believe it or not, with the odious and hateful campaign Ford did for the Fiesta not too long ago.
Thankfully there are more enlightened auto companies out there, and Honda has a new ad series that features a remarkably open and tolerant depiction of the Differently Animated.
Unfortunately, some of the press on the subject has been abysmal:
Honda Civic Perfect for Zombies and Other Freaks RPA gets exotic in new campaign By Tim Nudd
It doesn’t matter who you are—there’s a Honda Civic for you. That’s the message of RPA’s entertaining new ads for Honda, which broke Wednesday. To prove the point, they’ve assembled the most motley cast of Civic drivers imaginable. The five characters in the new campaign are:
• The zombie, Mitch, a salesman who’s into high-tech gadgets. His Civic Sedan is loaded with options like Bluetooth HandsFreeLink and navigation system with FM Traffic.
Other ‘freaks’ include a Luchador, woodsman and a ninja. Adweek can go jump in a lake for all we care; the ads themselves are wonderful though.
I’m embedding the group ad with all five characters as well as the Zombie character’s longer individual ad. There’s a bit of slapstick humor but really the fact that the Zombie character IS a character, and what’s more, represents a demographic Honda hopes to tap into with a car, resonates deeply with the ZRC.
Zombies as valued consumers… we could get used to that. Economic power often fuels civil rights movements after all.
This ad campaign gets a hearty Zombie Friendly rating from The ZRC.
Here’s a bit of an roundabout way to get the ZRC talking about Zombies.
Neil Gaiman and some very talented friends set out to make an album in 8 hours; 8 songs, hence the band name of ’8in8′. The project was surprisingly successful, though it was as frequently observed only 6 songs in 12 hours, and has become an album called ‘Nighty Night’ that you can download for 1 dollar or more, proceeds to benefit a music charity.
The members of 8in8 are no strangers to bucking the system. Amanda Palmer (from the Dresden Dolls) puts out her music online at Bandcamp (where it can be heard for free and then purchased for a small pittance, or whatever larger amount the listener decides) and believes in a new patronage system for creative arts. Neil Gaiman argues persuasively that allowing “pirating” of his work actually brings him more readers who then buy his books. Ben Folds, at least at one time (Ben Folds Five is listed on the Band that Allow Taping web site), appears to allow people to tape his live shows (thus getting music for free) as long as they do so unobtrusively (though he doesn’t seem to have an official policy). And Damian Kulash, with his band OK Go, last year left EMI and created a new music label in order to allow more musical creativity. All four are also heavy users of Twitter. So it makes a crazy sort of sense that they would collaborate on and record eight songs in eight hours (well, really six in twelve, but who’s counting), with input from their fans, bypassing the usual distribution and production methods while relying heavily on the Internet. They then put the music on Bandcamp and performed it live the next night (along with a few of their own tracks, including a “cover” of a recent mash-up of Gaiman reading from his introduction to Who Killed Amanda Palmer? with Ben Folds’s “You Don’t Know Me.”).
Fascinating. How does this relate to Zombies?
Well, at least one song, actually sung by Neil Gaiman, is kind of about one, the Zombie of Joan of Arc, coming back to life. What’s more, since the songs are released Creative Commons (under the exact same license as the ZRC actually), people can make videos:
Contains Death & Zombies. So sweet & funny. RT @carlygirlwriter: ‘The Problem with Saints’ video we turned in last night youtube.com/watch?v=sd05BQ…
So here, have a video about the Zombie of Joan of Arc coming back to teach the British what for. The song is called ‘The Problem with Saints’
We’re giving the song and the video an official Zombie Friendly rating because it creatively and sympathetically explores the plight a Zombie Saint like Joan would obviously face upon being resurrected so long after death into a world that has moved centuries past the concerns of her day.
We feel her pain, and so do the songsmiths. Plus it’s for a good cause:
Tomorrow’s supergroup today.
This project is Creative Commons BY-NC. For more info, please visit: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Initial proceeds from download-donations are going to berkleecitymusicnetwork.org – a charity which provides kids with every opportunity to see their musical potential.
You can download the album here. The site also has information on the songs and lyrics too, which is something I wish all bands with digital downloads would do; those online lyrics sites are really just parasites and often full of blaring pop-up ads. I get a tiny bit piqued that when I buy legal music I don’t get the liner notes; I’d gladly pay a bit more, people! hint hint.
Wow that’s getting me off track.
Download the album, help out a worthy cause, support Zombie Rights.
I trust nobody’s going to mind much if I talk about Madison’s ongoing activities if there’s free stuff involved:
Singer Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has always been a strong supporter of working people. Morello was so inspired after taking part in a demonstration and headlining a concert in February for the protesters at the state capital in Madison, Wis., that he wrote what he calls “fighting songs.”
Not only did he write and record the songs, he’s donating the proceeds of the new eight-song extended play (EP) “Union Town” to help working people. There’s more: For a limited time, you can download the title song free here.
Follow the bouncing widget below to get the song; you have to supply an email address that works to get the download link, and it signs that up for some email list of Morello’s, so it’s not *completely* free, but then again, you’re also free to immediately spam blacklist them if you choose. I’m personally interested, both because I like his music and because he’s been part of the movement here and hey, a man who gives me free music is already earning brownie points.
I was forwarded this story rather vociferously and repeatedly on Twitter, which only goes to show that we have an engaged following even internationally, which is very humbling for The Zombie Rights Campaign.
In short, although great progress has been achieved in some areas, especially here in the ZRC’s home base of Madison and in nearby Chicago toward establishing and solidifying the right of Zombies and Zombie-like individuals to peaceably assemble, alas in the UK the world has just born witness to a frightening backslide:
This was going to be a very silly blog. A combination of geeks, hippies and protesters had decided to mark the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate by having a picnic dressed up as zombies- some thought it was a political protest, some just thought it would be funny. We’ve done movies, books, TV, videogames, the Bible and Live Action Role Play on this site, so reviewing a zombie wedding party seemed like it would fill up our personal bingo card and maybe even rank high in google. To this end, unable to get to London myself, I asked Hannah Eiseman-Renyard and Amy Cutler to go and get photos and quotes for what I thought would be a bit of fun.
Then Hannah phoned me from the police station.
…
Amy Cutler explains:
“We were fairly inoffensive members of the undead, who ate some homemade ‘brainnnsss’ cake earlier in the day, and travelled on to Starbucks where we sat down with some tea. At this point, four police vans (with sirens!) came round the corner and did a raid on Starbucks. We were stopped and searched under a special Section 60 for the wedding day – by sixteen police men, although there were only five zombies – and finally arrested and transported to the police station.”
This story presents some tricky issues for the ZRC. First, we don’t really have an established presence in the United Kingdom or a lot of expertise in navigating their arcane legal system or increasingly byzantine civil society. The First Amendment rights and privileges that the ZRC heavily relies on are obviously absent or greatly diminished in a society lacking, well, a Constitution for one thing. We’re talking about a legal system that, it must be noted, has regularly engaged in grotesque suppression of personal behavior in recent years.
Secondly, from the materials put out by the organizers it’s clear that the rally didn’t so much involve Zombies or raise the issue of Zombie treatment in society as it utilized the spectre of Zombiism as a rhetorical cudgel against the current conservative English government:
I mean, really. Let’s be honest here. Any actual Zombies attending this convocation were probably doing so ironically. Hipster Zombies do exist, though in England I suspect they drink something other than PBR.
This is perhaps the most ridiculous part of this whole day. Sixteen police officers to arrest five zombies, when everybody knows that zombies can’t run.
…
The Royal Zombie Flash Mob was a very, very silly event. Some people there might have thought they were overthrowing the government, some people were trying to raise awareness about important issues, some simply thought dressing up as a zombie equals funny. It doesn’t matter a huge amount if you agree with their politics, or how effective you think dressing up as a zombie is as an agent of political change.
This gets to the heart of the matter: for the ZRC, these Zombie public gatherings are *not* silly at all. We take them very seriously. It’s clear from the coverage of the event that these protesters were, in fact, targeted for resembling Zombies as much as anything else; the UK has now declared ‘Walking While Zombie’ to be a criminal offense:
Officers also swooped on five people, three of whom were wearing zombie make-up, when they entered a branch of Starbucks on Oxford Street. They were arrested “on suspicion of planning a breach of the peace”.
They were all handcuffed and held in a police van and gave their names as Amy Cutler, 25, Rachel Young, 27, Eric Schultz, 43, Hannah Eisenman-Renyard, and Deborah, 19, an anthropology student at the University of East London.
“We’ve been pre-emptively arrested under suspicion of planning a breach of the peace,” Cutler told the Guardian from the police van. “We went to Starbucks to get a coffee and the police followed us in.”
“We were just dressing up as zombies,” said Amy, who was wearing a “marry me instead” T-shirt. “It is nice to dress up as zombies.”
I don’t know how much more obvious the government in the UK needs to make it that minority opinion and dissent won’t be tolerated than to throw up a magical zone where all personal privacy and free speech rights disappear, then utilize it to attack anyone who even *dresses* like a disfavored minority group. Precisely what good end can come of legal authority like this?
By the time the marriage vows had been made, the police had imposed a section 60 blanket stop-and-search order around the whole royal wedding zone, after a few individuals were seen putting scarves over their faces in Soho Square.
The move allowed officers to search people without discretion. It can be issued when police believe, with good reason, that there is the possibility of serious violence or that a person is carrying an offensive weapon. It was imposed along with a section 60a order, which allows officers to remove headgear and masks from demonstrators.
The powers remained in place for several hours, although the police said the mood in both Soho Square and at the Republican Tea Party in Red Lion Square, Holborn, was calm.
To see such far-ranging and radical powers granted to the very police who could abuse them with absolute discretion is chilling to say the least. The oppression of the Differently Animated (or their lookalikes) that followed is as predictable as the rising of the sun.
So, what next? We’re thinking of arranging a protest lurch. Please get in touch if you want to be involved (amycutler1985@gmail.com), and come and be a manacled zombie shuffling round Soho, in a walk in support of our right to be zombies whenever we goddamn like.
The perfect model, of course, is Bub from Day of the Dead, who I’ve saved for the end, as probably the most famous zombie prisoner. Don’t forget he ate through his manacles in the end though.
(Well, he got out of them, anyway. I wouldn’t say he ate through the chains per se; it’s not strictly true and it plays into the unfortunate ‘Zombies are eating machines’ stereotype.)
A protest lurch is precisely the proper response to oppression like this. The Zombie Rights Campaign sincerely hopes it has the desired effect and opens up the public sphere once again to the Differently Animated and their allies. We seem to be drawn once again into defending the inalienable human right to free speech as it applies to people who fail to properly understand and empathize with the plight of the Zombie in order to safeguard it for everyone *including* the Differently Animated:
We (four) are looking at our options. If Deborah, 19, wants to get in touch then please do. We were stopped and searched using legislation designed to prevent football hooliganism, and the police used the powers of arrest as an arbitrary method of dispersal. We were released without charge as there was nothing to charge us with – but they were clearly hoping we’d crawl away, chastened and grateful that it was over. However – and I can’t emphasize this enough – we weren’t doing anything illegal. This was police harassment.
This was pretty mild police harassment as it goes and almost every officer we met was perfectly pleasant – but this does not undo the overall shittiness that our right to free assembly was revoked and we were illegally arrested and detained simply because the police didn’t like the look of us.
We are looking into things such as Black and Green Cross, various legal aid, Liberty, maybe even the Twitter joke trial people.
When it comes to battles to fight, I never imagined mine would be the right to dress up like an idiot, but this is the one that’s happened to me and I’m not going to let it slide. Being arrested and detained for nearly four hours is not an expectable, acceptable, or legal consequence of wearing some fake blood.
Metropolitan police: you have messed with the wrong zombies.
Dressing up like a Zombie doesn’t make one an ‘idiot’, but allowing the police to abuse their own citizens for appearing too Zombielike, or too Asian, or too Muslim, or any other ‘suspicious’ class would certainly qualify as idiotic. We wish the Zombies and Faux Zombies of the UK the best of luck in overcoming this campaign of injustice, and hope that along the way a better, free, more Undead tolerant society can be realized.
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.
Yesterday that face belonged to one of the Differently Animated. Today that face belongs to a protester dressed up as a Zombie. Tomorrow it could belong to anyone.
Related media:
(A journalist who had covered the Faux Zombie protesters finds himself assaulted by the police acting under the Section 60 authority. His story and additional documentary evidence can be found here.)
A video interview with said Faux Zombie Hannah:
A video interview with others who dressed up. Note in particular the comments around the 3 minute mark stating that they were arrested on the presumption that a Zombie, or anyone dressed like a Zombie, was a de facto potential troublemaker:
A counter example of how a government can properly embrace and celebrate its Zombie population can be found here.
Pictures from that far prouder day here in Madison:
(Madison’s now-current Mayor Paul Soglin, then campaigning for the valuable Zombie vote)
Postscript: The ZRC wishes to condemn the following Anti-Zombie apparently commentary made to The Guardian in the wake of these events:
American-born artist Jennifer Verson had come down from Liverpool with her three-year-old daughter Ella and a group of friends. They were all dressed as zombies – anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian Britain being the land of the living dead. Her daughter was holding a sign saying “Princesses are pigs”; her friend clutched another saying “Princesses suck (their thumbs)”.
This is precisely the wrong message for an American to take abroad, even as the Zombie Rights Movement gains ground so rapidly here at home. For shame, Ms. Verson. For shame.
Yes we do appear to have another case of ‘Splash Zombies into Absolutely Anything’, thanks for asking:
When we were children we all read the classic storybook stories of Red Riding Hood, The Three Blind Mice, Jack and Jill, the Gingerbread Man and many other stories that taught many of us valuable lessons in life.
What if that world did not exist because of a unknown zombie virus that spread like wildfire throughout the storybook world and turned this lovable characters into brain loving flesh eating monsters!?
Welcome to StoryBook World 2012 one of many story book worlds in the storybook universe, but this storybook has been devastated by that unknown zombie virus, turning many storybook residents into flesh eating monsters.
Who can save them?!, Who can stop this madness?!, Who can kick major zombie butt plus have the fashion sense and look really hot doing it?!
It is too early in the morning for this stuff, I’m telling you.
*sigh*
Well, seeing as there was a free preview available, I went to download it and document the atrocities, as it were.
Here’s a brief segue into another ZRC pet peeve. If you’re giving away a free preview, just give it away. Don’t make me sign up for an account at some e-tailer in order to get the free thing. If you’re literally giving something away you *should* want to make it as easy as possible for the user to get the sample; that’s the point. Having to feed some website I’ve never heard of before my user information, then put the comic into my cart, then check out with it, find out that the comic site’s checkout process doesn’t work with my browser, copy the download link over into another browser, THEN get it to move and finally obtain a PDF is a waste of everybody’s time.
Another critique of this preview? If you’re giving people 7 pages, 2 of them shouldn’t be the same splash panel (once used for the cover, once as an interior illustration) with a third being the title page. Again, defeating the purpose of a preview here.
Rant over. How’s the comic?
In a word: ghastly.
In terms of plot the comic seems to be a retread of Marvel Zombies: a peaceful alternate world is suddenly ‘infected’ with a Zombie virus/Apocalypse of some sort and all your cherished fictional characters are turned into either grizzled survivors or flesh-devouring ghouls.
Naturally this means a before and after page, much like time travel stories often involve scenes with lots of clocks. Here’s the after for you:
Unfortunately, grizzled survivors and copious gore are about all the comic has going for it. The art is confusing, squiggly and crammed into the panels, making it hard at times to follow what’s happening. The story, what little one sees of it, is as mentioned highly derivative/familiar with the already detestable MZ formula.
Zombies are of course treated as a scourge, a plague, something to be eradicated with a shotgun. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Based on this admittedly small sample the ZRC still feels comfortable giving ‘Goldilocks in Zombie Land’ our lowest rating, that of Living Supremacist, for consisting of violent propaganda in favor of Anti-Zombie mayhem.
For those who don’t like it when the ZRC blog covers Madison-area events not strictly about Zombies, you can skip this entry, and rest assured, Zombie news is coming quickly hereafter.
I took a jaunt downtown to see the big motorcycle-themed protest ‘Thunda Around the Rotunda’ on Saturday, and thought I’d share some pictures and video with our readership. When we recently traveled to Indiana for an Atomic Age show we got several questions and comments about the goings-on up here; as has been noted locally quite a bit, the media coverage of Madison on a national level is… pathetic. People outside Wisconsin just don’t get much information about our ongoing little peaceful revolution.
To sum up recent events: at least 6 State Senate Republicans face recall elections, along with, perhaps, 3 Dems. The Democratic recalls have been marred by evidence of rather shady dealings, including outright buying signatures with alcohol, which, as it turns out, may be legal in Wisconsin.
The protests go on intermittently; our Supreme Court election is tied up in a recount and the Governor’s budget is in limbo due to court fights. In all likelihood, the recall elections on July 12th will turn control of the State Senate to the Democrats and Governor Walker will be a lame duck until his own recall election, which it looks like he will easily and soundly lose.
Which ought to show him for trying to pass such Anti-Zombie legislation.
Anyway, on Saturday there was a big pro-public sector union rally with a motorcycle theme downtown, and I went to get some shots.
The motorcycles more or less surrounded three sides of the square; I think a bunch of people had to leave as I saw police directing motorcyclists off the street and ordering them to try and find a legal parking space. At the same time, the fourth side seemed to be being kept clear, perhaps to provide emergency vehicles access if needed to the Capitol Square, not sure.
Now if I was Fox News, I would have led with these pictures of an apparently nefarious Communist infiltrator cyclist:
Finally I managed to get video of the entrance of all the bikes, coming up into the Capitol area along one of downtown Madison’s hilariously squirrelly little streets:
I apologize for the wind noise, which I took some steps to reduce at the start of the video. Basically, it’s super windy here this weekend. It’s a pain, but a fair tradeoff for finally getting to see the sun again.
The full set of Flickr pictures from Saturday is here, the collection of all Madison area protesting pics is here, and our Youtube channel which has many other fun videos is here.
Sometimes when you’re looking at a Zombie bashing product for a review, the prevailing thought isn’t just why anyone would be so bigoted and hateful toward the Undead minority, but some smaller, less consequential detail that completely unravels the internal ‘logic’ of said product, leaving you hard-pressed to focus on the important issues.
TV Tropes famously calls this sort of phenomenon ‘Fridge Logic’:
Half an hour after the show is over, A. Random Viewer is staring into his refrigerator, vaguely bemused by the fact that his six-pack of beer has somehow become a two-pack of beer. Rather than work out how this might have happened, it occurs to him to wonder how in the hell Sydney Bristow went from Hungary to Melbourne, Australia, then to LA, all within 24 hours.
It didn’t bother him during the show. It wasn’t until he discovered he was running short of beer that it became an issue.
Fridge Logic has been the writer’s-room term for these little Internal Consistency issues for a good while, as in “Don’t sweat the fridge logic, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’ve only got 20 minutes left to work in three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig.” It refers to some illogical or implausible plot point that the audience doesn’t realize during the show, but only long afterwards.
I bring this up because a few days ago I saw a page on a shirt spoofing Smokey the Bear and his famous campaign against forest fires, this time warning of, that’s right, the Zombie Apocalypse:
We live in dangerous times. There are all sorts of dangers – biological, chemical, social. If one stupid human makes one stupid mistake, we could have the apocalypse on our hands in mere days. If you miss the signs, if you have your head in the sand, if you just can’t bring yourself to shoot Grandma when she’s clearly infected with the virus, then YOU have caused the modern day forest fire that is the zombie apocalypse. Be prepared, zombie watchers. The time will come and you will be responsible for saving or damning the world.
Zombey the bear admonishes “Only you can prevent the zombie apocalypse” on a 100% cotton, cedar t-shirt.
Bonus points for the fact that this shirt is being sold by the Anti-Zombie bigots at Think Geek.
Take a look at that shirt. Yes, it shows a Zombified Smokey the Bear, in the context of a campaign to oppress the Differently Animated, and that automatically makes it suspect, but take a closer look.
Look at his hat.
That’s right, the bear has a hat that says ‘Zombey’ on it! So here we have supposedly an example of your classic Zombie Apocalypse, where the shambling, unintelligent, ravenous Undead stalk the Earth in search of delicious flesh, and yet our alleged example of this mindless, world ending scourge has taken the time to go get custom apparel printed with his new Zombie name on it?
Seriously?
Here’s a new ground rule: if you can afford to take the time to have custom apparel printed, it’s not an Apocalypse.
(Corollary: if your Zombies are having custom headgear made they’re probably not mindless automatons. Just saying.)
Perhaps we’re to believe his name was ‘Zombey’ before?
Which, considering the circumstances, might be the cosmic order of the universe showing itself. Name a kid Jeeves, they end up a butler, name an anthropomorphic bear ‘Zombey’ and sooner or later he’ll be Undead.
Like I said, the Fridge Logic here has thrown this review completely off the rail. Let’s get it back on track:
The shirt is sold by known Anti-Zombie bigots at Think Geek and explicitly advocates preemptive action against the fearmongering and completely fanciful notion of a ‘Zombie Apocalypse’.
Universal Pictures is negotiating with Jeff Bridges to star with Ryan Reynolds in the Robert Schwentke-directed supernatural comedy R.I.P.D. The film centers on a police force comprised of undead officers, based on the Peter Lenkov comic.
Welcome to the Rest In Peace Department — the devoted, yet dead, officers of divine law enforcement “patrolling the deadbeat…reporting to one boss.” Yep — THAT boss. Nick Cruz was murdered by an unknown assailent, at the height of his personal and professional life. Now he’s traded a hundred years of service to the R.I.P.D. in exchange for a shot at finding who killed him. Unfortunately his search will take him to Hell and back — literally!
Now this is an unconventional and positive sounding portrayal of Zombies! We’ve noted on the blog that in the past, the Differently Animated have found some of the rare sympathetic portrayals in fiction from work in law enforcement (Discworld being a prime example). To have an Oscar winning contemplating a role as a Zombie protagonist, upholding justice and serving the public? This could be an outstanding step forward for Zombies Rights on film.
If this movie goes forward I should mail a bunch of Zombie Strong wristbands to the studio for the cast as a thank you. Beats a fruit basket anyday.
We’ve been awash in ‘Call of the Dead’ info recently, and today is no exception, as a poster for the upcoming game has come the ZRC’s way and we think it’s important to share in order to fully explain the significance. At the same time however, we respect other peoples’ intellectual property, so here, have a taste and go to the original site for the full thing.
What’s interesting about this poster for us here at the ZRC is how Mr. Romero is shamelessly putting himself forward as the lead agent of the Anti-Zombie media here, claiming his arguably rightful place at the forefront of not just Anti-Zombie film, but videogames as well. Developer Treyarch has gone out of their way to pay homage to the master of Undead Hate with this expansion, and Mr. Romero is apparently more than happy to combine forces, so long as Zombies end up victimized one way or another.
It’s despicable, but at least now he’s stepped out from behind the camera and taken a very public, very visible role. This may make it easier to bring the negative attention his antics deserve upon the man himself, rather than just at his body of work.
