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.

Tags: Comics, Movies, Public Appearance, Romero, Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Friday, December 17th, 2010 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Zombie Media, ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.