Looting, violence and angry self-destructive behavior, all that and more on the next episode of ‘Dead Set’!

(Also essentially every Zombie Apocalypse story ever. More below the cut).

Looting. Let’s talk about looting in the Apocalypse, shall we?

A lot has been made of Anti-Zombie fiction as violent escapism; we at the ZRC heartily concur with the consensus that much of the genre functions as a way to ‘excuse’ normally morally unjustifiable violence by creating ‘acceptable’ targets.

Very unkind.

But what about the fact that virtually all of your modern Zombie media has at least one noteworthy looting scene?

This goes back, at least, to ‘Dawn of the Dead’, which saw its survivors pillage an entire mall to set up house. But examples abound: ’28 Days Later’ and its love of ‘irradiated’ fruit, Shaun of the Dead and its pub takeover, or the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake (which somehow managed to be even more crass about it than the original). ‘The Walking Dead’ elevates looting scenes to almost a genre of their own, with entire seasons (like the current one) often revolving around the extra-legal acquisition of supplies.

One suspects this is about wish-fulfillment in the same way as the moral-fetter-free violence, at least in more recent examples. Romero’s ‘Dawn’, with its relentless snarky undertone of anti-commercialism, could have intended the opposite result. It’s hard to say.

But it’s worth keeping in mind the next time the Anti-Zombie forces just ‘have’ to pillage private property.

Back to ‘Dead Set’: about the same time the foraging expedition gets under way, Riq and his survivor/traveling companion Alex find a little abandoned house to settle into. It even has a working tv, and astonishingly, Big Brother seems to be the only thing left on the air.

Back with the main group, a couple of trigger-happy policemen come upon the looting group, espousing a very militant No Zombies Allowed policy. Thinking one of the looters is infected leads to a standoff and things going south rather quickly.

Back at the Big Brother House, two of the cast members are now Zombies, and persecuted for it. Kelly kills a helpless Undead former tv hopeful and uses the occasion to remark that, with their supposedly superior intelligence, the Living can’t help but win this conflict in the end.

Riiiight.

The end of the episode reveals to Riq that Kelly is still alive, via the magic of reality television.

Tags: Euro-zom, Television, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, May 15th, 2017 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. 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.