Oddly Enough, Someone Who Knows What They’re Talking About Pens an Article on Zombies in Pop Culture
I was reluctant to read this summary of the history of Zombies in American pop culture, especially since it’s from AMC (purveyors of the despicable Walking Dead grand guignol spectacle), but, shockingly, unlike NPR and the NYT, AMC actually seems to have people who know what they’re doing working the Zombie history beat, and it’s a good, if short, read.
What went right here, where the others I’ve mentioned went so horribly, horribly wrong?
1) Actual in-depth knowledge on display.
–Whereas in both the NPR and NYT pieces, the history of Zombies as Americans understand them was slapdash and full of oversimplification, here we get a much broader view. Voodoo derived Zombies aren’t just given a casual mention and thrown overboard in favor of the post-Romero paradigm, but actually discussed at some length. European Zombie films receive prominent notice and attention as well, though the most recent revival of Undead filmmaking in Europe isn’t mentioned (one can’t have everything). Important but obscure (today) works are talked about in relative depth, reflecting their historical importance, and forgotten innovators are mentioned. Even though it’s short you actually get the sense that real knowledge is on display here.
2) Just the facts
–NPR and NYT both had outside voices take the topic of Zombies in the media and run with it to argue for their particular, idiosyncratic ideas of what Zombie media ‘means’. This led to a lot of trouble, especially when facts were played with loosely or not at all. AMC takes a more objective approach, talking about publication dates, broad themes, etc, and doesn’t try to spin an elaborate sociological theory out of the topic.
3) Focus is important
–One argument I got a lot in defense of Mr. Mantz’ thing for NPR was that it had to be greatly oversimplified because of the length constraints. Here, however, AMC exposes that there’s more than one approach to writing a short piece. They chose, instead of crushing facts in a trash compactor to slide under a word count, to keep their focus narrow: Zombies on film. Combined with refusing to overly editorialize (see number 2) this lets them keep it short and simple without having to make it wrong as a result.
Is it a perfect article? No, of course not. Discussing Euro-Zom movies without mentioning the Blind Dead films? Tsk tsk. Still, on balance, AMC laid out the cold, hard and unpleasant history of Zombies in Cinema with a useful overview that provides many leads that the casual reader could use to learn more, especially if they have Netflix.
This is how you do it, people. If AMC can manage an objective article on Zombies, surely the parts of the media whose profit margins aren’t officially driven by Anti-Zombie hate can pull it off.
Update: I hadn’t noticed but the AMC thing is actually older than the more recent NPR and NYT pieces, which is doubly damning to the NYT and NPR, because someone had gotten to it before them and done a much better job, methinks.
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