IntroductionsSo, funny story. As you can probably imagine, these posts take me a bit of a while to write proper, if only because I’m not the bestest at keeping up with my writing. Which should come as no surprise to anyone who read my Vampire breakdown and noticed that it came rather late in the October season. Now, if you recall, I did, in fact promise that I would do a proper breakdown for everyone’s favorite shambling corpses, Zombies. Oh zombies. It feels like we can't go a good five feet without running into shambling corpses looking to saciate their taste for human flesh. Seriously, it's telling that zombies find themselves in everything from kids games to fracking romantic comedies (although the latter is pardoy). I'd say that they've officially joined the pantheon of classical creatures to fear, along with Vampires and Werewolves. And while All Hallows may have come and past like so much candy corn, I still feel I have something vaguely resembling an obligation to break down what it is that attracts people to the living dead, aside from loneliness. So here it is folks: part two of our exxceptionally late Halloween breakdown of the undead. Consumerism: on the Insatiably Hordes... And Zombies.Ah yes, the classic of classic tropes. Established, of course, by the master of Zombies himself, George Romero, in his second outing with the shambling hordes, Dawn of the Dead, this is arguably the first trope zombies represented. It makes perfect sense too, when you think about. I mean, think about it. A bunch of soulless fuckers who come in all shapes and sizes and who vaguely resemble people but who’s only goal in life is to consume? Makes perfect sense. I suppose that's what consumerism will turn people into. The selfish hordes who only care for their place, and not for the welfare of others. Shit, at time of writing, it's the week after black Friday and the insanity that entailed. And yes, I will freely admit that Never mind the fact that Romero set Dawn in a damned Mall. Part of what I liked so much about the original Dawn, as well, was that zombies came in so many different ethnicities and nationalities. They were a reminder that comsumerism is a group effort. That we’re all responsible for the unholy juggernaut that is consumerism. It's telling, as well, that one of the most iconic zombies from that film was a Hare Krishna zombie. Religion has become just another commodity (more so than before) that the masses may consume. A product that is advertised with just as much zeal as coca cola, with only slightly more actual feeling behind it. Romero naturally continues the trend with his 2005 opus, Land of the Dead, which tells the tale of a post-apocalyptic world where the rich get all of the good swag and the poor, huddled masses have to eche out a living down below, so to speak. Eventually the zombies wise up (yes, they get smart, if you can believe that) due to normal humans exploiting them and killing them off, and go and kill the fuckers off. In it's own very convoluted way,, this represents the idea that by intruding onto spaces where they don't belong, the rich will end up destroying us along with themselves. While note quite anti-consumerism, it's anti-corporatism which is definitely related, and which I can definitely get behind. That being said, due to the fact that people tend to lose perspective when you’re not careful, zombies slowly but surely creeped farther away from that. Which isn’t to say that it went away entirely. In fact, I’d argue that the continued presence of the military in schlockier versions of the zombie apocalypse, something you see in everything from the Resident Evil franchise and, to a degree, in the modern zombie classic, “28 Weeks Later.” After all, who are some of the biggest consumers out there but the american military. Thanks to the increasingly Captain Planet villain like nature of the Umbrella, this connection isn’t quite as tenable as it could be. After all, as evil as some corporations may be, they will not intentionally do immediate harm to the person they care the most about (aside from themselves): the consumer. As for 28 Weeks Later, while it does sort of make sense that they’d do all they could to prevent the spread of the virus, this is more an excuse for the US military to do their thing than anything else. There’s also a rather recent cliché where the zombies are created to be weapons (see [Prototype] for example). While not the most feasible, it does sort of make sense with regards to this theme. After all, it could thoroughly be argued that one of the major reasons that the military is sent out to various countries to destabalize the local power structure is, in addition to fixing our own goddamned messes, to make sure that our interests (see: oil) are taken care of. I think the best example of zombies as rampant consumerism in recent memory has to come from the first two “Dead Rising” games. In the first game, we learn that the zombies came about because a group of scientists were trying to increase meat production for the united states. When they fucked things up and transformed a peaceful Mexican village into an undead hellhole, the Army came in and killed everything to keep everything nice and quiet. So, naturally, one of the surviving villagers infects a small town. I love this set up, to be honest. It’s a great deconstruction of the literally destructive effects of consumerism, not to mention the imperialism that is inherent in the modern meat industry. It also decries how the majority of the united States's problems were due to the greed inherent in many of our international relations (take the creation of the Taliban as a result of the united States just using local villagers as an adhock military service. The second game continue’s the trend by having the reveal be that the outbreak was caused primarily by a drug company that wanted to make an anti-zombie vaccine called zombrex. You see, a large group of zombies is traditionally needed for zombrex to be made, and what better way to get a big old group of zombies together than to start an outbreak. It doesn’t hurt htat the outbreak has the added bonus of making a whole new batch of survivors who’ll need to precious drug to keep things going. As you can imagine, the entire game a is ginormous jab at the for-profit drug industry. After all, a drug that's made to prevent infection by infecting more people. It'd be like if HIV meds were made by using dead HIV victims. Ingenius in a twisted sort of way. Needless to say, I'm not the only prick on the internet to talk about this topic. If you're interested in topic and would like to see more about it, just google "zombies consumerism" into google and you'll get more results than the creators of walking dead merch would like to admit. The Undead ValleyAs per usual, I suppose it’s worth mentioning one of my favorite topics of discussion, something which I definitely should’ve added an addendum onto with regards to the previous breakdown: the uncanny valley. For those who don’t feel like revisiting my old post, I suppose a quick too long, didn’t read is in order. Basically, we have some set traits we think of when it comes to how human beings are supposed to act, and one of the easier ways to make people feel uneasy is by knowing how to subtly twist what we expect from people. Like whenever you see one of those creepy old dolls that look just a bit too realistic, or how in certain games the character models look like they're some sort of robot trying desperately to appear human. Zombies, and by extension vampires, resemble humans. They have four limbs and a face (mostly). That is until you see their shambling gait and the fact that they only communicate in groans, (or, occasionally, scream “brains.”) Naturally, this just makes us feel a little uneasy, our instincts confused as to whether what we’re seeing is properly human. And this is assuming that the aforementioned shambling horror still has most of it’s face in tact, which given a genre that features a metric fuck ton of cannibalism, isn’t a given. Yeah, no, there’s definitely something to be said for just how fucking unnerving it is to see someone who’s walking in spite of the fact of the fact that they’re missing an eyeball, and have bits of skin missing. Could anyone forget the first time we see a zombie in Night of the Living Dead? We know almost immediately that something is up. Naturally, our suspicions are only confirmed when we see the fucker attack one of the main characters. Or perhaps the first time that we see a zombie in the original Resident Evil game. The moment it's head turns around and we see that the fucker's got an unnatural greenish tint to it's skin and the color red on it's face. Of course, the reveal of the zombie is sort of a classic trope in zombie films. Thanks to a bit of dramatic irony, we know what's wrong with the person who seems a bit off, but the protagonist doesn't, at least until they start attacking. Shawn of the Dead even parodies it in the beginning where we meet a few zombies on their way home from a bender at a pub, and only later do the two losers realize that there might be something wrong with the fuckers around them when the push a woman onto a steak and she gets up like it's no biggie, and that it might not be alcohol related. The Ultimate Cannon FodderIncidentally, it is this very foreignness that makes them equal parts existential threat and cannon fodder. They're perfectly unnatural looking to be scary as hell, and if they get close, they'll eat the crap out of you. It doesn't hurt that they can believably spread to the point where things get out of hand. That being said, they're not particularly fast, giving you plenty of time to prepare a proper headshot, and when they are fast, they tend to be just as unresilient as all heck. In essence, they're perfect for mowing down in hordes, or just a few if we're being realistic. Your guilt over killing one is, of course, dependent on whether or not they were actually someone you used to care about, so murdering off the endless hoard is no major issue, so we know exactly when we need to feel guilty about them. They’re also nice and mindless, meaning that they’ll easily succumb to traps that are set, and nice and slow so there’s a realistic enough chance of killing them off even for amateur shooters. In essense, they’re the perfect fodder for killing off mindlessly and without anything resembling guilt. With Nazis, you're limited to the fact that omething that, say what you will about them, the resident evil films tapped into with total abandon. Some of the best parts are, of course, when the survivors and—let’s be honest here, major mary sue—Alice fight off the various bastardized versions of the undead that haunt the film’s several hours of running time. Hell, there’s an entire genre of videogames devoted to the wholesale slaughter of various undead hordes. Romero himself is, of course, a major fan of this, having various survivors doing their damndest to think of more and more ridiculous methods for dispatching the undead. Even Walkind Dead and 28 days Later get in on the act. The show regularly features scenes, particularly with Darryl and Michonne where the two dispatch the undead in particularly gory and satisfying ways, with Darryl even taking out a walker with absolute ease. And then there's the scene where the soldiers decide to murder themselves some scary infected, killing them off with a combination of a minefield and some good, old fashioned shooting. Of course, the scene is played for twisted irony, and is used as an indication of the soldier's twisted, increasingly harmful masculinity, and how this constant onslaught of undead has driven them to become cold and cruel. Of course, if it wasn't obvious from that last paragraph, the fact that they’re mindless, unstoppable killing machines is sort of a double-edged sword. The Unstoppable DeadThe thing that really makes zombies a threat is the fact that their mindlessness makes them all the scarier, whether they be the classical shambling, decayed Romero variety, or the new-fangled, speedy, screaming Boyle variety. With the Romero variety, they’re sort of like more fleshy, only slightly more killable terminators. They care for only thing and that is the consumption of your flesh. They cannot be bargained with, they do not feel pain, and there’s only way to kill them: shooting them in the head, which as any marksman will tell you, is a tricky shot at best. Think of the endless scenes in the walking dead where they've stabbed a walker, but for whatever reason they just won't go down. Now imagine hundreds of those bastards wandering around like so many unstoppable monsters. And as for the Boyle variety, well, you’d better hope you got your cardio in. These things, while a bit more reliably killable than their romero counterparts, will run at you full tilt, and unlike normal humans, don’t stop. At all. It doesn’t hurt that they’re a lot more animalistic, and tend to growl as opposed to their classic compatriots. They’re more some sort of deranged predator that just so happens to look like a human being. These aren't human beings but screaming monsters who only vaguely look familiar. What's worse is that they're fast, meaning that you'd better have something ready just in case things go awry. And even if you do manage to fight either variation off, you've still got the very real threat of becoming the very thing you've fought against. Which brings us to our next topic... Does that Zombie look familiar?This brings us to the something else I should have covered in the vampire breakdown: the idea that anyone, at any point, could become an enemy. While this has been something of a running theme in scary movies since invasion of the body snatchers, it was the zombie film that really took it to the next level. I mean, think about it. Being transmitted via disease could mean that the very person who you've spent your whole life caring for could at any moment become a bloodthirsty monster. Unlike the classic body snatchers, though, this typically isn't played for paranoia so mcuh as it is for drama. Take the little girl from the poor little girl in Night of the Living Dead who came back and murdered her own mother with a fucking spade. There was no doubt in our minds that something was wrong with her the moment she came back. In fact, if anything, we knew from the beginning that somehting was going on with her. Recently, this has been one of the major themes of the Walking Dead. Could anyone forget the horror upon finding that poor Sophia had become a walker (assuming that this post hasn't spoiled that for you). Or even that Merle, who we were finally getting around to having some respect for, had those haunting yellow eyes. This isn’t even going into the classic scene in the original 28 Days Later where poor Frank, the major backbone of the survivors gets a drop of infected blood in his eye and has mere seconds to apologize to his daughter and get his fellow survivors as far away from others as humanly possible before becoming a raving blood puking monster. Or in the sequel when Don Harris becomes a monster that his conscience always told him he was when he becomes infected by his immune wife. The idea that you could become the very monster that has been plaguing you and your friends for quite a while is something that is, existentially, terrifying. The idea of losing who we are as a person is arguably one of man's greatest fears in life, this side of the dark. After all, as advanced as we are these days, we still worry ourselves to death about the possibility of getting alzheimers or whatever disease is driving people to forgetfulness. This takes us nicely to our next topic. You should get that bite looked at: the Zombie VIRUSLike vampires before them, Zombies represent the very real, very current state of the fear of infection. If you ever look around for cheam, schlocky zombie movies, you’re bound to find at least one with a biohazard symbol on it. It’s telling, as well, that aside from zombies themselves, that you’re most likely to see someone with a gas mask. Of course, we know why this is. Zombies, like vampires before them, represent disease. For, inspite of the various advances the medical community has made with the likes of vaccines and anti-biotics, mankind still has as much to fear from diseases these days. Can anyone forget the whole bird and swine flu epidemics? Or how about the various articles talking about how the increased usage of hand sanitizer will slowly but surely create bacteria that will become so powerful that it will become resistant to anti-biotic agents like a fucking super bacteria. While disease may be better understood these days than back when vampires were thought up, it it still just as feared, and still just as present in our day to day lives as ever, especially if you're a parent. In the original NLD, there is much made of the fact that we really don't have any idea what was the cuase of the virus, except that it was a virus and that the fuckers would still move around even if you hacked their arms and legs off. That being sadi, it was really brought to the forefront with the Resident Evil franchise. Due to the genetic engineering of the T-virus and it's various strains, we were given a perfectly good reason why there are not only zombie dogs but also weird looking fuckers with exposed brains and tongues like Gene Simmons. Hell, in the game's native Japan, it was originally called "Biohazard." We even see plenty of lab equipment and testubes and such present throughout the game, giving us a feeling that this was something made by man. And while there were a fair share of schlocky movies that explored this (Return of the Living Dead, for example), the film that really brought this bad boy to the fray was none other than really brought to the forefront with none other than the aforementioned 28 days later. Here, the between the presence of gas masks and the ever present fear that if you’re not careful, you’ll somehow become vaguely infected. I’d be remiss, of course, not to talk about how in the fourth season of the walking dead, one of the first enemies the group comes across aren’t the governor or Negan or whatever villain they’ve trotted out this time around, but disease. In the walking Dead TV universe, if you die you turn, no matter whether you were bitten or not. So, when a disease that can kill someone if you’re not careful comes about, then you’ve got a lot of trouble to deal with. And of course we have the Zombie Surival Guide/World War Z universe, a place where the idea of infection is brought to the forefront, if fact, if I'm not mistaken, the book even mentions that major reason for the outbreak was the fact that . If fact, while technically parody, when I first read the ZSG a good decade back, I became genuinely creeped out. Yeah, we’d just moved down to Georiga, and I was living in a stranger’s home at the time, but still. It’s telling that the made-up sections were so effective at building tension. And while I haven’t read the novel version, one of the things I liked so much about the movie version (yes, yes, I know, that isn’t exactly the favored version) is that it managed to show just how much chaos and madness would be going on in a world in which the zombie virus took place. One bite goes from an issue to a full on pandemic in the crowded streets of a major city within the moment that it hits ground zero. The ZIC: the Zombie Industrial ComplexNow while this title could actually make a great name for the industry that rather, rather ironically come up in the stead of the zombie craze, in this section, I intend to discuss the idea of the military presence in the zombie picture. As I may have mentioned before, zombies have been used as discussions for the horrors of capitalism for a while now. Here's the thing, through: like it or not, but our prison system is slowly but surely becoming more and more for profit. Now, I'm not sure when the theme of the army taking hold during the apocalypse started taking place. Perhaps it may have even been during Dawn of the Dead itself. That being sadi, when you get right down to it, the army finds itself entangled or even responsible for the the zombie onslaught at some point during an outbreak. What this signifies, naturally, could arguably be a breakdown of it's very own, especially seeing as how it's only natural that the fucking army would come by to take care of the mess that the zombie apocalypse. Now that I think about it, it could be argued that the army are a sort of reflection of the themes that that particular zombie tale is going, and are, at least in some ways, a representation of the overriding government has with regards to the outbreak proper. Depending on what role the government, or whoever their cronies may be, they may either be just as bad as the threat itself or may have been run down due to the presence of zombies proper. In Resident Evil, for example, there are significan militaristic themes with relations to the corporation itself, indicative of the games themes (yes, beneath the convoluted plots, those games are about something) of the overwhelming presence of the military industrial complex with regards to the outside world at large. And then we have the soldiers in Walking Dead that Merl and the governor's cronies come across. They're waiting for somet sort of sign, only for to be taken advantage of at the first chance they get. No longer is the government in charge here, but those who are taking over. The merciless and the manipulative. Those who see opportunity instead of companionship in their fellow man. It's telling too, that the Governor uses his new found tank for his own petty ends, as opposed to actually using it to protect the people that he now has to care about. I think my favorite example of this has to be in the 28 Days series. In 28 Days, for the majority of the film, the military are built up as this sort of last salvation, this last place that will surely be a safe haven. Of course, when the group gets to the coordinates given, they don't find any military present. Instead, they come across a whole field of nothing. While we do find out that the military are still present, it's only later that we learn that the military has lost all hope, and want one thing, and one thing only: women they can have fuck. No longer is the army out there to protect the people. Now they've just become a bucnh of selfish, hyper-masculine assholes. Again in 28 Weeks, the American military decides to start protecting the surivors of the initial outbreak. Of course, though, once things go tits up, so to speak, they start shooting up innocent civilians, reminding us that they're not there to protect the people but to keep the zombies from fucking things up. Again. The undead and human selfishness.They're us. We're them and they're us. The thing that I think that zombies reveal, especially these days, is humanity at it’s basest, it’s most cruel. I mean, think about it, when people are coming back as mindless monsters, the hardest thing to hold onto is your sense of right and wrong. Like it’s sibling genre, the post apocalypse tale, the zombie tale tells of what happens when the chips are down. When the thin fabric that holds society together falls to pieces right before our eyes, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to stay alive. At least that’s what you tell yourself as you’re killing innocents to get at their food and water.
As I may have mentioned, I am of the opinion that lifetakers--entities ranging from zombies to vampires and who are typically dundead--are typically representations of the darker aspects of our society in addition to disease, as I’m sure I pointed out when I brought up how zombism represents the consumerism, and yet the part of us that is, arguably still there. This has been with zombies since Night of the Living Dead. In fact, Night is arguably about the breakdown of our most basic understanding of the way the world works. People eating eachother with hapless abandon, little girls killing their own parents with fucking trowels. This is also reflected in the fact that the black guy, the one human being who happened to keep a calm head about him was mercilessly killed by some survivors for what I can only assume was shits and giggles. And while this arguably comes up in Dawn of the Dead, I think the best places that this comes up, is in I believe it was around season five that Glen said that they were no longer people but the walking dead. In a world where you’ll inevitably have to kill the person you love because they’ve become a monster, a part of you can’t help but die. It’s telling too, that the city where people are safe from the undead, that rick and the group have an impossible time becoming a part of things. After all, what did these people know about desperation? About how the world worked. One of the things I liked most about Darryl’s characterization of the series was that, if anything, the outbreak turned him into a better person. It’s funny that people were always asking him what he did before the outbreak, but in the end, it just turned out that he was a redneck stealing from people and shit. And then there’s 28 Days Later. It’s telling that in the climax of the film, not only is the final antagonist none other than the very army that the survivors were looking for, but that the main character ended up having to become something of a monster himself, sneaking around killing others. The aforementioned death of the could be seen as the point where hope ends and desperation creeps in. No longer is this world where things could possibly go back to "normal." There is no "normal" in this world, only those with the guns and the guts. In a way, this is what michael's final fight with the arm represents, with him running and hiding and generally acting like a slasher villain. He's forced to embrace the very darkness that they've been escaping as well. For one, when he free's the infected that the army had captive, it goes after it's compatriots instead of Michael, respresenting the line that he's crossed. It's telling to, that both of the girls thought that he was infected when they see him. I think one of my favorite lines in what I think is the vastly underrated Night of the Living Dead remake, the main character utters the lines up on top. Like it or not, creatures like that are dark shadows of both our own fears and our own dark nature. They're our greed, our cruelty and our selfishness given form, and we can't get enough of them.
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AuthorHello all and Welcome to Jacob's Latter. Here I will be giving my opinions on everything from movies, video games and books to my general outlook on the world. Archives
January 2018
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