New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh plunges deep in the rotting flesh of zombie cinema to find political meaning.

Comments

C L | January 25, 2007, 3:19pm | #

The image on the Reason home page for this story looks disturbingly like Hillary Clinton. As I read the story, I kept wondering when the part about Clinton becoming a zombie would show up.

SugarFree | January 25, 2007, 3:33pm | #

Do not set a zombie on fire. All you get is a burning zombie that is still trying to eat you.

All things considered, which is better... to be a zombie, a shambling corpse stripped of consciousness, or a ghost, a shambling consciousness stripped of a body?

I've always thought it would be worse to be a ghost. Not only is there an afterlife, but you are trapped in it with little or no control over your fate. As a atheist, I find the thought of an afterlife horrifying, especially one where you are denied the most basic freedom, suicide.

Of course, a better forced afterlife is as a vampire, but only if it's not in that twee Anne Rice way.

ed | January 25, 2007, 3:43pm | #

Clinton becoming a zombie

For the last time: she's not a zombie, she's a mummy. Big difference.

mediageek | January 25, 2007, 3:49pm | #

I think that Cavenaugh wrote a peice that is far more thoughtful than the genre really deserves.

As a fan of zombie cinema, I loved every friggin' line.

MattXIV | January 25, 2007, 4:24pm | #

The significance of the zombie stems from the fact that it is a human form which has no moral standing. It's a staple of zombie movies to demonstrate this directly by having characters succumb to the condition and have to be finished off by their commrades before they can injure others and characters who lack the will to do so often end up meeting nasty fates at the hands of the zombie they spared.

The implication of this when zombies are used to represent groups of people are scary in an entirely non-zombie related way, because it makes it implicit in the premise that that group is not really human, has no moral standing, no agency, and can be destroyed (not even killed, since their life isn't even acknowledged) at will. It's the ultimate form of objectification. In many ways, it constructs a kind of twisted revolutionary fantasy by pitting the protagonists against a slow and dumb but overwhelming force whose agents have nor moral standing and where death is perferable to being on the other side for those among the "living." This is also what submerges their obvious political overtones - even if you disagree with the message, the premise effectively precludes indentifying with the zombie cause. It's no longer a struggle of ideas, however morally or strategically stacked the deck may be in favor of the writer's prefered cause, since zombies simply don't have ideas, so proponents or passive supporters of the ideas criticized simply don't see their own ideas in the zombie and read out those aspects. That's why I find direct political exposition via zombie to be shallow and that when effective points are made, they done by highlighting the interaction of the "living" characters with both other survivors and the zombified.

haywood's proxy | January 25, 2007, 4:47pm | #

Obviously the pic on the front page is Hillary

mediageek | January 25, 2007, 4:48pm | #

*sigh*

Cavanaugh.

piece.

de stijl | January 25, 2007, 4:51pm | #

The Return of the Living Dead gets no love and I could never fugure out why. The scenes with Clu Gallagher and his medical supply flunky are deadpan comedy masterpieces. Probably because it's not a Romero movie.

mediageek | January 25, 2007, 5:01pm | #

I think the reason the "Return" movies get no respect is that they depart heavily from the established rules. Making the zeds capable of speaking somehow makes them less scary, and makes the whole concept seem wholly unrealistic.

mediageek | January 25, 2007, 5:01pm | #

FWIW, I think the Zak Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead was superior to the original.

fletch | January 25, 2007, 5:05pm | #

the esteemed cineaste Robin Wood declared that the zombie’s cannibalism “represents the ultimate in possessiveness, hence the logical end of human relations under capitalism.”

C'mon!... a 'capitalist' would not just stagger around moaning "Brain-n-n-s" and attacking people at random--

He'd buy them "vacuum-packed" from one of the many providers of this commodity in a transaction illustrating the concept of individualized value between two 'economic entities'.

Of course, zombie leftists will still be bitching that Wal-Mart has higher quality brains imported from China at lower prices...

Salvius | January 25, 2007, 5:14pm | #

"He'd buy them "vacuum-packed" from one of the many providers of this commodity..."

The most popular, of course, being Brains4Zombies.com.

Matt J | January 25, 2007, 5:22pm | #

Somebody once said that the cool thing about Zombie flicks is that they are the only horror scenario that looks like it would be kind of fun to be in.

The DOD remake was good, but there was a low budget creep factor to the original that is hard to match. The remakes are too glitzed up. Something about those 70s horror flicks just made you feel wrong for watching them.

But the first 10 min of the the new DOD was some of the coolest film making in horror history. That Cash tune gives me the chills.

mediageek | January 25, 2007, 5:52pm | #

Matt-

No doubt the original Romero movies are classics, and utterly enjoyable. But I just love the ah... rebirth of the genre that's happened in the last few years.

Rick H. | January 25, 2007, 6:18pm | #

Land of the Dead sucked because there's no horror in it. The undead are now supposed to be thinking creatures, motivated by coherent strategies and newfound emotions.

When the living dead are now just cannibalistic cripples with functioning frontal lobes and a sense of self, where's the horror of becoming one? And if all the regular folks are assholes, of course we're gonna root for the zombies. Which makes it into a war drama with the subtlety of an Itchy & Skratchy cartoon. I love Romero, but he dropped the ball on this one.

van | January 25, 2007, 7:28pm | #

I loved Land of the Dead except that the hero lets the zombie leader get away in the end. Your point (where's the horror of becoming one?) is a good one but I would've been fine with a message that, sense of self and collective consciousness notwithstanding, humans don't want to be degraded to the zombie level and are still at war with them.

Overall, I found it scary as hell and I loved that it was not one minute longer than it needed to be. Horror films just can't get away with being too long because viewers lose their sense of anxiety and dread. The original Dawn of the Dead was too long. And I hated all that 70s action crap at the beginning.

James | January 25, 2007, 8:01pm | #

Given that the idea of zombies is rooted in the slave/plantation culture, is it so surprising that it has been appropriated by anti-authoritarians and leftists?

The zombie film has all the elements of a slave rebellion, as seen from the point of view of the Master: semi-intelligent subhumans shambling forward with little more than primitive thoughts of revenge. The "heroes" are isolated, with no expectation of early rescue, forced into makeshift fortresses that inevitably succumb to the onslaught.

Unlike in real life, the movie slaves/zombies are victorious and we are treated to the destruction of the plantation. The Apocolypse indeed.

Single Issue Voter | January 25, 2007, 10:02pm | #

I pity the unsuspecting remaindered book shopper
thinking he is buying a book about Zombie Movies
buying a waste of dead trees by Annalee Newitz

Anybody here see Lenzi's Nightmare City?

The zombies run really fast!
I think they use weapons too

I probably have more than 20 Zombie movies on DVD and I still don't see the left wing thing
I've not seen anything newer than Cemetery Man though. I don't look too hard for political meaning in my media tastes either.

Frood | January 26, 2007, 10:08am | #

Sometimes a shambling, brain-eating monster is just a shambling, brain-eating monster.

Then again all this crypto-political crap probably explains why I've never liked zombie movies.

mediageek | January 26, 2007, 11:04am | #

Honestly, the most heavily political zombie flicks are the earlier ones.

James | January 26, 2007, 12:30pm | #

mediageek: my favorite line from 28 Days Later was when Cillian Murphy asks about the government and is told there IS no more government. The panic on his face is priceless. "There's always a government!" he cries.

van | January 26, 2007, 2:23pm | #

Anyone have ideas on the socio-political implications of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies? I love to see how someone could spin that one!

wingnutx | January 26, 2007, 5:25pm | #

I would love to see a political dissection of "Wild Zero," the finest movie ever made about Japanese punk rock bands who fight zombies.

van | January 26, 2007, 7:30pm | #

Hey nutz, thanks. I think I'll look that up and see if I can rent it.

Sigle Issue Voter | January 26, 2007, 11:02pm | #

By earlier ones do you mean those 30s movies ?
like White Zombie and sequels
or later early stuff like The Last Man on Earth
or post Night of the Living Dead?

mediageek | January 28, 2007, 7:37pm | #

SIV-

By "earlier" I meant the Romero-era movies. In other words, the modern incarnation of the cinematic zombie.

The original Night, Dawn, and Day...of the Dead films were rife with political messages.

I don't have much interest in the ones from the 1930's and '40's.