Zombies, a little less conversation.
While the undead genre as a whole has been a popular cult following for a long time now, in recent years there has been a surge of interest in the undead. Is this down to the public becoming more aware of the subject through films and books or is the subject striking home somewhere altogether deeper in the human psyche?
The popular culture of zombies has traditionally been followed by horror enthusiasts, those who enjoy the spectacle of the movies, the suspense of the slow shambling corpses that explode on a shower of flesh and gore as heavily armed people try to take them down. Zombies while being popular in this sense could easily be exchanged for vampires, lunatics or any other type of enemy, it was all about the spectacle and if you didn't enjoy the ultra gore or the violence then you stuck to your traditional action blockbuster.
Recently the trend has become just that, trendy. The internet is full of fan sites and projects that follow the genre and Hollywood have taken the idea of the undead and ran with it. No longer have the big directors turned their noses up at the undead and they are reaping the benefits. Does this mean that the general public are turning into followers of super violent films and gore filled movies? In a few cases I think so but to be honest I think the growth in popularity is somewhat darker. Romero's films have always been fantastic as they have been a social commentary, do the zombies represent consumerism, those with religion or just plain old walking dead people? The debate always has gone on and always will. But I don't think the recent popularity has anything to do with these philosophical questions. I think the cause of the popularity is modern life. How many times in the past decade have you been sat around with your friends and on a subject that angers them, has someone said they wish they could take a gun and deal with the problem? Maybe my friends are not quite all there (You know...upstairs!) but I hear it more and more, and from people I don't even know. It seems that in general, people are getting more and more angry, frustrated and helpless in dealing with modern life. Sure the old annoyances are still there, the taxes, waiting in line to buy things etc. but there also seems to be so many more problems that have recently come about that seem like they would be solved, or at the very least make you feel better by gunning down not just one, but many people. Then if the big problems can be solved in such a way, well why not the small ones?
Is this just a sign that the population is polarising? That instead of me against you, it is changing to us against them? Maybe, but it would be hard to explain away the fact that the zombie genre is becoming more and more popular in all countries, ones which have vastly different forms of governments, religions and cultures. Violence has always been in our lives and there have been times when people have thought that a mass event of violence could solve certain problems, but since when has it become popular for this to be a good and enjoyable means to an end? You can't tell me that millions of people have suddenly become wannabe mass murderers overnight, and society surely cannot have changed such a deal in such a short amount of time especially when nothing particularly bad has happened in that time frame.
Or maybe you actually can tell me that. Maybe we are starting to wake up and see that the old problems never go away, the last century showed us just how low humanity can sink to, events happened and overtook us which dwarfed past shameful times such as the Inquisition and the Crusades. Events were excused by our leaders because they were a means to an end, that life was going to get better and the old problems were now solved, the horrible price that had been paid will be worth it. Yet still the day to day problems are still here, maybe we are just sick and tired of it and the idea of killing people on a large scale to solve problems is starting to seem appealing, at least subconsciously. Maybe it explains that zombies, who are human but inhuman, dead but alive, who were traditionally slow but who are now fast and more human are a fantastically acceptable thing to destroy. The only reason for it being so acceptable that they are dehumanised because of their name. The modern zombie could be mistaken for a normal human being who is just angry. If history has shown us anything it is that before one group of people can destroy another group, they first have to be shown that the targets are not human. Hitler did it with the Jews and tyrants have done it before and since. The evolution of the zombie from a slow, shambling corpse to a fully functioning human who simply got up on the wrong side of the bed one morning has been a swift yet unrecognised change.
Are we being dehumanised to all other humans, not just a certain group, for a reason? When you find the idea of destroying a zombie not just acceptable but enjoyable, how big of a leap will it be from killing a human called 'zombie' to killing a human called 'neighbour' or 'stranger'?
Comment
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Comment by JJ on March 12, 2010 at 5:53pm -
In the film Inglorious Bastards, the infamous Nazi-based "Jew-Hunter" relates Jew's to vermin hiding beneath the floor boards; this is a great example of the dehumanization you are purveying, Laz. When the taking of a human life becomes equatable to that of a cockroach, landfills will take the place of cemeteries.
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Comment by Bunkerbewahrer on March 12, 2010 at 5:43pm -
oh and just to make it clear that i just wrote what i thought to points already mentioned, see it as another view so not all things (esspecially entertaining) should directly put into a politically context, even the comparisson was right, i wanted to add a neutral comparisson to that, what i think is a really interesting questions, esspecially when thinking about making a documentary, we need to know what ppl really want to see, and not what massmedia served us the last years.
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Comment by Bunkerbewahrer on March 12, 2010 at 5:36pm
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entertaining always change with the demand of society, which doesnt mean that you clearly can say the last years of evolution in games and on screen violence was literrally tortured, sawed and quarantined to sth which hasnt anything to do with romeros intention. Brian look up the documentary "document of the dead" on youtube, it was shot before he made day and shortly after the did night, and it rly has some interesting views from that time.
And personally im still overwhelmed by the common acceptance of violent media. Just a few years ago unreal tournament and quake 2 was the top notch of virtual violence, DOOM was considered as the worst game ever, so times change and ppl too, thats for sure, but it doesnt mean you just have to take it for granted, the q is what comes next, maybe in 10 yrs all vfx and sfx will be gone cause some country starts producing films for mainstream with real ppl getting killed.
Best example the video games, they became such a high standard by now, i really have no idea how it can become any better then hd. Double the actual standard and you have reallife film quality for games and home cinema.
And to add to JJ and Laz, Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and film enthusiast made a movie "the perverts guide to cinema". And i want to end my thread with a quote about Hitchkocks "Birds";
"The question is not if its possible or why the birds attack, its the crushing of reality which really brings the horror"
The same thing you can say about Romeros movies, the Zombies arent really bad on purpose, they just break into the normality and the ppl in his movie deal with that, the lost reality. The question where they come from, and how we can fight them is unnecessary, i think we have to realise that the zombie idea never was meant more as symbol to achieve that unconvenient feeling, the ppl hesitated to kill her relatives and friends, and now this has changed to a sport. You really should ask yourself where youre fascination for rotting corpses comes from, personally i just see it as a mirror ro society- (ok enough smartassed, now shoot^^)
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Comment by Laz on March 12, 2010 at 5:19pm -
It's also why stereotypes and national stereotypes emerged , if you find a certain group of people disgusting, offensive, barbaric etc... its much easier to convince people to go to war against them.
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Comment by Laz on March 12, 2010 at 5:07pm
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and very ncie points by the way JJ :)
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Comment by Laz on March 12, 2010 at 5:06pm
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Brian- comparing the psychology. Before a sane human will kill another the 'target human' has to be dehumanised. Hitler did this to the Jews by blaming the economy and then all manner of things on them, he made it seem to the population of Germany that Jews were not human, with that achieved it doesn't take much of a push to perform violence against something they don't consider human. All the allied powers did it in WW1 and WW2 to their populations via propaganda.
If movies are a way that people are starting to get dehumanised about the idea of killing each other then people eventually will feel the same way towards stabbing someone because they cut line, as they would about standing on a slug for eating their flowers.
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Comment by JJ on March 11, 2010 at 10:39pm
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In my honest opinion, Zombie films do not depict what society is becoming, but what it has already become. Human's have killed each other on massive scales long before the popularization of the zombie. The continued implementation of gore and ultra-violence in film is not to blame on the individuals who continue producing it, but the viewers who continue watching. Unless the film is independent (which many of Romero's earlier works were), it is a sad, sad fact that the catering of a demographic's needs will always supersede the importance of a message; this is the ugly, veiled face of corporal, fat-cat capitalism. People do not change according to what's in the theater; what's in the theater changes according to what people desire. If people want blood and guts, that's what the media will deliver because the general mass are the ones putting money in it's pockets; this is why I love zombie movies- they are not tools of subliminal messaging, but abstract pictures of certain patterns in societal behavior. You either get it, or you don't. You cannot change the direct course of all human nature, but you CAN change your own.
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Comment by Brian Mark on March 11, 2010 at 8:37pm -
Wait so ur comparing the killing of zombies to the killing of jews duriing ww2?
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Comment by Brian Mark on March 11, 2010 at 8:32pm
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He started that with Day of the Dead. Remember Bub?
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Comment by Laz on March 11, 2010 at 8:01pm
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yep bunks, its making them more and more human like, I think it might even be something that Romero was hitting on with Land of the Dead; when he started making the zombies able to communicate, just making them more and more human so eventually you wouldnt be able to tell the difference
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