[social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

[justdrew]

So is it just that zombies are now the only acceptable target for vicarious violence? Shooting terrorists is so déclassé and generally racist. You can only have nazi's in so many story-lines before it get's too uncomfortable for the PTB, and it's so "been done" - to death. So we're left with nothing to shoot but the already dead. In stories. In reality, our boys go on shooting anyone they care to deem a terrorist. Even so, our proud trigger pullers are apparently well into zombie fiction. If you were around for Katrina, and of the wrong completion, the zombie could be you.

so, what's it all about?

Did the Hutu's imagine/pretend the Tutsi's were zombies when it came time to kill?

[Wombaticus Rex]

Nah, I think it's about being taken and converted. The zombie appeal has less to do with the end result, more to do with the process. Hence the fetishization of ID cards and names in Walking Dead.

They can only remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers once every 5 years but the concept is the same, dontcha think?

[justdrew]

Nah, I think it's about being taken and converted. The zombie appeal has less to do with the end result, more to do with the process. Hence the fetishization of ID cards and names in Walking Dead.

They can only remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers once every 5 years but the concept is the same, dontcha think?

There is a strain of that within the zombie fiction, Marvell Zombies was that sort of shadow play I guess. Other than that, I can't think of any zombie fiction where the zombie retains sentience. It's hinted at toward the end of I am Legend. So I'm not sure the audience is ever projecting into the zombies.

Sorry, I've been avoiding Walking Dead, decided I just wasn't interested enough in another post-apoc vision.

One rarely sees zombie animals. and it's never clear how long the zombies can last. Seems to me if one did have a zombie apoc, just shelter for a few months and they'd all be too degraded to move/exist by the time you came out.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Nobody in the Body Snatchers oeuvre retains sentience, at all, it's a hive mind with a mask on. Zombies aren't humans, but they were. They were people we knew and loved. Terrorists are just strangers, aliens are just animals.

[justdrew]

wait, do you mean taken/conversion as in "forced into the survivor lifestyle?"

I can think of Body Snatchers as a type of zombie fiction but not zombie fiction as a retelling of the body snatchers concept. The Body Snatchers had an agenda, the zombies are just wind-up brainless monsters. One looks human, the other clearly is no longer. WWJS1?

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1 - what would Jung say

[Wombaticus Rex]

I guess that's a tribute to how much the uncanny valley affects our judgement. I see 0% difference between the mind of a zombie and a Body Snatchee.

I guess I'm totally disqualified from any conversation about why Normals are so entranced by zombies in the first place.

[barracuda]

Borgs are the like the true melding of the body-snatched and the zombie. No individual sentience, somewhat rotting physically, centrally hive-controlled, with the benefits of technology as an upgrade. What do Borgs eat, anyways? Some kinda nanosludge? Never really figured that out.

[justdrew]

I guess that's a tribute to how much the uncanny valley affects our judgement. I see 0% difference between the mind of a zombie and a Body Snatchee.

I guess I'm totally disqualified from any conversation about why Normals are so entranced by zombies in the first place.

well I wouldn't disqualify you As far as the amount of the former person left goes, yeah, they're the same, zero. I'm just saying the bodysnatched are controlled by a sentience of some sort, whereas the zombie isn't.

'cudda - I bet if the borg just had better marketing and fashion sense they'd be able to get by just taking volunteers most likely. There's the Singularity Zombies.

[barracuda]

Yeah, the Transhuman Undead.

[JackRiddler]

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Speaking of irrelevant distinctions among species of unminded post-humans, I once heard Romero bite a radio host's head off when the latter called "28 Weeks Later" a zombie movie. "Those aren't zombies! They're not dead, they're alive!"

I haven't seen that much of the genre, but surely the answer and the genre's high classic moment came already at the end of Dawn of the Dead, with all the zombies lurching about the freshly conquered shopping mall, going up and down the escalators and trying pointlessly to fulfill the strongest drive they dimly recalled from when they were still alive: to shop. The zombies are "we the consumers." No shit, Sherlock. What are they still doing with these movies 30 years later, except to amp up the action (the recent remake of "The Crazies" was nicely paced) and throw in some New World Order (Resident Evil)?

As a kid I was much more partial to Apes. Also, Monsters.

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[stefano]

On one level it's political: a fear of the hungry horde coming to eat you. The classic zombie movie involves a build-up establishing the protagonists as everyman and -woman, followed by the crashing down of all stability and order, then a terrifying climax in which we don't know whether the world will be given over to this inhuman mass of degenerate flesh, and then a dénouement in which the military comes in, helmeted and jackbooted, and wipes out the zombies to save us. It plays on the same folk fears as authoritarian propaganda. I thought now of A tale of two cities and the way that the French Revolution is even now regarded in the ideology of the British ruling class.

The zombies are "we the consumers."

I think that's a theme in some movies, but by no means all. I should get Dawn of the dead, haven't seen it yet but that is certainly a theme (and a cleverly treated one) in the very funny Shaun of the dead. In 28 days later and I am legend, the last two zombie flicks I saw, it's all about a fear of the feral proles.

You can only have nazi's in so many story-lines before it get's too uncomfortable for the PTB

I disagree! Hollywood can never have too many Nazis. It's quite obvious by now that it is impossible for the US to be equated with Nazi Germany on any kind of mainstream soapbox, so WW2 is the perfect theme.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I can't think of any zombie fiction where the zombie retains sentience. It's hinted at toward the end of I am Legend.

Those vampires were sentient, or at least cunning on an animal level, all the way through... or do you mean the film? Haven't seen the film 'cos Will Smith stars in it.

So I'm not sure the audience is ever projecting into the zombies.

I wonder... Lots of folk obviously project themselves into vampires and werewolves, because those are just exaggerated vessels for recognisable human motivations and feelings (uncontrollable lust, irrepressible rage, the feeling of being an outsider, weirdo, etc.)

Does something have to be sentient for people to project themselves into it? Babies and young children often treat inanimate objects - toys, dolls, whatever - as if they were sentient (and sometimes treat sentient beings as if they were inanimate, for that matter). Some grown men treat vehicles as if they were alive, and living people as if they were vehicles. Do people project themselves into Transformers when they're in their car or plane forms? What about a superhero who can turn into a gas and fly through a keyhole? Do we still project into him when he's a gas?... Okay, that's getting daft now.

Shaun of the Dead did a good job of showing normal people as zombies - shambling through their daily routines and fulfilling their basic needs with no more conciousness of their actions than a walking corpse would have. I think everybody could identify with the zombies in that, because a lot of them didn't change much after death.

Maybe people like zombies because they're the laziest of all monsters. It takes effort to be a suave, sophisticated, tormented vampire. Sometimes you just want to lie around the place groaning and reeking with drool all down your front.

EDIT: Stefano makes a good point too. "The ravenous horde." "The unruly mob." "Kill All The Brutes."

Didn't Romero's last film take place in an exclusive gated community, protected by a squad of insane PMCs, with the zombie underclass tearing down the walls to eat the rich?

[JackRiddler]

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Observation: While zombie-themed video games are about gunning down the zombies, which may derive from the first-person shooter limits, what happens when people actually dress up to play in meat space?


Chicago Zombie Walk 2009 -- such events are held periodically in many cities.

A big part of it is the surrender or absence of will, of personhood.

Vampires surrender it, long to have it back. Zombies have it rendered absent and irrelevant.

I'm not me, this isn't me doing these things, I don't even know what I'm doing, I'm the atom of an unseen soulless force, there is no I.

But another part of it must be the fantasy of full moral license to shoot/stake/burn everyone in your way: authority figures, all stations and sexes, your neighbors, your own family, lovers.

Both of these simplify otherwise vexing questions of self and sociability.

What is to be done?

A. Nothing I know, I'm not even an "I" but a zombie.

B. Scream, run, hide, hoarde and kill indiscriminately, because I'm not a zombie (yet).

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Re: Zizek had a lot to say about the development of "I am Legend" through various film incarnations on the radio, second link here:

http://www.againstthegrain.org/tag-dire ... avoj-zizek

Wed 9.08.10| Žižek on Ideology

Slavoj Žižek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce Verso, 2009

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Marx wrote in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. Is such a notion obsolete today? The provocative Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that ideology, understood in the Marxist sense, is alive and well. He explores the concept through the lens of the Hollywood film "I Am Legend," the legacies of 1968, and the phenomenon of Sarah Palin.

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[beeline]

SPOILER ALERT!

Other than that, I can't think of any zombie fiction where the zombie retains sentience. It's hinted at toward the end of I am Legend.

In 28 Weeks Later, there are characters which are infected with the zombie virus, but have a natural ammunity to it. The mother character is sort of a half-breed human zombie.

What do Borgs eat, anyways? Some kinda nanosludge?

I always figured they were kept alive much like the human batteries in The Matrix, with some sort of intraveinous nourishment through their belly-button holes that gets delivered during their rest sessions.

[Simulist]

America's fascination with zombies is probably yet another extension of Americans' endless fascination with themselves.

(An unconscious correlation in this case, almost certainly.)