[social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

[Allegro]

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’Zombies’ show up to counter
Westboro Baptist Church protestors
— Yahoo News | Mon, Jul 30, 2012

After reading this story, you may begin to see zombies in a whole new light. While they get a lot of criticism for their love of human flesh, it turns out that some zombies also go out of their way to support the troops.

The Westboro Baptist Church had recently announced that it would be holding one of its protests outside the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in DuPont, Washington. But last Friday, the controversial group was met with a far larger group of counterprotesters—dressed as zombies.

The controversial, Kansas-based church did not explain exactly why it was protesting in DuPont, but it has held a number of similar protests outside of military funerals in objection to gay rights.

That’s when Melissa Neace and three of her friends organized the Facebook event “Zombie’ing Westboro Baptist Church AWAY from Fort Lewis!”

“I have decided that the most violent free way to protest back is simple... a zombie apocalypse. So I ask EVERYONE who is able to attend that day, please come dressed in your finest zombie outfit,” Neace wrote on the page.

The event page received such a positive response that the zombies outnumbered the protestors by a reported level of 300 to 8, the News Tribune reported.

“We wanted to turn something negative around, into something people could laugh at and poke fun at,” Neace told the paper. “It was the easiest way to divert attention from something so hateful.”

“I think that their message is very hateful, and Jesus was not a hateful person. He loved everybody,” counter-protestor Ashley Winslow told KIRO-TV. More + pic + video.

[8bitagent]

News just reported that a man on "synthetic marijuana" ate his 40 pound dog...alive.

[JackRiddler]

I thought maybe the Onion was doing some partnership with NBC, but apparently not. Some may ask "does the government know something we don't know", but
I see it more metaphorical: the powers that be consider us all zombies.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09 ... ogram?lite

Also, related: "government warns of zombie outbreak as ruse"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48932910/ns ... 1118043084

University of Oxford does hypothetical study on a global zombie plague
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/techn ... ert-120495

Zombies under attack in counterterrorism training program
By NBC News staff

Zombies may have a tougher time taking over the world after a counterterrorism training program scheduled next month in San Diego.



MilitaryTimes.com on Sunday reported that California-based security firm HALO Corp. will incorporate training to fight the undead during its Oct. 29 to Nov. 2 Counter-Terrorism Summit expected to draw 1,000 military personnel, law enforcement officials, medical experts and government workers to the 44-acre Paradise Point resort island in San Diego’s Mission Bay.
Advertise | AdChoices

The company, founded by former special operations, national security and intelligence personnel, says its annual summit this year will include a realistic tactical training environment using “Hollywood magic” in live action demonstrations, realistic tactical training scenarios and classroom education.


Immersive Hollywood sets will include a Middle Eastern village and a pirates’ haven, MilitaryTimes.com reported.

The more than 30 courses range from border and maritime security to cyber terrorism and modern warfare, HALO says in its summit promotional material.

Related:

No, the zombie apocalypse isn't coming, assures the CDC
No, really: Government warns of 'zombie apocalypse'
Oxford University on zombie alert
After gory incidents, online 'zombie' talk grows

But a future crisis could arise from an outbreak of viruses that destroy brain cells and render people violently catatonic, like zombies, MilitaryTimes.com said.

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“The Zombie Apocalypse is very whimsical,” Brad Barker, HALO president, told MilitaryTimes.com, referring to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campaign released last year.

Zombies who roam the island will harass the troops, first-aid teams and medical responders participating, Barker told MilitaryTimes.com.

Ha, love the video, on Halloween they have former CIA and NSA director head General Michael Hayden.

[Laodicean]

[elfismiles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTB2b1sIBao

[JackRiddler]

I have posted a poll! Everyone answer!

[POLL] What is main factor in popularity of zombie genre?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35944

Please answer the poll and then reply HERE ONLY.

I will keep bumping the poll to get more responses.

QUESTION

What do you believe is the most influential factor in the current popularity of the zombie genre in the United States?

A - AFRAID AM ZOMBIE

B - WANT BE ZOMBIE

C - KILL EVERYBODY IS GOOD

D - BOURGIE MUST KILL ZOMBIES, HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOMS

E - NWO PLANNING ZOMBIE WAR

F - THE FUTURE SUCKS ANYWAY

G - MINDLESS GORY ESCAPISM, NO MEANING

H - NO ANSWER! BRAIN HURTS!

OPTIONS DECODED

It would be good if ranking was possible but in this format you must pick your ONE best answer, even if you also agree with other answers. These answers are indicative of veins of thought, not exhaustive.

A - People fear they are zombies, or may have a zombie element. It's a catharsis to watch living, willing humans resist the zombies. Even if they lose. Zombies represent cookie-cutter consumers, believers, parroters of myths and propaganda, work drones, constant media consumers -- in other words, us.

B - People want to be zombies. A part of us desires to surrender the vexations of free will, the need to think or choose or be a responsible individual. We want to be a mindless part of a shambling herd.

C - It's fun to think about killing everyone. It's even better when it's a moral imperative to kill everyone as a condition of species survival. We fantasize (or truly desire?) an opportunity to kill every last motherfucker crowding around us, without regard to age, creed, color, ideology, or elaborate discourses on right and wrong. Reload!

D - People hate zombie-others. Things have gone to hell and WE must fight back. But first we must recognize the threat, discover our common identity, and unite against the threat. Lower classes or hostile foreigners or inferior races or white trash or immigrants or crazy subcultures or alienated violent youth or religious fanatics or femme-extremists or extraterrestrial invaders or brain parasites or undeadbodysnatchersofmultiplefantasyspeciesfromfairiestovampires or commie liberals or criminal gangs or sexual deviants or mind-controlled drug addicts or demons or diseased pathetics or whatnot are taking over and destroying everything worthwhile! The good guys (in US productions usually signified as middle class, mostly white, professional, serious, law-abiding and hard-working, strong and responsible, love-seeking, nuclear-family-oriented people with just a hint of mainstream Christianity and some past trauma or hidden addiction or other psychological block to overcome) need to band together and fight the mobs in their own defense, and learn the hard lesson (usually at the cost of many of their number dead) that it's either US or THEM. With us or against us. Horrible measures are necessary and must be taken without hesitation and always with a clean conscience, etc. Those who have stocked up on arms and essentials will be at an advantage.

E - Psyops prefiguring the real-world future - as planned. Any of the above can be true as far as the appeal of the material to an individual consumer. But all of it proves secondary if we consider the zombie narrative as a function of underlying power dynamics. What's most important here is a propaganda trend, doubtless influenced and promoted by psyops, toward preparing us for real-life scenarios in which we will all effectively be designated as either "alive" or "zombie." The former will be deputized under a state of exception in a civil war. The latter are to be rounded up, defeated, excluded, deported or exterminated.

F - Pop-art prefiguring the real-world future - as coming regardless of any master plan.

G - Me stupid, me like gore and guns and shit.

H - Other. (Please explain, but if it's a combination of the above, PLEASE PICK ONE OF THE ABOVE as your number-one answer.)

[elfismiles]

H. "MOST COMPELLING FICTIONAL SURVIVALIST SCENARIO MAKES FOR EASY DRAMA, PATHOS AND SCALE" -- I really do think the main appeal is "what would I do? how could I survive?" and watching protagonists who exist as avatars for the viewers work through the permutations, one casualty at a time.

I think Wombat's answer gives the best reply for me.

I've been a zombie movie fan for a long long long time.

I saw Day of the Dead (1985 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/ ) in the theater - I think that may be the only zombie film I've actually seen at the theater.

My mom and step-dad have also been zombie movie fans as long and I think the whole post-apocalypse fetish I grew up with, along with an appreciation for the whole Swiss-Family-Robinson, jury-rigged / rube-goldberg survivalist mentality is appealing to me.

For the last few years, several friends and I get together once a year and have our own private ZOMBIETHON near the resting place of the house in which TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was filmed.

http://www.smileslewis.com/blog/tag/zombies/

[thurnundtaxis]

I picked D.

But I think decades of media conditioning making gun play look cool and heroic have imbued the general population with an awe of firepower. A Hand -Of-God type of Zeus-Bolt striking power which enables the individual to smite according to their will is what I believe to be the underlying attraction here.

While a few among the general population would never shoot to kill another human being regardless of nationalist or religious justifications, the undead zombies aren't living things, so in this fantasy even those practicing whatever degree of ahimsa they might subscribe to can blast away regardless.

My actual opinion would be a combination of C & D.

I really do believe that the deep state has had a hand in guiding the Hollywood studio system with regards to espousing a pro-armed forces agenda on a rather large level, at least until independent film began to diversify the narratives a bit. I see the zombie trend more like pro-militia propaganda
in that regard, coming from B-movie, outsider beginnings, the genre which perhaps held some social critique at one point, proved to be a box office money maker probably because of the guilt-free abandon with which most people could justify the used of extreme violence against The Other.

Now it's big money Hollywood fodder as well as indie nerd stuff.

Everybody wins. Except the zombies.

And of course all of this is frightening to think about in terms of what we might come to expect in a post peak oil society. How will the well fed view the hungry?

[barracuda]

Everyone secretly yearns to be devoured.

[Project Willow]

It's the fear that our unchecked impulses will destroy us, as will probably be the case with our species.

[elfismiles]

But I think decades of media conditioning making gun play look cool and heroic have imbued the general population with an awe of firepower. A Hand -Of-God type of Zeus-Bolt striking power which enables the individual to smite according to their will is what I believe to be the underlying attraction here.

"... Fourteen Foot Cobra, With Nine-Inch Fangs, Firing Lasers Out Of Its Eyes, With Seventeen Godzillas, Shooting Flying Saucers Out Their Nose."

Brief 30 second audio clip of a friend talking with Alex about gun culture and AJ giving one of his over-the-top-analogies:
http://www.elfis.net/media/AlexJonesGunAnalogy.mp3

[JackRiddler]

Some combination of all the choices, with answer "A" (we fear we are zombies) being probably the single most significant individual factor, followed closely by "C".

Nobody likes to think of themselves as mere mindless money, food, and sex grubbing automatons, or as "cookie-cutter consumers, believers, parroters of myths and propaganda, work drones, constant media consumers". The impulse to fight this perception of self, to rage against the machine so to speak, is strong. Which leads to answer "C", the desire, or fantasy, to "kill every last motherfucker crowding around us, without regard to age, sex, creed, color, ideology, or elaborate discourses on right and wrong. Reload!" in an attempt to project, or distances ourselves from our inner zombie.

[JackRiddler]

Cross post from the poll thread:

I just returned from seeing Warm Bodies and I think they've interpreted the genre extremely well. I guess my synopsis will include spoilers (or whatever), but there weren't really any surprises if one has seen the trailer. The general theme is that the zombie virus began due to lack of love and empathy amongst humans. In one of the only scenes in which the Most Sensitive Zombie in the World (key plot point) fantasizes about what life was like before the apocalypse, he longs to feel and to interact with others, and pictures a scene at an airport where all the living humans are playing on their cell phones, not looking at one another. Obviously love is the anecdote to the virus. The hero is the first to reignite his heart because he loves the heroine, and the other not-so-far-gone zombies witness this and feels it too. Love spreads, as Ian Brown (to whom the hero bears a slight resemblance) would say.

I think it's a pretty good answer to say that it was a fear of inhumanization and loss of empathy in whatever aspect of the modern era people imagine that begat the genre, going all the way back to the anti-racist message of Night of the Living Dead.

My girlfriend thinks that the zombie genre, above all others, taps into chase dreams featuring an unrecognizeable and blurred assailant, a near-universal aspect of human life.

p.s. I chose option A.

[undead]

I chose G (WR answer) because I think he pretty much nailed it in terms of its popularity in the movies. The appetite for mindless aggression and gunplay that has been developed is definitely the runner up, and I would also add the very reasonable fear of biological warfare, chemical mutation, and / or drug induced zombification in the future. Look at that Krocodil shit they are doing in Russia - the only reason that situation hasn't turned into a classic zombie film is that the drug is opiate-based and it doesn't give the necessary energy to attack. It could happen in the US if people found a way to cook down huge amounts of OTC speed into something similar, maybe adding some Xanax or OTC DXM. It would be something like that DXM-Dexedrine drug that Ayn Rand was addicted to.

From what I have heard from people living in the rural interior of the United States, the meth situation was past the point of zombie film analogy several years ago.

[wintler2]

I - killing death - giving a conveniently tangible (and thus destroyable) form to our fear of death and decay. The closer the reality gets, the more saleable is the symbolic relief offered by hollywood.