(from Monday. no edit. i did this in 45 min. at work and it shows. excuse typos my attempt at one of those meaningless Salon.com features i think...yet still profoundly personal and sincere.)
Respect for the Dead: Why Zombie Movies Matter
Today the box office receipts for this weekend revealed that more people went to go see zombies munching human flesh than went to experience Mel Gibsons vision of the last days of Christ, dethroning the Savior for the first time since the films release several weeks ago. This sort of thing happens all the time, but the irony here may be worth noting. One resurrection has been replaced by another in the publics interest - at least for the weekend.
Everyone who probably wanted to see The Passion of the Christ, has seen it, leaving its box office numbers the product of repeat viewers who just cant get enough of the Passion. Meanwhile, another type of audience found their way to the theaters this weekend in search of something less different than you might imagine.
Hard to ignore the funny irony in releasing a resurrection movie like Dawn of the Dead just in time for Easter, but putting that aside for a moment, let me take a moment to speak in defense of a movie - as well as a genre - that deserves more respect than it gets.
Zombie movies are important. Not important in the same way that say, police training films are important, but still - in a world that can elevate the religious vision of a Bird On a Wire co-star to a sort of must-see revelation - popcorn religious exploitation packaged as a church-supported salvation event - its nice to know that there is still an audience for the subversive context and social commentary offered by zombie movies, whether the audience realizes what theyre absorbing or not.
To be fair, Ive not seen the Passion of the Christ. Ill wait for it on cable when tuning in will be the most indirect way for me to line Gibsons pockets with my curiosity and, I dont mind saying it, bloodlust. Im a horror movie fan and from that perspective, and the perspective of a dyed in wool atheist, I am eager to witness what Ive heard described as the most realistic crucifixion in the history of film. (Sweet!) But seeing it in a theater also carries the danger of causing a stink if Im forced to share the back row with any Christians who might not take kindly to my ooh-ing and ahh-ing over slow-mo cutting-edge spike-through-hand effects.
Without having seen Passion, I can still say with some degree of certainty, that I will not be transformed by the experience, let alone won-over. Besides, I know how the story goes as well as any other member of the general public and I know that the basic premise is look at how he suffered for YOU - dare you deny him now? Any relevance the Gospels might have ever had, have surely disintegrated over time for any number of reasons, including that they written hundreds of years after the events they are supposed to chronicle by a smorgasbord of decidedly subjective unreliable narrators. But whatever.
On the other hand, zombie movies are inherently rigged with social commentary, and if you dont believe me consider this: What are zombies but ourselves with the soul sucked out so that all thats left is misfired synapse and our basest desires - hunger, in particular.
The original Dawn of the Dead offered heavy-handed sociology regarding consumerism and its dehumanizing grip on middle-America. Its a far cry from the tingly, subversive cold war creepiness at the root of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but at the time, this was far cleverer than any horror movie had any right to be.
That angle has been abandoned by the new Dawn and I cant argue with the omission. Americas consumerism now seems like an ancient and obvious target for criticism and I suppose theres an argument to be made for the original Dawn being downright prophetic about the decades to come. (Have we ever been as submerged in consumerism as we are now?) So whats left besides lots of running and screaming? Quite a bit actually.
Zombie movies continue to scare me more than any other type of horror movie for one simple reason: A zombie holocaust - whos to say it couldnt happen? In a world ravaged by AIDS, flesh-eating viruses, SARS and mad cow disease doesnt it seem at least kind of plausible in a way that makes you want to stop thinking about it the moment you ride the train of logic too far?
Zombie movies get under my skin because every time I see one, I walk away from the experience thinking, wed be fucked if that ever happened. And its true. As a nation, we dont do well in a crisis no matter how much we may have patted ourselves on the back as the smoke cleared from 9/11. The firefighters, rescue crews and the like - they may know how to tackle disaster pragmatically, but look at whats happened as a result of those attacks. Weve willingly followed our government into a dark abyss where civil liberties are dissolved and fear propels leadership. THIS is how we react in a crisis: fear makes us fall in line.
So imagine if middle-American neighborhoods began to melt down into fiery chaos as a zombie epidemic spread at the speed of light through family living rooms turning parents into blood hungry predators of their children. Imagine husbands eating wives, girlfriends eating boyfriends and coaches eating little leaguers. Neighbors, family members and roomates become flesh- eating home intruders, bereft of reason, as law, social service and sanity unravel in mere hours. This is the nightmare scenario presented by the first thoroughly un-nerving 10 minutes of the new Dawn of the Dead and it hits home with me in a way that the cobwebbed story of Christ, true or not, never will.
I was one of the millions of people caught in the dark by last summers east coast blackout and, unlike most of my friends, I didnt handle it that well. Perhaps it had something to do with my love of zombie movies. The first afternoon of the blackout was the closest I had ever come to the kind of mass hysteria that usually occurs in large-scale zombie movies.
It might sound like an overstatement but that day was the catalyst for a queasy uneasiness that Ive carried with me ever since. If you were left unaffected by the blackout imagine major intersections with no stoplights, an atmosphere where the authorities seem largely preoccupied by issues bigger than your personal safety, a lack of easily accessible news and information and finally, a mad selfish rush to buy bottled water. Imagine city streets that have never been hidden by the cloak of night, suddenly silent, desolate and dark as parents usher their children in after sundown to protect them from the uncertainty on the streets. Grocery stores vacant of shoppers as produce quickly goes soft and sour like a scene from 28 Days Later.
In my own mad search for a place to buy cigarettes during the first few hours of the blackout, I dropped in on my favorite local convenience store only to bear witness to a frightening display of greed and irrationality. As the clerk desperately tried to close his store, new customers continued to storm in, ignoring his warning that he was not taking more customers. Working alone he was caught between attempting to get to the door to lock it, while protecting his register and waiting on the five-person-deep line that had accumulated in second. I watched a man threaten the clerk for not accepting his credit card (clearly an impossible task) and another man steal two bags of ice from the cooler as others pleaded for the validity of their personal checks. Tension in the store went from zero to 10 in about 30 seconds as I watched, unsure of what to do and fearing the worst. There was just the faintest hint of a mob mentality beginning to germinate that afternoon in a small convenience store in an okay part of town. And these were not thugs making threats and stealing ice, but business men in suits, soccer moms and white bread suburban teens. Imagine the rough parts of town.
Imagine what must have been hundreds of people that were taking elevators one floor up when the power went out.
Movies like Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later, take that sinister little vibe, inflate it and turn it into something implausible. But the root of the horror is still grounded in something very real and very scary.
Zombie movies make us face the fact that, no matter what we might think, its every man for himself. Zombies in their single-minded pursuit of something new to consume, abandon any human sense of community and work as purely selfish entities propelled forward by their hunger. Sound like anyone else you know? Pretty scary, eh?
The heroes of zombie movies are usually a rag-tag group of thrown together individuals whose differences must be set aside to form an alliance against the zombie threat. In short, they create community and pull together in their darkest hour to survive. Its a heartening plot device that allows the audience to identify with someone positive to carry them through the nightmare. But do we ever really identify with the selfless heroes in zombie movies? Even the more despicable characters in movies like the original Night of the Living Dead, both Dawns and the Italian classic, Zombie are far more resourceful than I could ever hope to be in a similar situation. The zombie movie recognizes this discrepancy and winkingly allows us to identify with the heroes anyway.
Theres a scene early in the new Dawn where Sarah Pollys Ana is trying to make a getaway from her suddenly and at this point, inexplicably, rabid boyfriend. She makes it out of the house and to her car in the driveway in time to notice that over night her world has crumbled, as people run, scream, shoot, die and devour (roughly in that order). A neighbor, not a zombie, calls out to her by name and we see that he has a gun trained on her. Dont move Ana! Dont move! He is confused by what is going on, having probably just witnessed his wife eat the mailman, and the only thing he can think of to do is point a gun at anything that moves.
Thats the guy we really identify with. And for me, the true horror of zombie movies stems from that precisely.
The punch line, of course, is that zombie movies are notorious for having those not so fast endings that reveal how the heroes didnt actually survive. Its a precedent that was set the moment Duane Jones is mistaken for a zombie and shot down by a band of vigilante zombie hunters in the last scene of Night of the Living Dead - the father of the modern zombie movie. Community and resourcefulness, it seems, will only get you so far.
The message seems to be, you might not be one now, but you will be. Youre one bite away from becoming what you fear most.
In a country where over half of the public continues to support the presidency of George W. Bush, this seems relevant to me.
In a country where religious extremism, unreliable news sources, and politicians who appeal to our basest most selfish desires are turning us into a aloof nation of unquestioning, complacent zombie-like consumers - its hard not to draw a line between the two. When the answer to fighting terrorism is buy more stuff and church attendance rises because Mel-fucking-Gibson (homophobe and holocaust revisionist) made a movie featuring the most graphic death of Christ ever(!), you have to pause and wonder - am I a zombie, a selfish neighbor with a gun or a community-constructing hero?
Respect for the Dead: Why Zombie Movies Matter
Today the box office receipts for this weekend revealed that more people went to go see zombies munching human flesh than went to experience Mel Gibsons vision of the last days of Christ, dethroning the Savior for the first time since the films release several weeks ago. This sort of thing happens all the time, but the irony here may be worth noting. One resurrection has been replaced by another in the publics interest - at least for the weekend.
Everyone who probably wanted to see The Passion of the Christ, has seen it, leaving its box office numbers the product of repeat viewers who just cant get enough of the Passion. Meanwhile, another type of audience found their way to the theaters this weekend in search of something less different than you might imagine.
Hard to ignore the funny irony in releasing a resurrection movie like Dawn of the Dead just in time for Easter, but putting that aside for a moment, let me take a moment to speak in defense of a movie - as well as a genre - that deserves more respect than it gets.
Zombie movies are important. Not important in the same way that say, police training films are important, but still - in a world that can elevate the religious vision of a Bird On a Wire co-star to a sort of must-see revelation - popcorn religious exploitation packaged as a church-supported salvation event - its nice to know that there is still an audience for the subversive context and social commentary offered by zombie movies, whether the audience realizes what theyre absorbing or not.
To be fair, Ive not seen the Passion of the Christ. Ill wait for it on cable when tuning in will be the most indirect way for me to line Gibsons pockets with my curiosity and, I dont mind saying it, bloodlust. Im a horror movie fan and from that perspective, and the perspective of a dyed in wool atheist, I am eager to witness what Ive heard described as the most realistic crucifixion in the history of film. (Sweet!) But seeing it in a theater also carries the danger of causing a stink if Im forced to share the back row with any Christians who might not take kindly to my ooh-ing and ahh-ing over slow-mo cutting-edge spike-through-hand effects.
Without having seen Passion, I can still say with some degree of certainty, that I will not be transformed by the experience, let alone won-over. Besides, I know how the story goes as well as any other member of the general public and I know that the basic premise is look at how he suffered for YOU - dare you deny him now? Any relevance the Gospels might have ever had, have surely disintegrated over time for any number of reasons, including that they written hundreds of years after the events they are supposed to chronicle by a smorgasbord of decidedly subjective unreliable narrators. But whatever.
On the other hand, zombie movies are inherently rigged with social commentary, and if you dont believe me consider this: What are zombies but ourselves with the soul sucked out so that all thats left is misfired synapse and our basest desires - hunger, in particular.
The original Dawn of the Dead offered heavy-handed sociology regarding consumerism and its dehumanizing grip on middle-America. Its a far cry from the tingly, subversive cold war creepiness at the root of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but at the time, this was far cleverer than any horror movie had any right to be.
That angle has been abandoned by the new Dawn and I cant argue with the omission. Americas consumerism now seems like an ancient and obvious target for criticism and I suppose theres an argument to be made for the original Dawn being downright prophetic about the decades to come. (Have we ever been as submerged in consumerism as we are now?) So whats left besides lots of running and screaming? Quite a bit actually.
Zombie movies continue to scare me more than any other type of horror movie for one simple reason: A zombie holocaust - whos to say it couldnt happen? In a world ravaged by AIDS, flesh-eating viruses, SARS and mad cow disease doesnt it seem at least kind of plausible in a way that makes you want to stop thinking about it the moment you ride the train of logic too far?
Zombie movies get under my skin because every time I see one, I walk away from the experience thinking, wed be fucked if that ever happened. And its true. As a nation, we dont do well in a crisis no matter how much we may have patted ourselves on the back as the smoke cleared from 9/11. The firefighters, rescue crews and the like - they may know how to tackle disaster pragmatically, but look at whats happened as a result of those attacks. Weve willingly followed our government into a dark abyss where civil liberties are dissolved and fear propels leadership. THIS is how we react in a crisis: fear makes us fall in line.
So imagine if middle-American neighborhoods began to melt down into fiery chaos as a zombie epidemic spread at the speed of light through family living rooms turning parents into blood hungry predators of their children. Imagine husbands eating wives, girlfriends eating boyfriends and coaches eating little leaguers. Neighbors, family members and roomates become flesh- eating home intruders, bereft of reason, as law, social service and sanity unravel in mere hours. This is the nightmare scenario presented by the first thoroughly un-nerving 10 minutes of the new Dawn of the Dead and it hits home with me in a way that the cobwebbed story of Christ, true or not, never will.
I was one of the millions of people caught in the dark by last summers east coast blackout and, unlike most of my friends, I didnt handle it that well. Perhaps it had something to do with my love of zombie movies. The first afternoon of the blackout was the closest I had ever come to the kind of mass hysteria that usually occurs in large-scale zombie movies.
It might sound like an overstatement but that day was the catalyst for a queasy uneasiness that Ive carried with me ever since. If you were left unaffected by the blackout imagine major intersections with no stoplights, an atmosphere where the authorities seem largely preoccupied by issues bigger than your personal safety, a lack of easily accessible news and information and finally, a mad selfish rush to buy bottled water. Imagine city streets that have never been hidden by the cloak of night, suddenly silent, desolate and dark as parents usher their children in after sundown to protect them from the uncertainty on the streets. Grocery stores vacant of shoppers as produce quickly goes soft and sour like a scene from 28 Days Later.
In my own mad search for a place to buy cigarettes during the first few hours of the blackout, I dropped in on my favorite local convenience store only to bear witness to a frightening display of greed and irrationality. As the clerk desperately tried to close his store, new customers continued to storm in, ignoring his warning that he was not taking more customers. Working alone he was caught between attempting to get to the door to lock it, while protecting his register and waiting on the five-person-deep line that had accumulated in second. I watched a man threaten the clerk for not accepting his credit card (clearly an impossible task) and another man steal two bags of ice from the cooler as others pleaded for the validity of their personal checks. Tension in the store went from zero to 10 in about 30 seconds as I watched, unsure of what to do and fearing the worst. There was just the faintest hint of a mob mentality beginning to germinate that afternoon in a small convenience store in an okay part of town. And these were not thugs making threats and stealing ice, but business men in suits, soccer moms and white bread suburban teens. Imagine the rough parts of town.
Imagine what must have been hundreds of people that were taking elevators one floor up when the power went out.
Movies like Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later, take that sinister little vibe, inflate it and turn it into something implausible. But the root of the horror is still grounded in something very real and very scary.
Zombie movies make us face the fact that, no matter what we might think, its every man for himself. Zombies in their single-minded pursuit of something new to consume, abandon any human sense of community and work as purely selfish entities propelled forward by their hunger. Sound like anyone else you know? Pretty scary, eh?
The heroes of zombie movies are usually a rag-tag group of thrown together individuals whose differences must be set aside to form an alliance against the zombie threat. In short, they create community and pull together in their darkest hour to survive. Its a heartening plot device that allows the audience to identify with someone positive to carry them through the nightmare. But do we ever really identify with the selfless heroes in zombie movies? Even the more despicable characters in movies like the original Night of the Living Dead, both Dawns and the Italian classic, Zombie are far more resourceful than I could ever hope to be in a similar situation. The zombie movie recognizes this discrepancy and winkingly allows us to identify with the heroes anyway.
Theres a scene early in the new Dawn where Sarah Pollys Ana is trying to make a getaway from her suddenly and at this point, inexplicably, rabid boyfriend. She makes it out of the house and to her car in the driveway in time to notice that over night her world has crumbled, as people run, scream, shoot, die and devour (roughly in that order). A neighbor, not a zombie, calls out to her by name and we see that he has a gun trained on her. Dont move Ana! Dont move! He is confused by what is going on, having probably just witnessed his wife eat the mailman, and the only thing he can think of to do is point a gun at anything that moves.
Thats the guy we really identify with. And for me, the true horror of zombie movies stems from that precisely.
The punch line, of course, is that zombie movies are notorious for having those not so fast endings that reveal how the heroes didnt actually survive. Its a precedent that was set the moment Duane Jones is mistaken for a zombie and shot down by a band of vigilante zombie hunters in the last scene of Night of the Living Dead - the father of the modern zombie movie. Community and resourcefulness, it seems, will only get you so far.
The message seems to be, you might not be one now, but you will be. Youre one bite away from becoming what you fear most.
In a country where over half of the public continues to support the presidency of George W. Bush, this seems relevant to me.
In a country where religious extremism, unreliable news sources, and politicians who appeal to our basest most selfish desires are turning us into a aloof nation of unquestioning, complacent zombie-like consumers - its hard not to draw a line between the two. When the answer to fighting terrorism is buy more stuff and church attendance rises because Mel-fucking-Gibson (homophobe and holocaust revisionist) made a movie featuring the most graphic death of Christ ever(!), you have to pause and wonder - am I a zombie, a selfish neighbor with a gun or a community-constructing hero?