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Reged: Feb 16 2004
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This thread is for comments about Why I Hate Zombies, by James Schellenberg.
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kitsunealyc
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Reged: Sep 27 2005
Posts: 2
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In response to reasons why some people might find zombies unnerving, there is a rather large (and growing) field of academic literature that makes strong connections to zombies as a thinly veiled metaphor for consumer culture. If you think about the basics of most zombie texts that you've mentioned, you can see this fairly clearly (although please note, zombie texts as a critique of consumer culture is a fairly recent trend, and is distinctly associated with Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, and those texts that reference or were influenced by that work).
Zombies mindlessly consume. Most contemporary zombie stories (whatever the medium) specifically link this consumption to palaces of corporate distribution (shopping malls, the Umbrella Corporation, etc.) One of the reasons that Shaun of the Dead is such a good satire is because it recognizes and consciously references these tropes (think about how zombies are commodified at the end). The people who battle zombies do so by becoming social outsiders, anarchists removed from the consumption-obsessed marketplace -- thus a possible answer to why the people must *leave* the mall, when it seems they have everything they could need there. Life as a consumer/zombie is no life at all. Moreover, the movies are apocalyptic/nihilistic in that they offer no solution to the problem they're critiquing. For most zombie texts, you can fight and fight, but ultimately you are either going to become a zombie, or become consumed by them. There is no third option.
As to why zombie offerings might be unnerving, well, consider the irony. You are passively watching (i.e., consuming) a film or playing a game about battling mindless consumption on a global scale. You are a consumer zombie, watching a critique about the very process that made you a consumer zombie. My observation of this is not a critique against enjoying creative media offerings of whatever stripe. I'm merely pointing out that for many people, encountering a critique of something they are implicated in can be discomfitting. It should also be noted that not all people receive or interpret contemporary zombie texts in the same way, and even those that do read the authorially-inteded consumer metaphor might not agree with the critique against consumer culture.
For some starter references about these popular culture critiques on contemporary zombie texts, I'd suggest checking out the following articles:
http://joc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/83
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/harper.htm
Edited by kitsunealyc (Tue Sep 27 2005 11:15 AM)
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James Schellenberg
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Reged: Mar 21 2005
Posts: 29
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Thanks for the post, kitsunealyc. I definitely see the points you are making, esp. re: Shaun of the Dead. I agree with your arguments about consumerism, intellectually, but I'm still stuck with a visceral phobia of the undead. I'm not attacking the connection you made... more just puzzled that I've acquired such a strong fear from a cultural construct. I like to think of myself as rational and non-suggestible person. Maybe the forces you mention are operating on me.
As a side note, I do disagree with you about the passive nature of films or games. As a librarian, I've studied a lot about reader theory and how people interact with texts (speaking more broadly than books), and as I understand it, there isn't a simple power relationship of the text over the "consumer". Or at least, there is a lot of variation in how people react to cultural items.
Good links, btw.
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kitsunealyc
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Reged: Sep 27 2005
Posts: 2
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Oh, I agree that my comment doesn't necessarily speak to your personal visceral reactions, but rather to the recent seeming flourescence of zombie texts and what issues they might be addressing.
I also agree that texts are not "received" passively, any more than consumption is totally mindless. As always, the reality is more complicated than the representations...look at how texts are appropriated, hacked and re-deployed in ways that the producers might not have intended -- fan-fiction, for example. However, I think that producers would *like* for reception and consumption to be passive and mindless, or at least enacted in ways that producers can package and re-market, and I think that it is this "perfect world" of consumption that zombie texts are critiquing.
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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ah! Thanks for clarifying, that's quite helpful.
The appropriating and redeploying that you refer to is what makes me forgive a lot of sins on the part of videogames. Sure, many of the games are mindless, both in the way they are intended and in the way they are received. But add a lot of smart people to the mix and (almost inevitably) they are going to make interesting new games or make strange uses of existing games.
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James Schellenberg
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Reged: Mar 21 2005
Posts: 29
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(sorry that was me above, thought I was logged in)
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James Schellenberg
Regular reader
Reged: Mar 21 2005
Posts: 29
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More related to the videogame business side of things, some discussion about the fact that even if the audience for games triples, it might still be hard to make money in the industry.
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2005/09/future-of-gaming.html
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JoanneMerriam
Regular reader
Reged: Oct 07 2004
Posts: 93
Loc: Concord, NH
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Further to why playing video games might make you more scared of zombies is the participation level. As a counterpoint, my personal fear of zombies was re-triggered by watching Shaun of the Dead, and over the past several weeks I've begun playing World of Warcraft. One of my two characters is a zombie - a good-guy zombie, a contradiction fully supported by the backstory of the game (watered down Tolkienesque stuff) - and my fears appear to be receding. I fully expect them a resurgence if Lost goes where the last few seconds of the last episode suggested it was going.
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see how moonlight's sharp music breaks all of your windows
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