Isn't that the cutest zombie apocalypse ever? Seriously, though, I found it a lot more difficult than I originally thought when deciding to look at everything in the class from the perspective of a zombie. First of all, most of the texts and stuff we have watched so far does not let us get into the head of what the zombie is thinking (Warm Bodies and Delice being exceptions to that). Unfortunately, most of the zombies do not give us great one liners such as this:
Instead, I start forming my zombie perspective by trying to understand how smart the zombies are through looking at the context of the text. For example, I learned in "The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home" that the change into zombie mode is a slow one. I can ascertain that the zombies in that text have more intelligence when they begin to turn. So, as a zombie in that world, I would want to utilize my utmost brain power to trick as many humans as possible into letting me eat them before my intelligence completely fades away.
I have found looking at the zombie perspective in This Is Not A Test particularly challenging. First of all, the zombies are more of a sub-plot to the actual story. So, in many ways their presence is irrelevant for the majority of the story. The information we do get about them does not bode well for the longtime survival of the zombie species. They seem to be pretty dull in the intelligence realm. They also seem to be a bit slow which makes them quite easy to kill (I don't want to include spoilers so I won't elaborate on this point).
I think out of all the zombie stuff we've looked at so far in class, as a zombie, I would most like to be in the world of the Walking Dead. I think the zombies have the best chance for winning and completely overtaking humanity in that scenario. I don't consider Warm Bodies as a positive outcome for the zombies because we basically turn back into humans or if we are too far gone (bonies), we are eradicated. This is a loss to me, because either way, zombies no longer exist, and humans rule again. In the Walking Dead, it just seems to me that given a long enough time frame, everyone will die. That's a true example of a zombie driven world, even if those zombies are not super intelligent. I'll trade intelligence for an almost certain victory. It shall be interesting going forward to see what other depictions of zombies we have and if I change my decision as to what zombie world I would most like to unlive in as a zombie.
And now, for no apparent reason: ZOMBIE VS. SHARK!
As a fellow zombie, the subject of this post caught my eye. You definitely bring up some good points here (including some totally awesome, classic film clips) with implications for both humans and zombies alike. As anyone who has watched too many zombie movies (perhaps better to say, "just enough") knows, there is a tremendous amount of diversity when it comes to zombies. Yet it seems that all too often we zombies are subsumed under this broad, generalized 'zombie' category that really, when you get down to it, doesn't seem to do us justice. True, the introduction of the 'infected' vs. (classic/traditional) 'zombie' distinction does seem to gesture toward a greater sensitivity to differences among the undead, but despite this, it still seems that there are important differences being left out or ignored within this classic zombie/infected binary. WARM BODIES provides us with some interesting examples here. For example, beyond the boney/zombie distinction (levels of zombification), we are also presented with a case (or rather, cases) of zombies fitting the ostensibly "classic," Romero-esque, pale staggering corpses prototype THAT CAN BE CURED. What?? The rhetoric of 'curing' alone clearly troubles this infected/zombie dichotomy. Also the old school voodoo zombie: clearly in terms of behavior they can be aligned with (and most definitely informed) the "classic" zombie paradigm. Yet the element of possession and mind control so central to this manifestation of the zombie also seems to defy classification as either "classic" zombie (notoriously brainless, meandering, searching solely for food) or infected, particularly when we think of infection in more conceptual terms -- not just as a disease, but as the introduction of an alien or other into the human body. Does this not bear a striking similarity to the kind of mind control we see in something like WHITE ZOMBIE?
ReplyDeletePersonally, from the perspective of a speedy, 28 DAYS LATER-style "rage" 'infected', I think (ha) that it would be a bit degrading to be mistaken for one of the brainless, drooling walking cadavers from, say, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, or one of the blue-faced consumer corpses in DAWN. As the name of the virus reflects, I'm angry god dammit! I might not know or be able to articulate what about, but you can bet your brains I'm going to tear all through the town to show you just how mad I am! Contrariwise, as one of the half-melted, sticky, slow, and slimy things from something like DEAD ALIVE or RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, I don't want anyone ascribing any kind of intention to me. Save your politcal/theoretical cooptation for those rage-filled types -- I just want your guts!
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ReplyDeleteWhile the idea of attributing feelings to zombies is perhaps a dubious one, I think these questions of categorization bring up some other useful questions: How might we begin to establish a kind of zombie typology and what kinds of categories or variations on the dominant classic/infected zombie binary might we come up with? Is there a hierarchy of zombies? Furthermore, we might also ask what the points of intersection between the different groups are: Do similarities between groups enable us to say that these different zombie "families" are in any way related? Or does the fact that the reasons for zombie outbreak, even in instances of similar or almost identical groups of zombies appearing (such as in, say, DEAD ALIVE and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD), are so many and varied that such a claim is impossible? Might we be able to establish some kind of zombie family tree? While I certainly don't have the answers to these questions, interrogating them could offer valuable new insights into the relationships between different zombies as well as provide a useful classification system for survivors. "Know your zombie," after all, has come up time and again in our discussions as one of the essential strategies for survival. Not that I want any of you to survive, but, you know, food for thought.