This was written in the burb of ‘The Walking Dead Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye’ by Robert Kirkman – ‘How many hours are in a day when you don’t spend half of them watching television? When is the last time any of us REALLY worked to get something that we wanted? How long has it been since any of us really NEEDED something that we WANTED? The world we knew is gone. The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled, no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.‘
In the Introduction, the author said this – ‘To me, zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world… and there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.’
I never paid much attention to zombie flicks till I saw the zombie genre godfather George A. Romero’s ‘Land of the Dead’, which was truly brilliant. It urged me to go see ‘American Zombie’ at a film festival, which was ingeniously and relevantly satirical – using zombies to represent various ostracised classes of society. (It’s another one of those movies I didn’t get around to review properly, with notes scribbled and chucked aside indefinitely.) Here’s my abbreviated take on why zombie flicks can be fantastic… A good monster movie really points at (and warns of) the (potential) monsters in us. A bunch of humans forced to face the inhuman(e) are also forced to face their humanity. In extreme human-zombie encounters, the full spectrum of extreme humanity to inhumanity is exposed. A good zombie film always prompts you to wonder ‘What would you do?’ Will you lose your humanity or actualise it?
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Related Article:
Are You Alive in the ‘Land of the Dead’
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=12,4926,0,0,1,0