February 27, 2013 by

I recently tried to get back into completing the 2nd season of the Walking Dead TV series.  I quit after that redneck cop killed the fat redneck and used him as bait to escape.  By then the show got a little too cynical and overly dramatic for me.  But it's fairly popular, with some of my close friends and family following it every week, so I though I'd give it another shot.  But I still don't get it.

No too long ago, I finished the the Walking Dead Game, by Tell Tale Games.  It was quite a long time after quitting the TV show and a sufficient amount of time has passed since to get back into the show without things feeling stale.  But I must say the video game did a much better job of getting me to care about the characters.  Lee Everett and Clementine were memorable but most everyone in the TV show are just assholes.  And they all have names that are too similar, Sean and Shane and Dale and Daryl.  Can't anyone come up with more distinguishable names?

But I'm not really here to compare the Walking Dead Game with the TV show, I'm here to provoke, as the title might suggest.  And maybe get people looking at zombie flicks in a new way.

The way I see it, the Walking Dead is set in the American south, and the zombies are just a symbol for the fear of black people or those who like to work together, like a horde of zombies, otherwise called government.  American zombie movies are unique, and mostly always involve the end of the world.  In a way, the zombie apocalypse, like the one in the Walking Dead, is an American anarchist's wet dream: no government, survival of the fittest, and guns.  Lotsa guns!  Not every culture deals with the end of the world in the same way, nor do they make zombie movies in the same way.  Let me point out some examples.

British Zombies:

ie.  Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later

In Shaun of the Dead and the 28 series the military usually comes out at the end and saves the day.  Shaun of the Dead was a zom-com, a zombie comedy and was never going to end the movie with the end of the world.  Things went back to normal pretty quickly, which was part of the irony and brilliance of the movie.  Zombies simply became the next over-sensationalized pandemic.  Even in the 28 series, the military maintains quite a strong presence though it barely makes any appearance at all until the end of 28 Days Later, but just enough to let us know that the rest of the world is still there.  It's a distinctly different ending than any American zombie movie, even though Cillian Murphy kicks some zombie ass and would fit in well in any episode of the Walking Dead.  But the world doesn't end, it just gets seriously messed up, but people still work together just enough to keep the human race living and thriving.  There are American zom-coms as well, such as the truly awesome Zombieland, but still has the typical American zombie flick setting, the apocalypse.

Canadian Zombies:

ie.  Fido, aka Zombino

There aren't too many Canadian zombies movies, so claiming any relevance in zombie culture is a bit of a stretch, but still a worthy mention.  Fido is a zom-com in more ways than one.  There's an actual company in the movie called Zomcom!  In Fido, also known as Zombino, there was a zombie war which humans won and now everyone keeps zombies as pets or servants.  Fido is actually a satire about various issues form history.  1950s American/Canadian culture, capitalism and communism.  In many ways it matches up better with the Walking Dead, as an allegory to common American and Western fears from the past.  Of course it differs from American zombies movies in one way, no apocalypse.

The only other Canadian zombie film I can think of at the moment is called Pontypool.  Another slight satire or zom-com but where the zombie plague is passed through human speech.  From the vitriol of radio news and sham journalism from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, at least that's how I saw it.  In this case Pontypool was a believable apocalypse because it's entirely understandable how listening to radio talk show hosts like Glenn Beck could lead to the end of the world.  So it really was an apocalypse film, and thus has to be disregarded for the sake of my argument.  Just watch it, enjoy it, and pretend I never mentioned it here.

Japanese Zombies:

ie. Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Lollipop Chainsaw

I'm not going to go with movies for the Japanese treatment of zombies in pop culture, I'll stick with where they show up the most, video games.  Zombies are practically playthings in Japanese incarnations.  They might be dangerous and have the ability to bite off anyone's head, but never to the point of breaking down human relationships or their ability to work with each other.  In the cases of Dead Rising or Lollipop Chainsaw, hacking apart zombies are treated like kitchy sports and are used as nothing more than props for endless hours of entertainment.  Assuming, of course, that anyone considered Lollipop Chainsaw to be entertaining.  But in these titles, zombies never really approach the level of being more than a nuisance and most of the organizations and unions in the world are never really affected by them.  The governments, companies, and police are always on the case and the Japanese often put an authority figure front and center, like police officers Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine.  Not the everyman Joe Zombiekiller from American incarnations, as in the Walking Dead or Zombieland.

American Zombies:

Every society projects its fears into its art and culture in different ways.  Perhaps the modern American zombie story is the equivalent of the Grimm's Fairy Tales.  Stories designed to scare kids into keeping in line, if that's an acceptable interpretation of those stories.  I haven't read the original comics for the Walking Dead series yet, but I do think it's a special case.  I don't think it's an accident that it's set in the American south.  It's not an accident that the show contains very few racial minorities or names that don't sound very American.  There are no characters named Achmed al Achmed bin Achmedi or Jacque Bourgeois-Chapeau, and that's okay.  But it doesn't feel like a satire or social commentary, and if it does, perhaps not in a good way.

With British zombies, the military takes over and saves the day, Canadian zombies are kept as pets, and the Japanese undead are playthings meant to killed off stylishly with chainsaws.  But American zombies/black people/government always destroy the fucking world!

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