Don Of The Dead!

Zombies have become ubiquitous in modern culture, so commonplace that they are used for all manner of dramatic, comedic, and pedagogic purposes. The zombie is a blank through which all of mankind's weaknesses and even some strengths can be showcased. "Zombie Apocalypse" is a phrase known to most all people these days, a short hand metaphor for anything which threatens the security of modern daily life. But it all started somewhere and as far as I can figure we have George Romero and his mates from Pittsburgh to blame. Night of the Living Dead is a masterpiece of independent film making, perhaps "the" masterpiece. In that sometimes rugged black and white tale much is revealed and not all of it intentional, but no less valid. Turns out the story was a comment on our society's tendency to isolate the individual and focus on what makes us different than what makes us alike.

When next Romero took on the dead,  it was to poke fun at the consumer culture which has simultaneously buoyed and diminished our culture in the last many decades following the last great World War. The unyielding quest for things (of which I claim no immunity) has defined us in the time since I've been around. We are citizens of course, but first and foremost we are customers, catered to and coaxed constantly to buy what we don't need and eventually need what we shouldn't want' When war came knocking as the twin towers tumbled, we were told to go about our business, to keep the economy humming in the face of the assault. Romero's Dawn of the Dead tagged us long before Osama Bin Laden thought to throw our gross impulses into our faces.

And we are never any uglier than the society seen in Day of the Dead. The world seems lost as the dead have overwhelmed society and people hide away and slowly go mad in their own ways, desperately cleaving to the identities they had before the world was whisked out from under them. Without orders soldiers lose their way, without a way to plan for the future even those who love do so in the minute and in the minute alone. We become prisoners behind cages built to contain others, our jailers are ourselves.

And finally when society does begin to reorganize the old hates and class divisions rear up to make again a mess of the world which was taken away. When even the dead begin to change and show some spark of empathy, mankind's inability to do so shows all to readily why we all of us might well live in a Land of the Dead already. Romero's use of the zombie apocalypse movie, a form he invented is all about showing the world not what could happen, but what has already happened. We don't await the zombie apocalypse, alas we are all of us too often part of it.

I know there are two more zombie movies from Romero, but I haven't seen them yet. Soon maybe.

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The Balking Dead!

To be honest, I'm getting a little "zombied out". The avalanche (literally in some cases...I'm looking at you World War Z) of walking dead which has plagued the modern popular cult scene has become sadly tiresome. I'm a zombie fan by and large, I don't immediately hate all things zombie by any means. White Zombie is at the top of my fave Bela Lugosi list, Brother Voodoo and Simon Garth were both hits with me if not with Marvel at large in the 70's, and Night of the Living Dead gets a good watching from yours truly at least every other year. But all that said the world is well full of zombies now and the shock and potential awe they inspired once upon a time has dwindled almost nothing.

Case in point -- the most recent season of The Walking Dead. Now I'm not anxious to leap on the mildewed carcus of this once-great TV show by any means, but I have become downright bored by the last few seasons. They have their moments, but sadly fewer than in previous seasons wrought and there hasn't been a really good surprise since Beth's demise (Sasha's recent turn notwithstanding). The sad truth is the the characters have been reduced to fodder and the emotional center of the show has been washed out by too many close scrapes. We are left with a core group (Rick, Carl, Daryl, Carol, and Michonne) who appear to be unkillable. Those who are left fall outside the perimeter of what constitutes a shocking demise, since we're just waiting for them to croak. The surprise this last season was almost everyone survived. And while the writers likely thought that might be a nifty twist on the usual mayhem, it actually played against the truth of the situations they established.

I'm not saying that The Walking Dead is a bad show, far from it. It's clearly a well-crafted show filled with random interesting events, but sadly the immediacy of the experience is blunted by a lack of the constant anxiety that filled viewers when they watched earlier seasons. I never knew what to expect and each and every unexplored alley and shadow and closet was potentially lethal. And clearly now other humans are more of threat than the dead, which have been reduced quite frankly to a nuisance like cockroaches or rats. Now it's more talk than scares, and that brings us to Neagan. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is one of my favorite actors and I was jazzed when he appeared out of the night to be a part of this show, but after only a few episodes of the series I quickly just wanted his incessantly yammering to stop. Negan seems to be a sadistic killer who enjoys inflicting pain on those he wants to control and he uses his barbed-wired bat named "Lucille" to do just that, when he's not torturing them with his constant blather. God man...shuck the fuck up!

I admit that this season I recorded the series and watched it in a binge, often fast-forwarding to avoid most of Neagan's relentless rants, but all the same the series still stuck me as dull. After gripping seasons and potent episodes (they will never top "The Grove"and they know it I suspect) the series seems to want to tread water and extend the inevitable. Some of the core have to go, to make room for new blood. But it's clear to me that this show is not going there and that's the mark of a show which has forsaken its brand, the absolute dedication to the unexpected.

More's the pity.

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Dead Men Tell Great Tales!

I grow bored with zombie chat rather quickly. I like zombie stories in print and on film pretty well, but sadly the discussion of those movies seems to always become micro-seminars in make-up and after a very short while, this is deadly dull to me. I don't care about the minutiae of how to make gore appear realistic. It's the overall effect of a film's narrative I'm interested in, and not how to make a head explode convincingly.

But the second season of The Walking Dead wrapped up last evening, and I have to confess I'm a fan. I came to this series grudgingly, not wanting to get hooked on another television show, but definitely intrigued by the subject matter. I found this episodic tale of a plague of undead unleashed on the world, specifically the southern United States a fascinating examination of what people will do in a crisis which draws on the deepest resources.


After the first season I was interested, but it's the second season with its patient yet relentless storytelling (not unlike the deadly stride of an undead "Walker") which has made me rate this show at the top of my current television crop. Lots of folks seemed to find the quiet of the early shows frustrating, but it was during these stories in which the zombies didn't dominate the storyline that we began to really learn about the interior of our cast. It's their struggle against the overwhelming threat of the "walkers" which is what this show is about, not the creatures themselves. This season showed that and more.

I don't want to say much for fear of ruining it for folks who might not have seen it, but the way this show will kill off its cast, sometimes key members also has my attention. I truly believe that no one is safe in this dangerous world. I've never read the comic (nor much want to actually) so I don't have lots of expectations for this show to frustrate. I just watch the story as it unfolds and so far I have to say they've done a magnificent job.

I already hanker for the next season, but that will be months away.

Sigh.


To fill the void, I might have to dig out The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics which I picked up a few years ago mostly because it had a choice adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons from Hell". Or I might have to get the massive collection of zombie stories titled directly enough Zombies!Zombies!Zombies! edited by Otto Penzler. I'm a fan of Penzler's mystery collections and this gigantic set of undead stories seems ripe for the buying. Since It might be a great time, before the coming zombie apocalypse makes getting orders from Amazon a tad more difficult.

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