Natasha Johnson Eng. 101 T-Th 12:30-1:45 Brains: To Eat or Not to Eat : A Comparison of Early Zombie Films to the Walking Dead Fast zombies, slow zombies, Haitian zombies, Riot Zombies, Flesh Eating zombies, Intelligent zombies, dumb zombies…..what do these all have in common might you ask? They all originated from the same basic origin: Fear of the dead rising back to life and overtaking our society as we now know it. For some reason the thought of our deceased loved ones coming back to life and preying on our brains strikes fear into the hearts of the living. Within the confinement of these pages I will illustrate what a “zombie” film should and should not entail, and how far the image of the zombie has progressed into our modern day visage of the term.
Rebecka Gilliam Professor Paul Stark Hum 2020 December 3, 2013 Can a Zombie Have Memories? How do you classify a zombie? Are they just undead, can they be more? Zombies have the following basic characteristics: undead, brainless, and an unsaturated desire to eat human flesh. Slowly, our society is changing the basic zombie, they still want to consume us, however they are gaining intelligence, thoughts and possibly holding on to memories.
Is the movie Fido just another zombie movie, or does it have underlying messages about modern day culture? It’s the 50s and a few decades ago, the earth drifted into some “space dust” which reanimated corpses into zombies. The living populace fought the “zombie wars” (the equivalent of our WWII) for survival until an enterprising company called Zomcom discovered a method of “eradicating” the zombies and a method of domesticating them. Now every family has a zombie to be their slave. The movie has characters that represent different groups of oppressed people in the modern world, Fido and the other zombies represent racism, Mr. Robertson represents heterosexism, and Mrs. Robertson along with other females show sexism.
This is important; however, if cinema pretends to communicate any worthwhile truths about the human condition. Dehumanizing One of the more interesting aspects of civilizations as a whole, but cinema for our purposes, is the ability to dehumanize individuals or in some cases entire groups of people. We’ve seen it multiple times during our screening so far. In Strike we saw mass dehumanization toward the end of the film when a stampede of people was gunned down and it was visually likened to the slaughter of animals by the intercuts of the killing of a cow. The TV show Dexter also serves to dehumanize but on a more individual level and in a somewhat different style.
From paper to reel, the process of creating Zombies has tremendously evolved with the birth of computer generating image technology. The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous, 1960), an epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia, also alluded the Zombie's concept, as the goddess Ishtar pledged to “knock down the gates of the Netherworld, and let the dead outnumber and devour the living.” Though the epic does not give any description of the appearance of the dead, the concept of flesh eating dead creatures are still synonymous to the idea of
But if the screen had remained blank, the memory of that murder would have suffused "Jungle Fever" just as palpably, for it explores the nexus of race, sex and place that in one instance cost a 16-year-old innocent his life and in a broader historical scheme has tormented America for centuries. After touching these issues to both serious and comic effect in his earlier work, Mr. Lee with this latest film has driven to their
The story is told around the life of Helene Lyle. This piece of work fits into the horror category based off of Robin Wood’s definition of horror. Wood’s definition of horror is defined as any text in which “normality is threatened by the Monster” (Wood, 31). Thus Candyman is a horror film because Candyman is the monster who threatens the everyday lives of Helen Lyle and everyone in her community. There are many subsections to Wood’s definition of horror.
The Rise of the “Slacker Hero” . . . or maybe not “Who died and made you fucking king of the zombies?” (Wright) In the 2004 film, Shaun of the Dead, writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright use a comedic tone to show to how today’s society is like a world of zombies. They show this through one character’s daily journey and the comparison between life before and after the zombie infestation.
This documentary heavily revolves around the idea that the main cause of gun violence in America is due to so many American’s being immersed in a culture of fear. This matter is brought up by Rock Artist Marilyn Manson whos music was targeted by the media in the wake of The Columbine Massacre as a cause of the mass shooting. “It’s a campaign of fear and consumption” says Manson, “Keep the people scared and they will consume”. Moore seems to agree as he plays a montage of TV news headlines that blast viewers with images of crime after crime. This shows the viewer how Americans are not being shown the more important news story’s when a clip reveals “new speedbumps” being setup in a peaceful town in Canada.
''They' were getting impatient.' I thought to myself again. I recalled the time when CRYOTEC made their first attack on society. Dozens of infected humans spread the virus through bites and the fear of society escalated. Fear; that is what CRYOTEC used to control and manipulate society into following every command.