Zombies

[digitaldiscipline]

I admit it - I don't understand the zombie thing. It's cool that everyone survived (on a diet of brains, or by not having theirs eaten), but, really... what the fuck is so cool about zombies?

They fall into the same category of pop cultural iconography as reality television and cooking shows and Harry Potter and certain serial dramas - "shit of which I do not 'get' the hipness."

[and, yes, I did read the MEAD, and was entertained by everyone's cleverness... but it's like watching opera - I have no fucking idea what the attraction is, and can only barely grasp what others might see in it.]

So, in summary, Zombies = Opera

Comments

[razerwolfe.livejournal.com]

LOL: Undead Pavorotti

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

No particular attraction on my part, I just thought it was vaguely amusing for that moment in time, if for no other reason than its sheer randomness.

[gargoyl.livejournal.com]

Zombies are cool because they're fun to shoot. No guilt, they're already dead.

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

I also missed the Great Zombie Uprising. I thought it was fun to some degree but it got tiresome after a while (not saying anything bad about the FL, it was more about it hitting all my communities and such which kinda made me go, okay, funny once, funny twice, stopped being funny after the billionth time.)

Cooking shows are hip? I just watch them because I like to cook, can learn something from them, and enjoy food pr0n. I didn't realize it was cool.

I also don't get the HP madness, but I suppose I should be profoundly grateful for it as it has probably been a significant contributing factor towards my continuing ability to eat regularly and sleep indoors. ;)

[critus.livejournal.com]

I didn't "get" what happened yesterday until later in the evening, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As far as the whole zombie phenomenon? I can only speak to myself, but I don't think it's got anything to really do with zombies per se. Zombie movies generally represent an apocalypse of sorts. It's usually not "a zombie," it's thousands or millions of them. The heroes of the movie are almost always ordinary people simply fighting to stay alive in extraordinary, and pretty much hopeless, situations. There is quite often a sense that no matter what they do, they cannot "win." All they can hope for is maybe finding a place where they can survive a little bit longer.

When we were without power for a week after one of the hurricanes, I got a very VERY small taste of what life "without the conveniences" might be like. Just the psychological impact of not having power for that long was incredibly stressful. The silence. Going to flip on light switches by habit only to have nothing happen. Not being able to take a hot shower. I almost broke down into tears when our power came back on. So you take that feeling, multiply it by a bazillion (it's not just my block that shut down, but the whole world) and add on the fact that your neighbors now wanna chew on your cranium. Yeah.

That's some scary shit right there.

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

What happened yesterday? I think I missed something.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-like-its-end-of-world-bliteotw.html

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I would rather dress up for a zombie parade though.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

We did both, sort of. 2 of the other DJs from my club and I all blogged about it, with the (hive-mind-agreed-upon) result that we would all be heading to the club for "safety" and that everyone else should join us there. However (again, hive-mind) by the time we goth there, we'd all been bitten, so we showed up dressed as zombies, and some people who showed up in regular makeup got "bitten" and made into zombies too. And, of course, we played zombie-themed music all night.

The whole thing was deliciously impromptu and fun.

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

My wife and I did a zombie thing out here once. But the club that was hosting it was so packed it kind of wasn't worth it in the end. But it was fun dressing up.
http://www.clairesway.com/scott/pics/misc/zombie/zobieme.JPG
http://www.clairesway.com/scott/pics/misc/zombie/zombiekatrina.JPG
http://www.clairesway.com/scott/pics/misc/zombie/zombieus.JPG

Luckily our son healed us:
http://www.clairesway.com/images/fun/RoninHealsZombieMommy-.gif

[the-macross.livejournal.com]

im not much into zombies either, but Im enjoying the major disaster scenario exercise. something to kill time and fire the imagination.

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

I have always been into horror movies so the zombie stuff is interesting to me in the same way that vampires, werewolves, and psychopathic madmen and serial killers are. Being that zombie films usually have the "zombie effect" spreading like a disease, or animating a while graveyard, the idea of getting a large group together for a zombie parade seems like fun.

As for the other pop cultural iconography you mentioned:
-I like cooking shows because I like to eat. Gives me good ideas on meals to make or just how to use ingredients differently. Before I was dieting I wasn't into them much. But once I started limiting what kinds of foods I would take in, the cooking shows help me find better ways to use the limited ingredients (or the ingredients I can fit into my diet more) better.

-There are very little reality shows I have been into for various reasons. With shows like The Real World or Survivor it seemed that the first season or two were genuinely interesting to me. But once the new participants had seen the show, it was less natural and played more like a game.

Joe Schmo was a favorite of mine because it poked fun of reality shows a lot and was more of a joke on one (or two in the case of season two) person with the rest being actors.

30 Days I have enjoyed because of the topics they address and the fact that each episode is different.

The only other reality show I am into is The Biggest Loser. But give my history struggling with weight loss, and my current state of trying to maintain, along with gradually getting into fitness more in general I think the show will always interest me.

-The Potter thing...well, I have always liked to read books that had movies based on them. For me it is like an insider unedited cut. Once Prisoner of Azkaban came out I heard the movie was really chopping out a lot of stuff from the book (for running time mainly) so I started reading them. I like how the books start at a very basic level and gradually build up. I have enjoyed the stories quite a bit but am not a Potter snob who hate every little change they need to make in the movies. I will read the last book, but honestly I don't even know when it is being released (I think this month or next) and I am in no particular rush other than not wanting the end of the series spoiled by some fan boy posting details about the ending or hearing about it from someone at work.

-Other cereal dramas I can't get into except for the drama Fiber One used to cause on my colon. Wait, you said "serial". In that case I have never been into TV dramas that much. But to each their own.

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

July 21 is when the next PotterBomb drops. Welcome to my nightmare. ;)

I agree with you on the cooking show thing. I've learned a ton about cooking and food from stuff like Good Eats and the dreaded Rachel Ray (I hate her, but there are often some good ideas to be poached from 30 Minute Meals. The show is infinitely better on mute with closed captions, though...)

I also like The Biggest Loser too. I'm not in open warfare with my weight, but once you sift past the drama and crazy challenges, there's some solid info there on better food choices and exercise variety. I wouldn't say it's educational, but I think it's far less exploitative and silly than some reality show crap that gets churned out.

30 Days is also good, but I'd almost term that more a mini-documentary series than a "reality show", although I'll admit that journalistic credibility gets stretched frequently on that show.

[tomakins.livejournal.com]

"Potter Bomb"? Sounds like something they would find in the bathroom.

[ex-xn667.livejournal.com]

For me (and I can't be the only one), zombies = the masses. While I may never pull the trigger on a flesh-and-blood human, I can fantasize. Zombie flicks go far to appropriately demonize them, imho. Watching some fictional character(s) engage their resources in defending against the threat (while others fall prey, the stereotypes that fall speak to the writer/director/producer's tastes), well, I'm sick...it tickles me. Catharsis, if you will *eg*

Other than that, what's cool = what I like. About the only things the mainstream TV consumer has gotten right according to my idea of cool are some of the cartoons. Simpson, Futurama, Family Guy, American Dad, ATHF. And I'm a sucker for Law & Order: Criminal Intent and SVU. Other than that, TV can bite me.

I like your identity, though, heh. For me I think it would be more like Paris = Hockey.

[the_axel]

For me it's simply that there are a small mound of really good zombie movies - the most obvious being Romero's, Raimi's & Shaun.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

I think zombies represent the thing we most fear while at the same time being the thing we are closest to, in terms of monster. They are also the most "American" of monsters -- our answer to vampires and werewolves (each of which is its own kind of archetype as well).

The original zombies were terrifying because of the implication that anyone could be taken and turned into a half-asleep slave with no will and no escape. Whether people believed they were reanimated corpses or just drugged up slaves, it was still a terrifying prospect. (Read up on the New Orleans Needle Men for an interesting twist on this terror. This is the only reference to them online that I can find: http://tafkac.org/misc/needle_men.html, but note especially the part about people being stuck and sold off into slavery.)

As the 20th centure rolled along, the zombie became the ultimate voracious consumer -- the thing we are all urged to be every day. When we fight zombies, in movies, in dreams, in stories, we are fighting against the mindless consumer in us all.

I think it's such an American phenomenon because of our adherence to the concept of the cowboy, the lone individualist even as we all ultimately fail to live up to that ideal.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

Zombies originated in the Caribbean, though, so I'd say they're just as American as werewolves and vampires.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

I didn't say USAnian! The West Indies are part of the Americas and zombies are decidedly New World monsters.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

this is why i enjoy being an argumentative fuck sometimes; there are people out there who can put forward something insightful as a counterpoint. :-)

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting: Zombie Squad (http://www.zombiehunters.org/), a rather tongue-in-cheek organization that puts their focus on real disaster preparedness by talking about zombies.

[kat1031.livejournal.com]

I found the whole thing interesting as a cultural exercise. The two things that I noticed:

1. There's something cultural about zombies. I'm theorizing that it has to do with the latest psychological iteration of terror of the masses + terror of the unstoppable enemy + current fears of biological disaster.

2. The fascinating thing about reading a lot of people's zombie blogs was how much people were not the heroes of their own story. A number of people lost friends, family members, were unable to protect their children, etc. That says something about how powerless people are feeling now. It's both really interesting and somewhat disturbing.

Wrong!

[geekers.livejournal.com]

zombies < opera (< pirates) ;p