Zombies: A History of Allegory and Kick-assery

Zombies are never bigger than the movie. They are too humble and modest for that. At least the filmmakers and authors who know what they are doing know this. Because let's face it: zombies themselves are not scary. It's what they do to us that's scary. And no, I'm not talking about turning us into undead, for the most part at least. No, I'm talking about something much more complex. For this entry I'm going to dig deeper into this cultural icon known as the modern zombie and perhaps enlighten those who simply see this creature as a reanimated corpse fuel by instinct.

I'm going to begin with my second favorite zombie franchise, Resident Evil. Like I said, good zombie flicks never place the undead as the forefront of the movie. Resident Evil is about a huge pharmaceutical corporation, called Umbrella, whose main profit comes from viral weaponry and defense research. Umbrella is so focused on military implications of their products that they even have an elite security force whose job requires them to "clean up the mess". So Umbrella synthesizes an agent called the T-Virus which under certain conditions reanimates dead tissue ie makes zombies! And the fictional mid-western metropolis of Raccoon City soon becomes choked with an army of undead. I think this is a great idea. Whenever I think about Resident Evil, I think of like Microsoft or like GlaxoSmithKline doing the same shit Umbrella does. Like there are paramilitary soldiers with a "GSK" patch on their flack jackets running down some street to cover up a mess that they made. Or the Microsoft Special Forces gunning down a witness in cold blood and burning the body in a dumpster in Hell's Kitchen. Resident Evil affects me so much because it could actually, if it hasn't already, come to that. The dominant ideology must be kept safe and that is that these corporations actually care about us. They can't let us know that while we are buying anti-depressants and birth control and band-aids from them that they are also making nuclear warheads and viral weaponry and pills that will make your head explode. And the video games and movies and books have always been about people against the corporate machine, not against the zombies. Sure the zombies are in their way and they have to fight them off but the plot is never, "We have to kill every zombie here before they infect us all".

Now I'm going to get into my favorite zombie franchise, the one that started it all: Romero's Dead series. The great thing about Romero's movies are that they are each about something different. Some aspect of culture or society is dismantled, examined, and eventually reproached. In NIGHT, violence was examined and shown to be destructive even to those dealing it out. In DAWN, consumerism fetishes reflected the rotting corpses that filled the world in the zombie apocalypse. DAY showed us that when in a crisis, logic becomes skewed. And finally LAND said that money can only give illusions of class and power. But the common bond in all of his films, the thing that really sets it apart from other horror films, is the nature of the zombies. The zombies in the Dead series are not the antagonist. They aren't the monsters. And it's strange to think, two of the greatest horror films to ever be release came out in the same year, 1978. Those films are Halloween and Dawn of the Dead. Both films were remarkable in their portrayal of the antagonist. Halloween's antagonist is Michael Myers, of course, but he was different because he was completely vapid and emotionless. There was nothing there. He was simply put - an autonomous killing machine. He nearly isn't even human. And it's all in the mask too - plain, white, unremarkable. Nothingness is the only way I can describe it and that's why I think he's so terrifying. He represents a void. So if this is true, then Romero's Dead series does the opposite. If Michael Meyers represented a hollow nothingness devoid of humanity, Romero's zombies represented a strangely human entity yet so very unhuman. Like Peter from Dawn of the Dead says, "They're us, that's all." Night and Dawn and the rest of the Dead series changed the face of antagonists by making the human characters the villains whilst surrounded by creatures that could have easily been handed that role. It's so easy to make a zombie a villain because it wants to eat people. Romero completely subverted the horror genre because now instead of being afraid of the monster, we are afraid of the people around us.

The strange thing is, this subversion of the genre almost nulls it. Dawn of the Dead isn't really a horror film. It's more of a dark comedy/human drama. The psychological subplot takes precedence over the main plot. The crux of the film is about a group of people losing their humanity to a stale life of luxury, not zombies.

This analysis only applies to traditional Romero zombies who walk. The running zombies is a whole new can of worms. Running zombies present a bigger threat than walking zombies and therefore are usually given the role of antagonist. And let's face it, running zombies are pretty fucking scary. And those movies are good but I think they serve to slake the appetite of MTV-addicted, onanist, Ritalin- fueled thirteen year old males across the country.

Why Godzilla is a Bad Movie

I am a student of film but I'm no god. I don't know everything. I don't know what good acting is or good special effects or any of that stuff. All thats important but I usually don't consider those things when determining if I did in fact like the movie. So having said that, when I continue this little diatribe about Godzilla (1998), know that I'm not going to discuss any of those things. I am going to talk about the plot and what the movie says about people as a culture or species or however you'd like to classify us.

The plot is weak. A group of scientists and soldiers must kill the monster before it destroys the city, multiply, and take over the world. This may seem all well and good but my problem with it is, "Who is the antagonist/protagonist"? If you think that Godzilla is the antagonist, you have to ask yourself, "Is Godzilla trying to stop the protagonist"? That's what an antagonist does, they try to stop the protagonist from accomplishing thier goal.

So what's the protagonists' goal? First, who's the protagonist? Let's just say it's Nik Tatopolous played by Matthew Broderick. So what's his goal? He wants to stop Godzilla, or better, he wants to kill it because if he doesn't, it will multiply and take over the world. Okay. But that means that the way Godzilla is trying to stop Nik from accomplishing his goal is by...uh...not being killed.

Well that's not very compelling! Of course it doesn't want to die. It's stupid. But if you think about it even more, you ask yourself, "What side should I be rooting for"? And this leads to what I really wanted to talk about - what does this movie say about us? What's it say about our values and culture?

Well, it's not good. In the beginning of the film, we are shown nukes going off in French Polynesia and various reptiles being exposed to the radioactive fallout which turns Godzilla from mild-mannered komodo dragon to gigantic lizard. And as the movie progresses, people get scared and decide that this thing poses a threat to mankind and it must be destroyed. And we destroy it. We destory it and it's kids. Nice. Now this thing did considerable damage to NYC but that's the only thing it did that prompted the military to be involved. It wasn't malicious, that's the point.

So this is what I got out of it: competition must always be destroyed, even if it doesn't pose an immediate threat. And what's worse is the fact that we created the thing from the nuclear bombs. I think Godzilla should have won. We created the monster, its only fitting that it destroy the creator. That idea is a classic literary and cinematic technique. But the ending they had just summed up humans this way - we destroy. And the only thing that comes from our destruction are horrific monstrosities that, should punish us for our destructive ways, but instead, they too are destroyed.

My ending would have been hundreds of Godzillas roaming some grassland in Africa in harmony with the other animals. In the foreground, a band of humans hide behind some bushes wielding spears. The world would have been returned to a simplier place thanks to the Godzillas. That ending would have been poetic justice served to people for creating nuclear weapons.

But no, nothing is learned from this film. No insights gained, nothing can be taken from this film other than reinforcement for our collective appetite for destruction.