Posted on 12/13/2012 6:55:07 AM PST by FrogMom
Zombies are the new vampires in the entertainment world, but unlike pop culture vampires, they don’t sparkle, they aren’t sexy and brooding, and you don’t want to turn into one.
The most popular show in cable TV history is The Walking Dead. Dozens, if not hundreds, of zombies are slain in every episode. Head shots are taken with no more compunction than swatting as mosquito before it lands on your arm. An axe to the skull, a pick through an eye socket, blunt objects, arrows, daggers – anything goes. What’s more, it doesn’t matter if the zombie is a man, woman or child – it must be killed immediately as it staggers hungrily towards you.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
Action based TV Shows / movies need a villain.
Remember the good ol’ days when Russians, Chinese, drug cartels, communists, north africans etc... were common “bad guys”? Wonder why they’re gone?
It’s the same reason vampires and then zombies have become so popular. Zombies and Vampires do not have legal defense funds (well, not real ones anyway) and lawyers who sue when their “constituents” are “defamed”. They can safely be used as villains for that reason. I suspect we’ll see a turn to aliens and other mythical villains once the zombie / vampire thing becomes played out.
The era of “real life” villains who are not rich, white and male pretty much ended with 24.
While I sort of agree here that seeing the zombies get killed en masse might deaden the senses to videos of real mass murder, i think it’s a stretch to make the complete logical leap. The “threat to be enthusiastically destroyed” in Walking Dead would literally eat them alive if they didn’t fight back. Its like the author intentionally misses that point to make his own.
They’re not “dehumanizing” people to glorify / justify killing them as if the show were set during WWII in Auschwitz with Nazis as the heroes.
No doubt about it.
Also, despite the screeching I've seen from feminists that The Walking Dead treats women and minorities terribly----and I have no idea WTH they're talking about----they seem, almost involuntarily, to be attracted to the character of Daryl. I think this is because women, sometimes in spite of themselves, just like real men. The males on this show are a welcome change from the feminized, polished little metrosexuals seen elsewhere on TV.
Normally I don’t pay any attention to race in shows, just not on my “watch list”. But even I have had to notice that Walking Dead seems to have a 1 black guy rule. We had T-Dog for 2 seasons, then he gets killed an episode or two after Oscar, then Oscar gets killed the same episode Tyreese comes in. Now I know in TV world you can’t generally have as many characters for people to follow, and T-Dog was a lame character and they obviously weren’t doing anything with Oscar, and Tyreese is a great character from the books. But it’s still odd that they had that “bridge” black guy character in between T-Dog and Tyreese.
Exactly-—how could a show have a stronger female character than Michonne?
I was reading a message board where the feminists were howling in outrage at Glenn’s concern over whether Maggie was raped....see, he was being disgustingly “patriarchal.”
Freaking insanity.
That’s what some of the liberals are complaining about (no offense to you).
I’m just not keeping track of the race of the characters as they come and go. And Michonne is hardly blonde and fair-skinned.
Normally I don’t, but this one was too obvious. Especially when they killed Oscar the same ep they brought in Tyreese, just a couple of scenes apart.
hmm if a vampire bites a zombie does the zombie become a vampire or does the vampire bcome a zombie?
I have zero interest in zombies. Never liked them There are countless more interesting monsters, including vampires. I hate the Romero movies. Nevertheless I love The Walking Dead.
Zombies are just part of the premise. What makes for a good tv show is something else altogether.
The show is unclear on whether they’re actually dead or somehow otherwise magical. Every iteration gets to fashion its own rules. I think the explanation in the Night of the Living Dead movies is that hell is full. Or maybe that was just for one of them. Anyway, The Walking Dead has it as a disease, and everyone’s infected. People seem to die first then wake as zombies, but you can’t be sure.
Something must happen to you before you die to turn into a vampire or zombie. It doesn’t work on corpses. Vampires and zombies are already dead, so they can’t be turned into eachother.
Minorities of all sorts do die more often, but that’s because they are more likely to be minor characters. There may also be confirmation bias, because people look for that sort of thing. White people dying you tend to forget about. I don’t even remember how many members of Herschel’s family died on the farm.
As for women, they did at least write the Lori character horribly. Everybody hated her, and not in the way they hate Merle. This is a problem general to tv shows, and maybe to victim as a whole. It stems from the fact that most writers are men, and while they are able to invent good woman characters some of the time, they always let bad eggs through.
His brother’s a real redneck man, and no one likes him.
You’re right. The usual complaint is that the black guy dies first, and in my opinion that’s overblown. A better complaint is that black people die more often, but that’s still probably not statistically true. The real thing is that black characters are more likely to die. That’s true because black people are more likely to be minor characters. Whatever nonsense they feed you about “anyone can die,” they are still reticent to kill off major characters.
Okay, so that old guy, Shane, and Lori died. But do we imagine Rick will bite it? Or Daryl? Maybe, but if they do it’ll be seasons apart. Also, you can bet someone from the original cast will make it to the end of the show.
Back to black dudes. You can complain there aren’t enough major black characters. Michonne is one, but that’s it for the series. But if you want more than one black in the cast, they’re gonna be minor characters and alot of them are going to die. That’s the tradeoff.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.