Posted on 03/29/2014 12:00:33 PM PDT by lee martell
I don't have a tv of my own, but I see enough and hear enough to know that for some reason, Zombies are a hot sell on American tv right now. See the popularity of shows such as The Walking Dead. In fact, I heard there is even a new perfume for women coming to the market this spring, based on this show. The Walking Dead Perfume. Really? I'm not necessarily bothered by it, to each his own, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what has brought us to this level of fascination. I have read many, many of Dean Koontz books over the last ten years. I kept reading them, until he spent too much time trying to humanize the Antagonist by giving him/her a 'cool' sense of humor. I like my monsters scary and predominately unappealing, but there are always exceptions.
I tried off and on for years to appreciate Steven King, especially back in the 90's when he was cranking the books out like Wheat Linguine, but a rarely stayed with any of his work till completion. Most of Steven King's books read to me, like a never ending monologue, or as my junior high english teacher; Sister Richardene would say, a run-on sentence; something I still fall into today if not careful. I sampled some Anne Rice books. I never completed any of her stories because I was lost into the minutiae of character analysis, and I have never made the link between love and blood, at least not in the ritualistic manner of Rice. I see cable once in a while, I see the commercials about upcoming programs featuring Cannibalism, The Apocalypse, Tomorrow's Dystopia, Body Parts being ripped off and used as clubs. Is it that the Zombies has become today's most acceptable villian because most people share an energetic fear of the unknown? Is that it? To me, if you;ve seen one Hollywood Zombie with the strawberry jelly for blood and all the neat, symetrically placed spots of gangrene, you've seen them all. Am I wrong?
I’d say it’s the latest craze, like vampires a few years go. Also, makeup and effects make it more interesting to watch than pre-HD era. More detail and more gross stuff.
On King I understand you, but for one book and that is his novel ‘The Stand’. How he turned out such a great book is beyond my understanding.
What does TWD indicate? Unless the topic is political or societal, I’m usually out of the loop.
Another commenter said that the old stand bys, witches, vampires and Abominable Snowmen have been overdone. I tend to agree with that. I’m surprised, though, that we don’t focus on more a ‘Planet 9” scenario, where Space Ghosts end up chasing our astronauts across the surface of the moon. Come to think of it, that sounds like an episode of Scooby Doo I say in 1978.
The diminishing unions have to do something...
twd - the walking dead.
I honestly don’t get it. I’ve enjoyed fantasy and horror and gaming for decades, almost my entire life. Zombies were always the gratuitous ‘trash mob’ threat to adventures, easily dispatched, and usually the matrix for some more interesting threat.
I’ve asked the younger people - 20-30 somethings, what it was about. The two main answer categories I have gotten is that it is a horde of enemies for which there is no guilt involved when destroying them; or that they are a kind of metaphor for mindless, shambling mediocrity and failure which thinking young people recognize surrounds them on all sides.
Those are the explanations I’ve gotten. The zombie thing bores me rigid to be honest.
Well the first thing you missed is there’s no “sudden” about it. Walking Dead is about to wrap its 4th season, and things had been in a big spike of popularity before the show started. One of the big drivers is that zombies are an intractable enemy, almost a force of nature. They can’t be nice, they can’t be bargained with, they can’t sparkle, they just feed. Another thing is that they simplify story telling, the modern world with all its fast travel and cellphones is hard place for a horror story anymore, isolation is hard to get, but once you’re in an apocalypse all that’s gone, isolation is king. And really, it’s just fun, it’s almost impossible to watch a good zombie movie without contemplating how you’d handle it.
Switch to contemporary political non-fiction. It’s much scarier than fictional zombies, vampires, banshees and werewolves wrapped into one.
The monster movies of the ‘50’s were supposedly a metaphor for the fear induced by the communist menace. I’d assume the zombie movies are a metaphor for fear induced by Obama voters.
First, with regard to TWD the zombies are not the star of the show. They are simply a device to get us to the situation they are in. You could substitute many things for the zombies and the story could be largely the same. The show is about a post-apocalyptic world and what the people do, not the zombies.
Second, I think many entertainment types misunderstand this. In the copycat world of television if somebody has a hit show then the pile-on while the iron is hot begins. They think all they need to do is add zombies and instant hit. Not necessarily the case if the show stinks.
Read “World War Z”. (Book, _not_ movie by same name.)
Brought the zombie genre to a whole new & respectable level.
The last time I was in that dump, the bums were the crowd. And if zombieism ever becomes a reality, it will start in san fransicko.
Seriously, when I saw that movie "The Rock", I guess I was the only one wishing they'd launch the missles.
Amish!!!!
It is a metaphor for the horrors of violent, unthinking masses that will engulf us in any collapse.
It’s allegory man....allegory.
Me as well. I tried watching the first couple episodes of the walking dead, but when they got to the scene where they were chopping up that corpse, I turned it off in disgust. How on earth could anybody call that entertainment is beyond me. And I'll bet some parents actually let their children watch that crap.
“It is a metaphor for the horrors of violent, unthinking masses that will engulf us in any collapse.”
Bingo. You could base TWD in a post nuclear world and the bad guys could be the “Radiation People” or some other such.
You have to suspend disbelief and sometimes ‘check your brain at the door’, but The Walking Dead is a GREAT show. I NEVER watch television ‘shows’, but this one drew me back to it, at least for an hour or so every week!
I agree. First it was vampires, now zombies.
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