People! IT’S PEOPLE!!
I am fascinated by popular movies’ ability to reflect society’s fears. In the 1970s everyone was scared of the monolithic Soviets, so the bad guys in Star Wars were the evil Empire. In the late 1990s, computer technology was growing rapidly & Y2K was approaching, and it was all sca-sca-scary. So we get the Matrix - a post-apocalyptic world run by evil computers.
For the past few years we’ve seen a growing fascination with zombies in popular movies and books - and I keep wondering what exactly we’re scared of. At first I thought maybe it was disease. Most of these new-fangled zombies are the “infected” type, not the “crawled out of a grave to dance with Michael Jackson” type. Nothing freaks people out like a new case of SARS or Bird Flu. Eep! The call is coming from inside the body! But that didn’t seem enough to warrant all this zombie fever (pun pridefully intended).
This weekend I saw “Planet Earth, The Future:Into The Wilderness” as part of the Environmental Film Festival in Richmond, VA. It explored the current environmental crisis through a series of interviews with experts and the BBC “Planet Earth” filmmakers who have seen it’s impact first hand. According to pretty much everyone interviewed in the film, the biggest problem facing the planet is not energy conservation or garbage or water pollution - it’s population control.
Humans are literally taking over the planet, crowding out animals and plants, overusing all the resources, and generally making it a horribly uncomfortable place to live. Suddenly the zombie thing made sense - we’re not scared of diseases, we’re scared of hordes of other goddamn people mindlessly swarming everywhere. Hordes of people are scary.
So, people - stupid people especially - please stop having so many babies. They’re just going to end up being zombies.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Wait, what type of zombie? The slow-moving ones are ok, it’s the speed demons we need to fear most.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:42 am
I had the same train of thought the other day when I was reading your zombie script! Only my train of thought didn’t involve environmental destruction. It was more about a fear of intimacy or physical contact. And the inward, anti-social direction that technology is taking us. Something like that. Okay, my train of thought maybe wasn’t the same as yours.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
People are no damned good…
February 13th, 2008 at 10:25 am
How about this kind of zombie?
http://www.southernundead.com/
February 13th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Hmm… Stupid people….Yuk..
February 14th, 2008 at 3:00 am
thats why we are to colonize mars.
its the most important thing the human race will do in the near future and i believe that ALL resources should be put towards it. none of this, “IM GONNA NUKE YOU! NO, IM GONNA NUKE YOUUU!!!!!!!!!!!” stuff.
why don’t we put all those nukes in big ol rocket and shoot ourselves out to mars to start the terraforming project? its really simple and will unite the entire world.
BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
February 14th, 2008 at 3:01 am
p.s. 28 weeks later was AWESOME
February 19th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Wait, you were in Richmond VA, which means you traveled through DC and I missed it? UGGG!!!
P.S 28 days and 28 weeks later WAS AWESOME!
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
The topic made me think of the last scene of Soylent Green.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Personally, I think you haven’t focused enough on the hopelessness factor. Zombies all about hopelessness. It is as if we’re not afraid of them as much as we already know they’re here, and we are flabbergasted. No matter how many of them you kill or how high your film budget is, there are always more of them. Same thing as in real life I suppose. No matter how many condoms there, are children just keep being born. We live in the age of apathy, indifference and disillusionment. I, in fact, am praying to a new pantheon of gods. Chief among them is Jack White, the highest god of disillusionment. His opposite is Jack Black, the last line of defense against dragons and general sucking now that Meatloaf is getting old.