Saturday, October 13, 2012

My Issue With The Zombie Genre...



Issue With Zombie Genre…
It’s October, which of course means scary movies!  I’ve been a fan of the horror movie genre ever since I was two and a half years old.  It all started when I had snuck into the living room after I was supposed to be in bed asleep and stood behind the couch.  My mom didn’t know I was behind the couch until she heard me saying “So dat’s Freddy Kwuga!”  I was two and a half…so let me translate: “So That’s Freddy Krugar!”  First don’t ask where a toddler would hear about Freddy Krugar; my guess is that I hear about him at day care…the facilitators were probably talking about the movie one day and I must have remembered the name “Freddy Krugar.”  Since my mom didn’t know how much of the movie I had already seen, she let me stay up and watch the rest of it.  In case you’re wondering, no I didn’t have nightmares and oddly I knew that movies were all pretend…just people running around in costumes and make up with added special effects. 
Even though I love horror movies the one genre I don’t particularly understand is the zombie genre.  First of all the dilemma is that there are two basic classes of zombies.  The first class are the zombies created by George A. Romero in The Night Of The Living Dead.  These zombies are slow moving and all though they make sounds, they do not speak.  These zombies are after the whole human.  The second class are the zombies created by Dan O’Bannon.  These zombies move more quickly and are out for brains and unlike Romero’s zombies, they speak. 
By now you’re probably wondering why I have such an issue with the Zombie genre.  It’s not the apocalyptic atmosphere these movies take on or the cannibalistic nature of zombies.  My question is: what happens when the zombies have eaten all the people…or all the people’s brains?  The key thing to note is that zombies are always after fresh brains or fresh flesh.  And the world has a finite number of people in it!  And zombies are not smart.  So the zombie has two options.  Option one is to become educated and start human farming…making humans mate so that there’s always a steady supply of fresh brains and flesh.  Option two is that they start eating each other and that in itself would make for an interesting movie right there…who would be chasing who in that case?  It would be sort of like Spy Versus Spy I suppose.  Or maybe it would be the smarter and faster zombies who pick off the weak and slow zombies first, survival of the fittest.  But then how fresh can another zombie’s flesh/brains be exactly?  And too, if the zombies somehow became educated…went to school and became “civilized” perhaps they’d just become carnivores, eating animals instead of humans.  And then perhaps the zombies and humans would live in semi-harmony.  Granted, much like anything else in our society there would be segregation and the integration.  And that raises another issue.  If the zombies became educated and stopped using humans as their main supply of food, then would a zombie and a living person be allowed to get married?  It’s something to ponder, because a zombie is already a dead person and obviously a living person can’t marry a dead person.  But then the people running for office at that time could pander to both sides…”I am pro-integrated zombie marriage.” “I am against integrated zombie marriage.”  Then there’d be a huge deal made about civil rights and whether or not it is moral/ethic for zombies and living people to get married. 
If we allow the zombies to live amongst us and somehow a war sprouts up between us and them all we’d have to do is get guns and aim for their heads.  It’d be the world’s shortest war.  Those with the better technology normally win the wars.  Zombies have been known to primarily prefer using their hands and teeth as weapons, which don’t normally stand up against firearms.  And then I have to wonder about laws…if a zombie were to be killed by someone would it count as murder or would Double Jeopardy apply in that situation.  The zombie is technically already dead.  That’s the other thing I never got.  If I shoot a zombie in the head I’ll kill it!  But a zombie is already dead; it’s a dead person.  So how can I kill something that’s already dead?  I can’t, so what’s to stop a zombie from coming back once they’ve been shot in the head.  And what would we call that?  It would be a zombie-zombie. 
I am all for a zombie prevention program.  It’s called, cremation!  So far no one in the horror film industry has brought somebody’s ashes back to life.  If there’s no body, there’s no zombie.  Problem/issues solved.