Comments on: Whither Zombies?

By: Ginny

Ginny — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:54:01 +0000

John Burgess
I may be wrong, but I think that Tyouth’s point is not that all literary criticism is equally valid but that an author/director/painter channels culture as well as creates it, transcends as well as transforms his medium, etc. Sound criticism does not (and should not) always primarily value the creator’s stated purpose. After all, generally that stated purpose is to make money – sure the great Victorian novel is huge because most were first published as serials in periodicals and that was the demand of that marketplace. They wanted to sell. Superficial thinking may believe such statements trump all. Well, maybe for some who persist in seeing a two-dimensional world. But that is hardly the beginning and ending of a thoughtful understanding of art.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:06:11 +0000

Tryouth: Those viewpoints are ‘equally valid’ only in the trivialest sense. Someone viewing a Batman film and concluding that the Illuminati are running the government has a ‘valid’ POV, but it’s a useless one. My reading the Old Testament as a string of dirty jokes is valid–I read it that way, after all–but it has rather little to do with the intent of the writers nor the generally accepted view of its meanings.

Only when I am able to convince a majority that my reading is superior to all others does my POV equal that of earlier ones. Until then, it remains an outlier that can be read as fruitcake.

By: tyouth

tyouth — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:42:50 +0000

BTW, for the uninitiated, who may be interested, HULU (free movie provider) features Night of the Living Dead.

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Sun, 17 May 2009 23:21:40 +0000

James R. Rummel,

Yes, all survival stories appeal to the self-sufficient individual in all of us. They also present interesting thought experiments about how one would respond in different situations no matter how strange.

My son and his friends have spent considerable time discussing responses to zombie attacks. It sure beats the hell out of the “how do we survive the coming nuclear war” which occupied my friends and I back in the late 70′s early 80′s.

By: James R. Rummel

James R. Rummel — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:46:50 +0000

I can’t speak for everyone, but there is one aspect to zombies that appeals to certain rugged individuals. A person who is prepared and keeps their head can deal with the situation.

James

By: tyouth

tyouth — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:16:03 +0000

“most modern literary criticism seeks to exploit the analysis for political purposes instead of seeking to understand why and how the artist chose to tell the story as they did.”

True enough, but the reader/viewer’s opinion re. what it “means” is literally, absolutely, just as valid as the creators.

For my own part, since the last presidential election, I can’t get the zombie metaphor out of my mind. Scary.

By: Miguel

Miguel — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:20:29 +0000

All of what you say being true, Shannon, you ignore how easily the phrase “Obama zombie” rolls off the tongue, like a percussive riff of linguistic legerdemain. I fear we are in for a long run of zombie essays and allusions for that reason alone.

I must admit, large numbers of Obama followers are beginning to give me the willies, with their wide-eyed acceptance of the wildest contradictions and absurdities. But then, that is only political and ideological enslavement of the mind. In order for them to be true Obama zombies, would they not need to display gaping wounds and sores that will not heal?

Whatever. Keep us appraised of the situation, please, Shannon. Anything might happen at this point.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:11:55 +0000

One might just as easily argue that there are reasons why some cheap-enough, scary-enough scenarios are chosen over others, as well as the reasons why certain aspects of any given depiction of a zombie apocalypse are given more weight, and that’s leaving out the tendency of any content-makers to imitate the successes that preceded them. It’s certainly no stretch to demonstrate that (all else being equal (which, granted, it never is)) the more commonly and closely applicable symbolism with attract the larger audience. You can, for instance, track the success of some fictional motifs across cultures.

But you’d be right to suggest that it is often self-serving to suggest that there is only one cause for any broad phenomenon, much less an overtly political one.