"Good work, Denny. You've arrested a fish... and your car."
The Walking Dead - Season 1 (2010)
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on a computer from iTunes
I've decided that I'm not such a fan of zombies. Or, no, it's more that I prefer the malevolent spirits of the West Indies which are, in practice, more ghosts than zombies. Night of the Living Dead is still my favorite post-Val Lewton American incarnation, and Romero was smart to make his lumbering corpses a metaphor for the modern citizen. But, since then, what? They're fun to hunt, but it's their more horror-like mutations, like the witches in Left 4 Dead, that really bring out the romantic in me.
Zombies make me uncomfortable because I see them as a right-wing conspiracy theorist's Apocalypse of choice. Men who like to stockpile guns and rations against a hypothetical global meltdown probably see the world the same way that Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman does. We want to do right, and to live in peace, but some scientist is going to ruin things for everyone, and then we'll be glad we had this generator and this sack full of guns to defend the honor of our kids. Don't bring that stuffed animal unless you can fill it with black powder - innocence is dead!
I'm not interested in living in a world like that. I don't lie awake nights worrying about what would happen if things went really wrong. But Kirkman clearly likes to, and as his comic series progresses, it develops an icky obsession with all the ways that humans can be cruel - physically cruel, most of the time - to each other. Shaun of the Dead was a movie about love in the face of your worst bad day. The Walking Dead is about "survival," Republican-style: respecting the weapon, shooting your wife with a rifle, and laughing at Asian-Americans who can't hold their liquor.
Before The Walking Dead aired, I asked myself a question: what's the point? Why would I watch this? But it turns out the show is a smash hit, and season one is only half a dozen episodes, so watch it I did. The pilot spends a lot of time with a black man and his son, and I wanted to follow them on a fun adventure instead of traipse around behind the moral, violent cop who the camera prefers. But, like the Latino gang in episode 4 ("Vatos"), the black man is just there to teach our white hero a lesson about - yep - staying alive, and what really matters.
The biggest problem is that the writing isn't very good. The Georgia scenery is beautiful, but it's beautiful in Squidbillies, too, and at least there are things to laugh at in the Cuyler family. Squidbillies acknowledges the presence of migrant workers from central America in the rural South, and that's more honest to the character of the region than a jammie-clad abuelita calming her gun-brandishing nephew in downtown Atlanta. It's hard to imagine Rick Grimes visiting Stone Mountain the way Squidbillies' sheriff does, because isn't there a prison somewhere that can say more about the way we live?
About as much my cup of tea as a CGI gunshot wound, in the end. And while we're on the subject: you're in the South - get some deer blood and throw together a few fucking squibs!
Bonus zombie question: where are all the cats and dogs? Either the zombie infection crosses over to other species, in which case there should be all manner of undead four-legged beasts feasting on slow humans, or it doesn't affect Fido at all, in which case there should be tens of thousands of starving and abandoned household pets feasting on slow zombies. Right?
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on a computer from iTunes
I've decided that I'm not such a fan of zombies. Or, no, it's more that I prefer the malevolent spirits of the West Indies which are, in practice, more ghosts than zombies. Night of the Living Dead is still my favorite post-Val Lewton American incarnation, and Romero was smart to make his lumbering corpses a metaphor for the modern citizen. But, since then, what? They're fun to hunt, but it's their more horror-like mutations, like the witches in Left 4 Dead, that really bring out the romantic in me.
Zombies make me uncomfortable because I see them as a right-wing conspiracy theorist's Apocalypse of choice. Men who like to stockpile guns and rations against a hypothetical global meltdown probably see the world the same way that Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman does. We want to do right, and to live in peace, but some scientist is going to ruin things for everyone, and then we'll be glad we had this generator and this sack full of guns to defend the honor of our kids. Don't bring that stuffed animal unless you can fill it with black powder - innocence is dead!
I'm not interested in living in a world like that. I don't lie awake nights worrying about what would happen if things went really wrong. But Kirkman clearly likes to, and as his comic series progresses, it develops an icky obsession with all the ways that humans can be cruel - physically cruel, most of the time - to each other. Shaun of the Dead was a movie about love in the face of your worst bad day. The Walking Dead is about "survival," Republican-style: respecting the weapon, shooting your wife with a rifle, and laughing at Asian-Americans who can't hold their liquor.
Before The Walking Dead aired, I asked myself a question: what's the point? Why would I watch this? But it turns out the show is a smash hit, and season one is only half a dozen episodes, so watch it I did. The pilot spends a lot of time with a black man and his son, and I wanted to follow them on a fun adventure instead of traipse around behind the moral, violent cop who the camera prefers. But, like the Latino gang in episode 4 ("Vatos"), the black man is just there to teach our white hero a lesson about - yep - staying alive, and what really matters.
The biggest problem is that the writing isn't very good. The Georgia scenery is beautiful, but it's beautiful in Squidbillies, too, and at least there are things to laugh at in the Cuyler family. Squidbillies acknowledges the presence of migrant workers from central America in the rural South, and that's more honest to the character of the region than a jammie-clad abuelita calming her gun-brandishing nephew in downtown Atlanta. It's hard to imagine Rick Grimes visiting Stone Mountain the way Squidbillies' sheriff does, because isn't there a prison somewhere that can say more about the way we live?
About as much my cup of tea as a CGI gunshot wound, in the end. And while we're on the subject: you're in the South - get some deer blood and throw together a few fucking squibs!
Bonus zombie question: where are all the cats and dogs? Either the zombie infection crosses over to other species, in which case there should be all manner of undead four-legged beasts feasting on slow humans, or it doesn't affect Fido at all, in which case there should be tens of thousands of starving and abandoned household pets feasting on slow zombies. Right?
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
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