I read a very interesting article this morning:
A friend of mine from high school posted it to face book and
I was intrigued to say the last by the title. There are a great number of
sociopaths in the media right now. There was one great over site that I noticed…
the zombie genre films. These films
effectively turn all of the living in to sociopaths because the norms of society
are taken down by an “evil” or “dark” force.
This forces daily existence in to a survival mode and the mundane existence
of most quickly turns in to a kill or be killed culture.
The thing that makes zombie films so relatable is that the
films typically comment on society in some way. The original "Night of the Living Dead"
dealt with race relations of the living at the forefront but just below the
surface there was a comment on satellite technology. The inception of the
zombies, or “flesh eaters” as Romero lovingly calls them, starts with a fallen satellite
and the radiation that is caused from that catastrophic event. In 1968 when “Night
of the Living Dead” was released satellites were still in their infancy. Satellites
would still have another 7 years before they would be used for television with
the birth of channels like HBO and TBS. Today they are an integrated part of
our everyday life that we use for everything from TV to GPS to Internet to
radio stations so satellites are not as scary as they were over 40 years ago.
Today our zombies take a different form but they still
comment on society in a much different way. In 2002’s “28 Days Later”
the zombies are created from an outbreak that is begun in an animal testing lab
where the animals are set free by a group of animal activists. Similarly in 2009’s “Zombieland” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1156398/
a mutant strain of mad cow disease is what causes the apocalypse. The vast majority of zombie movies you see
the world through the eyes of the living and the living rage war with the
undead. There is no care for the constraints that society once had. The living
are all taken from their mundane lives and thrown in to a world where being a
sociopath is not only acceptable but is also the only way to stay alive. It is
only in “Shaun of the Dead” that we see what happens when the humans over take
the mass of zombies. In a few short clips of TV programing as Shaun is flipping mindlessly you
see that there are zombies doing everything from menial labor to living a life
as close to their old life as possible. There is an outstanding deleted clip
where they are interviewing two members of the band Coldplay about their 2
fallen members and how although they attempted to play with them it proved to
be impossible. The band Coldplay is very well known for their activism and it
is the activism that they end up promoting on the show. In the end the world really returns to normal
more or less. There is the distinct feeling that most people did not learn any
real lessons but they may be more grateful for their live.
The lack of rules and laws during the post apocalypse is what
truly defines as humans. Yes, we want to live but at what cost? We typically
find the living clinging desperately to any living human connections that they
can find. Occasionally there is regret for loss of life and a revelation that
these zombies were once no different from any of us. At the end of the day the
zombies had the same issues and problems that we all face in our everyday life
and they are also transformed in to unthinking sociopaths.
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