Tag: weirdness

On Becoming a Killer of Zombies

On By Chas S. Clifton

At the Pop Theology blog, another attempt to figure out the zombie craze, via review of a new collection of essays, Triumph of the Walking Dead.

It is based on the AMC series, but goes far beyond it.

From a pop theology perspective, the most interesting essays cover morality, meaning(lessness), personhood, race and gender, and redemption. In his essay, “Take Me to Your Leader,” Jonathan Maberry examines post-zombie morality through Rick’s position of leadership among the survivors. The most fitting conclusion, it seems, is to abandon all concerns of (im)morality because existence in this world requires amorality. Craig Fischer‘s “Meaninglessness: Cause and Desire in The Birds, Shaun of the Dead, and The Walking Dead,” offers a brief but fairly brilliant comparison of the three. Examining the “cause ” of the apocalyptic events of each film and the comic book series sheds informative light on the others. While they may all be related, in varying ways, to sexual desire, they could just as easily all be meaningless. Fischer makes a great case for Hitchcock’s The Birds as a “proto-zombie film” (69).

I still lean somewhat to the idea I was playing with last month, that “zombie apocalypse” is a why to mentally prepare yourself for life-or-death situations without having to consider killing your fellow humans. You always here about how a fighter must at least temporarily dehumanize the enemy—what is more “de-human” than a zombie?

Not *My* Ancient Pagan Survival

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

All right, you have put away the skulls, bats, and dishes for your ancestors, all the while humming, “It’s the Most Magickal Time of the Year.”

It’s time to think about Yule! And to ponder, is this custom an ancient Pagan survival? (Slightly NSFW.)

As for your pre-Christian traditional Yule tree, Obama wants to tax it.  Suddenly embarrassed, the White House has “delayed” the tax.

Thinking about the Zombie Apocalypse

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

The tremendous growth in the imaginary zombie population amazes me. Maybe, like other bubbles, this one is about to burst. But in the meantime, literary, cinematic, Web, and re-enacted zombification seems to go in two directions.

1. Practice killing the zombies.

There were a lot more stages, and to be honest, I lost count of how many. One, though, required that you get in a boat and move to a zombie-infested island in a small lake. Using your shotgun, you cleaned out the zombies and rescued the poor woman who was filling a water jug. Sadly, the zombies had eaten her brain by the time I got there, but at least I recovered the water jug.

A Google search on the phrase “What caliber for zombies?”  produced more than 500 hits.

If you don’t have a group, you can tack up your own zombie targets at the shooting range. Or settle down with a good book. A reworked classic, even.

The first zombie movie was made in 1932, and there have been a lot more since then. Whether there is any connection or not, the number has jumped since Sept. 11, 2001.

During the Cold War, some culture-watchers saw zombies as our fellow citizens turned into brainwashed Communists. Thus they had to be killed before they spread the “infection.”

Communism is not seen as a threat now, but does the zombie remain a sort of “double” for another threat, and, therefore, it is necessary and good to kill them? They are handy stand-ins for emergency-response drills.

In an effort to engage its community in a hazardous materials emergency preparation exercise, the Office of Homeland Security has put out a petition for 250 volunteers to done their best zombie look this Halloween. The effort will test first responders in how they handle hazardous materials exercises and, in an attempt to maintain the realism of zombie culture, first responders who come in contact with a hazardous material will become zombies themselves.

Like the Center for Disease Control, which published a guide earlier this year to survive a zombie attack, and Tom Deaderick who created a map depicting the each state’s zombie survivability rate, these Delaware County groups are using the zombie craze gain interest and participation their community in a more serious emergency preparedness drill.

2. Be a zombie, at least temporarily.

You can do it Denver, Colorado, or Brighton, Sussex, or many other places.

Brian Strongreen, 29, a student at the University of Colorado at Denver, wore a costume that he called “zombie- Khadafy.” His attire bore a striking similarity to the deceased Libyan leader.

“I used to be in the military and I’m all for dead dictators,” he said. “I couldn’t find a Jheri curl wig.”

So it’s about making fun of enemies sometimes? Depersonalizing “the other” and all that?

Pondering What It All Means, a BBC reporter writes,

Dr Marcus Leaning, programme leader for media studies at the University of Winchester, believes the shambling mass of rotting flesh now colonising our cultural space is well worthy of academic attention.

“Zombies are incredibly popular, the growth is phenomenal – not only are they in films, TV shows and fan productions on YouTube, but there’s a vast growth in books, with zombie survival guides selling very, very well on Amazon,” he told me.

“You even see small garden ornaments dressed as zombies – zombie garden gnomes.”

In fact, Winchester is soon to become the first university in the UK to offer a study module devoted entirely to zombies.

“We’re living through the hardest economic times in most young people’s memories,” Dr Leaning said.

“Maybe zombies speak to austerity Britain in a way other monsters don’t.”

So it’s the zombie economy, just shuffling along? People dress as zombies to quell their own fears? Just don’t take out a student loan to major in Zombie Studies.

How much longer?

When there are children’s books about zombies and high school kids put Zombie Outbreak Response Team stickers on their cars, is it about over? Is  it all about a lack of brains? Pundits ponder that question.

Before zombies, goths were on the same continuum, I fancy, though they were sexier than zombies. I could see me waddling down the aisle with a goth, but not a zombie. I’m all for challenging society’s conventions but, generally speaking, you don’t want to be saying “I do” with your eyeball hanging out.

Uh, yes. Right.

Clearly, zombies are a multivalent metaphor. I am waiting to see which “reading,” if any, predominates.

No, Not That Horned God

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

Celebrate your Christian faith with a touch of that ol’ Pagan mystique: the “Holy Shed.” The "holy shed" antler cross

That is “shed” in the sense of naturally shed deer or elk antlers, which some people like to collect for decor projects or for sale to be powdered for Asian men who have not yet discovered Viagra.

And here I grew up with the perception that Christianity stopped at the edge of town. With your cast-resin antler cross, it does not have to!

Mothman, John Keel, and Weirdness

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

Io9,com offers a reflection by on the “Mothman Prophecies,” both the 1975 book by John Keel and the subsequent 2002 movie with Richard Gere, which has little in common except the title and infamous bridge collapse.

Grabianowski’s article is a level-headed examination of the “flap” of 1967, about which I can say little—I wasn’t there. Maybe it did all start with the sudden, startling flight of a barn owl, viewed by people keyed up by the excitement of social transgression and (probably) anticipated sexual activity.

(The “seven feet tall” part is possible too—I’ve mistaken a jackrabbit for a deer when one suddenly jumped up in front of me at dusk—your eyes can play tricks.)

John Keel’s subsequent book went way beyond those particular events, describing how even his act of trying to report on them put him into a sort of “twilight zone”  of inexplicable happenings.

Grabianowski is leery of its reporting:

Somehow, in five years, Keel went from a plain denial of any Mothman-Silver Bridge connection to one of the most elaborate and bizarre cryptid tales ever told, with himself as a central character. The clues to what sparked the change come, again, from the published letters of Keel and [Gray] Barker. To put it bluntly, in much of their paranormal and UFO writing they were “taking the piss.” As Barker put it in a 1970 letter, “the kookie books are about all that I can sell these days. I lost the ‘sensible’ subscribers…long ago, so I get a kick out of letting it reflect the utter mental illness of the field.” Lurid tales sold a hell of a lot better than dry investigations that didn’t find much of anything, and there was always some portion of the public gullible enough to swallow any story whole. So that was how they made their living.

I did not read Keel’s Mothman Prophecies until the early 1980s. (It is still in print.) When I did, I was surprised at the “twilight zone” stuff, because my own youthful adventures in investigating certain phenomena had put me into a similar zone, where, among other things, just being in “the field” caused people to act strangely, to turn on each other, become wildly paranoid, etc. No drugs involved.

So I had to respect the book for that aspect—whatever “Mothman” was, paranormal investigations can leave you with one foot on “the other side,” in a strange psychological space.

Here is a YouTube video of Keel speaking about Mothman, etc.