It's been a good long while since I posted about a film. Don't ask me why. I've been watching them. It's just that sometimes I get sick of my own usual foul-mouthed, sexpotted rigamarole. It's a shame, isn't it? So, I figure I may as well get back on track with a big bloody, fiery, explosion-porn-rife zombie flick. Sure. Why not?
Much has been said of the cultural reflectivity of this particular genre. I don't suppose I really need to rehash it-- but, it's true. The Archetypal Zombie can function as cinematic folk devil for any measure of societal ills. Joshua Clover does a slick, dense little rundown about this film genre here. And I suggest you read his smart version, rather than allow me to indulge in blatant plagiarism. And it just so happens that his write-up is also about 28 Weeks Later, my sofa adventure this evening. What I find particularly interesting about this other blog-review is the comparison between the zombie outbreak in this film and the French Revolution-- or, say, ideological insurgency of any kind.
As my regular readers might have noticed (ha! regular readers... that's funny!), I'm sorta partial to rebels and outlaws, rule-breakers and transgressors of all colors. Well, maybe not all (some could argue that the likes of Hitler-think arose out of social rebellion, I suppose). But in general, social order doesn't often sit all that well with me, so I think folks that undermine it are kinda fun. But in Clover's analogy, the zombie are the rebels-- and they spread disease in rapid-fire. And they're pretty fucking scary, even considering they don't really have access to me personally, safe in my apartment, an ocean away from the rage-syndrome-ridden British Isles of the film. (Yeah, it takes a lot to ACTUALLY scare me.) They puke blood and are mindless consumers of human flesh. Chills and thrills all around.
But if we relay this back to our current American cultural Bogeymen--suicide bombers, insurgent militias and renegade ideologues of the Middle East-- well, then, would this film not reflect back to us a particular anxiety about THEIR ideology being contagious to us? We rational, not-religiously-zealous-AT-ALL, tolerant and diversity-loving Westerners? Yeah, that sounds just LIKE us! So, if we're worried that ideological insurgency is both contagious and zombie-fying, my sarcasm in the preceding sentences alone could lend itself to the argument that we're ALREADY zombies.
And so, in this circular method of thinking, rebels wind up right back on top--and paradoxically, at the bottom-- of the hero pile. And here's why: fear of zealotry can entail blindness to one's own version of zealotry which leads to the application of social pressure towards intellectual conformity which often manifests in a manner remarkably similar to (hey, surprise!) zealotry and therefore, the only voice of reason becomes the renegade--who is, indeed scary, because his or her new and innovative ideology might well be every bit as contagious and zombie-fying as the original form of zealotry. Christ. I think I might have lost myself in this argument. No, that makes sense, right? It's the same old overturn-the-government-with-a-new-regime-that's-every-bit-as- problematic-as-the-first-regime-because-both-have-been-devised- by-bumbling-humans argument, isn't it?
In any case, the movie's fun. Probably not as emotionally ripe as its prequel, 28 Days Later, but bloody and absorbing and anxious in its own way. As a zombie flick should be.
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