Shaun in particular was largely referential to the older films, but breathed a new life into zombie lore. It made them fun again. That same year, a remake of Dawn of the Dead was released, further affecting and pushing the zombie into mainstream pop culture. That film was a pale reflection of the original film it remade, which is widely considered one of the best zombie films ever made, but it did well with audiences, and it seemed like zombies were suddenly on the radar again, and more than ever. In , Zombieland was released to general acclaim, mixing a strange brew of action, coming of age, and comedy, with a famously hilarious cameo by Bill Murray.
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Lots of smaller Independent zombie movies were released as well as plenty of terrible ones, but it became clear that zombies were and are "hot" again. One thing is for sure. And while I'm not a fan of The Walking Dead , it's fair to say that the series has completely changed zombie fandom, and probably permanently.
Underestimating its impact would be ridiculous. I'm sure some will find the idea of a zombie fan who isn't really into The Walking Dead confusing, so what gives? It's just not to my liking I guess. I think that the show has a weird imbalance. It has over the top comic book type characters, but still milks as much maudlin drama as it can, and it's rarely scary. There's also something strange to me about a show that's sometimes extremely graphically violent, but goes for a PG when it comes to love scenes.
I'm not saying that a lack of nudity and profanity is a bad thing, but it's a weird feeling to see a show where occasionally someone gets torn to pieces but no one drops F-Bombs. That's probably more to do with the fact that the show is on basic cable, but it also illustrates a pretty strange American acceptance with violence but a weird prudery with other material.
Who is this show's target audience anyway? The other issue I have with The Walking Dead is how the zombies themselves I'm sorry, I refuse to say "walkers" , are killed in droves and easily in every episode, by the comic book style commandos that every major character seems to have become. It makes them less frightening, and it also illustrates something I personally find troubling. There seem to be a lot of newer fans that really like that aspect of the show, and it's manifesting in the real world, in the form of people who seem to wish a zombie apocalypse would really happen so they'd get a chance to shoot a whole bunch of them.
Gun manufacturers are even pandering to this type of zombie fan, making "Zombie Hunter" versions of popular rifles such as the AR15, and that's pretty weird to me. I'm not suggesting that the types of people buying those are nuts, but I don't really like overly playful humor when it comes to real firearms. You can also by realistic ballistic dummies that look like zombies and bleed when they're shot.
There's a scene early into the original Dawn of the Dead where people described as "rednecks" are enjoying shooting zombies wandering around the countryside. They aren't portrayed exactly positively, and that's something that seems to be changing in the now broadening fandom. Romero's zombie films wrote the book and the rules that The Walking Dead borrows from, but Romero's work was usually subversive.
It was understood that just getting a bunch of people with guns to hunt zombies wasn't going to work, but that's exactly what a lot of fans of The Walking Dead seem to enjoy seeing. Munster also seems concerned by the trend. After all, it's acceptable to shoot a walking corpse in the head but there would be a huge backlash if a gun manufacturer sold anatomically accurate human ballistic dummies for people to use for target practice.
When asked about her thoughts on how zombie films and the fans have changed in recent years, Munster added this:. As somebody that runs a very popular zombie walk, I find it strange that the same people who identify with zombie hunters will also dress as zombies for the zombie walk.
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Sure, I see hunter types reading hunting magazines featuring beautiful deer, or television programs romanticizing fishing, but you don't seem to see hunters or anglers dressing up as deer, waterfowl, or giant fish in festival or play. All of a sudden the living are walking amongst the dead. One of the interesting things about the classic zombie, as portrayed in George Romero's films and there's not much debate about him being the filmmaker who established the zombie rules is that zombies were portrayed as being distinct characters with their own individual traits.
Yes, they were part of an ever growing and dangerous horde, but they retained those unique personalities. On the other hand, Romero's films generally portrayed the military and other groups as nearly faceless, and I think that's a powerful subtext in those films. It's sad to see zombies mostly shown as faceless members of the undead, briefly menacing, and then quickly dispatched with a Samurai sword or a quick bullet to the head.
In the recent film adaptation of World War Z, the zombies are nearly portrayed like a swarming hill of ants or a tidal wave, there's nothing individual about them. For longtime fans such as myself, seeing the fan interest shifting away from zombies and more towards fantasies of becoming a zombie killer can be kind of jarring. At an enormous event like a zombie walk, where the fandom comes out in force, that divide is readily evident.
Munster has watched this new phenomenon develop over the years, and has this to say about it:. It takes the unity out of the group mentality of the zombie. It is not that zombies are not all accepting creatures, part of the wonderful thing about them are that everyone from any and all walks of life can be a zombie and walk with the horde. It is just odd that people would fantasize about being a zombie AND killing a zombie, and has definitely weakened the undead pack.
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Why we need to fear zombies
The Walking Dead is not the only zombie show or film in recent years with an emphasis on making the central monsters more of a target than a consistent threat, but its popularity can't be underestimated when looking at how the fandom is changing. My usual answer is that we are already in the zombie apocalypse. This is a trans-humanist world, as we experience life through technology; our bodies are just walking shells going through the motions of mundane quotidian existence while our minds are completely wired into online identities. Of course, most people don't like this reply and would rather hear how I am planning to kill zombies.
It is possibly of relevance that we were in a massive drought, deeply tired and slightly desperate. It is even more relevant, as I found out later, that in those months the curtains of the aurora australis were visible from this latitude. A hundred years earlier, those lights would probably have been taken for fairy dances. But from the s to the mids, our society was both fascinated by the speed of technological change and frightened of it.
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This was the technology that gave us TV. It also gave us the bomb. We even had atomic-bomb practice at primary school, hiding under our desks when the siren went, which would have been extremely useful during an atomic catastrophe. At least our corpses would have been neatly laid out.
And then, in the mids, a new terror emerged. The vampires of the s and '90s were sexy, wealthy and powerful. Just like the powerful "new rich". This was the age of flash, dazzle, conspicuous consumption, leopard skin, limousines and melon-sized new breasts. And it was frightening, if you stopped the dance to think about it, as that was also the era where the limits to growth were being propounded, too; the realisation that we couldn't keep increasing consumption forever. Look at the newspapers back then and you'll see front page after page of our secret fears: Secretly, we knew they were our vampires.
And they were out to get us. Not singly but in hordes, marching, individually weak, tattered, decaying almost to non-existence, but together they can destroy our world. They are our secret fear, the ones we try not to look at. Like the hordes of the newly unemployed, from industries that were deemed indestructible and eternal only years before, like the car industry, here and in the United States.
Night after night, we see images of the vast tides of dispossessed: In America, whole communities were built on industries that are no longer there. They are inhabited by those who were once confident home owners, swimming-pool owners, three-car families with a TV in every room. Suddenly, those comfortable lives no longer exist. They probably never will exist again, despite Donald Trump's promises. Industries rarely re-emerge once they vanish, either to other countries with cheaper labour or, even more commonly, are made redundant by new technologies and automation.
New industries can and will emerge Could we become them? Even those whose lives are still comfortable feel excluded from the knowledge class that runs the high-tech world we live in, and the power and wealth that comes from it. Night after night, too, we see images of the vast tides of dispossessed: