tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3607787806641362594..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: zombies, zombies everywhereCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-52581461458329785602012-03-26T00:58:57.988-04:002012-03-26T00:58:57.988-04:00Last week I saw Juan of the Dead (www.juanofthedea...Last week I saw <i>Juan of the Dead</i> (www.juanofthedeadmovie.com/lang/en/) and thought about your post here! It is a must see!Ana Grinbergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-23617454705143541452011-12-12T13:33:59.633-05:002011-12-12T13:33:59.633-05:00Due to my paralysing and un-exaggerated fear of zo...Due to my paralysing and un-exaggerated fear of zombies I haven't seen this, but I have heard many fantastic things about Charlie Brooker's Dead Set, which I believe depicts the unfolding of the zombie apocalypse from the perspective of contestants locked inside a Big Brother house.Allyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04972573962346702861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-62462457216937137662011-12-12T13:01:51.959-05:002011-12-12T13:01:51.959-05:00Pontypool was suggested to me when I was putting t...Pontypool was suggested to me when I was putting together a prospective syllabus for a monster movies course. New Canadian zombie film, and great. Really good performances, esp. from the shock-jock protagonist, and talk about "orally transmitted diseases," to quote Ana...ASMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11435943511202521086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-54635731547081903952011-12-11T16:14:26.088-05:002011-12-11T16:14:26.088-05:00Being the sci-fi nerd that I (not very secretly) a...Being the sci-fi nerd that I (not very secretly) am, I'm especially fond of the Reavers from Firefly (TV) and Serenity (Film). That's more about dictatorial control than capitalism, though.hayliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08750786030542152620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-45136152312570415372011-12-11T13:57:27.074-05:002011-12-11T13:57:27.074-05:00For those of you who read German, Tim Albrecht has...For those of you who read German, Tim Albrecht has a very good short essay on zombie movies, the definition of death, and animal/human experimentation in the summer 2010 issue of Kultur und Gespenster, starting on p. 272 (Link is here: http://www.textem.de/?id=2086 -- and you can download the entire issue as a pdf from a link right under the cover image.) <br /><br />I'm biased because I happen to be married to him, but I think it's worth a read.ihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-807522963882680932011-12-11T13:41:20.349-05:002011-12-11T13:41:20.349-05:00Dead Snow is an interesting zombie film. Nazi zom...Dead Snow is an interesting zombie film. Nazi zombies? Of course. A friend of mine claims that there's some political commentary in terms of Norway collaborating with Nazi Germany, but I'll need to get him to tell me about it again.<br /><br />The Walking Dead (the graphic novel, not the tv show) is quite good, at least in the early going. Very little to do with capital, and has more to do with trauma and isolation. I'm also partway through Colson Whitehead's /Zone One/. Whitehead does go the commercial route, but keeps bringing in interesting language of man as machine, a machine that has broken down.<br /><br />p.s. love your thoughts on zombie temporality. I might write something soon about monsters and temporality.Rick Goddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04109263756022001400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-52712011860641083222011-12-11T11:00:56.349-05:002011-12-11T11:00:56.349-05:00I think Junot Diaz's semi-recent invocation of...I think Junot Diaz's semi-recent invocation of the zombie in the context of late capitalism and the Haiti earthquake is potentially relevant to what you're talking about, and pretty powerful regardless:<br /><br />"This is what Haiti is both victim and symbol of—this new, rapacious stage of capitalism. A cannibal stage where, in order to power the explosion of the super-rich and the ultra-rich, middle classes are being forced to fail, working classes are being re-proletarianized, and the poorest are being pushed beyond the grim limits of subsistence, into a kind of sepulchral half-life, perfect targets for any 'natural disaster' that just happens to wander by. It is, I suspect, not simply an accident of history that the island that gave us the plantation big bang that put our world on the road to this moment in the capitalist project would also be the first to warn us of this zombie stage of capitalism, where entire nations are being rendered through economic alchemy into not-quite alive. In the old days, a zombie was a figure whose life and work had been captured by magical means. Old zombies were expected to work around the clock with no relief. The new zombie cannot expect work of any kind—the new zombie just waits around to die."<br /><br />Full essay (but no more zombies):<br /><br />http://bostonreview.net/BR36.3/junot_diaz_apocalypse_haiti_earthquake.phpTim Millernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-16255688644861030762011-12-11T10:54:31.435-05:002011-12-11T10:54:31.435-05:00Peter Jackson's Braindead (or Dead Alive as it...Peter Jackson's <i>Braindead</i> (or <i>Dead Alive</i> as it's known in the United States) is a weird little zombie comedy, with the focus being much more on Oedipal tensions than post-apocalyptic ones. (It may turn out that those two things really aren't very far apart from one another, actually.)<br /><br />It's also full of many splattery guts, which I think is another draw of the zombie: lots and lots of blood and gore. That's certainly not a new thing, but it marks the zombie as different from the other major undead monster, the vampire, which is less about bodily destruction and more about bodily transformation (through sex, of course).Tom Elrodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14634982419388998095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-44437728661501396472011-12-11T09:20:13.752-05:002011-12-11T09:20:13.752-05:00I have been wondering about the prevalence of cont...I have been wondering about the prevalence of contagion, particularly in film. Vampires and zombies have shifted from exemplars of the world of the undead revived by some unfinished business (as were the revenants in the Middle Ages) to representations of orally transmitted diseases, so to speak.<br /><br />Say the revenant in William of Newburgh's <i>Historia Rerum Anglicarum</i>, chapter 22 in book V, does not revive because he was bitten by another "infected" zombie as we see in <i>Shaun of the Dead</i>.<br /><br />Can we think, perhaps, that fear of contagion also is related to capitalism?<br /><br />Yet, my very favorite undead has to be <i>Carmilla</i> by Sheridan Le Fanu.Ana Grinbergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-78073020619849846652011-12-11T08:58:59.244-05:002011-12-11T08:58:59.244-05:00Have you seen Fido? It explores the divide betwee...Have you seen <i>Fido</i>? It explores the divide between living and living dead, specifically inter-existential(?) relationships and romance in a film set in the alternate America of the 50's following the Zombie Wars. Of all the zombedies, it is , by far, my favorite.Brad Stablerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14464317394712248756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-50119067181466722202011-12-11T08:58:06.606-05:002011-12-11T08:58:06.606-05:00I have two particular favorites: Glam, whom you no...I have two particular favorites: Glam, whom you noted, and Thorgunna in the Eyrbyggja Saga. Her tale is noteworthy as it involves the only living creature more frightening than a <i>draugr</i> - a <b>lawyer!</b>.Fridrikr inn gamli Tomassonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01619681210146006283noreply@blogger.com