Images via the very neat Neatorama.com
I heard on the radio about some mashup of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and a zombie novel. It rang a bell and sure enough.
It seems to me that the problem with zombies, and what makes them such a great pop icon/metaphor, is that they want to eat your brains, sure, but it doesn’t make them feel any better when they do!
And they’re so distracted by their quest for something that doesn’t help they never stop to reflect on what they could be doing differently instead.
Going one step further, the humans being chased around by the zombies rarely reflect on what they could give the zombies instead. Ok, there’s some discussion of this in the original Omega Man, at least the book version, and I think maybe the Will Smith movie remake. But still.
Not sure why reading this made me think of that.
Submitted by 2701 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-02-08 11:13.
Just fyi - it's Jane Austen, not Jane Austin ;-) Gotta love the zombies though.
[Thanks, Suzette. I've corrected the spelling. --fl]
Submitted by 2701 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-02-08 11:32.
The movie "Return of the Living Dead" (a truly excellent film featuring the punkest zombies ever, rampant nudity, and an incredible amount of shouting) will explain all. Being dead is painful, but eating brains soothes the pain! Live, human brains! LIIIIVEEEE BRAAAAAINS!
urrrghhh
braaaaaiiiiiins
[Except that it really doesn't because... then they almost instantly have to have more. Thanks, Holly. --fl]
Submitted by 2701 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-02-09 11:28.
Okay, as someone who has damn near DIED chasing women on several occasions (taking up alpine mountain climbing for someone who wanted a man who could "keep up" with "her athleticism" in my ill-spent youth) I think you are being far, far too sanguine about this. The fact is that the "zombies" (men possessed by the single-mindedness of the chase) are continually offering themselves, and are continually found wanting, and MIS(?)interpret that as a failure of their selves, not of some kind of ontological mis-match of personal preferences.
It's really not a misreading of the situation when someone else has a lot more real options than you do. My latest not-willing-to-reciprocate play partner just zipped off to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to try dating girls again. The only leverage I have on women is to deny them the time, attention, and sex I might lavish on them...um....which they can quite easily, nay instantaneously, replace with time, attention, and sex from someone, um, else.
"Hey, FISH! I'm taking my bicycle and GOING HOME!"
reCAPTCHA "63-year-old plant". About how I feel this a.m.
[Except I wasn't saying zombies are a straight-across metaphor for men! Not at all! Sorry about the confusion (natural, I guess, after my link to Twisty.) But really, no. The closest I'd come to that would be an assumption that love, sex or shopping, or money or something will "set us free." Thanks, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 2701 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-02-09 18:49.
Ohhh, you weren't actually talking about zombies, I just now got that. I guess I just get enthusiastic about zombies. Hee.
[Well, actually I *was* talking about zombies. I was just talking about why they resonate with more people than, say, vampires or 50's-style gigantic insects. Thanks, Holly. --fl]