Given that I'm stuck in zombie writing mode, I'm hijacking the direction of the group for the next two weeks and derailing us off werewolves. Therefore...
Day of the Dead, from '85. Third in the Romero series. Sure many of you have seen it, but it's odder, sadder, and weirder than often remembered. The military industrial underground complex. Bub the pseudo-domesticated zombie. The apocalypse that doesn't ever quite transition to post-apocalyptic. Infighting, petty squabbles, "friendly" fire, and all the other things we do to help hasten the end of our days.
Wednesday, my house, 8:30.
2 comments:
There's an interesting dichotomy played off between the humanism of Bub (surviving his death or imbued through his captors' socialisation?) and the cruel inhumanity of the military rabble. What does it mean to be human? And who has been Othered here? Is 'humanity' a set of ideal charactistics or is it a state of merely 'not being Zombie'?
Great film, mind. If I wasn't so land locked in the UK, I'd love to visit a screening of yours.
Indeed, '85 was a hell of a year for zombie-inspired negative definition (precisely the point you raise, of humanity meaning basically "not-zombie"), given that Return of the Living Dead came out that year as well. Return, while being a rather awful film, represents a real deepening of thought about this: look for a relatively full account of it here in the next couple days.
And if you ever do break the landlock and make it out this way, definitely come look us up. Conversely, maybe I should do a guest screening of sorts while I'm in London next (I'll be there in November for the Historical Materialism conference.)
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