Author Archive

WD3:11: “I Aint a Judas”…but I am a ___

Posted: February 25, 2013 by zombieprofessor in Zombie
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Here there be spoilers.

Episode 11 is one of those sideshow episodes where we wander off and focus on one or two secondary characters for a while.

We start off with Merle laying down his knowledge of the Governor, talking up the Gov’s tactical brilliance and his superior numbers in terms of troops and guns. It’s kind of a great scene: Merle is always bitching about back when he was locked to the roof in Atlanta and had to cut off his hand. And now he’s right back in Rick’s captivity. He’s almost sympathetic, especially when conversing with Herschel. We learn Merle even has a brain as he starts citing bible verses and spouting scripture back at Herschel. I guess if East Texas cheerleaders can surprise us with scripture, so can Merle.

Merle’s warnings about the Governor establish the raised stakes: There are underdogs and then there is the Rick Grimes Gang. It’s looking like an Alamo kind of situation. But at least the good guys have the prison on their side, and the fact that they aren’t (like the governor) trying to raise a child army.

Then we get the big Herschel/Rick confrontation. “You once said this isn’t a democracy? You have to own up to that. I put my family’s life in your hands.” Exactly. Rick, please stop following hot hallucination/ghost Lori around the prison yard. Even your son wants you to back off.

(And Rick does. It’s not his episode.)

Much of the episode is dedicated to Andrea’s journey to the prison and back, in direct defiance of the Governor’s orders. Her exit isn’t exactly the Great Escape. It’s unclear why she appeals so idealistically to Milton and asks him to help her get out of Woodbury. Of course Milton goes straight to the Governor with news of Andrea’s “betrayal” (Milton’s entrance falls immediately after the Governor takes the bandage off his eye—looking uglier by the day, Gov!). “Help her,” the Gubernator says. It’s clumsy evil but still evil enough to keep us going, all things considered. With walkers crawling around all over and Rick descending into madness, we don’t need the Governor to be anything more than a straw man with an army.

Andrea’s quest allows us the gruesome scene of her going all Michone on a walker, first double amputating it and then using a rock to take out its teeth, while Milton holds it down. I’m going out on a limb and saying that this scene was the second most disturbing example of “curbing” ever caught on camera, after this one. I guess the joke is on Milton after all! He seems like the kind of guy who has bad dreams.

The problem with Andrea’s quest is that no one believes her tie to the Governor, or “Phillip” as she calls him. He keeps heads in fish tanks and his zombie daughter in a closet—typically a bad sign in a man. So her need to be this mutually interested ambassador between her friends (understandable) and this guy (fish tanks!) falls a little flat.

That said, the prison visitation allows for some intense moments for Andrea, especially during the scene with Carol and the baby, when Andrea first learns 1) that Rick killed Shane; 2) that Shane loved Lori, and in fact loved her enough to try to kill Rick; 3) that Shane probably wasn’t all that into Andrea, however it may have appeared at the time; and 4) that her post-apocalyptic track record with men is shoddy.

Even as Andrea’s episode sunsets, we see the raising of other stakes: The chess pieces are moving. The Governor gets his military intelligence: First by picking up Dennis-from-”The-Wire” and his fellow rejects, who know the inside of the prison and don’t like Rick; and second from Andrea, who confirms that Michone and Merle are with his other enemies. Of course he doesn’t know that his enemies are moving against him, with Rick promising to leave on a run in the morning. He’s taking Michone to test her, and Carl.

Some fathers and sons fix a car together as a rite of passage, but not Rick and Carl Grimes. No, they go on a “run” through zombie country to fight a cyclops. Could Carl’s Rite of Passage possibly be as bizarre as Harmar Cow Jumping?

WD3.10: “Home” Sweet Home?

Posted: February 21, 2013 by zombieprofessor in Zombie
Tags: , , ,
1

As usual you are in Spoilerville. Proceed at your own risk.

Sorry to have been absent. Officially I’ve been on non-zombie matters. Unofficially I’ve been boycotting writing about The Walking Dead until Rick got over Lori.

I’m hoping my boycott can end now that we’ve slogged through episode 3.10: “Home.” What a painful episode it was. We can recognize the long-term character benefits of Rick seeing his dead wife Lori all over the prison yard. (How bleak is this show that she looked regal down by the barbed-wire fence?) But do we really need our protagonist to go on a micro-journey to the underworld? He’s already in hell as it is, hiding out in a “Home” carved out of a penitentiary. You might think you couldn’t lay this absurdity on too thick, but Lori looking hotter than ever in a white dress, making the prison yard blush, is asking too much.

Lori, let me remind you, was the root of so much trouble (hence my boycott). Harken back to the first season. Shane knows he’s in trouble given he’s been sleeping with Rick’s wife, presuming his best friend was dead, only to see Rick return. For maybe an episode and a half, Shane keeps it together, and his intentions are aligned with his best friend’s. But then comes the “Tell It To the Frogs” episode. Lori goes apeshit during the frog-catching adventure and tells Shane to stay away from her family. Her vicious, guilt-consumed reaction cuts Shane off from the only thing he was striving for: Lori and her family. Shortly afterward, stripped of any meaning, Shane flies into a rage. He beats up Ed, who is clearly a douchebag deserving of a beating, but still: Goodbye ego, hello id. Thanks, Lori, for triggering that. And now your visage is leading our hero around the woods in a daze. This is supposed to be a zombie series, not 127 Hours.

The most understated revelation of this episode was Rick’s admission to Herschel that when the phone rang in the prison it was Lori and Shane on the line. These hallucinations have been going on all season. His journey outside the prison walls, into the unsafe land of the dead, takes on a kind of listless Orpheus and Euridice quality, with Lori slipping away each time Rick nears her. (Myth nerds: Feel free to commence an argument on Edith Hamilton vs. Thomas Bulfinch in the comment thread if so inclined).

Of course all this fits well with the existential themes we’ve been talking about for a while. Rick’s visions are hand in glove with the doubled-down sense of confinement, trapped in a prison that could seemingly get overrun at any point, with the world around them offering few options but to continue this confinement.

Fortunately, we also have the Governor. I have never been so glad to see his ugly face. He shows up at the prison in the final ten minutes with various gifts: thugs, automatic weapons, a U-Haul full of walkers. Nothing like violence to snap our protagonist back into Ranger Rick mode. The attack also gives cover for Daryl to bring Merle back into the fold. I’m sure there will be a debate about whether or not Merle stays, but Rick can’t say no to Merle when the guy just saved his life.

While the Governor’s entrance snaps us back on track in several respects, he still finds time to remind us he is the most grating character on the show. I could have done without his Cobra Commander-style, from the hip machine gun play.

Bold prediction for next week: Shimmering Lori apparition appears over a herd of charging walkers. Yawn. Hopefully the single descent into the underworld was sufficient and I won’t have to resume my boycott.

A grand bargain: Climate change for…?

Posted: June 17, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Climate change
Tags: , ,
0

Ryan Lizza has a must-read article about Obama’s second term in The New Yorker. Here’s the climate change bit:

Obama talks about energy in most of his speeches, but, in contrast with 2009, when the centerpiece of his program was a cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions, his goal today is unclear. Early discussions on Capitol Hill suggest that, in a wide-ranging deal, a carbon tax might be part of a grand bargain to settle Taxmageddon. The proposition is not as absurd as it sounds. In 1997, the budget deal struck by Clinton and the Republicans was not so much a meeting in the middle as a swap of major priorities. “That was a deal of trades,” one former Clinton official said. Clinton won policies such as a new children’s-health program, a higher-education tax cut, and some progressive changes to the welfare bill that he signed into law in 1996. “We won those things and then we just gave the Republicans big Medicare savings, and we let them cut the capital-gains tax for rich people.”

A grand bargain, with climate change as a solution to Taxmageddon? And…what’s Taxmageddon?

Election Day is November 6th. Fifty-five days later, on New Year’s Eve, the size and the scope of the federal government are scheduled to be radically altered. Federal tax rates for every income group will shoot up to levels not seen since 2001. Payroll taxes for employees will jump by two percentage points. Unemployment benefits for some three million Americans will be cut off. The Pentagon will start the new year with a fifty-five-billion-dollar budget cut. The budget allocated to everything from the F.B.I. to the Park Service to meat inspections will be slashed by the same amount. Soon after, federal payments to doctors who treat patients using Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, will be slashed by about a third.

The huge increase in taxes and the precipitate drop in government spending would equal an economic contraction of more than five hundred billion dollars, more than three per cent of G.D.P. The impact could send a fragile economy back into a recession. “It’s two to three times bigger in negative terms than even the biggest year of the stimulus was in positive terms,” Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said. It is this frightening confluence of fiscal time bombs, starting on December 31, 2012, that has earned the name Taxmageddon.

It’s good to hear climate change is part of the biggest domestic policy discussions going–where it should be. It is a large bargaining chip; we shall see how it is played and if Congressional Zombies can be defeated.

Inner demons, bath salt-induced and otherwise

Posted: June 4, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Zombie
Tags: , ,
1

We at Zombielanche have been watching the Miami “zombie attack” incident unfold, waiting to comment. Before we say anything about the incident, we offer up the video account, the most factual and least sensationalized telling of this story.

Disturbing, no? Not hard to see why people are already jumping to a zombie explanation. We’re certainly interested in that possibility, but moreso in how this incident has provoked and/or revealed zombie thinking throughout our society.

Look at how many cars drove by this grizzly event? It takes eight minutes for anyone to slow down and take notice of the atrocity going on next to a major road. And it takes 18 minutes for the cops to get there (though it sounds like the 911 operator may have received a number of calls before the police arrived). Or maybe it’s just that no one really noticed until Rudy Eugene had stripped naked and begun to eat Ronald Poppo.

The emerging story about why this happened is probably more unnerving. The Miami police are blaming “bath salts”. Until about a week ago, most people who knew anything about bath salts were aware only of the bathroom variety. But it turns out designer drugs called “bath salts” are a growing public health concern. I’ll say: this designer drug makes you strip off your clothes and maybe even eat face.

Curious about bath salts? I was too (no not THAT curious). CNN tracked down someone who survived an overdose. The interview with a bath salt user who came back from an overdose speaks for itself, especially when the user describes bath salts as creating some kind of evil possession.

Looks like he just barely came back from the bath salt zombie craze. I do like this quote: “I didn’t want to eat anyone’s flesh.” Well it’s good that’s not universal.

The drug does seem to have a powerful effect on otherwise peaceful people. Rudy Eugene apparently was religious and had attended bible study two days prior. And as the Huffington Post demonstrates, there is a sad story and larger social warning behind all of this.

Of course many may miss the warning. Since it’s Miami, there has to be a tourist angle, right? You betcha. Apparently the site of this tragedy is already a tourist destination. You see there are many types of zombies.

What is Zombielanche?

Posted: April 6, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Avalanche, Zombielanche
Tags: , ,
1

Logline: Zombielanche is a climate change/zombie mashup about a team of climate scientists whose research station gets buried in an avalanche and overrun by zombies.

Synopsis

Jane Blakely is a renowned climate scientist whose most recent work has been publicly criticized. Her latest expedition has taken her to an ancient glacial valley that is disintegrating in unprecedented ways. Her research there will set her career and the climate change debate back on track.

Cleve Jones is using Jane’s expedition to get him within striking distance of biological specimens discarded in this same valley by the US military decades before. He brings a specimen into the expedition’s research station shortly after Jane finds the scientific proof she has been looking for.

When an avalanche buries the research station—and the eight-person expedition—Jane and her team struggle over how to escape. Then the specimen infects Cleve with a mysterious and contagious ailment that incites violence and cannibalism. Infected scientists begin to  turn against their teammates.

If Jane wants her team or her science to survive, she will have to defeat the zombie scientists without any real weapons and dig out from under the avalanche. It’s zombies versus climate scientists in a thriller that will make people think.

Mashups

Posted: April 6, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism
Tags: ,
0

The Wall Street Journal looks at mashups going mainstream with a feature article focusing on Seth Grahame-Smith, best known for “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer.”

Mr. Grahame-Smith wasn’t the first writer to put a bizarre spin on a classic tale (arguably, Shakespeare was a skilled practitioner of genre remixing). But he’s become the mash-up movement’s modern avatar. His irreverent literary reboot landed at precisely the right cultural moment. In recent years, digital remixing and sampling—once viewed as derivative at best and illegal at worst—has grown widespread in music, film, television and fine art. Mash-ups are no longer just kitschy parodies. Literary writers like Colson Whitehead and Michael Chabon have experimented with horror and science-fiction themes. A zombie-infused Regency romance doesn’t sound so ludicrous in today’s mash-up rich environment.

I’ve written before about mashups. The public acceptance of genre-bending is refreshing, and the critics clearly lack imagination. That’s why we know the time is right for Zombielanche, a climate change/zombie mashup feature film.

Walking Dead 2:13: Beside the Dying Hope

Posted: March 22, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism, Zombie
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Spoilerama

At last the finale, the day we all knew was coming eventually: The day the farm ceases to be a viable microcosmic civilization for Rick Grimes, his family, Herschel’s family, and their ragtag social contract. And, more essentially, the day we find out the secret that was planted just out of our earshot at the conclusion of the first season.

But first we get a little Planet Earth-style walker footage, with the story of a walker migration told through a series of powerful visual anecdotes. First, the helicopter. Where did that come from? Someone’s flying it, and if you know anything about helicopters you know they are a bitch to maintain. So there’s capacity to keep the thing in the air. OK. That sounds like infrastructure. Good sign.

But I digress. First we have the walkers shuffling in pursuit of the helicopter and, apparently, never stopping. A walker in motion stays in motion. Do they follow flocking rules the same way that birds do? Flocking rules call for alignment—averaging out the distance between members of a flock—and cohesion—steering toward a common long-term location. For birds, it also includes separation—avoiding obstacles and other near-term navigational hazards. While the flock of walkers seems to abide by the rules of alignment and cohesion, they utterly lack in the separation department—as we see when they coalesce behind a fence en masse until the pressure grows too great and they burst through. This inevitable force never met an immovable object.

And what an unfortunate thing to come creeping up just as Rick was dispensing Shane. It makes for a taut opening to the episode: The long shot of Rick struggling through the difficult revelation to his son of if/why Rick killed Shane. With darkness as a backdrop, we’re left with a delicious bit of dramatic irony, waiting for the walkers to emerge out of the darkness behind our heroes. And as soon as we see them, we know it is on.

Things move quickly from here. How apt that Rick and Carl end up trapped in the barn—now it’s the walkers on the outside and the people on the inside, an inversion on the farm when they found it, with Herschel hoarding loved-ones-turned-walkers in the same barn.

The rest of the farm springs to action and the fog of war takes over. As everyone in the house takes to the cars and starts picking off walkers cavalry-style, it becomes hard to account for everyone. Andrea gets separated and no one knows if she is hurt or dead. Rick tries to be noble but gets talked out of it by Herschel, who points out it’s all about the boy. We’re reminded of The Road, where the hope we place in the offspring becomes the only meaning left on a bleak landscape.

(more…)

Walking Dead 2.12: Better Angels and Civil War

Posted: March 15, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism, Zombie
Tags: , , , ,
1

Warning: Spoilertown

The title of the latest Walking Dead interests me. “Better Angels” evokes Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural, a speech steeped in good intentions that still couldn’t stop a civil war that was already fomenting and that officially began a month later with the attack on Fort Sumpter.

Rick’s eulogy for Dale in which he appeals to everyone’s better angels is an earnest attempt to restore togetherness. It’s like a plea for the former way. But the earnestness is undermined as scenes of zombie butcher are interspersed, just as Lincoln’s speech was undermined by the fact that the South had already seceded from the Union following his election. Dale wouldn’t have been happy to see Andrea cruising around in a truck looking for chances to stick a pitchfork through a zombie’s face. Come to think of it, Abraham Lincoln probably wouldn’t like it either.

Despite the attempt at rhetorically-induced peace, there is conflict coming. Early on we have Lady MacBeth herself taking pity on Shane as he toils alone repairing some kind of tower. She tells him she appreciates him, and that it might be his baby but that, as far as the two of them as a couple go, sorry not gonna happen. But you sure are great!

Lori seems very sincere in this scene. Maybe she’s driven by guilt for planting a homicidal notion about Shane in her husband’s ear; I can’t help but feel that she’s the one that upsets the first rock that starts the rockslide. Why tell Shane it might be his baby? Lori caveats her appreciation by disclaiming her appreciation with “even though things got confused between us.” If a woman said this to me I’d flip. Sounds like a semantically camouflaged way of saying I’ve convinced my husband to kill you.

If Lori Grimes’ motives are in doubt, Carl Grimes’ are not. (In fact it seems that preserving Carl’s innocence is one of the big changes in the show from its comic roots.) Carl just wants absolution from Dale’s death, and for some reason he seeks solace in Shane. As discussed, Shane has a different appeal for a young boy. Of course Carl’s confidence in Shane has an unexpected outcome in the hands of all these “better angels.” Carl gives up his gun to Shane, who gives the gun to Rick and offers some sound parental advice, provoking Rick to give the gun back to Carl so that Carl can eventually use it to kill zombiefied Shane. Got it? By acting like a concerned parent Shane eventually undoes his undead self. This comes full circle when Shane claims he is a better father than Shane.

(more…)

Walking Dead 2.11: Stomachache

Posted: March 8, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism, Zombie
Tags: , , , , , , ,
1

Spoiler alert: I had to wait an excruciating three days for my Walking Dead fix but perhaps some of you are later still. This week’s review includes several big giveaways if you haven’t yet seen the “Judge, Jury, Executioner” episode.

There’s a Thom Yorke song that shares the same name as the latest Walking Dead episode.


Somehow Yorke’s crooning isn’t melancholy enough to be the anthem for The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 11, “Judge, Jury, Executioner.” This episode serves up the death of a conscience, a Darwinian assertion, and taut suspense that left me feeling sick to my stomach.

Things get off to a quick start, with Daryl going Guantanamo on Randall. The Jack Bauer routine results in some key news: Randall’s people include 30 or so rapists. This is grim stuff, Cormac McCarthy bleak. If any cinematic entity could get away with roasting a baby on a spit, it’s The Walking Dead.

Amid the grim decisions, Dale is still trying to keep it real. “Keeping our humanity: That’s a choice.” We’ve heard this sort of thing before. Just as we’ve heard Shane at the other end of the spectrum: While speaking with Andrea outside the shed, Shane claims the people making the rules are the source of the problems, not him.

Well, the rule-makers are about to be tested.

(more…)

Walking Dead 2.10: “Shane…Shane…Come back, Shane”

Posted: February 29, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism, Zombie
Tags: , , , , , ,
2

Spoiler alert: There be giveaways

Could we just get on with the final showdown? The next time Rick and Shane fight, someone needs to die.

Continuing on a theme, The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 10, “18 Miles Out,” begins with the second season’s unavoidable dualism: Rick and Shane facing off. Rick tries to reason with Shane. But Shane doesn’t reason. Shane is one big muscle. I mean please: His name is Shane. He fucking leaves.

There’s the persistent question of Lori and how she navigates this love triangle. Somewhat mercifully, we see early on that Rick is not going to be conned by Lori’s run at Lady MacBeth. He tells Shane what his wife told him—that Shane is dangerous. While there are plenty of undercurrents to this, it isn’t a precursor to a MacBeth style murder-him-while-he-sleeps moment. Rick is going to try reasoning it out, until gravity takes over and they descend to blows again. The only thing that prevented homicide this time was the surprise walker infestation that overran the scene. But after Shane threw a hundred-pound wrench at Rick’s head, the will to kill is now on the table.

Of course the show’s creators have to leave this impending collision between Rick and Shane to simmer a bit further first. In the meantime we have a few other things to look forward to:

  • Suicide pacts  So if Lori isn’t Lady MacBeth, what is she good for? She impotently implores Beth to stay strong for her family. “We can make now alright, and we have to.” This proves counterproductive with Beth, who shortly afterwards tells her sister “I want to go, in this bed, tonight.” Will there be accomplices? Maybe Andrea walks someone else up to the existential edge and back. As Camus said, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Is the farm about to turn into Jonestown?
  • Can any rule endure?  “There are no rules, Shane,” Rick says. Though we know Rick has one rule: Protect his family.
  • What is up with the walker in the field? Does Shane somehow identify with it? Does Rick see it? Is it a sign this place is actually crawling with walkers? Is it Shane’s worse fear: Wandering brain-dead in the wilderness? Why am I reminded of The Stranger?

The episode ends the way it began, with the two men in dialogue. “If you’re gonna kill me, you have to do better than a wrench,” Rick says. “If you’re gonna be with us, you have to follow my lead. You have to trust me.”

But I thought there were no rules?

Three episodes or less to the next collision. There can only be one Nietzchean Superman.

Older Entries