Posts Tagged ‘Shakespeare’

Walking Dead 2.12: Better Angels and Civil War

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

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

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

Walking Dead 2.9: Lori’s Lady MacBeth Moment

Posted: February 20, 2012 by zombieprofessor in Literary criticism, Zombie
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Spoiler alert: Don’t read this if you are waiting to see the Feb. 19 episode

Walking Dead fans who have lamented a shortage of gore and terrifying things at times during Season 2 were given just what they wanted at the beginning of this week’s show. The walker ripping its face off as it pushes through the broken windshield trying to get to Lori is one of those frightful images that makes this series so scary. That we don’t get these moments before each and every commercial break is a good thing. The pacing gives us time to come to care about the characters.

Speaking of the characters, a few of them are going through changes following the philosophical turn we analyzed last week.

Shane and Andrea now have a hostage who they can plot to kill, in direct defiance to Rick’s renewed attempt to fight for the sake of humanity and common decency. The idiot stranger who jumped off the roof and was almost left to be dined on by walkers—Randall—seems like he could have a Nordberg-esque existence. Sometimes characters are props and I suppose that’s fine. Do I smell a dramatic arc for next week’s episode?

One of the subtler signs that things have changed: At the 17:35 timestamp, Herschel (probably still drunk and having just seen a man get his face eaten) uses the word “Walkers” for what I believe is the first time, a word he rejected using back before the barn incident. His idealistic worldview is gone.

With the group severed from the fools’ errands that defined this season before the barn incident, this little slice of humanity is now teetering on an existential precipice. What I found most telling in this regard was the ending, when Lori and Rick are finally alone and Lori makes a case for getting rid of Shane:

“You killed the living to protect what’s yours?….Shane thinks I’m his. He thinks the baby is his. And he says you can’t protect us. That you’re going to get us killed. He’s dangerous, Rick, and he won’t stop.”

The will to power is in full effect. So too are the echoes of Lady MacBeth as Lori tries to steer her husband toward murder. As Lady MacBeth says in Act I, Scene iv:

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue

It’s one thing for Rick to kill a stranger to protect his own people. It’s something else to kill his own people to protect his own people. But if anyone has the valorous tongue needed to talk Rick into offing his former best friend, it’s Lori.

Am I going overboard with the Shakespeare comparison? Probably—it wouldn’t be the first time the Zombie Professor took things too far. Are there simpler readings? Definitely. The Atlantic looks at this week’s episode as a trio of love stories and doesn’t seem to think much of the Rick/Lori/Shane triangle. I agree with them that Shane’s sometimes over-the-top belligerence could be reigned in. Apparently, so too do the show’s writers: Andrea tells Shane he should use a “lighter touch.”

But what’s more interesting to me is the possibility that Shane is right, that the group is focusing on the wrong things. “They want to play house….They are bound to get us all killed,” he says to Andrea. Could Shane be turning into a kind of Thug Cassandra?

(Probably not. After all, Rick knows something that none of us do; if anyone has prophetic wisdom, it’s the sheriff.)

Which brings us back to Lori’s Lady MacBeth scene. Lori may be right that Shane is violent…but her claim that “he’s going to get us killed” is weaker than Shane’s identical claim against Rick and Herschel. Rick and Herschel have consistently stood for grandiose notions and gallant quests, while Shane is about saving his own ass.   The three of them need one another to maintain balance in their fragile civilization. That’s why I don’t think the MacBeth comparison is overdone. Lori is threatening the group’s existence by trying to contaminate her husband with the same “you killed the living to protect what’s yours” thinking that has been driving Shane.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.