Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Zombie Apocalypse




Being in an apocalyptic mood, I've been tooling around the Information Super Highway(exactly how outdated am I anyway?) looking for aficionados of TV's most popular apocalyptic meltdown, The Walking Dead.

I should start out by saying that I've never liked the show. Oh, I have a few zombie films in my mental attic, but The Walking Dead has always annoyed me.
When it first started, my 15 year old son & I would watch & just rip it to shreds.
After a while this all became a bit pointless as the show veered toward cliched self parody.

Then he started telling me that his classmates would discuss each new episode as if it were Holy Writ.
In other words, it all became funnier.

In my travels tonight, I came across this discussion over at The Atlantic.

Here, The Walking Dead becomes a metaphor for just about everything. From terrorism to eco-meltdown to underwear that bunches up too much for comfort.

And as these astute culture critics frolic in their inner geekdom, they like to repeatedly mention that The Walking Dead isn't so much about zombies as it is about the protagonist's valiant efforts to maintain their humanity in the face of implacable odds.

They champion this "humanity" from a website whose header ad is from EXXONMOBIL.

Jesus, talk about dissociative behavior.

They really don't see themselves as part of the problem.

The Walking Dead's upscale geek fan base seems to see themselves as the plucky survivors caring & loving & yadda yadda ya-ing in the face of certain doom, while in reality, they're the fucking zombies who have rapaciously eaten up everything in sight.

If anything, The Walking Dead is a metaphor for the world's inability to keep Westerners & their voracious appetites at bay.

We're the fucking unstoppably hungry zombies. & we are most definitely not the heroes here.

As much as we like to believe we are.

We're not.

& if you're dumb enough to think that the economic meltdown of 2008 has changed anything, I invite you to toddle down to your local mall and watch the zombie hordes in action.

They're fucking everywhere.

& they're hungry as hell.








2 comments:

Collapse Watch said...

That Black Friday video is AWESOME!! The only thing it's lacking is this playing in the background:

Proud To Be An American

just_another_dick said...

CW, it's evident that you're waaaaaay more on the ball than I'll ever be. It's also evident that you've been deeply immersed in collapse culture & all its attendant contradictions & lunacy to a greater extent than I'll ever have time to do...

So I have to ask, why are you wasting any time visiting my superficial heap of bullshit, bad jokes & snarky rudeness?

I'm about as popular as tofu at a Texas BBQ.

(Although I do seem to attract a crowd from somewhere in Pakistan every time I post photos of chicks in bikinis.)