Zombies and Me. Part 3: Zombies are Just Plain Awesome!

To view Part 1, a list of zombie movies and books, click here. To view Part 2, my fascination with how zombie films explore the breakdown of society, click here.

The idea of how the apocalypse affects our society is not the only thing that sets zombie movies apart. Many movies have this concept, but I don't have such positive feelings about them (cf. Armageddon).

Zombies serve as useful secondary plot devices that allow filmmakers to explore some aspects of the human condition that would not otherwise be feasible. The pseudo-zombie movie The Omega Man needed zombie-like creatures to provide the dramatic tension, other characters, and some cool skin diseases. Without something like zombies, it would have been impossible to explore just how interesting the Last Man On Earth (LMOE) condition can be. In other words, the audience can take only so much of a cocksure Charleton Heston cruising around a deserted Los Angeles. I think Hollywood has proved that Tom Hanks is the only actor who can be the sole character in a film (unless you count a bloody volleyball).

Zombies are more than mere plot devices. Their importance extends to providing fascinating artificial laboratories for characters where one can explore human nature in an extreme setting. One such laboratory is: how do humans react when the zombie chasing you is a beloved relative or friend? That is, the zombies only appear to be these people. The zombie is something else: an impersonal force of nature with no feelings, few memories, and very little intelligence. Nevertheless, the wave of uncaring death looks like people we knew in our former lives, and this adds to the difficulty of dealing with it. What kind of people try to ignore reason and hope that this person would never hurt them? What if a character becomes so inured to exterminating human-like creatures that he begins to murder normal humans?

The original zombie movies were fairly simple in this regard because the zombie obliterated all connection to the living human that gave up its body. This causes some drama in the middle section of a zombie movie when the wife is forced to kill her husband, etc., but this is usually overcome in a short period of time. It should be noted, however, that some zombie movies try to push the envelope in this regard. George Romero's latest, Land of the Dead, and, to some extent, his version of Dawn of the Dead give the zombies some retention of their former lives (working in a gas station or going to the mall). Peter Jackson's Dead Alive also allows the zombies to pursue the goals that they had before conversion albeit with much more directness (case in point: the zombified mother tries to stuff her grown son back into her womb).

This tension and discomfort caused by an object that resembles a human but differs ever so slightly has actually been studied in detail. The notion of the "Uncanny Valley" (wikipedia) captures our discomfort thusly: as an object becomes more and more similar to a human form, we react more and more positively. That trend ceases, however, when the similarity gets into a region that is quite close, but still not human-like. At this point, the familiarity drops precipitously and we react with revulsion to the object. Only when the object is an exact copy of a human will we accept it as familiar. Scientists study this phenomenon with regard to corpses, robots, and animated films. Computer animators are well aware of the Uncanny Valley and currently make efforts to stay out of it by making movies about animals, anthropomorphic cars, or obviously exaggerated humans like The Incredibles. The resources required to make a computer-generated human that audiences will accept on a visceral level are too great (the box office failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is often quoted as an example of discomfort due to the Uncanny Valley). Where does the Uncanny Valley come from? Is there some sort of evolutionary reason? If so, where would the Uncanny Valley crop up in prehistoric man's environments? Maybe we had to regularly fight zombies. I suggest that we study this hypothesis immediately.

The zombie aesthetic is a clear exploration of the Uncanny Valley. Not only do we fear what the zombie will do to us (eat our flesh, infect us, etc.), we are very uncomfortable when we look at these creatures. Zombies are doubly creepy: they look like corpses which reside at the bottom of the Uncanny Valley. Plus, they do something that corpses shouldn't do: they move.

Enough high-minded, faux-academic talk. Zombies allow the filmmaker/writer to picture really crazy scenes and scenarios which are, honestly, too screwed up to seem worthy as an "exploration of the human condition." They're just really cool and fun to think about. One of my personal favorite topics explored in zombie narratives are the details of zombie combat, defense, and escape. Max Brooks' remarkable Zombie Survival Guide focuses on these topics giving weirdo military nuts like me a treasure trove of cool stuff to think about. Like: a bicycle is the best form of transportation because it is nearly soundless, requires no fuel, is faster than walking/running, and can be carried relatively easily. Or: the harpoon is really the only reasonable weapon in underwater zombie combat. According to Planet Terror (part of Grindhouse), a pocket bike is a great way to stay low, keep mobile, and look like a circus clown. A tough, zombie-killing circus clown. I also like to think about the best possible defensive wall design. Since zombies lack the cognitive ability to climb, it need not be too high. But what if they crush each other, forming a ramp that other zombies can simply walk up? The crushing force may also render simple wooden or brick walls useless.

People can write volumes about how to manage ammunition when the number of zombies is in the millions, how to set up choke points in an escape route, how to lure zombies out from where you don't want them, what types of firearms are superior zombie-fighting instruments, what to stockpile in a zombie-proof bunker, when not to use fire to fight zombies, and how to fight zombies from zeppelins. The zombie is an interesting creature because it is probably very predictable. This allows great confidence in computer simulations of tactics, semi-analytic techniques for zombie flux, modeling of infection rates, and zombie speeds in different types of terrain.

There are other more fantastic topics that zombie movies explore. What happens if a pregnant woman is infected? Does she give birth? Will the baby be infected? How would an infected baby behave? Dead Alive, as always, ups the ante when a zombie priest impregnates a zombie nurse (at the dinner table, no less!), and she gives birth within days to a psychotic little imp who laughs maniacally and wreaks hilarious havoc. One of the most surreal scenes occurs when our human protagonist takes the zombie baby for a stroll through the park in a barbed wire-covered baby carriage.