With such fun times popping up around the undead as Humans Versus Zombies game last fall and the new zomBcon in Seattle (during which Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell officiated a wedding and several renewals of vows), it's hard to imagine the zombie culture as anything but a facet of the mainstream. Just look at the blockbusters like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland (that's over $13 and $75 million gross in the USA alone), along with the Resident Evil franchise and the Left 4 Dead games, and you'll be just starting on the massive cultural fad.
But, believe it or not, zombies weren't always fun and games, despite the rising surge of zombie romance novels. There was a time when the zombie culture was considered full of paranoid geeks, the militant right-wingers of the nerd-kingdom. (There are actually several prep sites available for perusal, not to mention a best-selling book by Max Brooks). Pre-fad, if someone even considered preparing for the zombie-apocalypse, s/he would likely receive odd looks and be deemed suffering from paranoid delusions brought on by far too many video games (citation: personal experience). Now, however, should a person mention zombie-preparation,
the more common response would be a laugh and a tactical discussion (like the pros and cons of holing up in a supermarket or what to keep in you Mobile Zombie Preparedness Kit); my own discussions involve the building-fortification potential at Whitworth (not promising, considering Whitworth seems to love glass) or the biological/physiological details of an actual "undead." And this is not ridiculed so much as indulged. Because now it's mainstream.
This absorption of a pseudo-rebellious culture into the mainstream is a lot like Hebdige's process of recuperation: "(1) The conversion of subcultural signs (dress, music, etc.) into mass-produced objects (i.e. the commodity form); (2) The 'labelling' and re-definition of deviant behavior by dominant groups--the police, the media, the judiciary (i.e. the ideological form)" (2484). Commodification? Done, done, and done (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has both a prequel and a sequel, by the way). Re-definition? Movies, video games, and music have had instances of portraying zombies as either humanized, not-really-zombies, or humorous (I maintain that the zombies in RE 4 and 5 are not actually undead; they are infected living humans--at least until mutation, then t
hey're infected living mutant-monsters). It's not common for zombies to be seen as terrifying or apocalyptic (though 28 Days later has a funny part...or two...). They've been mass-produced into plushies or comedic characters/plots on Comedy Central TV shows (the room
mate in Ugly Americans or the "Zombie Attack" episode of South Park [caused by Worcestershire Sauce]).
The point is that "meanings [are] being constantly created and reconfigured," with culture absorbing, spitting out, shunning, and reabsorbing subcultures. When something crops up in society that makes an anti-statement, culture acts the like the magpie with a shiny object, pecking and heckling before picking it up for itself (and then probably dumping it in its hidey-hole and forgetting about it for a few years).
Look at it, plotting its future life of crime, the thieving little bugger.
Haha. Nice post. I like the magpie.
ReplyDeleteI was interested in JoCo beFORE zombies were cool.
ReplyDeleteSo, are velociraptors the new zombie? Or rather, maybe they are the reaction against the zombie, and other major fears. While zombie fans discuss real possible issues were zombies to exist (and how they would), velociraptor haters hold vigils for the victims of velociraptors, make jokes about how it's mathematically impossible to escape velociraptors (on account of they're so smart)and keep waterguns full of concord grape juice because it keeps crows from eating crops and since birds are descendants of dinosaurs, it's our only hope against them. In short, velociraptor awareness seems to critique every other "awareness" we have, especially zombies. What do you think Hebdige would say about them?
Here's my favorite part about from the Zombie romance link:
ReplyDelete"In Regina Riley's poignant 'Undying Love,' a long-suffering zombie seeks his lost lover."
Also good post :)
Wuthering Heights?
ReplyDeleteI think Hebdige might acknowledge the Velociraptor-Awareness group as a counter-culture to the absorption of the previous counter-culture. Or maybe as a form of one culture trying to "minimize the Otherness" of the counter-culture (2487). By satirizing the zombie (Zed) culture, the Velociraptor-Awareness (V-A) culture is deriding the Zed culture (which can lead either to Otherness-as-sameness or Otherness-as-meaningless). These two routes might be combined, in that perhaps the V-A culture minimizes the Zed culture because it [Zed culture] has been absorbed into the mainstream culture. the V-A culture is rebelling against the commodification and integration of a subculture into the broader culture; but the V-A culture is also gaining power, and it, too, will probably be absorbed in time.
ReplyDeleteThat sounded rather convoluted. :P Sorry.
Also, there's a great article in which a Dr. Steven Schlozman says, "The zombies themselves represent a kind of commentary on modernity... We're increasingly disconnected. That might be the current appeal."
Warning: the featured picture is gnarly. In both senses (pretty cool, but also pretty gory). But hey! Doctor/scientist zombie-geeks! :D Yayz!
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/25/zombie.virus.zombies.book/index.html?hpt=C2
Pax, I love your posts. I laughed out loud at your magpie analogy, but I also would have to agree that you're totally right. Any new counter-culture movement is initially "squawked" at (or in Hebdige's terms, there's a panic), toyed with a bit, and then taken up to prevent any damage from actually occurring. Whether the magpie wants the item or not, it'll take it just in case. In the same way, whether culture likes an idea (or fears an idea) or not, it will adopt it just in case, just to be safe. And then yes, bury it out in the backyard. If the deviants are brought back within the cultural norm, it's far more easy to bury and forget them. And far safer, because everything becomes so deluded it dissolves into nothing "counter" at all.
ReplyDeleteMagpies aside, I do have to wonder about natural human inclinations. As Lesley was saying in class today, we seem to innately desire to rebel. Yet, as we talked about earlier in the semester when we were discussing women, we also seem innately compelled to design an "Other" so that we are superior. So we both want to be the deviants and then point fingers at them, and inevitably, above all, we seem to want to preserve culture by yanking them back into the overarching structure. At which point are we acting out of truly "innate" desire versus learned behavior?
Pax,
ReplyDeleteNice post. Again, part of the issue is what it means to be on/at the edge of a movement. Maybe the issue is simply to be able to freeze frame it and articulate what you see in the frame.