The other day, partially in response to a post by Jon Hastings on The Host and Land of the Dead, I brought up the way that mainstream film critics will latch onto political allegory (real or perceived) in horror films, frequently to the exclusion of other, more interesting aspects of those films.
Blogger Bruce Baugh wrote to me in response:
I have a theory that the critics’ urge to find political allegory in Romero’s movies in particular is their way of staving off dealing with what always seemed to me the obvious point in his work: nihilism. It’s much easier to say “yeah, those guys over there suck” than it is to think “but maybe none of my good intentions or noble efforts matter one bit, either.” It’s not that Romero makes no distinctions between good people and bad, it’s just that he goes on to say that it doesn’t matter in the end whether you were good or bad: it won’t affect your chances of survival when things come munching. And even though I don’t think that’s the moral truth of the universe, it’s for sure an _emotional_ truth of part of our experience, if we acknowledge it rather than hide it.
As something of nihilist myself, at least in my approach to horror, that makes a lot of sense to me. Now, to be fair to the folks who come at Romero looking for the purely political message, I do think it’s there, not least because interviews I’ve read from Romero himself seem to back it up. But it seems reductive to take the complexity of, say, the shifting nature of who’s right and wrong in Night of the Living Dead and boil it down to a campaign commercial. Nihilism works a lot better as an explanation. And it is truer.
Bruce continues:
Hmm. In its way, the Romero-verse illustrates one of the classic existentialist points Camus was on about: whatever you’re trying to hold onto won’t last. You’re stuck. You have to start something new. I wonder what a zombie story would be like if I had a community of survivors who accepted that philosophical/religious despair and then went on to try to do something meaningful in the next context. Damn, like I don’t already have enough on my plate….
Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s ongoing zombie comic The Walking Dead looked, for one brief shining moment, like it was headed in that direction, but that was a year or so ago now and that hasn’t happened and doesn’t look like it will happen. DIY, Bruce!
Meanwhile, Jon Hastings himself wrote in regarding the other half of that post of mine, my surprise at the rape scene in 300:
As for the rape scene in 300, what I thought was interesting is that it wasn’t presented as something for a guy to avenge or get angsty about (a la Identity Crisis) but as the Queen making a sacrifice for the good of Sparta (just like her hubby and his men!). Still very “problematic”, of course, but I’m not sure that I’ve seen a movie that’s taken that particular POV before.
That’s a good point. She even doles out the comeuppance herself, and the whole business occurs with no expectation from either her or the rapist that her husband will ever find out about it, even. Very different than the old “women in refrigerators” approach.
On a completely unrelated note, The Horror Blog’s Steven Wintle, who knows me well, writes the following:
I’ve been watching the British sci-fi series Primeval recently. It’s about a group of scientists investigating holes in time that are releasing prehistoric creatures into the modern world. The third episode looks like it’s chock full of scary aquatic dinosaurs.
Just thought you should know.
PS: I found out about it from Bill Cunningham.
Oh boy! I gotta check this thing out–it seems kind of like The Mist with no mist and tonier accents.
Finally, I write letters too. Or at the very least I post comments. Andrew Dignan’s review of the latest episode of Lost over at The House Next Door (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) saw him throw his hands up in despair over the introduction of the so-called “magic box,” from which the residents of the mysterious Island known as the Others claim to be able to produce their hearts’ innermost desires. “I give up” is the direct quote. I myself did not:
I think you’re taking the “magic box” concept a bit too literally. I assumed that Ben was speaking, if not metaphorically, then at least, er, poetically, and never got the impression that the room where Locke’s father was being held was an actual Magic Box that they opened up to find him in that morning. Rather, I interpreted Ben’s statement as a more explicit assertion of the already established ability of the island, and apparently some of the people on it, to make manifest their fears and desires. From Jack’s dad to Eko’s brother to Kate’s horse to Charlie’s guitar to Locke’s ability to walk to Juliet’s ex getting run over to Charlie’s plane full of heroin to (perhaps) Claire’s mother getting into a car wreck immediately following Claire wishing she were dead, the entire show has involved one character after another opening the magic box, if you take my meaning.
Later, Andrew replied, in part:
Guys, come on now. I say outright that the box is likely a metaphor, and not literally a cardboard box sitting in a corner somewhere.
Granted, but I think what all of us who accused Andrew of literalism were picking up on was that he was acting as if this aspect of the show debuted, or at the very least reached some completely unprecedented level, this week. The point I was trying to make with my list of “where there’s a will, there’s a way” moments is that this has been a part of the show for a long time, and that this ability of the Island and some of its residents was already apparent.
Hooray for interaction!