It's all hatred against women to fuel male G*mers pipedream about hate fucking and murdering the opposite sex. yea Oh I'm sorry, these are "zombies" (also a stand in for immigrants) so it's permitted.

  • smokeppb [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Most zombie media to me has always struck me as reactionary, can't really think of a counter example. Zombies tend to get coded as a mob of minorities in the worst cases like that scene in World War Z perhaps the most fascist thing I've ever watched unexpectedly was the zombies making a pig pile to scale the wailing wall to attack the Jews and "the peaceful Palestinians who were just getting along" gee I wonder what the message was supposed to be there. Even when writers don't seem to be trying to code their zombies as a minority group they got a sort of painting the masses as "the mob" thing going for them that just doesn't vibe with me.

    EDIT: An older CoD has the zombies as Nazis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0cmEZGbpnQ so I guess they're out there.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, the only good zombie media I know of that doesn't stick zombies in the "savage horde" trope that's borderline racist is Romero's stuff.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Return of the Night of the Living Dead was basically a big shitpost about small business tyrants and the military industrial complex causing disaster through their own negligence and bloodlust. Its sequels weren't great but they also didn't really do the normal zombie thing: the second one has suburbanites turning on each other after the military botches the cleanup of the first movie and the third puts the zombies in the role of elite military bioweapons. The fourth and fifth are completely unrelated early 2000s b-movies about the military industrial complex trying to make elite shock troops out of zombies and something incoherent about drugs being made from the zombie serum for ??? reasons that were pretty much just a narrative excuse to have a horny rave sequence.

        I got drunk and watched some movie on netflix a few years ago, I think it was called Rezort or something like that, that was about refugees being literally dehumanized and commodified for private profit. It wasn't a particularly good movie, but it was a pretty scathing critique of the zombie genre in that the zombies were explicitly victims being put into a situation where park engineering rendered them harmless so rich freaks could hunt them for sport.

      • DADDYCHILL [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        night of the living dead ending with the black guy being shot by the police is kinda hilarious.

        • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          For the time though it was pretty scathing, Romero's always been pretty conscious on racism and class issues and it shows in his zombie movies.

      • smokeppb [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Never watched Romero movies, they were before my time. Good to know though.

        • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          They're great, and not just as zombie movies either, but you gotta respect that his films set the stage and the bar to clear for future generations of zombie media.

    • Albanian_Lil_Pump [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      But they also made one of the protagonists a Nazi lol. I mean they made every faction of WWII and the Cold War protagonists, but still stupid

    • RebloodlicanDemocrip [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      It does have very reactionary roots, although I think there's more to them than something just being borne out of reactionary views.

      As a plot device it can set up and be explained by a lot of scenarios. A lot of its cultural endurance probably is down to it being an interesting scenario, and a scenario that's very easy for people to self insert to feel good about why they're a brain genius who totally would've survived the apocalypse.

      I base these musings off nothing but vibes though, could be wrong.

      Anyway, Shaun of The Dead has a funny little riff at the end about the post Zombie world and how we might treat these 'subhumans' after. The military clears things up pretty quickly (as they probably would), and then the remaining zombies are just used in challenge type obstacle course gameshows and stuff. Apart from the protagonists best friend Ed, who he keeps in his shed and attempts to rehabilitate by playing video games with him and sharing junk food.