A Geek History of Time - Episode 131 - Zombies Part VII

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and I support numbers with those who love me. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, I'm sorry. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always had to sexual revolution.

It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, you're gonna get over it. And I don't understand the book, it's a school. Agra has no business being that big. With the cultists when we all win. This is a geek history of time. on their shelf and just adding the continued hunt for actual house and remaining unlike my podcast partner very very excited at the prospect of setting up a barbecue grill and being able to cook over a fire as God intended. Outdoors on on property that I claim it's a big deal. To me and I understand maybe that's

white guy colonizer I don't know I don't know. It does sound very manifest destiny. A little bit a little bit. A little bit. And I've got to work through those issues on my own, but that's kind of where I am right now. How about you? Oh, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and drama teacher at a local high school up here in Northern California. I don't have much in the way of updates other than I did get my kids to cook two different meals a couple weeks ago

and then they've managed to trick me into not asking them to do it again for two weeks straight. So I am proud of two things this week, one the fact that they have conned me for two straight weeks and two meals they made were amazing. Now having said that. Yeah which one did you see? Well, the one the one I remember is the one on your son, Cucked on the Tomahawk Stakes which is as a dedicated carnivore. I was looking at that like where did he buy those at a local gourmet food store. Okay. Yeah. Now here's a thing I didn't know. That shit's expensive as hell. Yes, it is.

I am pricing his recipes from now on before I say yes because the amount that- It's not a steak steak cheap. No, they are not. I had no idea like, and I already had a lot of labor because those bones have been French. I don't know what that word means. That's, um, it's, it's the, the bone is separated. I know the bone has been separated from the meat and the, the tendons and whole tissue have been scraped off of it to create that nice clean bone

So like when you have I'm gonna start using that in discussion of like what happens to people in industrial accidents That's that's horrible, but not entirely inappropriate right. Yeah. Oh, man From the knee down. We are French Yes, wildly inappropriate, but but true. Yeah Actually technically not wrong. Yeah, it is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct But yeah, no, so you're you're paying for number one you're paying paying for usually the steaks that are on the bone like that are high grade beef. They're rib-eye. Yeah, yeah, and rib-eye, which is an expensive cut, anyway, even if you get a cheap rib-eye,

it's not a cheap rib-eye. I know, I looked. I was like, shit, well, at least these aren't rib-eye prices, and then I looked and I'm like, what the fuck? I guess we're not buying milk this month, Jesus. So. But it tasted good, did it? Oh, it was great and it was, you know,

we were accidentally kosher. So, you know, it worked well. Oh, hey, there you go. Perfect. I shall know that we were, because we used creamed row in the mashed potatoes. creamed row in the mashed potatoes. Well, no, because the thing is the meat itself, and we can, we can check with, you know, a friend of the showtuss about this, but the meat itself was not cooked in the milk.

That is true. That is true. So you're okay. Okay. I think. All right. I think they were on the same plate, though, like the meat and the mashed potatoes which had Heavy cream as well as I don't know as creamed row and cream row is is fish eggs So see creamed row by itself might not be a violin might not be trife, but okay? I don't know yeah, friend of the show just to help us out. Yeah, let us know. Yeah. Anyway, you know, she's she's a vegan. So like, you know, to her, the whole thing's an abomination anyway. But she knows rules really well. Like, she does, she does know she knows, she knows, she knows those those rules, yeah, better than anybody else. I know. So yeah, anyway, but yeah, no, I was I was very impressed

by your son doing that cooking. So was he going, oh, I'm sure. Oh, you saw the picture. He's so proud. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I do remember looking at that going like, how much did Damien drop on that dinner? More than I thought I should of. But, you know, I, yeah. It was a good experience for him. Like, he, you know, he, he learned, you know, and he knows how to cook meat and, and Julian knows how to cook meat and, you know, they both, they both have made some fantastic dishes. So, and this week we are, we're making smoothies for breakfast on Sunday.

He's really been wanting to do that. So, so cool. Yeah. Anyway, so last we talked. Yes. I had given most of the plot of the 2005 Romero film, which is, start of the dead.

Well, yes, but as I was going to say, it started Dennis Hopper and one of the dead. Well, yes, but as I was gonna say, it started Dennis Hopper. Yeah. And one of the things I did is. Because it was 2005 and how could it not? Right, right. Which one of the people I didn't mention that it started was John Lake, was Homo.

And he's gonna figure in big to my analysis of it at this point. Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, look forward to that. Yeah, so. I'm a big fan of him. Good, good.

Yeah, and so in land of the dead, like we said, it's set in Pittsburgh, so we're still keeping in Pennsylvania. There's a mall preceding a high rise. The high rise is where the really, really rich live. It's a semi-futal society run by a guy named Kauffman. That is, of course, Dennis Hopper. And it's very much the rich are safe.

The poor are not. So I don't know, like he was talking about the times then he was talking about times now, like, is it really satire when you're just like calling out what actually exists? Well, yeah, it is that I'm telling you what actually exists. It's just the way in which you're doing it. Yeah You know, satire is satire is about, you know, tone and content really as much as anything else. Yeah. Um, you know, I think what I, what I find so 2004. Okay. Because the movie came out no five, but 2004. Okay. Okay. Well, in, in 2014,

it has five. So we're talking about the end of Bush to the first First term first first term. Yeah for for Bush to and Second term he wins by saying, you know, sure I screwed up the war on terror, but do you want to change horses midstream besides that guy's not a war hero like me? What the fuck yeah, okay, so and it worked Yeah, it did it did so so I'm trying to think economically what we had going on in the country in 0 4 into 0 5 well the vice president had deep ties with corporations that ruin large swathes of the economies the country's economic power as well as defense contractors that had ruined large swaths of other countries. So that's going on economically. Okay, but I'm talking boom bus

cycle. Oh, oh, yeah, I'm talking I'm not I'm not even getting that that we're headed toward a big fucking boom. Like this is the beginning of the bubble blowing up. Yeah, okay. Like it is getting really big. It is noticeably big. Okay. Yeah. So this is the tail end. Well, this is this is the after effect, if you will. We're now we're now several years on from the Clinton presidency and the growth during the Clinton presidency. But presidency and the growth during the Clinton presidency But all of that growth during the Clinton presidency all those all that job growth that we saw was low wage You know Wal-Mart greeter right kind of kind of positions kind of cooking the books a bit

Kind of cooking the books more than a little more people people are working, but less, the purchasing power keeps dropping. Yes, there we go. That's the kind of point that I'm looking for. And Glass-Steagall is starting to get dismantled. That starts under Clinton. That's true. Because of the contract with America. Yeah, because of... It's not his fault, because of...

Exactly, but. Yeah. So, yeah, we have, we have huge corporate deregulation going on. And we are seeing, but maybe not, or it's going on. And it, like, trying to figure out how to say it, I want to say, like like we're seeing, but we're not yet really noticing the widening gulf between the 1% and everybody else. Well, I would say that John Edwards for all of his faults and foibles called it out a lot earlier than most people because in the democratic primary

he had said there are two Americas. I remember that. Yes. And he was gaining a lot of traction with that because there was there was a very large swath of our population that recognized that and had not bought completely into identity politics of the right yet. But yes, you are seeing a huge widening of that gulf, like you said. I think you're also seeing, okay, so when I bought my house, it was the worst possible time to buy a house, maybe not the worst month on record, but definitely the worst year, it was 2007.

Oh shit. 2007 is unique because in that year, certainly in the fall of 2007 or late summer, prices were plummeting and people were not actually letting go of their higher prices So values were we're falling through the floor, but prices weren't falling Because people were still holding on to hope and and I I always like in it too If mr. Fantastic was afraid of being on a roller coaster

He would grab the bar at the very top as the whole thing goes down and his arm would just stretch. And I think that's what's going on. A surprisingly good analogy. Yeah. And I think that's what's going on economically in 2005 especially. It's, you know it's getting bad, you don't want to admit it and you don't have to admit it just yet.

Yeah, the reality has not become unavoidable. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And so what I'm going to say is on a subconscious level, that ties in really strongly to this idea of, you know, we have the zombies big daddy and the zombies who are the working poor. Yes. We have the protagonist of the story who are the middle class, the struggling, starting

to really struggle middle class. And then we have Kaufman and his ilk who are the 1%. Well, let's bring race into it now, too. Okay. Well, let's bring race into it now, too. Okay, because big daddy is black and working poor and John leg was almost in it and I'm gonna talk about him for a bit So okay, but yeah, you're absolutely right. I really like the idea of the struggling middle class I had not thought of that but he's absolutely a person who is Working really hard to enrich and empower the rich and then he's going to leave who is working really hard to enrich and empower the rich.

And then he's going to leave on his own and he's going to kind of disengage to move to the suburbs, if you will. And so the movie is delightfully and savagely subversive. The main antagonist is not a zombie, it's Kaufman. Kaufman is everything that Marks warned us about in Doss' Cockatoll. Dennis Hopper plays a great heavy. He really does. And then you combine that with the lack of imagination that we came to think of as Quaint, although deadly to others in George Bush. He even said at one point quote we don't negotiate with terrorists i'm talking about koffman not not bush

uh... when he's dealing with a heavily ethnocized character named cholo played by john Lake, wasamo. Yeah, you don't want to think of that as being 2005, but it was. Although it is satire. It is. This is true. Rod brush is true. You know, so the committee of LRT.

Yeah. So when when Cholo tries to hold him up for money, having been rejected in his bid to live amongst the rich, that's when Coffin says that. So just to give you a little bit of background, you got the middle class, you know, your main protagonist whose name I never wrote down and I've forgotten. But he is the one who builds the train slash bus slash weapons platform, Snowplow. And he ends up working with Cholo.

Cholo is on the bottom of the wrong. He is a hustler. He is a violent trying to get ahead and his dream is to live in the high rise. Now again, this is a dystopic Pittsburgh, which is that that's kind of redundant. Yeah. I can't believe it. A dystopic Pittsburgh, I mean, it's, you know, which is essentially a Philadelphia. Yeah.

I'm like, it's like, like, so, but okay. It's for where they throw batteries and say that a clause is supposed to shilly. Right. So, Cholo is this bottom dwelling character whose dream is to live like the guy who still lives in the same shitty spot just higher up. Where's the middle class? Ruling in hell. Yeah, where's the middle class?

He wants to get the fuck out of there and just start his own world, right? And there's a very different's in paradigms there. So that's the character Cholo. Kaufman says, we don't negotiate with terrorists when Cholo is trying, so Cholo is trying to make a lot of money so that he can move in, because you have to buy your way in.

And there's nothing not racist about Kaufman's character either. He refuses to let Cholo live in the high rise. And it's not because he doesn't bring enough money, because he has saved up and hustled enough money. But it's because Cholo's brown. Meanwhile, Kaufman has three soldiers, a tough Latino name, Manolette, or Manolete,

a wise-cracking female soldier named Motown, although she's a white woman, and she breaks the stereotype as a result. And a hulking ethnic Samoa soldier, Samoan soldier named Pillsbury, which honestly, these three feel more like heels from glow than a movie in 2005 Which to be honest, that's also kind of the point right? I mean their cartoonishly evil bad guy with cartoonish thugs

Cholo later responds when reflecting on the fact that Kaufman has not allowed him to live out his dream of moving in with the rich white people. And he says he's quote going to quote do a jihad on his ass. Now now that's that's an interesting into that. Grace note. Yeah. As it were. Yeah. He doesn't find. into that. Grace note, yeah. As it were, yeah. Huh. So, you know, it, huh. It's interesting that our culture, that Western, white, you know, majority culture, yep. Has taken such a different, has attached such a different kind of connotation to the words crusade and jihad. Yes. Because literally, they mean almost, I mean, like in terms of intent in their original source material, they

mean in many ways the same thing. Although jihad literally just means struggle, if I remember incorrectly. And there is ample evidence for jihad taking many forms from the individual struggle against one's own sinful nature to literal holy war. Where as a crusade, no, sorry son, that is one thing. That is one thing. That is one thing. That is, I am putting this red cross on my chest and I am traveling to a foreign land to fight people who have different faith than mine. That's it. There you go. We're done. We can dress that up and we can add that, you know, we can say, well, you know, I'm engaging in a crusade,

you know, the government is crusading against the social ill. Yeah, we can totally do that. But the root of it is literally, I'm going to go beat other people over the head because of religion. Yeah. You know, and, and I find it remarkable, meaning worthy of remark, not like surprising. But I find it worth noting here that Romero has his character used the word jihad because in American parlance, jihad strictly means I'm going to go to the mattresses 100% a holy war. I'm going to commit assassinated violence on him. Yes. Yes. When when like in point of practical facts, it really should have said I'm a crusade on him Funny that to get to get to real source being yeah, well jihad and in 2005 jute jihad took on a connotation of definite violence where his crusade takes on a definition of Travel and then battle.

You know, I'm going to argue that in 2005 Crusade didn't even necessarily have to involve travel. Crusade simply meant a righteous struggle within our parliament, within the majority, white America, Christian parlance, you could use the word crusade for any kind of righteous endeavor. It was usually against it. It was against an other though. And the other was never immediate.

The other was always remote. I'm going to say that travel is part of it because you use the words going on with crusade. You don't use the words going on. Well, okay, I was I was thinking of the use of crusade as a noun. Right. Oh, no, I'm saying these are both his verbs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I know I can see that. But even going on a crusade, I mean, that's still. Yeah, going on, I encourage you. There's a certain amount of, yeah. There's some travel.

There's, you know what there is? There is a, I'm fighting them over here so I don't have to fight them over, over here thing. Or fighting them over there kind of thing. Like there's, there's, there's, so I don't know. Yeah. There is a, I'm going, I'm going into the lion's den, aspect of it.

Going Uttra mayor. Mm-hmm. Now, there's, there's a term we don't hear enough. There is a I'm going I'm going into the lion's den aspect of it going ultra-mer now There's there's a term we don't hear enough I want to bring back the idea of a ultra-mer You're welcome to that's what I want to do, you know, you do it while you're barbecuing outside. That'll be good That's a really nice way to say it fuck you you. Thank you for being so polite about it. Just tell me when you got the barbecue done and I'll come over. So there's a website called Desist Film. And there's an author on there called Adrian Martin.

And he analyzed the heck out of this movie. And I got his permission to borrow liberally and primarily from his to inform mine. OK. So here's what Martin says. He says, quote, in his book, Zombies, Liliputians and Sadists, the power of the living dead and the future of Australia, and then he gives the biographical or the bibliographic information, the author, Frankl, distinguishes three new classes that go

far beyond the old social divisions of race, gender, or wealth. His analysis has a general applicability to all contemporary western countries. Zombies are those who have been ground down by the system. By the mindlessness of work, made passive by consumerism. They are still alive and potentially capable of action, but out of touch with the times, nostalgic, hitching their prevailing life force to perverse religious fundamentalisms or the research and racisms.

Lilipussians are those who think big and spout radical rhetoric, quote, and then in parentheses he says, think of the Irish radical in land of the dead who vows to quote, turn this place into what we always wanted it to be in parentheses. But never succeed in changing anything, perhaps they even make the status quo worse. Sadists, the true living dead, in which group Franklick includes ex-president Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, are those who find a way to wield power over others,

whether through the old, established paths of privilege or acts of sheer brute strength. Frankl's sociological diagram is virtually identical with the scenario of land of the dead, except that instead of moving backwards into the past, Romero Zombies turned toward revolution. End quote. Hmm. Hmm. Huh.

Yeah. That's a very antipody and, uh, kind of slant on it. I don't know that word. Antipody, uh, and the antipodies are the bottom half of the globe. Oh, okay. So Australia was considered part of the Antipodes. Right, right. I'm kind of floored by the way that

that whole analysis hinges on a very Australian world view. I just, I got kind of caught up in like, oh wow, he's referencing major. I mean, I remember that name because he was Prime Minister of Australia, but like how much in the United States do we hear about that? You mean Howard. Howard.

John Major was a British guy. Was a British guy. Yeah. See, that just proves my point. But the fact that he references Howard, whose name, honestly, I did recognize even though I completely with a British prime minister. But that, huh. Okay.

I see the argument very clearly with Bush and Howard falling in that in that last category. Totally, totally see that totally by that. I feel like there's a very interesting right-left dynamic between zombies and littlela putians. I think it's just me. I think so. I think I think it's class consciousness. Because the zombies are clearly the proletariat and the lila putians are. Petty bourgeoisie. Yeah. Okay.

Like speaking as a member of the petty bourgeoisie, I feel like I can call myself petty without I'm not punching down. Sure. But the fact that he says that he could be punching up, I don't know if I count as bourgeois, but anyway, sorry, he says that the lily-pusions are those who think big and spout radical rhetoric, but never succeed in changing anything. And perhaps he even make the status cool worse. I mean, that's yeah. So I see where you're coming from as far as the spectrumy stuff,

because in many ways you could see the bottom group being leftists, the lilyplutians being liberals, and then the others being conservatives. But I think it's more class consciousness. So it's a Marxist. I think it's a Marxist model. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, solidly Marxist model. And what's especially interesting about Romero's zombies is that he never sets out to codify the genre, right? He uses them to make points about points in his movies about what's going on at the time. Yeah, well, he's not the thing is there are... I'm gonna make a broad statement here.

Sure about storytellers. I think at the end of the day there are basically two kinds of storytellers. There are storytellers who set out to just tell a story. Sure. And the anvils they drop wind up being dropped because of the story they are telling and the pattern on the wallpaper. And then there are, for lack of a better word, and I don't mean this to be judgemental, ideal logs, who have an agenda and are telling a story to to express their agenda. And I think Romero, we've established Romero started out as the first type. And I think in order to be really trying to codify anything,

I think there's a certain amount of the second type that you kind of need to have going on. Because there's a level of meta if you're actually going to be like, no, no, no, no. I want to to quantify this symbol. I want to have this be a symbol for this other thing. Right. You kind of have to have to have an angle you're working toward. Yeah, and you have to be conscious of it. I think is the real, real thing. And you have to be aware of it. So that yeah, there's a level of Meta fiction involved in that and

Romero started out Started out he didn't give a shit about that. He had a story wanted to tell and I wanted to do it right and as you established in our first episode He kind of stumbled her second episode is he stumbled backward into it. Yes. I think by the time we're now talking about this film, though, I think this is one of the ways in which I feel like this is a massive paradigm shift because he's really clearly trying to make a meta point from step one. Like, this story is not just about our protagonist trying to figure out how to survive in this circumstance. It is, no, no, I have constructed this entire world because I'm looking at the world around me, and I want to point out to everybody how fucking ridiculous it is. Now, do you think that that's, I'm going to push back a little bit. Do you think that it's that

or that he has, he is evolving himself and as a result, his views on it evolve and he has been writing in this world for so long that it has evolved. And so in many ways, he's just kind of continuing to explore, and this is the natural consequence of that. I'm going to say it's a little calamity, a little comedy. Okay. Fair enough.

I don't feel like the two are necessarily opposed. Okay. Yeah. I think I like I remember when this movie came out, reading commentary and reviews on it. And I don't feel like the way this story was put together would be something you could fall backward into even like maybe partially. Right. Right. I don't like, you know, the first night is the living dead.

He fell backward into his message because he wound up casting the best actor who wound up being a black man. And all this symbolism then just like imposed itself on story. He's right. Right. It grew organically from it. Whereas in the other ones, those were deliberate choices. He took them to a mall. He had them underground. Yeah, those are deliberate choices. It never convinced me that Big Daddy was not cast intentionally. Oh, he very much blocked it. Yeah. So I think we're seeing a very significant paradigm shift in in in where Romero is coming from as a storyteller at the same time as we're seeing a paradigm shift in what the movie

is really about. You know, it's not it's's still, I'm going to say this, it's still not a horror movie. It's a survival action film. You know? Yeah, no, I think I think you've got something there. I think he's responding to and yet at the same time, hemmed in by the resident evil success. I'm going to I'm going to take that a step farther. I don't think he's hemmed in by the resident evil success. I think he looked at what was going on with resident evil. And it was like, you know what? This is a different kind of story I can tell. And I can say different in this paradigm. I don't know because he did come out and talk about the Snyder cut of, you know, Dawn, and said that, you know, it kind of fell apart. It didn't, it was more action than it was character.

So then he goes and he makes this. That doesn't necessarily, okay, yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he thought it did that because it was an action movie. I think he was just critiquing another, another, another, he called it a- No, he called it a- Did writers- Did writers- Did writers work?

He said it felt very much like a video game, right? He called it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, yes. Still. So you can, you can look at something and say this feels not a lot like a video game Rather than a story and you can still do something then in and I

Genuinely think you looked at that went you know what I can take this paradigm and I can do something think you're with it and and still be in that genre. Yeah, I guess I'm just I'm sticking on on the quote where he said I thought it was a good action film, which to me is a distinction. And then he said, you know, the first 15, 20 minutes were terrific, but it sort of lost its reason for being. Okay, whereas he very much do you do think this isn't an action film that he made? No, I think he made an action film. I think he now in order to be able to make a successful zombie movie, I think Romero does have to dip into action, whether he wanted to or not. I don't think he's looking to explore it so much as this is now the paradigm. In other words, he is no longer the genre creator,

he is another artist within the genre. And so he has to fit within these rules too. Okay, all right. Yeah, I can see that. I think we're kind of arguing across each other. I'm mostly responding to the idea that as an action film, you know, from what you said to a prior episode talking about, you know, they've become, you know, mindless entertainment. Right. I think this is Romero taking an action film and being like,

yes, it's entertainment, but it ain't fucking mindless Yeah, I could I definitely see that because I mean he's got zombies creating a revolution Yeah, yeah, and he very clearly has something to say and the paradigm is now 100% different. Yeah, it's it's within heradimably earlier films. Yeah, however, unlike the redemption story cut of Dave's dead, or Don of the dead. This one still has his very cynical, very nihilistic kind of take, well, nihilistic might be overstating it, but his much more cynical view of things. Interestingly, it does still end with the main protagonist, you know, escaping off into the wilderness with a bunch of people to, you know, found their own better society.

Right. Which, you know, is a huge departure from everything we've seen from Romero up to this point. Mm-hmm. Um, which I do want to get to that, um, because I think that in many ways that's Romero saying buy to the zombie genre In general, that's that's him leaving it, you know, that's that's that's that's to me righting off into the sunset Yeah, in some ways. I mean it feels to me very similar in In energy not in tone not in message, but it feels very similar to the very opening line

that Max Wonsato gets to say in episode seven where he says, this will go a long way toward making things right. And he puts the thing in his hand. That's the director saying, sorry about the prequels. Like, this will go a long way toward making things right. You know, I think this has that same vibe to me of like, well, I'm fucking out of here, man, you know. Oh, okay, all right. But, you know, so Romero lets his zombies evolve in his world, and Martin goes on to say, quote,

every key moment of the plot relates to some way in which these monsters become more conscious, more communicative, and more adaptive. No longer simply the functional static closed beings defined as either stentures for how they smell, or walkers for the sole action for which they're capable. And this means that the veil between humans and zombies is also more permeable. Yeah, I was going to say they become more human. And the humans are becoming more like, you know, they're devolving. A lot stress. Yeah. And Martin goes on, he says, Charlie, with his facial

figurement and mental disability, is easily mistaken for a zombie when we first encounter him. He's a character that we run into early on. And Cholo ultimately comes to swap his upward social mobility with his hopeless, deluded dream to live like a rich protected citizen, for a more radical desire to join the zombie class, and quote, see how the other half lives. The blurring of the zombie and the human species leads to a key scene that would be literally impossible, unthinkable in Romero's previous zombie films.

Even though Cholo has already transformed fully into a zombie when he confronts Kaufman in the Underground Park car park, he still has the guided intelligence to take his political revenge against the principal embodiment of capitalist evil. And Big Daddy has become smart enough not only to repeat his old gestures of pumping oil into the car, but also more decisively rolling in a lighted canister to ignite the murderous flame, a superb moment of narrative, an economy and resolution. I love Martin's writing. Yeah, that's that's that's well put together. Yeah, I'm gonna say, I also got to say very clearly

a Marxist analysis. Yes. Oh, 100%. Where's the class conflict conflict where's the proletariat empowerment oh okay there yeah yeah oh hey there you go yep oh 100% true yeah yeah um you know and like as as a paradigm that's a paradigm you can use right there um and for the story that we're we're analyzing it's not a bad one. No. Especially considering how house subversive and, and satirical Romero gets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think the, the idea of the permeability of the dividing line between human and zombie is an interesting

development in that story. And what I think is more interesting about it is we don't see that same kind of idea going forward after that. Yes. going forward after that. Yeah, it's true. Like Big Daddy gets really close to being fully intelligent. It is, it is, they're fully human in his level of intelligence. And he's planning on foresight and leadership and whatever all. Oh, yeah. And then Romero has his, all right, later, you know, moment, you know, and then that's

what this film is. So the bourgeoisie can afford to leave. Yeah. Yeah. And then after that, we go right back to zombies being mindless. And I think this is kind of the high watermark of zombie intelligence. For lack of a better word or zombie, zombie humanity. And I think it's a very interesting statement about the story that Romero was telling here.

You know, because clearly, I don't, I don't think you can tell this kind of story without there being a message behind it. Like I'm gonna take this, what has to become no a stock monster, which by the way, I codified. Yeah, I'm a little responsible for codifying, you know, 80% of the behavior of this of this monster. Sure. And now I'm going to fuck with that codification. And then I'm going to walk away. But everybody else after that goes right back to the codification. Well, we're going to we're going to get into why that happens, ultimately, as well. Okay. But in 2005, if you really think about

it in this movie, especially, but in 2005, this makes a lot of sense. Humans and zombies aren't looking to reunite at all. Nobody's looking for a cure. But the world in 2005 is such that a zombie movie now has the zombies wanting their own place to live and the humans falling upon each other in their continued adherence to adverse and cat-biddleism. Okay. So the wheels are turning in my head. I'm trying to do the math of what the obvious parallel there is, that we are accepting an endless war. The Western, the Western world. Okay, so as, so as to say, the, the, the or the middle classes because they already have homes. Okay. Okay.

Boomers. Okay. Fair. I'm wondering if it's that, or if it's a first world versus second world, third world. Dynamic. I don't know. I mean, Romero tended to make statements about the United States in his movies.

Yeah. You know, they were fairly in turn. Majority American, dominant American culture. Yeah. Okay. Now, it's really important. Fair enough. Yeah.

Now, it's really important to note this next part because this next paragraph really struck me and I think it deserves more fleshing out. So here's what Martin says. He says quote, the narrative shape of land of the dead demands particularly close attention. The film alternates in a masterful fashion, three threads or trajectories. That of the zombies led by Big Daddy toward the Fiddler's Green Tower. That's the high rise. That of Riley and his team, there's your Petit bourgeoisie guy. And that of Cholo.

Each of these trajectories takes us through and into many different social milieu in different ways and in different directions. While Riley changes from being a man of the law to a hired hand and finally into a visionary individualist searching for Virgin Land at the head of a truly hawksy and team, a prostitute, a disabled man. Cholo is the secret agent who, quote, takes out the trash of the system, travels up the social hierarchy and is then brutally rejected from it, hence left to take his revenge as

a zombie dying in the process. When all three trajectories are combined in the film's unfolding pattern, the logic of the entire social structures laid bare as surely and systematically as Fritz Lang did in the movie M in 1931. Boy, going back with Deepcut to Fritz Lang. And I decided to go with him on that too. So I'm going to talk a bit about M, but first let's, let's like take a look at that for a second.

So as we were saying, right, you've got Riley and his team. That's the white middle class. They can always opt out of the troubles. And and Riley is for lack of a better term. He is kind of our main protagonist. Yes. If I'm, you know, like, and he was, he was a man of the law. He was upholding the system with his efforts until he decided I just want to check out. Why is everything got to be so political?

Yeah. No. That's it. Cholo is really, that's a really, really cynical take on what I was about to say, which was, you know, that that that is the default American protagonist is a member of the Petit Bouj Wazee because that's as a nation that's how our founders identified our political founders identify that's how like that is that is the the class and the figure that defaults in our cultural yeah Mexico yeah and so of course that's our that's our protagonist. But then you've also got, oh, going.

Because, I mean, you know, you don't want to be, you know, trying to identify with one of the poor people, like, I mean, come on. Right. And let's, let's, let's look at that real quick. You've got both, both sets of the pores are people of color. Okay. the pores are people of color. Okay. One puts out of the pores are trying to create their own success in this system.

And they recognize that to do so, you need to upend it. The other is represented by Cholo, who is not as dark as the first group, which I find interesting. And he is simply trying to imitate the trappings of the super powerful. Well, he's trying to buy his way, literally trying to buy his way in. Yeah, he's buying into this stuff. He's not looking to change it, to overthrow it, to burn it down.

He is trying to succeed with image. You just want to get to the top. Right. Now, what's really fascinating here to me is that you've heard, like, if you divide the American system into five quintiles, that whatever class you are, you are aware of the one that's immediately below you and the one's immediately above you, but you have no concept how anybody further than that distance exists.

So like you and I, we're semi-middle class, sometimes just barely hanging on. We're in the quintile. Yeah, well, let's say that we're in the third quintile. So I would say that we're in the first quintile. Or we're in the second quintile. But I'd argue. Above us are the rich. Below us are the working poor.

We don't really have a concept what's below that. We also have no clue what life is like for the ultra-rich. No. More importantly, the ultra-rich have no idea what our lives are like. what our lives are like as evidence by any time we hear them talk. And the, the, the, the, the ultra-poor have no idea what it's like to be in the middle class. Yeah, for anybody, for anybody who is struggling with homelessness, because I mean, you know, I'm thinking of before really talking about what first quintile would look like. Like, let's talk about the truly no seriously destitute. Like anybody who's been stuck in that position long enough is going to have a very hard time compranding a life where, you know, I've had a really hard time. Comparhending a life where you know I've had a really rough day,

let's get a pizza. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that was my day today. For reasons we won't get into. I had a rough day and I didn't want to cook dinner. So talking to my wife, I was like, how do you feel about pizza tonight? Because I'm worn out. I just don't want to cook. Yep. Like, oh my God, the level of insulation, real privilege, obviously. But the level of cushion,

that's involved in making that decision. Oh yeah, like, you know, is hard for them to understand. Meet me, meanwhile, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who never do their own cooking one way or another. Oh, let's going further than that. There are people who don't understand the cost of their own fuel for their pinstriped private jet. It's just always fueled up. Fuck you. But yes, that's like, you know, talk about a one-up or, but yes, don't you're right. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's like the point five percent. But yes, no, you're totally not wrong. I don't remember where it was. I saw it. Well, it was on Facebook when I don't remember the post specifically. Somebody talking about the, not just the gap between the, you know, top 30% and the top 1%, but the difference in our economy here in the United States right now in 2021,

between the top 5%, and the top 0.5%. Is so huge. Yeah, incredibly stark. Yeah, like, I feel like a system of quintiles is not or enough. No, yeah, not anymore, not anymore, because it makes them seem like they're equal parts. It's, it's a much worse, much worse.

Hey, so let's talk about M for a second. Peter Laurie. Okay. Fritz Lang brings in quite a confluence of groups that have no business working together in this movie. Despite their radical similarities, someone is murdering children in a German town. Okay, this movie came out in 31. The police are doing everything they can to solve the case, but after several months, several murders and exhausting work, they still have no clues. Their methods of trying to find the murder start to adversely affect the local criminal community. Due to this, the local organized crime syndicate takes it upon themselves to find the murder and meet out punishment because these cops are getting in our way, so let's just solve it for them. And in many ways, it's indicative of the type of crime novels that were popular in the

thirties. But more importantly, you have two groups working together toward the same goal, but toward very different ends. And that part's really important. Same goal, different ends. Their collaboration, which is strained by this difference in the mission end game, it nearly lets the murderer get away as a result.

And the police are shown as inept, the criminals are self-interested, and the people in the middle suffer the loss of their children. Only the street poor seem to be doing things effectively and for reasons other than their own profits. Hmm, okay. things effectively and for reasons other than their own profits. Okay. So that's M, right? And that is Sholo helping Riley.

And also Big Daddy helping Sholo helping Riley, all of whom are fighting against Kaufman, but you know, so same goal very different ends Riley wants to fuck out of there Cholo wants revenge big daddy wants revolution And we're gonna quibble on which part is the goal on which part is the end? The end yeah, it is like Riley wants to get out. Cholo wants to get into the building. Oh, to me, that's the end. To me, that's the end, because it's semantics. But anyway, yeah, no, I see what you're saying, though.

Because the goal is the thing that they're all working toward, but the end is the reason why they're working toward those things. You know, the thing that they get as a result of that goal happened. That makes sense. So we all want to overthrow Gopman. The reason we want to overthrow Gopman. They're different. It's different.

And that is going to cause us to get in each other's way. Yes. Yeah. Much like the crooks want to catch the killer, and we're going to get the cops out of their way. The cops want to catch the killer, because well, it the cops out of their way the cops want to catch the killer because well, you know, it's a job It's what we got to do right and the poor people

Living in Berlin in 1931 when to catch the killer because it's my fucking kid right and the homeless folks are the only ones that are actually gonna do the job And the homeless folks are the only ones that are actually going to do the job. So, in 2005, Time held a lot less meaning for people. We were in an unending war with no clear sign of success anymore. Also, we were in Iraq, and Romero titles were specifically switched from referencing time, which lost some meaning when it came to social progress or change, to referencing space, which to me signals defeat. Night of the living dead, night is a scary time. Makes sense, dawn of the dead sounds like they're ascendant, but also a rising menace. Day of the dead, it's still going to end land of the dead. Oh,

shit, they've outrun us. Okay. All right. I'll buy that. The undead in each Romero film. Yeah. What's that? No, go ahead. The undead in each Romero film represent a menace that is external to humanity, threatening us and showing our fault lines. They also come to embody very specific cultural threats, both in how they look, how they attack, and how they endanger. In night of living dead, they're pale,

they're listless, they're still malevolent, white folks who attack a home that has integration happening inside of it. In dawn of the dead. side of it. In dawn of the dead. Oh, okay, carry on. Yes, they are. I just, I had to have, I had to have a moment for that. In dawn of the dead, they're listless, multi-hued malevolent people, but who are also fairly incompetent zombies,

endangering the Maldwellers by virtue of their crushingly overwhelming numbers. They want to consume specifically. In day of the dead, many more of them retain their old memories and several are bitten soldiers, and they also do a lot more attacking just for the sake of eating. So it's very much a malevolence, but our heroes still escape from the threat. Because these are all times. But in Land of the Dead, they're led by a black man, who is in many ways an inverted recall back to the original movie.

But there's more. He's also working class, which is interesting because when we first meet Ben, he's got a tire iron. He's able to learn. He's compassionate. Actually putting a couple zombies out of their misery on purpose. He's also directed and the leader and essentially he's a revolutionary. He's not malevolent per se. That's what Dennis Hopper is. And also in this movie, Dennis Hopper's character is, but, you know, he might be a very nice man. You know, he could be a wonderful individual. He might have been, yeah, plays that really convincing. Yes. But the richer are malevolent and also in this movie they are the zombies are no longer a force for destruction

There's a knee jerk part of me that wants to argue with you It's a distigial Yeah, someday that'll be my jack boot I better shine it up by looking at So the zombies are no longer a force of destruction. Their agents of change against a hyper corrupt system that has risen in the ashes of the old world. Romero's zombies, whether he means them to be or not,

have evolved into a revolutionary Marxist force. It is no longer easily fooled by the tricks or the fireworks of the rich and powerful. And it's no longer incapable of by the tricks or the fireworks of the rich and powerful, and it's no longer incapable of using their tools to affect change. They break into the mall using a jackhammer. Workers of the world unite. They're no longer incapable of anything besides simple parallel playing. Now they can cooperate, they can do so to great effect and to sweeping justice for themselves.

They topple the rich in their fort, something that the poor humans were unable to do, because this poor humans were so distracted with their bourgeois concerns of money and the like and averis. Also the fact that the bourgeois humans, you know, feel pain and get tired. But then they inflicted on each other too. Like for entertainment. Yeah, I'd find. They do.

And you're not wrong. I think flip. Yeah, no, but I think there's something to that though. Like because we, yeah, yeah. Because there's ultimately there's, there's empathic mobility for humans. There's a race to the bottom. And I think economically because there's mobility for the people at our level, there's a desire

to step on other people to keep up. Whereas, and it's out of fear. Whereas when you're at the bottom wrong the hell you have to lose True, yeah Now by the way in 2005 there was a first person shooter game came out that was called Land of the Dead Road to Fiddler's Green And it was supposed to be a prequel to the movie in video game form and it was wildly panned But it is a zombie first person shooter that came out in 2005.

Really? Yep. Okay. Now, by this time, supernatural is on the air. Yes. Zombie movies are big but so are supernatural zombie movies with a reversible curse of some sort or at least a way to damage Zombies often involving the use of salts mortuary comes to mind Also the sci-fi channel starts making use of this genre which was a bit of a problem as regarded quality

TV can only give you so much within this genre, but it can give you a lot of quantity Um, and when you get a glut in the market like this, you get a lot of genre bending as well. The movie The Stink of Flesh came out in 2005. That's a title. It's a sex-ploitation zombie flick. Of course it is. After sundown was a zombie western in 2006.

Automatonsons and transfusion is a kind of a red dawn meets zombies meets Jacobs ladder in the same year City of rot that's a mashup. Yeah, city of rot was a South Park style animation zombie film dorm of the dead came out in 2007 film. Dorm of the dead came out in 2007. In 2007, 28 weeks later came out, which was a sequel to 28 days later, which was not a sequel to the Sandra Bullock film 28 days. It was very different. Yeah, as it turns out, you can imagine the surprise of my mother I'm joking. I didn't take a movie. I was gonna say wait what? Well, I love making that joke about the movie us. Turns out not as equal to this is us. Just turns out. and since the original movie of 28 days later was such a hit, this one had a much bigger budget and had much more profits. As a movie, it's really good, but it really doesn't do anything differently than

the sequels expected to. There's no new direction, no new statement being made so I can kind of just plow through that one. Um, this particular one is made after multiple attacks had happened throughout the Western world, however. So 28 weeks later, it comes out after the July 7th public transit bombings in 2005. Oh, right. But honestly, there doesn't seem to be that much of a connection to that national trauma

in this movie though. The only thing that I found of remote interest was the focus on the fact that our main character was infected by his wife, whom he'd abandoned to earlier to an Azombi attack, who was an asymptomatic carrier of the rage virus. What's fun about this particular wrinkle is that despite all the precautions, despite all the efforts to isolate the island from the continent, A symptomatic carriers brought the virus to the continent as well. Kind of appreciate it.

Ain't it? This of course opens up the door for an as yet unfulfilled sequel. In 2007, American zombie came out that is a spinal tap style documentary. Okay, I might have to find that one and watch it because oh my god, okay. Yeah, yeah, it is good stuff. And I'll end with Romero stepping back in. I like to use him as bookmarks. He steps back into the zombie sphere with diary of the dead. It's more of a standalone in the world that he's created. It's a found video style, so think Blair Witch Project. And it serves as a bit of a prequel or at least contemporaneous with night of the living dead. Although it's still a modern movie so it's

contemporaneous with the remake in many ways because there are cell phones, there is the internet and he was trying to do better what Blair Witch had tried to do a decade earlier. So you've got these students who start out what the sound I was going to say the found footage element is yes. Yeah an interesting thing for him to be playing with at that point. And it's it's it's justified in universe as these are film students right which in many ways he's writing about himself now. The students start out filming a horror film, but before they find themselves caught up in a world where the horror has become real.

And as usual, Romero is absolutely holding up a mirror to ourselves, right? The xenophobia that comes about as a result of the convulsion of fear from 9-11 definitely is featured as an aspect of the first few minutes of this film. An immigrant shot and killed his wife and child and then himself, which is being reported on the media. He loves using TV or radio to kind of move the exposition along. Speaking of which, this movie heavily involves the media, making them a chased target of the zombie. This is a pretty obvious nod toward the continued war on media waged by conservative pundits and

warmogers during the Bush presidency. As the movie itself is a collection of found footage by film students in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s, all of whom are white. He is also able to poke at white male vanity and fragility. The women are usually much more competent than the men in this movie, and they're also much more willing to do more than just film what's happening. The only black people that you see in this film come across are people that they come across, who've decided to hunker down and keep each other safe. So there's a community of black folks who are like, okay, this is what we gotta do, probably because they've had generations of trauma

inflicted by white violence. So there's some like, hey, here's how to stay safe. But there's no macho heroics in this group. There's no vanity in this group. But they do comment that since the white folks have left, they finally have the ability to do right for their own people and have full agency over that choice. So, okay, so here's the deal.

Romero is now like, you know what? I have all these anvils. I have collected these anvils over many decades of making these movies. And now, you know what? Fuck all y'all, I'm gonna drop them. You know what my next sentence is? I'm gonna drop all of them.

Anvil, meat, gravity. But it's not just one. drop all of them. Anvil meat gravity. But it's not just one. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. You just said, yeah, no, no, no, I'm sorry. Look upon the field where I grow my anvil and know that it is for cudd.

And now I'm going to drop them all on your fucking head. And and these folks, yeah, you're not wrong. These folks, this community of black folks who finally have their own homestead, they don't take advantage of the young college students despite being far better armed than them. Now, recall that Ben gets killed by a white militia. This is not Romero being sneaky, but he's certainly being effective because when they run across the National Guard, the National Guard mug them. Because the National Guard are almost all or all.

Yeah, almost all. Yeah. Yeah. So Romero is also happy to use the film within a film trope against itself too. When the actor who had been playing the monster in the student movie actually turns into his zombie, he stalks the very actors who had played his victim. And honestly, he's calling himself out a bit too. He equates the video camera with the gun as a tool of violence.

After one of the men kills a few zombies, he returns the gun to another man saying that it's just quote, too easy to use the gun. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm just okay. I have to, this is kind of breaking the media analysis of this.

But speaking as a gamer, you're never going to meet a tabletop gamer who's going to do anything that's stupid. Like, no, no. No. If it's easy, keep it as easy as you can get it. We know what it means when you have a 5% chance of failure. We all roll one occasionally. Right.

No, no, no, no. No, no, no. The difference between a 5% chance of failure and a 10% can deal. Yeah. It's not too, no. hold on to the fucking gun. If you're saying it's too easy, you're being arrogant and you're going to fucking die. Well, shortly thereafter, the female protagonist Deborah returns the video camera she's been using to her documentation of Seth's boyfriend Jason with the same remark that the camera is too easy to use.

In other words, we should experience this. They continue to argue about the appropriate actions to take throughout the film. According to Deborah, Jason has become too obsessed with filming everything and uploading it onto the net, numbing him to the actual human horror of what's happening. Jason claims that since the government and commercial media are systemic, systematically lying about what's going on, they have to get the truth out, man. Um, and this means filming what's happening and uploading the material, and they're actually both right.

I genuinely don't know which one of them sounds more like a white person. Yeah. Like, like there is, there are layers of privilege involved in both of those arguments. Yeah, and notice what they're not doing. They're not working to keep each other safe. They're arguing about the media that they're going to use to talk about this. Yeah. There's another group who's just like, mind your business.

Let's stay safe. Yeah. Everybody stick together. Yep. Keep your, keep your eyes pointed outward. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I find it interesting that you and I are both latching onto this critique as a couple of guys, um, recording a podcast in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Yeah, it was not lost on me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which, which is, yeah, spread very easily by contact. Um, so, you know, they're both right. And at the end of the film, after Jason's killed, Deborah edits and uploads his documentary despite her earlier criticisms So the real question is does it actually matter?

The zombies are everywhere cell phones don't work, but the internet still does I don't know why When faced with the end of the world There really is nothing you can do except to bear witness to it in some form Which in this movie is a floating video. That sounds very existentialist. It does. It does.

But then again, is there anyone left to watch it? Well does that matter though? Yeah, because... From an existentialist point of view. Well okay, from an existentialist point of view, no, but from a practical point point of view What's the goddamn point of being a witness if there's no audience because then your a witness is a mute witness Yeah So by 2008 broadband internet was everywhere iPhones and their cameras were growing in ubiquity YouTube was three years old and growing Facebook was available to the public for two years by this point. My space was still ascendant, but they were still new.

Yes, yes, and the ramifications of social media had not become clear yet. Right. But we are starting to see things, right? Because my space was on its way up and out social media and both the democratization of media and the fracturing of the common narrative were starting to really show. Obama was running for president using media in a way that nobody ever had before. That's true. In the living dead series, zombies were something like the return of the repressed come to claim vengeance in some way or another. They represent the crumbling of the structure of the family, the commodity of fetishism, military scientific complex, the socio-economic class system.

But in all of these films, in all of the living dead films, the zombies represented those things. They were an existential threat standing in for that specific aspect. In diary of the dead, all of these social structures are still in place since it's set before the apocalypse. But instead of representing these structures, zombies are now images to be recorded, but images that directly constitute the real and existential sweat that they are, as they replicate and proliferate everywhere. And the way to let folks know about the threat is to show them the images, not the reality. Okay, so this is in 2008.

What I find interesting is what you're describing is memes. Yeah, and what is that literally mimetic? Yeah, and what is that if not the fracturing of the national narrative, the fracturing of the shared experience, even though everybody shares memes, it's memes to trigger the other side kind of thing. Everyone's a content creator too.

Yeah, and I think the timing is really remarkable. So this is 08 and the iPhone, the first real, you know, modern smartphone was in 2007. Yes. And that's so that's still new in the public consciousness and that is in our technophilic new wave loving kind of psychology as a society. That's the new normal. Yeah, but we don't know what the new normal means yet. Right.

And so, you know, we're on the very, very beginning of everybody has a camera in their pocket. Everybody has a connection to the internet in their pocket. Yeah. Which means we can connect more than we ever have and be disconnected more than we ever were. Yeah, we can be we can be totally connected 100% all the time and yet separated by a screen. Yeah, because it's a mediated worldview. Yeah. And since everything in the world is at our fingertips as an image and spreads virally and gains traction by way of contagion. In the same way that

zombies proliferate and communicate with their own condition to others. Screens thus are in fact the only tools we have left to cope with the world and its realities. It used to be that everyone watched images on a television together and they only watched the three channels. And it was and its realities. It used to be that everyone watched images on a television together, and they only watched the three channels. And it was very tightly regulated as to who got to have access to it. Now, everyone owns a camera, and everyone actively captures

and produces images. And often to no avail. And as it turns out, you can film a murder, but that doesn't mean that the policeman will be found guilty. Now, toward the end of the movie, as if this wasn't enough anvil dropage, Romero has... No, no, no, no. The fields of anvil. Right.

Look at the field where I grow my anvil. It's fine that it's fertile. Romero has us watch two scenes that are seemingly at odds with each other and yet entirely the same. A white upper middle class student actor has snapped. He is now living alone, but he's also not living alone because he's in his ultra-rich parents fortress slash mansion out in the middle of nowhere. And he has preserved all of the zombified people around him. His parents, his, their servants, everyone else in the house. And he objectifies them as undead sculptures planted in his swimming pool. They stand fixed to the bottom and seen a seam unable to escape. And that's how

he coped. Another scene shows a white, middle-aged American hunters, somewhere in rural Pennsylvania having a good old time as they hunt zombies for sport. Both scenes objectified the zombies, and both lost a part of their own humanity in doing so, coming one step closer to consuming the very thing that was trying to consume them. And at the end of this whole podcast, I will bring up this part again because Westerns. But at the end of this film, Debra, as a narrator, wonders whether if this is what we are like,

we are actually even worthy of survival. Okay. like we are actually even worthy of survival. Okay. So lots of animals. All of them. Yeah, really. I really just wanna cover one last film. It'll be short because in 2007, well, the one last film for this episode.

In 2007, flight of the Living Dead came out. Probably as a response to snakes on a plane. Probably. And that's all that needs to be said. Really? Really? What? I was wrong.

Like, snow. It came out as a response to stinks on a plane. When the whole concept for the original film is, all right, no, we're going to take an airplane. We're going to pack it full of snakes. Yeah. Like that's it. Yeah. That's that's the elevator pitch.

We're done. Yeah. All right. Green light. There you go. Do the movie. Sure. Yeah. So, and we're going to. Oh, oh, sorry. Sorry. Critical important, critically important part of the other recipe. We're going to have Samuel and all Jackson. Yeah. Say most definitely mother-fuckin tired of these mother-fuckin steaks on this mother-fuckin plane. Yeah. Because that's crucial. And and that got greenlit. Yes So yes as a matter of fact This airplane is this this movie rather is really clearly

clearly, uh, or response to that. Cause how could you not? Mm hmm. Okay. So anyway, carry on. Tell me, tell me about this. Oh, there's nothing to tell. I mean, I just wanted to point out that, you know, I, I like when I find these little gems, like when, uh, El Santo was in a zombie film or when I found a

zombie exploitation film, like I found a zombie's exploitation film. Like I'm gonna keep calling out those titles, you know, I just am. But in the next episode, I'm gonna talk about I am Legend and we'll probably finally get to one of my favorites, Dead Snow. Okay. Yeah.

I am Legend. Uh huh. favorites, Dead Snow. Okay. Yeah. I am legend. Uh-huh. I'm going to throw this out here in the last minute or so of our podcast right now before we get into the next one. I am legend, zombie movie or vampire movie. That's well. There wasn't my thunder.

Yeah. Wow. You're absolutely right. That's one of the things. But I think I will, you know what? I will go just a little bit into it. I think it is a zombie movie. Okay. And it goes back to having a science explanation as well as the hope of reversal.

Okay. And we never saw them actually, um, vampiring. Oh, okay. In the 2007 one, you know, fair enough. Fair enough. I also, I mean, you know, I think in the 2007 one, I also, I, I immediately think of the Omega Man. Yeah, everybody does, yeah.

Which like, anyway, we can talk about it in the next episode. And I certainly didn't want to, you know, take it. Well, you know, it's, there's not much to say about it though. I mean, it's back, it honestly doesn't do anything to push the genre. It's back to some stuff that we were already aware of, although there is a fun little inversion in there, where it inverts the zombie trope, ultimately. They're all very white, threatening a black man. And in this one, he seems to be the

danger to them, but then it turns out he's trying to save them. So there's a lot going on there. There's a lot going on there. Yeah. Cool. I'm forward to it. Yeah. All right.

So that is the end of this one. Anything you want to glean because we dropped a lot of goddamn Danvils in that last part, especially the diary, but also I think I think the Adrian Martin stuff. I mean, there's a lot of meat on this bone, unlike the Frenching that I experienced. Nice nice way of bringing that back around. Brick joke ladies and gentlemen. uh, brick joke ladies and gentlemen, um, I, I think, I think the thing that strikes me, speaking of bricks, is the, the way that Romero has come around to, as I've said now, multiple times, and I'm going to keep going with, look upon the field where I raised my handfuls and see that it is fictunned and rich. For somebody who started out codifying the genre, kind of has a reaction to

his own falling backwards into a message. You know, he made the first movie and like, oh hey, there's symbolism here. And then he made the next couple of films. Mm-hmm. And the extent to which he was forging and then dropping anaphyls on people increased kind of each time. Yes.

And then we get to die where the dead where it's like, oh no, no, it's like it's all animals. It always has, like the medium of the two astronauts, always has been. Yep. Like, you know, like, and the fact that the story he told in that film, and I'm not gonna give him credit for dropping an anvil on this part, because I think it was too early

for him to be, for anybody to be aware enough of this, for it to be an anvil drop, but the fact that it retroactively becomes an anvil drop, but the fact that retroactively becomes an anvil drop. The idea of virality having parallel in internet culture, in internet 2.0 after the advent of the smartphone, explosion of YouTube, and as you said, the democratization of media. And the fracturing, like I cannot emphasize enough that on one side of the spoon, you have democratization, which is a very good thing. And on the other side of the spoon, you turn it over, and the media has to be completely fracturedured and with that democratization came a loss of.

A polarization. Yeah, which, I mean, one is really, really good and the other one's really, really dangerous. I'm really, really, really shitty. Yeah, so yeah. You know, but the fact that, you know, the idea of, you know, things on the internet going viral. Even before the term was really 100% part of the lexicon.

The fact that that's kind of in the background of what he does in the film alongside the metaphor of zombieism. of what he does in film alongside the metaphor of, you know, zombieism is really remarkable. You know, the level of, and again, he kind of falls backward retroactively into being really visionary. Yeah. How many times can a man do that before we just admit he's a visionary? I'm going to, I'm going to just say I think I think he certainly qualifies as being a visionary,

but I think what I, what I'm really fascinated by is the fact that he is a visionary, but he's a subconscious visionary. Okay. And that leads me to wonder how many visionaries are subconscious vision. Right. Like that they're able to they're in touch enough with their own. I don't want to say it, but but their own their own subconscious. They're they're in touch enough with the their intuition. They're intuition. There you go. Very good. They're they're

intuitive enough. Mm-hmm. To be able to extrapolate something without actually seeing it. Yes. actually seeing it. Yes. In that kind of way. Yes. That's a very particular kind of genius. And I think that's my biggest, whoa, moment out of what we've talked about. episode is is the idea of the intuitiveness of Romero's perception of these things. Yeah. That's me. Cool. Yeah, I like it. What do you think? I think you're you're on something for certain there. I mean, I would point out that intuition is sometimes often, well, sometimes often. Intuition is developed. Yes. And if you remember or activated too, because if you remember what he used to do coming

home on the train was he would go and he would rent movies His entire world view Seems to be aimed at looking at media Okay, he's only ever made films, you know, I'm sure he had other you know side jobs and stuff like that But films have been so important to him. I think he would get it I think he would understand and. I think he would understand. And because he was an outsider coming into it, he carries a different view. That's true.

You know, and so he, and he sticks to a specific genre. So I think that's another mark in his favor, and his ability to see and forecast things that others of us can't see because we're stuck in it. So yeah, I agree with you. And for those additional reasons. So, what's your reading? Right now, I'm still reading student work because I now have a whole bunch of sixth graders sent

my English classes and I'm trying to teach them to put together a coherent, non-run-on sentence and send help, who's really kind of all I can say. There's very strong gulf between the ones who have it and are ahead of the curve and literally everybody else. So that's kind of what I'm stuck reading right now. How about you? Oh, let's see. I'm just reading, I'm reading a lot of plays lately. I'm trying to think if there's any books that I've read that I haven't already recommended to you. Nothing's coming to mind. So I'm gonna say for homework, go watch Dead Snow.

Okay. And you're welcome. So where can people find you on social medias? I can be found on the social medias at ehblaloc on Twitter and ehblaloc on Instagram and mrblaloc on the tiki talk. And where can you be found? Let's see go go find me at Doh Harmony on Twitter and Insta, find me every Tuesday night on twitch.tv, forward slash capital puns, where I do puns. Those are some pretty good places to find me. Yeah, where can be found at Geek History time on Twitter and Geek History of Time on the Internet.

And the podcast itself, Bardmay, can be found on Stitcher and Spotify and the iTunes podcast application. And if you look us up there, please take a moment to hit the subscribe button and please give us a review. Give us the five stars you know that we have earned. And yeah, if you need to shout out us about something, Twitter is probably the best place to do that because then we can have a conversation about it That's about all I got to say there. Yeah, I like it. Well for a geek history of time. I'm Damien Harmony

And I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time remember to aim for the head head.