This week All Of Us Are Dead, the new Korean zombie offering from Netflix, is taking the world (or eating it’s brains?) by storm. Set in a high-school, the action comes fast, thick and bloody and there is no doubt zombie fans will, uh, feast on yet another interpretation of the genre.
Although every zombie movie usually offers something unique — I Am Legend had Will Smith as the solitary individual wandering around in an apocalyptic metropolis, Army of the Dead (not unlike Peninsula) was about an infiltration slash heist deep inside zombie-infested territory, Dawn of the Dead was a hold-out and hold-on for dear life affair in a mall, World War Z was a round-the-world quest for patient zero (with an added twist that the zombies stayed away from terminally ill people), Zombieland is a family story with zombies as a backdrop and Resident Evil was the same, except instead of family it was the evil corporation, etc. — in all these movies, the zombie “element” remains the same and it has to i.e. the ‘rush’ and ‘surge’ of the zombies towards their prey.
Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Žižek has suggested that the popularity of zombies lies in the appeal of the concept of this pure desire even in death. This is the constant in all great zombie movies: the mob of blood-thirsty dead-yet-wildly-alive former human beings chasing and clawing away at the world and society to satiate their desire for, well, blood and meat.
Pure craving, sheer obsession, mad lunging towards a goal. Bullets, saws and bombs may get in the way but who cares: If a zombie sees a meal, they go right for it.
If only a zombie had half the motivation towards their career when they weren’t zombies yet, which they presently have for attacking people. But that’s it, isn’t it? There’s something about stark raving bloody single-minded yearning which attracts us.
Zombies are ‘alive whilst dead’ — they are clinically dead whilst behaving with such yearning which bursts the confines of life as we know it — whereas, sigh, maybe many of us are ‘dead whilst alive’ i.e. even though we’re clinically still among the living, our existences often feel lifeless.
Thus, some of us secretly want to be ‘captured’ by an objective which renders us blind to the world.
Maybe we all wish we could be so ‘caught up’ in a drive, in a target, that our lives are both invigorated and given meaning at the same time?
Yes yes of course we understand it’s not always ‘practical’ or healthy (imagine a kid who’s only concern in life is getting straight As’ in O-Levels and nothing else, or a wife so devoted to her husband she willingly suffers abuse) but we gotta admit we can’t help being fascinated by these people.
This is also why we love quest or adventure documentaries in which a team risks limb and life to get to the top of some mountain or some island. Not unlike ‘snake-master’ Austin Stevens risking his body to get a photo of some dangerous snake which could bite his head off. Or free soloist mountain climber Alex Honnold risking a fall from hundreds of feet just so he can conquer the face of some magnificent cliff. Or, well, Jesus undergoing torture and death out of love for people.
Our capitalist society is also implicated somehow. Look at all the ads bombarding us 24/7. On one hand, these spur more and more levels and kinds of desire within society, on another hand we are often numbed by the sheer number of options available for consumption.
So much so that finding something ‘real’ to desire, as opposed to yet another t-shirt or phone or car accessory, becomes priceless.
And make no mistake, we humans desire to desire.
There’s something about the single-minded pursuit of something, even to the point of irrationality, which draws us in. Maybe we love zombie movies ‘cos these creatures, despite all the gore and horror, demonstrate an intensity we wish we had?
