Zombies, you just can’t kill ’em. Well, you can with a swift blow to the head, but as a cinematic force, they are seemingly unkillable.
The infectious undead have been munching brains on film since the late ’60s, and today, zombie culture is bigger than it ever has been with zombie parades, zombie conventions and zombie scholars (yes, actual scholars, read below) spawning from our current affection for the fictional creatures. But why do we still love such a phenomenon that is over four decades old?
To get some insight, Liam Maguren spoke to director Alexandre Philippe, whose film Doc of the Dead explores this love affair in great detail. Philippe knows such pop-cultural trends all too well, having examined Star Wars fans in his 2010 film The People vs. George Lucas and fans of virally-trending seafood in his 2012 doco The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus.
Doc of the Dead is a part of this year’s DocEdge Festival: Be sure to catch it in Auckland’s Q Theatre on Fri 30 May and Sun 1 June or in Wellington’s Roxy Cinema Fri 13 June and Sun 15 June.
FLICKS: Are you more fascinated with zombies or the people pretending to be zombies?
ALEXANDRE PHILIPPE: It’s a little bit of both. I was raised on horror films as a kid; Scanners was my first introduction to the genre and it blew my mind (no pun intended).
Then I discovered Night of the Living Dead which terrified me – I was probably six or seven years old when I saw it. I love horror when it’s well done and I have a soft spot for zombie films, but I’m also a pop culture documentary filmmaker, so I tend to keep my finger on the pulse (I think this pun was intended – Ed.) of important trends. In recent years, it was pretty obvious that there was something special happening with zombies, so that’s what gave me the idea to explore it.
There are many other horror icons (vampires, Frankenstein, etc.) but they’ve never accumulated a mass culture like zombies have. Why do you think that is?
The amazing thing about zombies is that you can project anything you want onto them because they are us. They can be us at any given time, and in history, they can represent social or political issues. They’re a blank metaphor for any subtext we want to give them, making them the most versatile movie monster that we have.
It’s interesting that it took us so long to wake up to that fact. It started out as a very strong but still very underground culture. Only in recent years has it gone into the mainstream.
I don’t think you can quite put your finger on one thing and say “this is the reason”.
I think it’s a cultural thing and a number of influential events. If you look at 9/11 as an event that brought the apocalypse to the front doorstep of America, it really changed everything around the Western world. Since 9/11, we’ve seen a lot of interesting zombie narratives coming out: Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later, The Zombie Survival Guide, The Walking Dead comic. Post-9/11 also introduced to fast zombies and, as Arnold Blumberg talks about in the film, our fears were getting greater, so we needed a faster zombie.
Like in ‘The People Vs. George Lucas’, where ‘Star Wars’ purists show an avid disdain for what George Lucas turned ‘Star Wars’ into with those prequels, zombie purists also lashed out about fast zombies. Would you say there are similarities between the two subcultures?
You mean debates like Slow Zombies vs. Fast Zombies or Did Han Shoot First? Yeah, sure.
Fan culture, broadly speaking, you’ll find similarities between fans of any pop culture brands. When you embrace a universe or genre completely and passionately, you’re going to have strong feelings about it. You’re going to start building expectations, you know what you like, you know what you want, and whether you like it or not, the classics of the genre become like a sacred texts.
“Whatever you think of ‘World War Z’, that film too was an important movie event.”
So… ‘slow zombies’ is the Old Testament and ‘fast zombies’ is the New Testament.
There you go. Exactly. Although I would hate to say The Phantom Menace is the New Testament for Star Wars.
What’s interesting is that any genre or franchise has to evolve, has to change and has to try new things in order to remain healthy. I think if you’re attached to a specific tradition, that change will make you mad, and you’ll end up limiting yourself.
‘Warm Bodies’ tried making a zombie teenager go out on a date and that seemed to work, so it looks like you can bloody well do anything with a zombie now.
Absolutely.
Whatever you think of World War Z, that film too was an important movie event. It was the first big PG 13 zombie movie brought to the masses and introducing a new generation to zombie culture which, in turn, will introduce them to the classics like Night of the Living Dead.
Do you predict the zombie trend to die off any time soon?
Zombie experts have been asking that question for six or seven years now and have just given up asking since it just keeps getting more and more popular. But, just like everything, there will be a ceiling to this – whether it’ll decline massively or gradually remains to be seen. As long as people keep trying new things with a genre, it’ll remain ever-present.
Just going back a moment to what you said earlier: what is a zombie expert and how do I apply to be one?
I think what qualifies someone to be a zombie expert is a person who has really studied the genre, watched hundreds – if not thousands – of zombie movies. There are scholars out there who not only study but teach the genre like Arnold Blumberg and Sarah Lauro who write books about zombie culture.
So it’s not my mate who trolls the zombie internet forums every Tuesday looking for arguments?
I… would say he’s a zombie aficionado, but not necessarily a zombie expert.
“I look at ‘Doc of the Dead’ and ‘The People vs. George Lucas’ as a tale of two Georges – [Romero and Lucas are] mirrored doppelgängers.”
George A. Romero, you could say, is the priest or the Jesus of –
The Moses
Yes, he is the Moses of the zombie bible. Unfortunately, his last few zombie films haven’t been well-received. However, we all still love him, so why do you think he hasn’t become the George Lucas of zombie culture?
I think the answer is pretty simple here: his relationship to zombies is almost the exact opposite to George and Star Wars. In fact, I look at Doc of the Dead and The People vs. George Lucas as a tale of two Georges – they’re mirrored doppelgängers.
George Lucas kept his franchise very close to his chest, and that’s the gist of that film, that Lucas has always been about “It’s mine, mine, mine. I will do whatever I want with this. You can’t do anything with it.”
On the other hand, George A. Romero, due to a copyright snafu, let it go straight into the public domain. So Romero is not the business guy that Lucas is. He’s never had that and you sort of feel for him – the fact that Night of the Living Dead went to the public domain so quickly is really a terrible thing for him, but a beautiful thing for zombie culture. Anyone was allowed to go out there and make zombie films.
So that’s why I think the fans love Romero so much – he didn’t get super rich from it but he made a series of good films, has always been about the craft and has always been about the fans. I’m not saying that George Lucas isn’t, but I do think Lucas is about ‘The Bottom Line’: money-making, merchandising and the like.
Plus, Romero never went back to his classic films and ‘modified’ them by, like, fast-forwarding the tape to make his zombies run.
Oh God… Lucas would have done that, that’s for sure.
