 by Flemming Funch
Jon Husband mentions Inspector Lohmann: Of Zombies, Bloggers, and The Will To Power As Disappearance. First part of a bigger article on, well, our capitalist consumer society as analyzed based on ... zombie movies, for one thing. An entertaining tour-de-force. Here, first, from one of the most memorable scenes, the zombies in the shopping mall in Dawn of the Living Dead:[In the mall the zombies approach Penny's Department Store after our living heroes embark on a "shopping spree".]
—They're still here.
—They're after us. They know we're still in here.
—They're after the place. They don't know why, they just remember...remember that they want to be in here.
—What the hell are they?
—They're us, that's all. There's no more room in hell. Just like us. Mindless walking dead, showing up in the mall, trying to satisfy some urge they don't quite understand what is, and which never gets satisfied.If gangster movies are the morality plays capital performs for itself to explore capital's inherent ethical dilemmas, then zombie movies are the phenomenological fairy tales of the denizens who live within capital's ubiquitous empire. ...
Zombie movies are the mature and fully realized symbolic metaphor of corporate capitalism's ability to co-opt anything into its fold. It's also no coincidence that zombies create new zombies by spreading a "virus" into the living; and that zombies can only be killed by destroying their brain. Their condition is, metaphorically, one of perception: they have been indoctrinated by a virus to be the ultimate consumers of, and servants to, corporate capital, and cannot imagine any other way of being. A blow to the head snaps them out of it (by killing them). ...
Corporate persons, or golems, have since utilized rights granted to humans for their own gain and motives, usually in the name of profit and shareholder value. They use the First Amendment to justify their right to lie or deceive in advertising. They use it to pump millions of dollars into our political system. They invoke Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure of assets thwarting government oversight and auditing. The Fourteenth Amendment ensures they are not discriminated against in law and is used when a community does not wish their presence—even when brought to a general vote. The sum gain is a twisted political system which serves the rights and common good of large golems, depressed cheap-labor communities, and environmental decay. Essentially, it is the collapse of the "town commons" and democracy itself.
Thus zombies are the soul-deadened servants of their comparably soul-deadened Golem overlords.
Zombies are what the Golems require us to be. All they ask in exchange for the trinkets of our consumption is our souls, our time, and our lives. And, further, there can be no one who isn't a zombie — complete and universal conformity is required. There can be no escape — there is no "outside." I, for some reason, love zombie movies. I don't care much for horror movies in general, but the zombie movies, the Dawn of the Living Dead kind of thing, somehow have a special draw. These mindless flesh eaters who're just everywhere, just doing their thing, and a few remaining resourceful humans somehow manage to stay alive anyway. I think his analogies are quite appropriate, actually.
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