Gorrible

Re: The meaning of violence

Phantasma-gore-ia:

Are you essentially saying that we are watching the worst in ourselves when watching a zombie flick and that the undead represent our negative points?  If so, no wonder there's so many stenches...

No!  That's not what I'm saying!  I'm saying that zombies are total mindless evil.  It's justifiable to destroy them.  Watching someone that can and must fight zombies for his or her very survival is visceral.

Re: The meaning of violence

Well, at the end of the original Dawn of the Dead, the Zombies are clearly a critique of actual living Americans. So I don't think that Zombies are totally mindless evil. I don't even know if they always are evil. I think they are pure lizard brain beings. They need something to survive and will do anything to have it.

Besides, is it really evil if it is mindless? To me, evil has a mind. In fact, evil should be intelligent. That is why I generally find suspensful films much scarier than horror because smart people can be really scary. Also because evil acts generally aren't the same as senseless ones. War is often evil and it rarely happens "just because" it happens because really smart people have a plan, on all sides.

Re: The meaning of violence

Thanks for the thoughtful response, taking almost a psychological look at evil.  Yes, I agree that evil is a conscious force and that zombies are merely the least that it takes to live.  They are no more evil than a bear, say.  They just do what...may I say comes naturally?  They do what zombies do and since it's against us, namely eating us, we're totally free and inculpable for any action taken toward them.

As far as smart people being chilling, take the infamous Ted Bundy, a considerably calculating sort who schemed up and down for years; the fictional psychopath Jigsaw who enacts his sense of morality and vengeance, along with Kevin Spacey's character in Se7en and the Caller in Phone Booth.  People who know all the exits and have planned all the angles are nerve-wracking because you never know how it's going to be possible to defeat them.