Eager to Return to The Walking Dead Universe

It's been too long since I've watched either The Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead. For the former, I was halfway through Season 7 (2016), while for the latter I stopped at the finale of the first season. For the past four years I've been wanting to return to these series, but life (not zombies) had a way of keeping me busy.

Since then I have avoided hearing spoilers and synopses. I thought that once I retired I would have time to return to binge watching, but somehow I am just as busy, though now I could not really say what it is that is keeping my wheels spinning.

I can't help but wonder what I've been missing. For me the most important part of the sixth season of The Walking Dead was Carol's moral meltdown. Her inability to continue as part of the original group following the purposeful massacre of the Saviors fascinated me. Her trauma, her crisis, spoke to one of the qualities of the zombie narrative that fuels my interest in the subgenre.

In his 2017 book Living with the Living Dead, theologian Greg Garrett quotes a series of questions posed about the zombie narrative by Episcopal priest Torey Lightcap: "Where do we draw the line in doing harm to one another in order to save ourselves? how much stress can we take before we are fundamentally changed in who we are. ...When does the impulse to protect ourselves mean we ... start actively hurting others?"

I hope The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead have avoided becoming mere entertainment and continued to portray through their separate cinematic narratives these and other questions that are worth consideration, now more than ever as we face a future that will be anything but a joyride.

The second half of Season 10 of The Walking Dead will begin airing in late February 2020, while the release date for the sixth season of Fear the Walking Dead is still pending as of this post, according to a report in The Buzz Paper.

Of course, now is also the time to return to the original comic books by Robert Kirkman, especially as the author has announced he will be concluding the series.

Dibakar Banerjee Takes Zombies Seriously

The new four-piece “Ghost Stories” film anthology from Netflix features one zombie narrative by Indian director Dibakar Banerjee. In an interview he states that the driving force behind his horror film is the fear of extinction. “We all know that we won’t be around after a few years, and that scares us. Also, as a group of people, we might not be around… and that could happen sooner rather than later. If that fear of group extinction is embedded in a story, no matter what the plot is, then that works. The best zombie films, right from the European and American zombie films from the ’60s and ’70s to now, have that core… where you are about to be wiped out.”

I have yet to watch the series, but I am certainly looking forward to it as Banerjee may be one of the few Indian filmmakers who doesn’t automatically trip to comedic mode when working with the iconic zombie. The zomcom is one of those approaches to the zombie narrative that I still have trouble enjoying because so many filmmakers seem to have trouble finding the right balance between horror and humor, turning their films into silly and immature romper rooms. When done well, however, the zomcom can be a powerful vehicle.

In other reviews of the “Ghost Stories” anthology Banerjee’s work is noted as the most “political” among the four. If that is so, then I look forward to seeing this as I view the zombie narrative as having the most potential for addressing the sociopolitical concerns of the viewer. It is this quality that I most respect. So off I go in search of the “Ghost Stories” anthology. Until then, here’s looking at you, Kid.

Nighttime Drones and Home Invasion Anxieties

Our popular television and film media have prompted us toward paranoia and seeing enemy spies hiding behind every haystack, but who thought we’d be looking for those same intelligence rivals in the sky above those bales of hay? But that’s apparently what’s been happening for the past few weeks since mid-December 2019 when some residents in wide swaths of rural Colorado and Nebraska have been piqued to the point of paranoia by large formations of silver-and-white drones. 

As of January 1, 2020., nobody has stepped forward to claim ownership of the pilotless drones that hover over fields and homes, too far out of reach to be taken down by sharp-eyed shooters but close enough to creep out residents and set their dogs to barking. Local police officers are coordinating their efforts to determine the flight paths of the drones and perhaps figure out their origin, but so far they have been able to say little more than that the Federal Aviation Authority has been brought in to help identify who has set these flying cameras loose into the wild, and for what reason.

Might the canine clamor suggest the drones are using different technologies to map the areas they hover over? Are they looking for underground energy resources, carrying out research in night vision technology, studying wildlife populations, or conducting a simple cartography mission? One thing’s for sure: those aren’t delivery drones from Amazon.com sent to bring you that Tom Clancy novel you just ordered.

It is certainly easy to see how this story can grow in the popular imagination into something decidedly creepy. We are trained toward physical privacy, which is a good thing for sales of Venetian blinds, curtains, and window treatments.  So many of our horror stories deal with the monsters that cross the boundaries and come into the home, violating what we normally assume is a safe space. In horror fiction that presumption of home safety and the culturally respected protection afforded by the mere presence of a window and door frame is highlighted by the traditional Western vampire’s need to seek permission from the homeowner before entering. (What an absolute mindblow in the Fright Night remake when the vampire, denied permission to enter the home, finds a way to drive the targeted residents fromtheir own home.)

The creepy aspect of these unidentified drones is not knowing what they are doing. The idea that they can be scanning homes to “see” or “hear” the data, downloads, and passwords of residents feels wrong—well, it is wrong—on many different levels, but mostly because it is a form of “invasion” that combines both the high-tech (sure, we’ve been giving away our homezone privacy since we invited the Internet-connected computer into our personal spaces) and the physical (the presence of a piece of machinery that, flying by algorithm, seems to have a mind of its own and therefore in our imaginations a degree of subjecthood). That the drones are “watching us” is creepy. 

But I won’t drone on about it.