In my review of George Romero’s Land of the Dead, just out on DVD, I discussed the sorta despondent feeling that’s permeating pop culture lately, that we’re standing at the edge of a cultural abyss, and in relation to this terrific film, how the idea of a zombie apocalypse is actually pretty darn relevant -- at least in a metaphoric sense -- to the world today.
And it seems I’m not the only one who feels that way. The crack investigative reporting team at The Onion has uncovered the terrible truth about a Midwestern city:
Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack
PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.
"When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel," Murphy said. "Who's in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who's going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we'd all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday."
And this news couldn’t have come at a worse time, with all the zombies who are, in fact, descending upon major North American cities: San Francisco, Montreal, Austin, Vancouver, and Madison, Wisconsin.
There’s something profound amidst the goofy fun here, an attempt to confront and control fears about impending disaster -- zombie movies were big in the 1970s, too, but impromptu zombie parades are a decidedly 21st-century thing. The zombie meme is touching something new in us today -- and if you look at the pictures from those zombie events, there are way more 20- and 30somethings in bloody costumes shuffling down the streets than there are teenagers and younger kids (unless you count all the Xers who brought their own little tykes along). This isn’t a college fad -- this isn’t the 2000s equivalent of flagpole sitting or streaking. It’s Generation Xers who are feeling the urge to deal a defiant smack to the face of this feeling weighing down on us, that something bad is coming down the pike and before too long, we’re all gonna be shuffing down the street or fighting off brain-eaters.
And there’s perhaps even a hint of the shape of the conflict to come, something bubbling up out of the subconscious of these zombie mobs. The Austin zombies crashed auditions for the modern Gong Show American Idol -- will it soon be time to throw off the automated mass production of Entertainment(TM)? Or maybe we’re gonna decide to throw off the shackles of rampant consumerism: the Vancouver zombies landed at an upscale shopping mall.
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