The Development of the Zombie Film Narrative
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Zombies in a Time of Terror The Development of the Zombie Film Narrative Jasper Wezenberg 5947634 [email protected] Ferdinand Bolstraat 27-3 1072LB Amsterdam 06-20924216 Thesis guide: dr. C.J. Forceville Second reader: Amir Vudka 2 Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank dr. Charles Forceville for being an excellent thesis guide who always provide me with pragmatic tips, interesting insights and fast comments. Thanks to Amir Vudka for being my second reader. I would like to thank Absaline Hehakaya and Maarten Stolz for reading parts of my unfinished thesis and providing comments. Many thank to Saskia Mollen for designing the awesome front cover. Thank to my colleagues Joost Mellink and Renée Janssen for covering for me. Thanks to my friends Niels de Groot and Rufus Baas for encouraging me. Thanks to Marek Stolarczyk, Roeland Hofman, and Marije Ligthart for being funny and supportive. Thanks to Nika Pantovic for making nice music and providing inspiration. And finally thanks to my parents and brother for being awesome people. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 5 1. Generic difficulties 6 2. On zombie studies 12 3. The Quantitative of the dead 16 3.1 Introduction 20 3.2 Corpus and zombie movie production numbers 21 3.3 Results 23 3.3.1 Zombie invasion narrative 23 3.3.2 Shots of deserted streets 24 3.3.3 Use of news- or found footage 25 3.3.4 Speed of zombie movement 25 3.3.5 Are they dead? 27 3.3.6 Extra: funny zombies 28 4. Zombies in a time of terror: invoking images 29 4.1 REC 29 4.2 Train to Busan 34 4.3 Land of the Dead 40 Conclusion 45 Bibliography 48 Filmography 50 Appendix A 51 Appendix B 53 4 Introduction Of all the monstrous creatures that have populated the horror stories of Western culture, the zombie may well be the most characteristic for the late 20th and early 21th century. What is it with massive amounts of walking, flesh eating, rotting, and mindless corpses that fascinates millions of movie fans? While it once was a monster of b-movies, nowadays zombies seem to have taken over the world. It is as if a cinematic zombie apocalypse has been taking place the last two decades. In film, the creation of the zombie can be traced back to the movie White Zombie (1932). It was inspired by Haitian folklore like voodoo, in which a witchdoctor takes control of another person’s body. The genre took a more postmodern turn when filmmaker George A. Romero released his low- budget movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), containing undertones of social critique. Today, Romero’s debut has become a prototype for the whole genre. In a typical zombie movie, a zombie apocalypse takes place, which causes the dead to rise again from the grave. These animate corpses are almost always murderous and out for human blood. After a person has been attacked by one or more zombies, he or she then also turns into a zombie. By this mechanism the zombies spread like a virus or a plague. Amidst this deadly chaos, the story’s protagonists are trying to stay alive and rescue their loved ones. What kinds of zombie narratives are there? How is the zombie genre able to reflect social unrest? Has the genre changed much since Romero? How have zombies been studied by academics? In this MA Thesis I will investigate the development of the zombie film narrative, hoping to find answers to these questions. In the first chapter I set out to create an overview of the studies that have been done on the subject of genre in film studies. As I am dealing with a very specific genre, I must investigate numerous theories on the existence and use of film genre. In the second chapter I will look into the academic studies that have been done to date on zombie films, to provide me with bearings for my own research: what has been discovered and what needs to be researched more? In the third chapter I will present the results of quantitative research I have done on the characteristics of zombie narratives, to show how narrative techniques in the zombie film have changed. In the fourth chapter I will do a close analysis of three selected zombie titles, to provide us with more details the element that are typical for the genre, and how zombie narratives function. At the end of this research I will hope to provide an answer to the question: how has the zombie narrative developed over the years? 5 1. Generic difficulties If we want to be able to discuss and research the zombie movie as a category, we first have to delve deeper into the structures and processes that define the generic conventions of the zombie movie. What criteria define a specific genre and how do we use and need our knowledge of genres? In this chapter I set out to create a general outline of the field of (film) genre studies and some of its main scholars like Rick Altman, Barry Keith Grant and Stephen Neale. The problems and concepts introduced here will be used in our next chapter on the genre of horror and its subgenre: zombie movies. The concept of genre has been important on many levels of spectating and studying film as the work of the following scholars will prove. While for the average moviegoer, the different generic categories may seem like a collection of clear-cut traits bundled to categorize different films, the concept of genre is of course not without its difficulties. The meaning and use of genre within the realms of film is the result of a complex interplay between scholars, spectators, critics and the movie industry. I would first like to consider the work of Rick Altman and especially his book Film/Genre (1999), for it has been a seminal work in the study of genre within film studies. Altman starts out his book stating that one of the first ideas about genre goes back all the way to Aristotle and his famous work of Poetics. In his work Aristotle states that he will approaches the art of poetry based on its essential qualities. Determined by these “essential qualities”, Aristotle describes how different forms of poetry could be discerned from each other based on the medium, the object, and the manner of imitation. While literary genre theory has of course evolved over the years, Aristotle’s ideas have remained influential. The main problem with this, according to Altman (1999), is that Aristotle’s ideas are based on various presumptions. Aristotle namely assumes that his generic categories are “objectively present, stable phenomena, while the decision whether a certain text belonged into a specific genre depended on the presence or absence of certain characteristic features embodied in that text” (Forceville 2001: 1787). Altman states that Aristotle’s ideas have persevered all these year in literary studies and thus literary genre theory has not been able to come to any definite conclusions about what constitutes a genre (Altman 1999: 12). Although a theoretical framework on film genre has been established since the late sixties, this body of theories has not been without its shortcomings: the same dogmas of genre studies within the literary field, have crept into the academic work on film genre. Altman point out multiple problematic tendencies that have persisted within film genre studies. One of the most important things he points out is that the focus of genre critics and scholars has been on a reduced corpus that consists of canonical titles, to keep things neat and manageable (Altman 1999: 16). This means is that the critics and scholars tend to pay more attention to a small number of movies and as a result reduce a genre to a 6 very select group of ‘pure’ genre titles. From this strategy follows that only the titles that tick all the boxes of a generic prototype are included. Cross-genre and titles from outside of the canon tend to get overlooked. “[Genre critics] have systematically disregarded films that fail to exhibit clear generic qualifications. [Also], each major genre has been defined in terms of a nucleus of films obviously satisfying the theory’s […] assumptions” (Altman 1999: 16). He adds to that genres are treated as if they are trans-historical, as if they are fixed in history and never change of evolve over time. For Altman, this is clearly not the case. Altman uses the example of the musical genre to demonstrate that genres undergo historical development and are constantly susceptible to changes. He explains that in the earlier years, the term ‘musical’ was never applied as genre, but always used as an adjective to other genres such as melodrama or comedy (Altman 1999: 32). It was only after films with singing and dancing became less popular, that the term ‘musical’ started being used solely to describe a feature film. Many examples of movie reviews from the time period are given by Altman to underline the change in public perception of what a ‘musical’ is. It is also an important nuance that not all films are deliberately designed to fall into pre- existing categories. This is where Rick Altman makes the distinction between a ‘film genre’ and a ‘genre film’ (Altman 1996: 277). ‘Film genre’ refers to broader categories that can encompass a wide scope of films, regardless of the intent with which they were made. ‘Genre films’ refers to a type of film that self-consciously makes use of existing categories, models and expectations.