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by Michael Cote.
Original Post: DrunkAndRetired.com: Zombie Film Delimas
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Watching The Crazies, I realize one of the key themes George Romero plays out in each of his films: the impossible decision to kill. And, less precisely, how easily minds can be changed to treat others like cattle instead of humans. Again and again in Zombie films, Romero’s in particular, groups of people — often the military, but always with guns — decides that the “infected people” have become inhuman and must be slaughtered.
By making them into zombies, the issue becomes much more complicated than the “simple” question of “should we treat all people the same?” Of course we fucking should. There’s no debate there except assholes versus humanists.
But, once you’re a zombie, the question becomes: when people start acting intractably bad — wanting to eat other’s brains — what do you do? And can you blame the actions of the still-humans?
Infection
Now, now: things get more complicated in a movie like The Crazies. The Crazies is a pseudo-zombie movie (side-note: when did being hairy go bad? The lead male role in this 1973 film has a unibrow ferchristsake). It’s bio-zombies: a virus (often man-made, or at least man released as in 28 Days) escapes into the general populace, making people go nutty, if not turn into brain craving zombies.
The question in this film — as cameo’ed in most zombie films — is: how do you treat potential zombies? People who are still people but might be infected.
“We’ve Gotta Burn the Bodies.”
The answer that the films gives is what we’d expect from The Animal World (that is, all living creatures except human: we’re so happy to exclude ourselves like that): kill them. As lore goes, if you handle the baby of a wild animal, the mother will kill it once she gets it back. That is, animalistic nature is to destroy any trace of corruption without question. Better safe than sorry.
Now, that’s all just from the authoritarian side of the zombie genre. That side is never good (though often short-cut pragmatic), as best highlighted by the corrupt military crew in 28 Days. If you take into account the good side in zombie films — the more Red Dawn‘ish civilians-cum-para-militaries — things get more minuteman (of course, we have a different word for that now-a-days).
(There’s a remake in the works. While I think that’s great for Romero…can’t Hollywood come up with some new fucking movies? Jesus. All they seem to do is remake things.)
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