Thursday, June 03, 2010

Zombie rights

Back in February I saw 28 Weeks Later on TV. It’s one of the better zombie flicks. A very efficient piece of filmmaking. Of course, the genre is rather limited. There’s only so much you can do with zombies. Character development isn’t their forte.

Because the Rage virus is so easily and rapidly communicable, there is almost no margin for error. The odds are already stacked against the human race.

Thankfully, this is fiction. But if this were real, the human race would be doomed in short order. Why?

Because all of the usual “human rights” organizations would pivot and swing to the defense of zombies. Rounding up zombies would be “racist.” Zombies would be entitled to Miranda rights. The ACLU would appeal to the 9th Circuit to have them released. The pope, Archbishop of Canterbury, and US Conference of Bishops would deplore discrimination against zombies. Sociologists at Stanford and Harvard would publish studies on how zombies are oppressed and misunderstood. Blue states would hasten to pass new laws criminalizing “hate speech” against zombies. The NYT would leak the classified methods and sources for containing the outbreak. And so on and so forth.

The human race wouldn’t stand a chance.

5 comments:

  1. "The pope, Archbishop of Canterbury, and US Conference of Bishops would deplore discrimination against zombies."

    I'd think the pope would stand up against the zombies.

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  2. If a "real zombie" outbreak occurred, my main concern would be whether or not the same rules of movie zombification applied. Is it the one drop rule? Do you have to be bitten? Does there have to be a transmission of fluids? Is it airborne? Demonic? Is it reversible? Wouldn't it suck to find out that after you go on your anti-zombie rampage that a cure for your loved ones' zombie condition had been on the way the whole time. And you just murdered your family.

    So surviving the "test" phase of figuring out the rules would be trepidatious, especially if it is just sprung on you unsuspecting like and you don't see it coming. But after that, it would just suck. Though it might be somewhat satisfying to purge all the zombies from the land. It's not quite ethnic cleansing since you don't all become the same ethnicity when you get the same disease.

    I thought the movie Zombieland was pretty awesome.

    Ben

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  3. Back in February I saw 28 Weeks Later on TV. It’s one of the better zombie flicks.

    Nonsense, it was one of the worst movies of 2007.

    http://spoonyexperiment.com/2007/12/31/the-10-worst-films-of-2007/

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  4. MATTHEW SAID:

    "Nonsense, it was one of the worst movies of 2007."

    The reviewer was probable a vegan.

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  5. I'd have to say that 28 Days Later was better than 28 Weeks Later, but regardless, the issue of zombie "rights" is central to Romero's Survival of the Dead, as well as several stories in the book The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology. Suffice it to say that such endeavors usually don't turn out well!

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