Zombies Don't Eat Brains!

Certain people end up with weird stigmas. I'd say one of the best examples is the comedian Gallagher. For those who aren't familiar with him, his act is basically an hour of unconnected witty little observations ("cargo goes by ship, and shipments go by car..."), and then as a high-contrast finale, he'll pull out a sledgehammer and start smashing produce, causing his audiences to come wearing rain coats. Most people tend to forget his comedy since the smashing is such a unique hook (which is a shame, but totally off topic), and specifically, his smashing of watermelons. Why watermelons? They make the biggest mess, that's why.

Moving on to the point. Gallagher, from this, earns the reputation of "the watermelon guy" in the eyes of the public, and thus, anything watermelon related comes his way. He once did a standup special dedicated to all the watermelon related oddities people had sent him.

This sort of thing happens to me too, on three different fronts. I seem to be a hub for Weird Stuff, photos of chupacabra heads, video of crabs getting sucked through cracks in low pressure pipelines, people building hobbit holes, etc. Then there's the slime thing, which to be fair, IS how I first really got my name out there. Finally, an awful lot of people associate me with zombies. So, zombie info flows to me, I'm well versed in the subject, I suppose it's now my duty to provide some education on the matter.

When most people hear "zombie" the first thing that pops into their head is "braaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnssss..." While admittedly, that's a fun thing to go around saying, the fact that people do it bothers me to no end. Why? Because, as the title says, zombies don't eat brains!

Here's the part where you say "Uh... zombies don't actually exist you realize." At this point, I could point out that this isn't true, and that there's parts of the world where, using a combination of brainwashing and a few freaky drugs, people actually turn other people into zombies. It's where the term comes from. The only difference is, they only THINK they're shambling corpses.

This isn't really relevant though. We're talking about zombies as defined by the dictionary of pop culture (which someone needs to put to paper some time). Tractor beams don't exist in real life, but I think we're all in agreement that a tractor beam pulls things towards the source of it, and that if someone went around saying that what tractor beams do is turn pansies into elephants, this person has no clue what he's talking about. Similarly, we can say that elves have pointy ears, werewolves are killed by silver bullets, and that looking at Cthulu drives you insane.

Now then. The definition of zombie we are using (assuming we are describing animated corpses as found in various works of fiction) was set by one George A. Romero. Period. You might think you're pulling YOUR zombies from somewhere else, but you're not. More or less anything you're going to find that features zombies plucked them from the brain of George Romero. Either they're borrowing the concept from Night of the Living Dead and making their own twist on it, or they're doing so second-hand. Any given established fact (in the sense that pointy ears for elves is an established fact) about zombies comes from the ... of the Dead series. Heck. The whole "zombies eat brains!" concept comes from the Return of the Living Dead movies, which specifically state, as their basic premise, that they consider Night of the Living Dead to be canon. So if you're trying to rationalize something via those movies, you're still dealing with zombies as defined by Romero, and brains just plain aren't what they eat.

There are three basic established facts about zombies which, if you don't agree with, you are in the same camp as Mr. Tractorbeam-elephant-man up there.

1. Zombies are animated (in the move-around sense, not the cartoon sense) corpses.
2. Zombies eat people.
3. The only way to stop a zombie (point #1 makes kill an inaccurate term) is, to paraphrase an oft-paraphrased quote, "by destroying the brain, or severing the head (burning them to a crisp works too)."

Point 2 should be enough to prove my case, but let's deal with point 3 here. Shoot or stab a zombie in the head, no more zombie trying to bite you. I don't think you're ever going to find someone who disagrees with that. You're also not generally going to find anyone who disagrees with you that, while it isn't the only way it happens, one of the most common ways a zombie comes about is from one of those nasty infected zombie bites. Come to think of it, in many things, it's the ONLY way (which begs the question of where the first zombie came from, and how it managed to get anything done). A zombie takes a big bite out of your arm, a while later you're a zombie. We all agree with that, right? Now, let's say a zombie was specifically after your brain. They're not going to bite the rest of you, so no zombification to worry about there. They're just going to crack open your skull (or in many stupid things, somehow bite through it with their ill-equipped loose hanging jaws), and eat that brain... now it's academic if this would turn you into a zombie, because the thing that stops a zombie (bye bye brain) has already been done to you. Tada. Zero population growth, no chance of getting enough zombies to have a problem. Clearly, it doesn't happen. Well, fine, it can HAPPEN, if you've got fifty zombies fighting over one victim, they're likely to eat just about everything, but my point is, it's not a thing they're overly inclined to do.

Now that that's off my chest, here's some other zombie fun facts for you which people with too little familiarity with Romero's movies aren't aware of, regarding proper canonical zombies. As said before, zombie bites aren't the only cause of zombies. There's also just plain dying. If zombies are happening, it doesn't matter if you get chewed on by zombies, drown, get shot in the chest, hang yourself, choke on a pretzel, you're a zombie. Why are zombies happening? Nobody really knows, but we can pretty darn safely rule out "it's a virus." How are zombies compared to humans in terms of physical fitness? Lousy. If you're basically brain dead, have various broken bones, massive injuries, and all your muscle tissue is rotting away, you're not likely to win the hundred meter hurdles. They have vague memories of when they were alive, and try to act on'em if there aren't people around to eat, and they don't actually benefit in any way from eating people.

While I'm throwing all this info out there, I've never actually seen a decent discussion on the films in question, despite their impact, so I might as well at least give a brief overview of the major themes here.

First off, the ... of the Dead movies aren't horror movies. A horror movie has a big scary monster (or little scary monster, lots of monsters, guy with a knife, whatever) chasing screaming people around, with lots of scenes designed to make you jump. These movies don't fit that description. At no point in any of them do we even really have people being killed by zombies when it comes down to it (except at the begining of Night). I'm not saying that zombies aren't involved in the deaths of any characters obviously, but what I'm saying is, the true cause of any given character's death can be directly traced to the actions of a character in the movie. Sometimes it's someone losing their mind and recklessly endangering themselves, sometimes it's someone throwing someone else to the wolves as it were, sometimes it's out and out murder, but the zombies themselves are just an environmental concern.

So really, what these movies are ABOUT, is analyzing the uglier side of human nature. That's why they're released about ten years apart. Each ... of the Dead movie is dealing with the nastiest aspects to be found in humanity in each decade. Night (1960s) is all about that cold war, only so much room in the fallout shelters, small group of people in a pressure cooker sort of situation commonly seen in The Twilight Zone. Dawn (70s) deals mainly with selfishness, rampant greed, racism, and violent crime. Day (80s) handles decadence, beuracracy, machoism and military thinking. Land took 10 years longer than planned, coming out last year, and deals with class struggles, respect for life, and basic human dignity... with a little post-9/11 shakiness in the mix.

We can also look at these movies as an ongoing documentary of zombie behavior. Night, they happen, we have the shock, the eating, the attempts to fight'em back. Dawn, the collapse of society, and a glimpse of what zombies do when there's no living people around. Day features experimentation with zombies, showing us what makes them tick, and throwing out ideas for what can be done with the problem. Land is the long view of zombies, and humans trying to adjust to their presence.

Then there's the presentations. Night's a 12 Angry Men sort of movie, Dawn is a black comedy if it's anything, Day is something of a product of the 80s Gore Machine (a topic for another rant really), and Land is more in keeping with the trappings of your standard big budget action movie, somewhere in the vicinity of Jurassic Park I'd say.

If you're going to watch'em, watch'em in order... oh, and avoid the remake of Night and the reuse-of-title of Dawn. Both are perfectly watchable, but not relevant to the above.

Extra fun fact: 28 Days Later is not a zombie movie. It's a movie about a virus that makes people crazy and violent, a la The Crazies. Get it straight.