There is no tiptoeing around it. The zombie film genre has permeated popular culture since its inception. Unless you move up to zombie snuff or grave robbing to make your film, you are very much well within the mainstream realm of cinema.
You are thinking, but this guy just used the word “cinema”. He can’t be all about wearing Ed Hardy tattoo shirts, driving fast like Vin Diesel, and rejecting a foreign film outright because it has subtitles. This is true, I’m not. But what happens when purveyors of the finer arts in life wantonly place these labels on you simply because you love zombie films? One needs to defend one’s dignity of course!
You are at an art gallery gala enjoying the tremendously well-reviewed expo on Degas. Suddenly, out from behind a pedestal bust, you are accosted by a middle-aged bourgeois woman asking directions to the oils (note: pompous aggressors will come in all ages, the younger, the more vicious). She goes on about how it’s nice to see the youth of today enjoying traditional forms of expression blah blah. Figuring you have made a common connection, you reveal your current project, a zombie wedding film, to your newfound potential patron. This is when the wall goes up.
Madame makes the comment that she is not generally one to enjoy that sort of trashy material. Simply respond by stating that whether an art-form is “trashy” is completely subjective. After all, the Victorians found the groundbreaking nude works by artist Herbert Draper, indecent and heinous. Rather straightforward by todays standards, the works didn’t gain notoriety and respect in the art world for at least 60 years!
She then complains of the violent nature of zombie films. You may proudly counter her argument by speaking of the metaphor of violence. Depending on the film, violence should never at first be taken literally. In the case of the zombie-wedding project, the wedding represents the structured, traditional, and very much fragile train of civilized thought. The zombies and their subsequent destruction of the wedding, represents the tearing down of these stuffy modes of thinking. The violence needs to be exuberant to shock the brain out of its acceptance of the status quo. The mind is thus opened to a more radical (and fun) way of thinking.
It is nearing gallery closing time. The woman makes one last objection to the work you have labored over for the past six months. She states zombie films are too silly. This is where you remind her that pop art by the likes of Andy Warhol wasn’t exactly trying to depict the last days of Jesus.
If she objects any further, tell her to shove it.
So there you have it, some valid and well referenced arguments to further push the zombie film genre into the fine art world. I pray you never encounter a scenario like the one discussed above, but if you should, you now have defenses against the upper crust. Perhaps we will see the inclusion of best zombie film at Cannes next year. I await with bated breath.
George Somerwill
