While watching the first couple episodes of \u201cDead Set\u201d I was thinking about Jeffrey Cohen\u2019s article, \u201cMonster Culture\u201d and the role that the zombies play on this show. First, I thought about what makes zombies inherently scary and, based on Cohen\u2019s theses, I believe they fit into at least three categories. Zombies are a cultural body, they\u2019re the harbinger of category crisis and they dwell at the gates of difference. They\u2019re a cultural body because they represent people\u2019s fear of invasion and disease. Maybe it\u2019s a fear of foreign invasion or a fear of non-white people since the fighters and survivors in most of these films are usually all American or predominantly white. Examples of movies like this include \u201cZombieland\u201d and \u201cShaun of the Dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zombies are harbingers of category crisis because they\u2019re walking contradictions. Being the \u201cliving dead\u201d defies the categories we know of and creates fear. This is what also causes them to dwell at the gates of difference because they\u2019re dead cannibals, with deformed faces and little intelligence. They\u2019re the opposite of a normal human being and just looking at them is terrifying enough and the fact that they\u2019re sole purpose is to eat and kill humans doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting about the zombies on \u201cDead Set\u201d is that while their sole purpose is to eat and kill people, they\u2019re focused on killing the people on the reality tv show \u201cBig Brother.\u201d The creators of this show purposely placed zombies on this set to disrupt this popular reality show in the most extreme way. This could mean a couple of things. One, the creators are trying to make a point about what reality tv is doing to humanity. Maybe they believe that reality tv or tv in general is turning us into zombies; single-minded and slow. Two, the creators are critiquing reality tv and believe that it needs to be destroyed and they\u2019re using zombies as the tool to do that.<\/p>\n
The Big Brother characters aren\u2019t placed in the best light. They\u2019re vain, insecure and obsessed with performing for the camera. The behind the scenes look at the show reveals how fake reality tv is. There\u2019s heavy editing which manufactures drama for the audience and the contestants are being over the top so they can stand out and be popular. I believe the creators turn Cohen\u2019s first thesis on its head. Usually humanity is the “hero” that kills the monster but I believe that on “Dead Set” reality tv is the real monster, the cultural body that needs to be destroyed, and the zombies are actually the \u201cheroes\u201d of the show who will kill the monster. To be honest I\u2019m not mad at that idea. If reality tv died tomorrow, I wouldn\u2019t really care, I think I\u2019d actually be happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While watching the first couple episodes of \u201cDead Set\u201d I was thinking about Jeffrey Cohen\u2019s article, \u201cMonster Culture\u201d and the role that the zombies play on this show. First, I thought about what makes zombies inherently scary and, based on Cohen\u2019s theses, I believe they fit into at least three categories. Zombies are a cultural …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-53","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}