{"id":315,"date":"2019-02-10T13:38:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T18:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/?p=315"},"modified":"2019-02-10T13:38:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T18:38:28","slug":"dead-set-against-the-walking-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/2019\/02\/10\/dead-set-against-the-walking-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Set Against The Walking Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zombie cinema and television have become a staple of American media since their\u00a0inception in the 1930s.\u00a0 Popularized by Romero’s\u00a0Night of the Living Dead\u00a0<\/em>in 1968, the genre has largely become a commentary about human nature itself, with the zombies acting as a sort of catalyst to instigate the\u00a0human conflict.\u00a0 Dead Set<\/em>, a British mini-series, seems to follow this same structure throughout the first two episodes of the show.<\/p>\n

The most celebrated and mainstream example of zombie\u00a0television is\u00a0The Walking Dead<\/em>.\u00a0 With its initial release in 2010, the show came 2 years after\u00a0Dead Set<\/em>.\u00a0 Having once been an avid fan of\u00a0TWD\u00a0<\/em>for the shows first few seasons, I now have not kept up with the show for ~5 years.\u00a0 Part of the appeal early on, for me, was the constant struggle between human\/zombie enemies.\u00a0 The outbreak, much like in\u00a0Dead Set<\/em>, caused instantaneous widespread panic, as people fought for their survival.\u00a0 The action and uncertainty of fighting an unknown enemy, much like what was seen at the beginning of both series, is the most satisfying aspect of the genre.\u00a0 Balancing that against battling other humans for power, wealth, and resources requires every character on the show to\u00a0remain honest and aware at all times, even when there are no ‘undead’ are around to\u00a0attack.\u00a0 Each week was a new struggle with both the human and zombie enemies, as things were still relatively new.<\/p>\n

Around Season 5 of\u00a0TWD<\/em>, however, the zombies took a second-hand (they stopped being a major<\/em> threat to the action of the show) to humans as the primary enemy.\u00a0 While realistic, human enemies are not why audiences tune into watch the show.\u00a0 As soon as\u00a0TWD\u00a0<\/em>became so overt in its critique of humanity, it lost its appeal for me and many others that watched the show.\u00a0 I may have jumped ship earlier than others because of several of my favorite characters being killed, but Miles Surry, in an article from this past season<\/a>, discusses\u00a0TWD<\/em>‘s decision to stray further from being a show about zombies.\u00a0 TWD <\/i>is\u00a0finally shifting the show’s themes, after the show stagnated between finding new\u00a0settlements and fighting their corrupt leaders with the\u00a0occasional zombie massacre for the past few years since I stopped watching. Now the show intends to examine the reconstruction of a zombie outbreak, as opposed to the fallout.\u00a0 Perhaps a fault of making the series so long, and thus needing to extend the plotlines,\u00a0ratings and viewership have<\/a>\u00a0both been trending down over the years.\u00a0 With most of the criticism stemming from the writers introducing too many stale, unwanted, or unconvincing characters, it would seem that the show got too caught up in expanding the story and only spun the tires.\u00a0 The legacy of the show remains to be seen, with the success of this ‘rebirth’ likely being the determining factor.<\/p>\n

Zombies clearly seem to be a critique of mindless Western consumerism and the “pack mentality”, which\u00a0are commonly cited as issues ‘plaguing’ these societies.\u00a0 The half-dead, half-living appeal paired with the apparent lack of brain function and free-thought thus make zombies a perfect rendering of a tool scary yet recognizable enough to analyze certain\u00a0aspects of our own human behavior.\u00a0\u00a0Dead Set\u00a0<\/em>fits the mold of balancing conflict, with the reality show being an obvious criticism of mindless consumerism.\u00a0 The fact that its a 5-episode mini-series leaves far less room to ‘go wrong’ since the show is not required to build massive plotlines.\u00a0 While\u00a0TWD<\/em> might be a better drama-series,\u00a0Dead Set<\/em> seems to do a better job of nailing the zombie-genre down effectively.<\/p>\n

**I also greatly appreciated how seamlessly\u00a0Dead Set\u00a0<\/em>fit against\u00a0A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em>, with both including external anxieties, such as demons and zombies, contrasted against a reality television set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zombie cinema and television have become a staple of American media since their\u00a0inception in the 1930s.\u00a0 Popularized by Romero’s\u00a0Night of the Living Dead\u00a0in 1968, the genre has largely become a commentary about human nature itself, with the zombies acting as a sort of catalyst to instigate the\u00a0human conflict.\u00a0 Dead Set, a British mini-series, seems to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"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-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-b"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-55","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\/315","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\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}