{"id":513,"date":"2017-02-14T13:43:10","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=513"},"modified":"2017-02-14T13:43:10","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T13:43:10","slug":"avoiding-the-z-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/02\/14\/avoiding-the-z-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding the Z-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

So far in my viewing of the first two episodes of Dead Set<\/em>, a British television series about filming a Big Brother<\/em> TV show during a zombie apocalypse, no one has used the word “zombie”. The characters use vague pronouns like “it” or “them” of “things”, but never settle on a name for the undead* monsters.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Devina as a zombie. Source: Zombie Guide Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why not use the z-word? As a novice to the zombie apocalypse genre, perhaps referring to the monsters as “things” and not “zombies” is common. This does add to the confusion and heightens the terror around the monsters. By not calling them “zombies”, a well-known and defined category of monster, the audience is left more uneasy and does not know (entirely) what to expect from the creatures – like these creatures, which are fast-moving zombies (who can’t climb gates, or swim, apparently).
\nAnother reason could be that in the world of the show, the idea of a zombie doesn’t exist. As a result, the characters have never seen horror films or TV shows with zombies and don’t have that familiar classification for the undead.<\/p>\n

Since we knew several of these characters before they changed, perhaps the show avoids “zombie” because referring to them as an other is dehumanizing. Often the characters still refer to known zombies by their given names, such as the producer Peter and contestant Pippa when talking about the (now zombie) host Davina. By still using their names, killing them has an emotional aspect since the characters still associate their human versions with the creatures.<\/p>\n

Whatever reason the writers used, not using the term “zombie” irked me as a viewer and resulted in several fumbling “th-th-those THINGS” in the dialogue.
\n*\u00a0Shakespeare frequently used “un” words to draw certain emphasis to the opposite of the word or the revocation of a verb, such as “unking” or “unbroke” (both from Richard II). Since one becomes a zombie after dying from a zombie’s bite and returning to “life”, using a Shakespearean interpretation of “undead” makes the for an interesting analysis of the zombification process. Terming them “undead” reflects their transformation back through a reversed process of dying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So far in my viewing of the first two episodes of Dead Set, a British television series about filming a Big Brother TV show during a zombie apocalypse, no one has used the word “zombie”. The characters use vague pronouns like “it” or “them” of “things”, but never settle on a name for the undead* … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Avoiding the Z-Word”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[70,71],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a","tag-dead-set","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}