Chadwick Jordan
#830282211
2/9/16
Final Draft
Analyzing and Evaluating Nicole Birch-Bayley’s “Terror in Horror Genres”
Nicole author of Terror in Horror Genres: The Global Media and the Millennial Zombie, sets out to prove our political and cultural objectives, are inherently violent, reflective of our culture and manifested thru the media. In fact, she states the media is responsible for this shift reflected in zombie films as the crisis culture. I have issue with the amount of influence Nicole has given the media. Nicole jammed packed her article with evidence that we will go over, compare and then arrive at a conclusion.
First let’s take a look at the parallels mentioned in the movies with our current culture. The very first zombie
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In 2007 Juan Carlos introduced a sequel to Danny’s 28 days called 28 weeks later. Ironically it is more extreme than the first. Fresnadillo centers on what Snyder did, not necessarily the fear of violence but the fear of societies ability to suppress the violence. This helps propel these films forward, and this influence comes from the director not the media. Since Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead classic the film zombies are almost too alive, running, jumping, and screaming. News masters feed us images of violence and urgent threats on a regular basis, why not create zombies that mimic the same. Danny Boyle certainly took advantage of this emerging market around the world.
Diary of the Dead is different from other millennial zombie flicks in terms of how explicitly it centers on global media. Jason Creed made a like documentary called Death of Death, which is about the global media mania, spin doctrine, and the reality of international crisis. The film was made to tell you the truth and scare you, so we do not repeat the same mistakes. The movie warns against media pressure and more impartiality in distinguishing the truth from
The article “Dead man still walking: Explaining the zombie renaissance” by Kyle Bishop is about the revitalization of the zombie genre. The article talks about the inception in the late 1960’s, the category of zombie films has had its roller coaster ride of ups and downs, starting with its decline in the early 1980’s with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Furthermore, during 1990’s, due to the shift in the cultural consciousness that came with the Clinton Administration and the countries isolation from global tragedies, the popularity of these films continued to decline. Cultural consciousness refers to the understanding and awareness a shift in feelings, sensations, thoughts, of not only our own culture, but adjoining cultures.
In the modern movie genre, horror movies accounts for very great proportion of the number of followers. Relevantly, the zombie film genre has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream horror, replacing the previous monster such as vampires and werewolves. In Max Brooks’s essay “The Movies That Rose From the Grave”, he offers his opinion that throughout the process of zombie film transformation, it increasingly captivates viewers while gradually generates the modern horror. Brooks’s essay should be an appropriate inclusion of a college textbook which explains the phenomenon of the “undead explosion” in various kinds of media, proving to the audiences with enthusiasm, interest, credibility and specific examples that zombie culture is resurrecting a formerly obsolete genre.
The horror genre has been captivating and enthralling the masses for centuries, but more recently in the twentieth century these morbid tales have moved from the old media of oral stories and literature to the new medium of horror pictures. Horror pictures still are not the end of the evolution of the horror genre, as this medium itself has experienced evolutions to satisfy an increasingly desensitized audience. To exemplify this evolution of horror pictures we will be taking a look at an occult classic from 1968 Night of the living dead and a new thriller The Walking Dead. Both horror pictures portray a zombie apocalypse and there are similarities and differences in the main characters, the zombies, and the worlds of the two pictures.
Romero created a new version of monster movies with zombies in Night of The Living Dead. The zombies
When analyzing this piece of writing it is clear that the purpose is not to entertain or persuade. The purpose, instead, is to inform and give a new perspective on zombie movies in a simple way that an audience of all ages can understand. In Andrew Cooper and Brandy Blake’s, “George Romero Zombie Films: A Plague of Meaning,” the authors walk the reader through how as time changed zombie movies changed with it. The authors further explain how zombies in many movies represent the time and culture. The writers inform the reader through their use of information from past zombie movies and analysis of the events of the times they were made.
There has been a resurgence of zombie films in the last decade, ranging from Danny Boyles 28 Days Later to Paul W.S. Andersons Resident Evil. This renaissance of zombie cinema has resurfaced in response to the cultural, political, and social volatility experienced in today’s society, much like its predecessors. A zombie film, unlike other monster movies, plays more with the real-world fears and anxieties, presenting the audience with inescapable realities. However, to understand why this subgenre has been brought back into the mainstream cinema, a comparison is needed across generations of film. This paper will focus on the comparison between George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Danny Boyles 28 Days Later; in an attempt to show how zombie cinema is a reaction to cultural shocks.
Rodney Clapp, writer, editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers and expert in topics such as theology and culture, in the article, “Attack of the Zombies”, argues that many things in life are beginning to resemble zombies. Clapp assumes that the audience also views zombies as lifeless creatures that go around spreading their disease. The author’s purpose is to persuade the audience to believe that many things they see today are starting to resemble zombies. The author writes in a challenging tone for people who question the similarity of zombies to every day life. Clapp supports his argument by comparing and contrasting, and exemplification.
him or her involved in the film - how often have you been watching a
In the “Night of the Living Dead”, it illustrates the year on which it's based pretty accurately in some ways, but not so accurately in others. In one case where the motion picture portrays 1969 accurately is when they said the cause of the dead rising was revealed as high-level radiation from a space probe, but you could compare that radiation to what nuclear fallout could be due to the cold war looming with the Russians. It also depicted how gruesome the Vietnam war was, like the blood, guts and how relentlessness the zombies were compared to the Viet-Kong. The way the movie depicted 1969 inaccurately was that there wouldn't be a black man in charge of a household of white men and women. That would be due to the reason that black people back then barely had any rights at all and weren't even seen as human due to racial discrimination. Also, movies during this time barely showed any skin on women, but you could clearly see in the movie that some women zombies were completely naked which was extremely unusual for 1969. In this movie, it puts in a lot of diversity that was very uncommon at this time, but it also broke the ice for future leadership roles to be African Americans.
In the Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, one the biggest topics in the story is zombies. Recently scientists have found a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, or more famously called as "Zombie ant fungus". After killing its host, the zombie ant fungus grows from the ant's body and produces spores, which rain down on the forest floor to infect new hosts. The zombie ant fungi is named for its ability to control the behavior of its host in this case. All of the characters of The Forest of Hands and Teeth all the characters would be shocked because.
Fear of the unknown has been an effective psychological dynamic fueling curiosity for ages, and the notion of a zombie apocalypse has become omnipresent in all aspects of today’s modern culture especially in media programming. Fueling this fascination is AMC’s The Walking Dead (Darabont, 2010) fashioned on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. This series has experienced widespread acceptance in today’s pop culture, capturing the People’s Choice Award for favorite cable drama in 2014 as well as the Critics’ Choice Television Award for most bingeworthy show in 2015. Ratings for The Walking Dead over the past six seasons show that millions of viewers tune in each week averaging approximately 12-13 million viewers regularly indicative of the appeal that zombie apocalyptic entertainment has had on today’s culture in relation to total population. The connection the industry has created with viewing audiences in regards to a zombie apocalyptic world has resonated through our imagination, as it has brought the comic book pages to life in a way that the graphic illustrations of the printed account are unable to accomplish. The interest in the end of the world as we know it has encapsulated the entertainment world in areas of print, television, cinema, and video game entertainment. For instance, the 2013 Paramount Pictures blockbuster hit, World War Z, promoted further transformation of what defines a zombie grossing $500 million globally
A girl runs frantically through the woods trying to escape an axe wielding villain. The defenseless victim suddenly trips and collapses to the ground. The villain laughs wickedly as he lifts the axe above his head. The girl releases a final scream as the weapon quickly ends her life, causing the audience to go silent as they watch the villain drag away the lifeless body. Death, blood, guts, suspense, screaming, and terror are all just a few things to expect when watching a modern day horror film. What is horror? Horror can be defined as an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. (Wilson) The description of horror is not very pleasant, but for some reason horror films are extremely popular. Why is this so? People are addicted to the
Is it possible to kill an idea when it is undead? Classic movie monsters tend to fade in and out of popularity as audiences grow bored and move on to fresher concepts. But there is one that has risen up and does not seem to slow down: zombies. Zombies have gone from being a small subgenre of horror film to a staple of popular culture across various media. This paper will explore the rise of zombies in popular culture and why it continues to remain relevant.
The popularity and appeal of the undead has greatly increased in the past few years with the rise of the popular television show, The Walking Dead. The show began in October 2010, and is still on the air today. Before the show was created, there were The Walking Dead comic books that were first published in 2003, and continue to be published today with over 148 issues. The fascination did not begin with The Walking Dead, though. Many movies were produced, and many books published before The Walking Dead was even thought of. An extremely influential individual to note is George Romero. Romero is an American-Canadian screenwriter, film producer, film director, and editor. He is best known for his series of apocalyptic films, beginning with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Romero has been nicknamed the “Godfather of the Undead.” Some other works of fiction and film to note include 28 Days Later, I am Legend, Pride and Prejudice Zombies and The Zombie Survival Guide, also by Max Brooks. Our cultural fascination with “the return of the dead” can be traced back to the events and the general morale leading up to World War Two, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
A sixteen-year-old boy sits on the couch and watches a horror movie. Suddenly, a scene where a man stabs a woman emerges on the television screen. The boy is not distressed by this scene because he is used to witnessing a great deal of violence before. He just learned a new idea and increased his criminal expertise. As a result, horror movies inspire copycat crimes. Copycat crimes are defined as those that are “inspired, motivated or modeled after acts that have occurred before in the media” (“Understanding”). The crimes themselves either mirror the inspiring acts or are simply based upon them. Violence and criminal behavior shown in horror movies affect people psychologically and physically. Watching violence in the media desensitizes people to the world around them and enables them to become more familiar with violence and crime. One may conclude that horror movies do not affect them because they watch horror for fun, however, people are unconsciously affected by watching horror movies. Although most people believe horror movies do not impact them, horror movies inspire people to commit copycat crimes in real life because the violence portrayed in the media psychologically damages people and makes them more aware of violence.