Wanted Undead or Alive:. Джонатан Мэйберри

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СКАЧАТЬ a duology of zombie novels. “No further progress will be made. Nothing more will be manufactured. Life will go on—mostly—but the society has broken a cog and stopped in place. What remains are the echoes of that society, and now that it’s frozen, and we, the survivors, have become something more, we can look back at it and really see what we were. It also forces the human characters to expose themselves: a greedy person might successfully hide behind a curtain in a civilized society, but in an anarchic one, they will have to be openly greedy and grab what they can when they can…Similarly, a generous character might be open-handed to the extent that they do not eat enough. The situation forces the morality of the character, for good or ill, to surface and take over. A person’s morals—their principles—are the cornerstones of their personality, and I truly think that in an extreme situation, an individual will tend to revert to these cornerstones almost unconsciously, and cling to them.”

      Zombie Appeal

      “Zombie stories appeal to a wide set of groups on a lot of different levels. There are the darkly beautiful feelings of hopelessness and bleakness that run rampant in the genre, but there’s also the fantasy escapism of being one of the last people alive with everything left to you but also being free from the rules of a civilization that no longer exists.”—Eric S. Brown is the author of Season of Rot (Permuted Press, 2009) and The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies (Coscom Entertainment, 2009).

      “You cannot judge zombies in a moral sense,” argues Dr. Kim Paffenroth, associate professor of religious studies at Iona College and author of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006). “Before the modern era, there was talk of something they called ‘natural evil’—things we’d call natural disasters or just facts of life (earthquakes, fires, diseases, etc.). Zombies would seem to fit there. It also means that zombie tales have to go one of three ways, it seems to me: either they humanize the zombies and give them more of a sense of mind and soul, or they treat them as a natural disaster (which makes some zombie movies look more like disaster movies than monster movies), or they have to focus on the evils committed by human survivors against one another.”

      Jacob Kier, the founder and editor of Permuted Press, one of the most successful publishers of zombie and apocalyptic fiction, agrees. “The classic Romero-style zombies are neither good nor evil, they’re driven by pure instinct. You wouldn’t call a shark that attacks a human ‘evil,’ so neither would you call a Romero-style zombie evil. There as dangerous as a tsunami but equally innocent of malicious intent.”

      Night of the Living Id

      “Freud described the id as ‘The dark, inaccessible part of us that has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of instinctual needs.’ That sounds like a zombie to me. At least the reanimated dead we’ve come to know and love over the past four decades. Creatures not driven by any agenda or motivated by any amoral sense, but operating completely on instinct. Zombies are all id, just like newborn children. True, most children aren’t born with the instinct to consume the flesh or brains of their parents, but that’s no justification to label zombies as evil. They’re just a collection of involuntary drives and impulses demanding immediate satisfaction.”—S. G. Browne is author of Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament (Broadway Books, 2009) and Fated (NAL, 2010).

      Though, admittedly, it might be hard to remember that when a zombie is chomping on your arm.

      “Blameless,” Kier adds, “does not equal ‘harmless.’”

      Part of the popularity of zombie and apocalyptic stories stems from the joy of seeing people survive against overwhelming odds. Seeing a great bit of ingenuity is thrilling in any context, but in an apocalyptic scenario the opportunity for ingenuity is boosted to a whole new level. Take the ultimate survival challenge combined with the new level of freedom due to society’s collapse and out pops a whole new horizon of solutions to all manner of problems. Go ahead and take an axe to the staircase. Build a wall out of wrecked cars. Construct catwalks between rooftops. Trap and train the zombies (or aliens, or infected). Nuke a city to eliminate just one person (or creature, or building). Fight to get into prison. Fans of the apocalypse eat up these scenarios that can only really play out in a world that’s already gone to hell.

      THE MISUNDERSTOOD MONSTER

      Along with the mindless evil we have the misunderstood monster, a creature who is dangerously innocent. Innocent because he, she, or it lacks the emotional maturity or cultural awareness to grasp the concepts of right and wrong or good and bad. Dangerous because they may be equally unaware of their own strength or unable to control their own nature. Yet these monsters differ from the mindless variety because they can think (to a degree) and feel (again, to a degree), and they are often confused, hurt, psychologically damaged, or too alien for their own good.

      The classic example is Frankenstein’s monster. He has no true identity; he’s a composite being with a damaged brain. Many literary scholars have debated over whether such a creature would have a soul—though I tend to think so. The possession—or lack thereof—of a soul was never the creature’s issue. It was his damaged brain and awareness of his hideous and unique nature. This was most poignantly portrayed by Boris Karloff in the James Whale movie of 1931. Karloff gave humanity to the creature and highlighted its pitiable state.

      Misunderstood Monsters

      “I always sympathize with the monster, because the most interesting ones are simply misunderstood when you get right down to it. They really just want one thing: love! All the classics like Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, and the Wolf-man are simply looking for a hug from a lovely gyno-American! I have always wanted Frankenstein’s monster to live, and instead of a little girl with a daisy, I made sure Toxie caught the blind eye of a gorgeous blond bombshell!”—Lloyd Kaufman is president of Troma Films and creator (with Joe Ritter) of the Toxic Avenger.

      Universal Pictures made a number of films with a similar theme. In both versions of their take on werewolves, The Wolf Man (1941) and The Wolfman (2010), Larry Talbot is a tragic figure who is by no means evil and is unable to control the violence of the monster that lives beneath his skin. Each morning following the full moon, when Talbot becomes aware of what the werewolf has done, he is torn by remorse. Genuine remorse.

      Twas Beauty Killed the Beast

      “King Kong was always my favorite. He was taken away from what he knew, his home and life, to a place where he was a monster, a novelty and a tragic victim of his captors. The love story is there to humanize the beast so we can relate better with his loss and solidify the monster to our own perspectives. Most great stories involve a monster who is a hero and a hero who is a monster.”—Doug Schooner is an artist, poet, and animator.

      King Kong is another twist. Kong has the intelligence of a great ape, or perhaps a smidge more, but he isn’t a human and cannot reason (we assume) like a human. However, he shows compassion when protecting Anne Darrow from pterodactyls and tyrannosaurs, and he believes he’s protecting her when he breaks out of the New York theater and carries her to the top of the Empire State Building. At the same time, the mayor, the governor, and the flyers from Roosevelt Field are justified in doing what they do to protect the city from the monster. They kill him the way they would kill a lion loose in the streets. Has either character acted with evil? No. The true villain of the piece is Carl Denham, the blowhard show-man who captures Kong and brings him to America. Every death in the movie can be laid at his feet, and yet none of the film versions really paint him as evil. Corrupt, self-important, egocentric…but not evil; yet he shows no remorse for all the deaths he’s caused. It’s weird, and it’s also disturbing.

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      IT DIDN’T START WITH VAN HELSING

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