Michael A. Appel 
MAY 24 – Warning: there are no spoilers ahead.
Last week, director Zach Snyder released army of the dead. This movie sees a ragtag team of generalist shooters, a helicopter pilot, and a security hacker take on, well, an “army” of the undead in a tattered, abandoned Las Vegas.
The plot borrows a bit from last year’s Peninsula where a team also infiltrates zombie-infested territory to retrieve something, but you know with Snyder, nothing is quite like it is elsewhere (see note 1).
Although each zombie movie usually offers something unique – I’m a legend had Will Smith as a solitary individual wandering in an apocalyptic metropolis, dawn of the dead It was a holdout and a holdup for a high cost of living mall deal, World War Z was a quest around the world for patient zero (with an added twist that zombies stayed away from terminally ill people), zombieland was a family story with zombies in the background and resident Evil was the same, except instead of family it was evil society, etc. – the zombie “element” remains the same.
It’s the constant in every great zombie movie: the mob of dead and still living, bloodthirsty former humans hunt and claw the world and society to sate their desire for, well, blood and meat.
Pure desire, pure obsession, crazy race towards a goal. Bullets, saws, and bombs can get in the way, but it doesn’t matter: if a zombie sees a meal, it runs for it.
Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Žižek has suggested that the popularity of zombies lies in the appeal of the concept of this pure desire even in death.
If only a zombie had half the motivation for his career when he wasn’t yet a zombie. But it is that, isn’t it? There is something about pure, delusional desire that attracts us.
Zombies are “alive while dead” – they are clinically dead while behaving with such lust that shatters the boundaries of life as we know it – while, sigh, maybe many of we are “dead alive“, that is, even though we are clinically still among the living, our existence often seems lifeless.
So some of us secretly want to be “captured” by a lens that blinds us to the world.
Perhaps we all wish we were so “caught” in an impulse, in a target, that our lives were both invigorated and meaningful at the same time?
Yes, yes, of course, we understand that it is not always “convenient” or healthy (imagine a child whose only concern in life is to be straight as in SPM and nothing else, or a woman if devoted to her husband whom she voluntarily suffers from abuse) but we must admit that we cannot help but be fascinated by these people.
This is also why we like quest or adventure documentaries in which a team risks their lives to reach the top of a mountain or cross an island.
Kind of like “Snake Master” Austin Stevens risking his life to get a picture of a dangerous snake. Or solo free climber Alex Honnold risking a fall of hundreds of feet just to conquer a magnificent cliff face. Or, Jesus undergoing torture and death for love of humanity.
Our capitalist society is also involved in one way or another. Look at all the ads bombarding us 24/7. On the one hand, these stimulate more and more types of desires within society, on the other hand, we are often numbed by the sheer number of options available for consumption.
So much so that finding something “real” to desire, as opposed to yet another t-shirt, phone, or car accessory, becomes invaluable.
And make no mistake about it, we humans desire to desire.
There is something about the dogged pursuit of something, even to the point of irrationality, that attracts us. Maybe we love zombie movies because these creatures, despite all the gore and horror, demonstrate an intensity that we wish we had?
Footnote 1: army of the dead has plenty of gore and firepower and, as is the case with many zombie films, a fair amount of personal angst. It’s 2.5 hours of mayhem that, to Synder’s credit, generally remains unpredictable.
*This is the columnist’s personal opinion.
