From Night to Survival: Nihilism and the Living Dead

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marmysz
Keyword(s):  
Human Power ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Moral Constraint

This chapter scrutinizes the structure of George Romero’s Living Dead films in light of Friedrich Nietzsche’s distinction between passive and active nihilism. The films analysed include Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. It is argued that in this series there is a progressively building ambiguity in Romero’s attitude toward the passive forces of the zombie invasion and the active efforts of the human survivors. Initially, Romero’s sympathy seems to be with the humans; especially with minorities, women and the disabled. Yet as the films progress, sympathy shifts toward the undead, who are increasingly depicted as targets of human cruelty and abuse. What begins as a nightmare of nihilistic passivity eventually ends with a nightmarish scenario of nihilistic activity, exposing the awful potential of human power unleashed from moral constraint.

Cinematic Nihilism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marmysz
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Fight Club ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Dead

Exposing and illustrating how an ongoing engagement with nihilistic alienation may contribute to – rather than detract from – the value of life, this book both challenges and builds upon past scholarship that has strutinised nihilism in the media, but which has generally over-emphasised its negative and destructive aspects. The book is divided into three sections that explore an international variety of films in which encounters, confrontations and overcomings of nihilism are depicted. Drawing on insights from Plato, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud, it’s nine chapters include case studies of films such as The Wicker Man, Breaking the Waves, NEDs, Under the Skin, The Human Centipede, Nymphomaniac, Videodrome, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Rollerball, Fight Club, Avatar and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, among others. The overall trajectory of the book illustrates the potentially negative consequences involved in overcoming nihilism, while highlighting the potentially liberating and creative consequences of remaining entangled in an ongoing battle with nihilistic distress. The book’s main thesis is that cinematic nihilism is a potentially beneficial phenomenon that offers audiences the opportunity to explore and reflect on their mortal condition while remaining safely detached from real-life dangers.

Horror and Death: Rethinking Coco's Border Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Orquidea Morales
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Walt Disney Company ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
Animated Film ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The U.S

In 2013, the Walt Disney Company submitted an application to trademark “Día de los muertos” (Day of the Dead) as they prepared to launch a holiday themed movie. Almost immediately after this became public Disney faced such strong criticism and backlash they withdrew their petition. By October of 2017 Disney/Pixar released the animated film Coco. Audiences in Mexico and the U.S. praised it's accurate and authentic representation of the celebration of Day of the Dead. In this essay, I argue that despite its generic framing, Coco mobilizes many elements of horror in its account of Miguel's trespassing into the forbidden space of the dead and his transformation into a liminal figure, both dead and alive. Specifically, with its horror so deftly deployed through tropes and images of borders, whether between life and death or the United States and Mexico, Coco falls within a new genre, the border horror film.

Fight the Dead, Fear the Living

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Clasen
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Highly Effective ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead

George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) depicts the futile attempts of a group of people to survive a zombie outbreak by barricading themselves in a farm house. Romero’s film introduced the modern horror zombie, a reanimated, rotting corpse that feeds on the living, travels in hordes, and is contagious. This chapter argues that Romero’s implausible monster is highly effective because it triggers defensive adaptations in human evolutionary psychology, especially adaptations to predators and contagious substances. The zombie’s counterintuitive aspect, its undeath, makes it especially salient. Romero used the figure to probe human reactions to disaster and to paint a vivid picture of the inevitability of conflict and defeat, especially in terms of social, psychological, and organic breakdown. It resonated especially with disillusioned moviegoers at the time of its release, but the film’s monsters and themes continue to engage people because of their evolutionary salience.

Day of the Dead

Grand Street ◽  
1993 ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Stacey Land Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead

scholarly journals Procesy i egzekucje „żywych trupów” przed sądami miejskimi i wiejskimi w XVI–XVIII wieku – przyczynek do wierzeń w magia posthuma na Śląsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Daniel Wojtucki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

There are references reaching back to the Middle Ages, regarding the fear of the “undead” or “living dead” who would rise from their graves in a local cemetery to haunt and harm the community. The fear of the “undead” was extremely strong, and the entailing hysteria often affected entire communities. In the 16th to the 18th century, in Silesia, effective forms of coping with the harmful deceased were developed. Analysing the preserved source material, we are able to determine that the basic actions involved finding the grave of the “undead” in the cemetery, exhuming the corpse and destroying it. However, this did not always mean the total annihilation of the poor man’s corpse. The trial and execution of the corpse of a person suspected of the harmful activity against the living took place observing almost the same rules as in the case of the living. Apart from the authorities, who usually commissioned local jurors to handle the situation, opinions and advice were also sought from the clergy as well as gravediggers and executioners. The last were considered to be experts of sorts and were often called upon to see corpses of the suspected dead. In the analysed cases of posthumous magic (magia posthuma) in Silesia, we deal with two directions of handling the corpse accused of a harmful posthumous activity. In both cases, the main decision was made to remove such corpses from the cemetery’s area. Costs of the trial and execution of the “undead” were considerable. They included expenses incurred due to rather frequent court hearings at which sometimes dozens of witnesses were heard, payments to expert witnesses, payments to guards watching graves, costs of legal instructions, services of gravediggers who would dig up suspicious graves, and, finally, the remuneration of executioners and their people. In the second half of the 18th century, despite relevant decrees issued by supreme authorities, trials and executions of the dead were not completely abandoned.

scholarly journals Reading Discourses of Power and Violence in Emerging Kashmiri Literature in English: The Collaborator and Curfewed Night

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Amrita Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Conflict Zone ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This essay studies two literary texts on Kashmir, The Collaborator (2011) by Mirza Waheed and Curfewed Night (2010) by Basharat Peer and analyzes the discourses of power, overt forms of violence that the works present. It first contextualizes events from the last three years that have occurred in Kashmir to present forms of violence Kashmiri subjects undergo in the quotidian of life. The essay, thus, argues that the selected literary works represent Kashmir as a unique postcolonial conflict zone that defies an easy terminology to understand the onslaught of violence, and the varied forms of power. As analyzed in the article, one finds a curious merging of biopolitics and necropolitics that constructs the characters as “living dead” within this emergency zone. For this, the theoretical trajectory of the essay is mapped out to show the transition from Foucault and Agamben’s idea of biopolitics to Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics. Thereafter, essay concludes how the two texts illustrate Agamben’s notion of the bare life is not enough to understand subjects living in this unique postcoloniality. The presence of death and the dead bodies go beyond bare life and shows how that bodies become significant signifiers that construct a varied notion of agency.

scholarly journals EL CH'ULEL EN LOS ALTOS DE CHIAPAS: ESTADO DE LA CUESTIÓN

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Elena Lunes Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Companion Animal ◽  
The State ◽  
High Plains ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead

El artículo presenta una revisión de la literatura generada alrededor de la noción y concepto de ch’ulel, basada en la cosmovisión tsotsil-tseltal, en el altiplano chiapaneco. De acuerdo con las interpretaciones que los autores han realizado sobre dicho concepto, la información se sistematiza sobre los siguientes significados: ch’ulelcomo alma; en la salud y en la enfermedad; en la conciencia de los niños; como control social; el vayijelal o animal compañero como vela de la vida y como calor. Se distingue el concepto de ch’ulel con ch’ulelal;este último vinculado con la celebración del día de muertos. Se expone en su conjunto y como aporte de este artículo el concepto de Mundo ch’ulel.   SUMMARY The article presents a review of literature generated around the notion and concept of ch’ulel, based on the Tsotsil-Tseltal cosmovision, in the high plains region of the state of Chiapas. According to the interpretations formulated by the authors on said concept, information is systematized on the following meanings: the ch’ulel as soul; in health and in sickness; in the conscience of children; as social control; the vayijelal or companion animal; as candle of life and as heat. The ch’ulel concept is distinguished from that of ch’ulelal, the latter associated with the celebration of the day of the dead.  The concept of “ch’ulel world” is expounded as a whole and as contribution of this article.

Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film

2010 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Lowenstein
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Relationship

This essay analyzes the relationship between fear and film by exploring the theoretical concept of "attractions" and its value for a historical understanding of three seminal American horror films directed by George A. Romero: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Land of the Dead (2005), and Diary of the Dead (2008). All three films belong to the same "Living Dead" series, so the essay focuses especially on their shared temporal relations to historical trauma through issues of deferral, belatedness, and retranscription.

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