Sun 13 Jan 2008 In: Worth Checking Out View at Wayback View at NDHA
Look out! The Man Eaters* are coming your way! Welcome to the new zombie zeitgeist, but what's in it for us? Zombies appear to be the newly ascendant monstrosity du jour within the horror genre and popular culture both. Recently, there's been a minor spate of apocalyptic zombie fiction titles, such as the Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and David Wellington's Monster trilogy, which involves a rapid escalating covert military experiment gone hideously wrong. Added to which, you may spot an impromptu twentysomething zombie parade down one of our main streets at some point. However, are there such things as gay zombies? Zombies tend to be distinguished through their decaying flesh, shambling motion (due to deteriorating muscle and bone structures), lack of cardiac response, monotonous reparte and single-minded fixation on (primarily cannibalistic) nutrition sources. If this is indeed the case, then their lack of sentience would imply the lack of a conscious gay identity, or any other interest outside dietary satiation. So, given this, how could a gay zombie conceivably exist? There are two possible solutions to this. One is that in addition to their overwhelming and rather unaesthetic dietary compulsion, some gay zombies retain their sexual orientation. Presumably, if they aren't terribly decayed, they might even be able to go out on dates. Just don't let one get oral with you... For example, this appears to be the central theme of the wickedly funny parody, Creatures from the Pink Lagoon (2006 - trailer shown below). The second solution is that the zombie/s in question have somehow retained sentience, as some tended to do in David Wellington's apocalyptic trilogy of zombie novels. If this is the case, then they might be able to make conscious choices about non-nutritional-related human behaviour, although this didn't seem to be the case in David Wellington's trilogy.That was the case in one of Poppy Z.Brite's short stories, but then that zombie wasn't overtly interested in securing a bite (...) to eat. Will the zombie ever replace the staples of LGBT horror - lesbian and gay vampires (Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite), lesbian witches (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), lesbian ghosts (Hex) and so on? Or is the zombie on its way up the cinematic and literary food chain? *And no, there are no lesbian zombies in existence... yet! Recommended: Gay indie zombie movie parody: http://www.creaturesfromthepinklagoon.com/ Harry Benshoff: Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film: Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1997. Barbara Creed: The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis: Routledge: London: 1993 Fiction: Max Brooks: Zombie Survival Guide: London: Duckworth: 2004 Max Brooks: World War Z: New York: Crown: 2006. David Wellington: Monster Island: Monster Nation: Monster Planet: New York: Thunders Mouth Press: 2004, 2006, 2007 Craig Young - 13th January 2008