What I've learned from The Day of the Triffids, The Walking Dead, and 28 Days Later

I recently finished reading The Day of the Triffids, a science-fiction novel by British author John Wyndham published in 1951, about man-made carnivorous plants-the triffids-that begin to attack humans and kill them following a night-time meteor shower that blinds those who have watched it. Up to this point, they were aggressive in the sense of being able to sting people with their poisonous stingers, but after the meteor shower, they begin to move about and to kill humans. They are mostly localized to gardens, so that it remains safe for the most part to traverse city streets, but deadly to try to enter homes and dwellings that have any sort of garden attached to them. The opening scene, where the protagonist wakes up in a hospital bed (his eyes covered in bandages after having been splashed with triffid poison) to find himself almost alone, is one that has been borrowed by zombie apocalypse shows and films such as The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later.  The book is excellent in its portrayal of how people adapt to and cope in the new world of mostly-blind people wandering about in London and the rest of England, searching for food and for people to help them. As always in these types of stories, The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later included, the threat from monstrous creatures, while real, pales in comparison to the threat from the human monsters who take advantage of the situation and who try to control others with brute force. In other words, it becomes possible to shoot, hack at, and kill the zombies and triffids, but it is more difficult to do that with other human beings, because you don't always understand their motives until it is too late. In all three of these stories (book, TV series, and film), survivors band together in the search for food and safe lodging. It is not always smart to stay put if you first have found safe lodging, because at some point you will have to go out and find food, and that puts you at risk. You learn to kill the monsters, but you don't always know when they will appear. In The Day of the Triffids, those who can see (and who have a heart) try to take care of the blind people they run across, whereas other seeing people brutally shove them aside to let them die alone. Good people versus bad people, or are the bad people just the ones who have seen the grim future and understood that mankind has to make some hard choices? But we are human, and humans have hearts and empathy, and it is not easy to root that out. You will always have 'the every man for himself' type of people, and you will also have the altruistic people who always put others first. Both are extremes, because in a time of crisis, you need to have the middle-ground people, those who can see ahead and try to plan for the grim future, at the same time as they take care of the less fortunate.

Why do I bring up these apocalyptic themes? Because it is my contention that during times of crisis, you will sort into one of three groups of people: those who poo-poo the situation, ignore the seriousness of it and go about their lives as though nothing has happened (the 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' type of people); those who panic and begin to hoard foodstuffs and household products ('the every man for himself' type of people); and those who understand the gravity of the situation and who try to keep a cool head in the midst of chaos (the 'common sense-we will get through this' type of people). It is the latter group that the world needs more of. They are the people who understand that there is safety and efficiency in numbers, that our spiritual values require us to help others especially in times of crisis, and that to use reason and intelligence is necessary in order to find workable solutions that will ensure survival. I'll put my money on them any day. That much I've learned from apocalyptic literature, series, and films.

When will reality TV shows disappear?

We’re now well into season 6 of The Walking Dead; episode 10, entitled The Next World, aired on Monday evening here in Norway. Fear the Walking Dead starts up again in April, and tomorrow night the sixth (and final so far) episode of The X-Files airs. I’ve been watching them all and loving them. The return of The X-Files after so many years (it went off the air in 2002) made me very happy; I looked forward to getting involved with Mulder and Scully’s cases and their relationship all over again. And these episodes didn’t disappoint; despite mixed reviews (as always), they managed to hold my attention and left me wanting more. It’s not just that all these shows are sci-fi, horror, apocalyptic, or fantasy shows that appeal to me because I find those genres interesting. It’s that we get involved with the characters at the same time, characters that are dealing with life and death situations, survival, family matters, sickness and death. The zombies have to be dealt with and/or dispatched on The Walking Dead; likewise the mutants and monsters on The X-Files. No matter how fantastic it all becomes, no matter that the survival of the main characters is sometimes very surprising or even unthinkable, I am rooting for all of them to make it. This is television at its best—series that I enjoy following, that give me something to think about and look forward to each week; that entertain me, surprise me, shock me, and involve me. There are other good series too; Sleepy Hollow, Game of Thrones, Wayward Pines, and American Horror Story are just a few that come to mind. I’ve watched them too, but The Walking Dead and The X-Files remain my favorites. I’m just thankful that they exist at all, because most of what is available to watch is reality TV. I wish someone would take a hatchet to anything that even remotely smacks of reality TV, and put all these shows out of their misery forever. They include The Kardashians, all the cooking competition shows, all the lip-syncing competition shows, all the ‘how to survive on a desert island or on a mountain-top’ shows, all the shows about bratty children who fall in line when a nanny appears, all the shows about spoiled adults whose credit cards are maxed-out and who suddenly need professional help to get them out of debt, all the shows about presumably fashionable (not) women telling other women how to dress, all the shows about pawn shop users or those who go scrounging through other people’s garage possessions, and rich men’s wives. The list goes on ad nauseum.

I don’t know what I’d do without the TCM channel that serves up films from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, that even at their worst, are one hundred times better than anything offered me by reality TV shows. Most of the old films had real substance; a few were fluff, but the majority were not. These were films made about characters you wanted to get to know, involved in life dramas that mattered. Not so for reality TV shows. I wonder how our Western culture became so obsessed with the latter, and with one family in particular; that family’s every move is reported in the media. How did that happen, and why? Or is it just a matter of watching them because there is nothing else on? Why do I not care what happens to a single one of them? Why do I wish they would all crash and burn? All I know is that I am glad I grew up when watching television was an enjoyable experience, when shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Maya, Bonanza, Kojak, Sanford and Son, Bewitched, The Bionic Woman, The Bob Newhart Show, The Partridge Family, The Waltons, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, Dallas, Knot’s Landing, All in the Family, MASH, The Twilight Zone, Dark Shadows, Night Gallery, The Night Stalker, Columbo, Cheers, Miami Vice, Magnum PI, Married With Children, Murder She Wrote, St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, and Remington Steele, among many others, were popular. I watched them all and followed them all. They made an impression on me that has lasted. They were funny, sad, moving, provocative, entertaining, scary, intelligent, but above all, memorable. That cannot be said for reality TV programs. I feel sorry for this generation that has grown up with these shows; they have no real idea of what good television is, except perhaps when they sit down to watch the TV series that we grew up with. It is no wonder that streaming has become so popular; I can watch the shows I’m interested in and ignore the junk. That’s progress.  

Anxiety and dread in Fear the Walking Dead

I’m already hooked on the new TV series--Fear the Walking Dead (the prequel to The Walking Dead)—after only two episodes. I’ve read that there will be six episodes this season; it’s already been renewed for a second season. Unlike The Walking Dead that takes place in Georgia, Fear the Walking Dead takes place in Los Angeles and depicts how the apocalyptic zombie plague got its start as a flu-like virus that spreads rapidly together with the anxiety and paranoia that accompany it. Anxiety and a sense of mounting dread pervade the show; it’s not hard to imagine similar feelings if a disease like the plague spread rapidly throughout a large city and wreaked havoc on its populace. How might we react to such a plague, that the authorities would not be able to fight effectively or adequately inform the public about? How would we protect ourselves and our families? How would we survive, and what would we prioritize?

We know what’s coming in the next few episodes, since this is a prequel; we know from The Walking Dead that it’s going to be impossible to stop the zombie apocalypse. A huge city like Los Angeles and a large high school are not the first places we might expect to be creepy in broad daylight, but in this show, they are downright creepy. You half expect a zombie to appear around every corner in the high school or in the dark passageways under the highway overpasses that abound in the city. An abandoned church also ups the ‘creep you out’ factor; not surprising since this is where the first episode begins—in an abandoned church frequented by drug addicts who squat there. When Nick (played by Frank Dillane) awakes from his drug-induced sleep, his girlfriend Gloria is no longer beside him and he goes looking for her inside the church. He hears screams and goes toward those sounds, thinking that Gloria might be in trouble. When he finds her, she is no longer the girlfriend he used to know, and what he sees shocks him into wanting to get sober. He hightails it out of the church and ends up in the hospital after getting hit by a car. When his hospital roommate dies (surely an eventual zombie, implied but not shown), he escapes the hospital amid all the commotion and gets in touch with his friend and drug dealer, Calvin, who sold him the drugs. He thinks maybe he has been given drugs laced with PCP. Russell doesn’t like what he hears, and decides to take Nick out because he is afraid he will go to the police. But in a twist of fate, Calvin ends up dead, shot by his own gun, and Nick ends up alive. In the meantime, Nick's mother and her boyfriend (Madison and Travis, played by Kim Dickens and Cliff Davis, respectively) are searching for him; they have gone to the church to see for themselves what it is he has described to them (Gloria’s murderous rampage), and when they see a large pool of blood on the floor of the church, they understand that something bad has happened there. They drive around the seedier sections of the city trying to find Nick, and eventually they do, at a tunnel entrance to a storm drain. When he tells them that he has killed Calvin, they go to the scene of the shooting, only to find that Calvin is gone. What ensues convinces them that something horrific is afoot, and that they need to take what is happening around them seriously. 

The characters are believable, and behave for the most part in ways I can relate to. Trying to get one’s family members together in one location when a catastrophe strikes, being separated from those you love while doing so, trying to understand what is happening around you when you have very little time to reflect, and trying to decide whether you should provide help to others or just protect yourself and your family. These are issues that most of us can relate to. It will be interesting to see where this show takes us. I can definitely envision enough material for one season; I have a harder time understanding what the second season will focus on. But so far so good; I’m looking forward to the third episode. I’ve got to wonder though, why so many people, myself included, are watching shows with apocalyptic themes; is it an acknowledgment of the fact that we really cannot control the world around us, much as we think we can? Nature (tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis), pandemics (infectious diseases) or even certain groups within society (terrorists, gangs, etc.) do what they do whenever and wherever they want, and we have little to no control over them. 

Started watching Sleepy Hollow, still watching TWD

Started watching the show Sleepy Hollow at the beginning of January; we’re some months behind the USA where I know the season finale already took place in December. I love the show; it works for me, thanks to the superb acting of Tom Mison as Ichabod Crane, Nicole Beharie as Abbie Mills and Orlando Jones as Frank Irving. I grew up in Tarrytown NY, the sister town to Sleepy Hollow (which was formerly called North Tarrytown); The Legend of Sleepy Hollow written by Washington Irving was required reading in high school. Most inhabitants of both towns are familiar with the story of the Headless Horseman and Ichabod Crane. The TV show bears little resemblance to the original story, but it’s a cleverly-written supernatural show that works. Tonight’s episode, Sanctuary, was especially good; we now know that Katrina, Ichabod’s wife, gave birth to a son in a house that was a sanctuary for former slaves as well as a haven against supernatural evil forces. The baby’s birth breaks the protective spell surrounding the house and the evil forces invade the house. It is implied that many of the inhabitants were killed. In the present time it is an abandoned haunted house—haunted by good and evil ghosts, and ‘guarded’ by the ‘tree monster’ that was sent by the demon Moloch to destroy the original inhabitants of the house. The tree monster is awakened to life when a descendant of the original family who owned the house overtakes it and decides to renovate it and live there. Every now and then when I watch this show, I am (briefly) reminded of The X-Files, another favorite show of mine, because the wonderful chemistry between the two main characters Ichabod and Abbie in Sleepy Hollow reminds me of the chemistry between The X-Files’ Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny).

Still watching The Walking Dead (and it still gets under my skin—as in, it’s still pretty creepy after four seasons in). It’s not so much that I’ve grown attached to any particular character; it wouldn’t make much sense to do that, given that the show is not averse to killing off major as well as minor characters. Again, the actors (thanks to the writers) do a very credible job of showing us what it might be like to live in an apocalyptic world peopled by zombies. But the show also realistically depicts what it might be like to have to deal with other survivors who might not be the nicest people (the Governor and his lackeys). It is one of those rare shows where the group dynamics provide much of the reason for my watching it. I like the interplay between the characters, their different strengths and weaknesses, the way they depend on each other, and the way they face their fears, as well as watching them deal with the ‘walkers’, because that’s what the show is really about—dealing with the living dead that are always lurking about. It’s not so much the shuffling and the way they move and look that are unnerving, but rather the way they sound—you can hear them coming (growling) long before they actually appear. I suppose in one way this should be advantageous, as it gives the characters time to get away or to prepare for confrontation. On the other hand……..

A new favorite TV show

I am enjoying (if I can really use that word) watching the new season of The Walking Dead on Fox Crime on Thursday evenings. Perhaps a better way to say it is that I am enjoying being scared and jolted by the twists and turns and scares of the new season. We are about a week behind in Europe compared to the USA. The new episodes (Seed and Sick thus far) contained a lot more exciting action now that Rick and his motley group of survivors have arrived at the prison and made it their home. The ‘walkers’ inhabit certain areas of the prison and need to be dispatched if the group is to live there. Some of those attack scenes were pretty intense; we’re talking a high zombie dispatch rate and a group of survivors who were literally dead-set on taking the prison for themselves. But to spice things up even more, there were also surviving prisoners who were intent on keeping their prison for themselves, which made for a tense conflict in this week’s episode with unfortunate outcomes for some of those prisoners. Rick and his group don’t waste too much time talking; it’s kill or be killed.

I have been online to read about what people are saying about the new season, and a lot of the reviews are quite positive, precisely because there promises to be a lot more excitement during this season. There is less talk and more action, and many of the characters have gotten much tougher. It’s a welcome change from last season which moved slowly and relied on countless numbers of conversations to drive it forward. Not that slow or talky is bad, just that action is more exciting, and that is one of the reasons I tune into a show like this.

The last time I actually looked forward to watching a TV show each week was when The X-Files was on the air. Some of their episodes were completely spooky with assorted creatures and monsters (e.g. Home stands out) and the creep factor was quite high. But I sat and watched them all and dealt with being scared. The Walking Dead is different in that the humans are always under attack by the same type of monster—zombies. So the survivors have learned how to take them out and have become good at doing so. But at the same time viewers are being scared, they are also being comforted, because they know that ultimately the survivors will be able to take care of themselves. That doesn’t mean that favorite characters won’t die off; I’m sure they will as the season progresses, but it’s anyone’s guess as to who they will be. In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the ride--it promises to be a memorable one. 

In the spirit of Halloween

During the weekend I happened to be up late and decided to see what was on television. I stumbled across the new horror series that has been racking up rave reviews in the USA—The Walking Dead. The first season is being shown late at night here in Norway on the cable station Fox Crime; I understand that six episodes comprise the first season, and that the second season premiered in the USA last night. I have only managed to see two episodes of the first season so far, but what I’ve seen is fairly convincing. This is a cut above your average horror series. The zombies are very realistic and the entire show has such a realistic feel to it that you could almost imagine such a thing happening—a virus wiping out huge segments of the population and then the dead coming back to life as flesh-eating zombies. The episode I watched last night was the final one of the first season—when the CDC in Atlanta self-destructs after the generators lose power due to lack of fuel, taking the one scientist who decides to stay and end his life there with it. But before it is destroyed, this scientist shows the group of survivors who travel together the 3-D brain scans of his wife before she died of the virus, and how the virus spread through her brain, killing her. It was interesting to see the ‘live’ brain scans—the neural circuits in the brain flashing and then the virus spreading through the brain, causing the circuits to stop firing. Then, after some hours, some light started to glow in his dead wife’s brain stem, but nowhere else in the brain, allowing her to rise again as a zombie, at which point he shot her through the brain. I have to ask myself—why at my age do I still enjoy being scared by this type of show? Why do I still watch this type of horror? I find myself being scared in the same way as I was when I was a teenager. I know none of it is real, that it probably could never happen quite in this way, although an apocalypse of some sort could of course occur. That was more than realistically portrayed in Corman McCarthy’s book The Road, which I found to be quite a harrowing read. For that reason, I did not watch the film based on the book and which starred Viggo Mortensen, mostly because it all seemed so hopeless and dark beyond words. Perhaps the difference between it and The Walking Dead is that there seems to be some hope in the latter, if only in that the survivors can in fact take out the zombies, who are slow-moving and easy to kill. But they are ugly and scary-looking and the show is definitely not for children or the faint-hearted. I found myself thinking of I Am Legend with Will Smith and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston as well, also films where viruses led to scenarios quite similar to those in The Walking Dead—survivors battling virus-infected monsters and vampires respectively. Both of these films are based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, which is excellent.

Zombie and vampire movies continue to fascinate us, as is evidenced by how well most of them do at the box office. They scare us—and we seem to like being scared. Monsters scare us, the monsters of our childhood, the ones hiding in the closet or under the bed. The dark scares us, and it seems to be an instinctive response—we cannot see in the dark and that by itself leads to fear, because we are vulnerable in the dark. I remember that feeling as a child. What lies behind the door? What is in the closet? What is under my bed if I look down or if my foot sticks out from under the covers? What will get me if I am not protected? What if I look out the window and a monster stares back at me from the darkness? That is why the scenes of the monsters overrunning New York City in I Am Legend were terrifying. They were strong, vicious predators and nothing seemed to stop them. They hid indoors by day and came out at night. Imagine a society where that was the case—howling screeching monsters running amok in the night. 28 Days Later was another such film that created the same feelings; especially the one scene in the tunnel where the car with uninfected survivors won’t start and you can hear the infected mob bearing down upon them. Will they escape, and what happens if they don’t? We know the answer but we watch anyway to make sure they get away. Because some of them have to escape the horrible fate that awaits them—some of them have to live. We have to know that it is possible to survive, otherwise what is the point of watching?  

Halloween is soon upon us. Each year the USA (and now many European countries ironically enough) celebrates this strange holiday—a combination of pagan and Christian influences. Halloween is not originally an American holiday. The idea of Halloween with masks and costumes is in fact quite ancient, originating with the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer (information culled from different websites). The Celts (who were spread out over much of Western Europe) believed that demons and ghosts of the dead returned to earth during harvest time (before the winter months) due to the fact that the gates between life and death were more ‘open’ at this time of year. These other-world visitors were dangerous because they could cause trouble with the harvest and food stores for the winter months, so it was necessary to appease them. The Celts thus wore costumes and masks during Samhain to ward off demons and ghosts, sacrificed animals and burned crops to their gods in bonfires built by their priests (the Druids) who could control the supernatural energy present at this time of year. We thus have Halloween in our blood, so to speak. Despite the Christian influences that eventually overtook Halloween, the original pagan celebration is a part of our heritage. The fear of the supernatural world, of demons, ghosts, vampires and monsters, is as old as time. Fire could protect, darkness was danger. We would prefer not to be visited by ghosts and demons; we would do what we could to prevent that. In our ‘civilized’ age, we don’t believe that ghosts, demons, vampires and monsters walk the earth, but the superstitious part of us is tenacious and not easy to get rid of no matter how ‘civilized’ we are. Perhaps that is one explanation for our fascination with the darkness, with the unknown, with monsters. As much as we like to pretend that we don’t get scared, the reality is something else again.