Sorry, dollfaces, but I can’t get the politics out of this one. You’ll have to forgive my post-modernist leanings on this one. It may not have been meant to be political [because it wasn’t], but whatever it was supposed to be, political is what it is. I’m a semiotics researcher. I can do that.
What do you mean that the Communists are invading?! It’s the Red Menace, here to eat us alive and wipe out that all-American spunk to make us mindless drones of the hive mentality! Or…any other political force, military action, or new brand of diet soda. Take your pick.
It’s funny, though, because while this movie is so obviously born out of the fears of this era, I can also see echoes of some of the arguments I hear now: don’t spend too much time on social media, don’t trust liberal government, watch out for the chemical make up for our medicine. I suppose, though, that in the end, that’s the point. In the end, good horror needs to be able to outlast the horror of its own era. If it doesn’t resonate forward, it’s not going to make it through to the next era.
“We’re not the only ones who still know what love is!”
It’s Romero who’s name comes up in relation to the hive mind and the mindless destruction of self but I think that we do a disservice when not talking about the horror that came out of the Red Scare. And I think that it’s this fear of lose of humanity that makes this genre of horror still work. I still hear people placing themselves into in groups and out groups like this in arguments.
Remember, dollfaces, that it doesn’t matter what side of an argument you find yourself on. It’s always the other side that’s wrong.
