Walking Dead

I watched The Walking Dead yesterday, the new zombie TV show. I am into zombie-themed, vampire-themed, and werewolf-themed products of modern day society, in case you haven't noticed. I believe that intelligent beings create their own reality, so popular themes and "myths" are important to me.

First, Daniel Defoe wrote a pamphlet titled Murder Considered as a Fine Art. When I first saw it years ago, I immediately became aware that a complex symbol - such as "Art" or "Money" or "Religion" - is exactly what you make of it, no more, no less.
If the Nazis had won World War II, our Holocaust Museums of today would be places to celebrate, and the pictures of Auschwitz would be sold by Sotheby's and purchased  by admiring art collectors for millions. Treblinka would be Eichmann's "Blue" period.

So it is with with Art. A show can be technically great and well written, but it can still be a nasty bit of business. Evil is not debased by our adoration of it; we are. If Murder were a fine art, so much the better for Murder, and so much the worse for us.

The Walking Dead is a great and ghastly show.
It is a diseased story of the Resurrection: the zombies rise from the dead not to glory, but to horror, infamy, degradation, and mindless brain-eating ennuie; another form of death-in-life.

Even after death, violence is eternal.

There exists the quaint notion that a bullet to the head mercifully puts things to rights and the zombie out of their misery: a well-depicted bullet shot with a good deal of detail.

Therefore, I watched a show where zombies achieved their Nirvana by well-intentioned devotees of guns, priests of the cult of violence; a future and present where the only release from death is more and more death! Impressive, eh?

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