The Horror Genre is designed to tap into our
deepest fears and anxieties, and what is suggested is often more frightening
than what is revealed. The fears that are revealed in “The Walking Dead” and
“Dead Set” reflect upon the suggestion of the possibility of a dying world full
of plague, depravity and sickness. They also include anxieties about the
invasion of a person or person’s own personal space. The picture of a dead
world: grey sky and polluted air relates to today’s industrial economy and the
worry over global warming.
“The Walking Dead”, for example, is a horror drama
television series developed by Frank Darabont and based off a comic book series
of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.
Set
in a post apocalyptic world, the main character “Rick Grimes” wakes up from a
coma to find a desecrated world dominated by flesh eating zombies or as they’re
referred to in the series as ‘walkers’. Rick sets out to find his lost family
and on his journey he meets other survivors along the way.
The
bleak, grey landscape reflects a dying world, which is a picture everyone
fears. The huge change between two worlds experienced by Rick is very shocking
and he is quite distraught by it.
In
addition to the setting it involves the survivors going to extreme and thrilling
lengths to see through the apocalypse and stay alive for as long as possible.
It is noticeable to reference small groups of people and large groups of
Zombies showing the stakes to be very high knowing that there are more Zombies
than there are surviving humans.
As
well as that it is easy to picture a small group of people in a secluded place,
which they cannot get away from. They are trapped and coming at them from all
directions are a vast number of Zombies. This reflects the fear of personal space
being invaded. This theme continues in ‘The Walking Dead: Episode 2 – Guts’
when Rick and other humans are trapped in a shopping centre.
In
acts of panic and desperation people are fleeing across the country to various
refugee camps. This reflects the desperation and degradation people in the real
world experience as migrants. Everyone can recognize the desperate position
that the main characters ‘the survivors’ are in.
What
is effective about Zombies is that there is a simplistic yet horrific point of
identification that can be portrayed. These are people who used to be like us,
ordinary members of the society who have died and have been resurrected with
only one thing on their mind: to eat the flesh of the living. They are
brain-dead and lifeless in movement as well as appearance. “Re-animated corpses with an unstoppable craving for human
flesh, especially brains have invaded pop culture like never before. For
staggering, slow-moving monsters, zombies have become quite a force in the entertainment
industry over the past decade.” – Radford (2012) this in turn
reverts to the description of Zombies being “Real
flesh and blood creations that shamble through the shadows and our nightmares”.
– Swancer (2014) symbolically Zombies link to everyone’s basic fear,
which is death.
German expressionist films of the 1920’s,
influenced by the English Gothic novel, were also obsessed by death. Creatures
like Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies are fictional representations of death,
sickness and horrifying changes of identity.
Gothic horror or monsters create suspense and
thrills over death-related subjects. The chemical activity of the brain is
stimulated by this representation of a form of fear. “Fear is the unpleasant
feeling that we get when we are aware of danger or if we are anticipating
danger. And what’s actually happening is the brain is releasing chemicals
through the body; giving us that human built in – flight or fright response.” –
Lewis (2009) and furthermore Film and or TV provides a very strongly visual
medium because what is being viewed produces pictures in the mind of the viewer
which will stay for a very long time.
It is the intention of the filmmakers to produce
scary things, but not just for the imagination, but also to pick up on fears
that are in the real world ‘The history of the horror film is essentially a
history of anxiety in the twentieth century’ – Wells (2000: 3) It is key to
identifying the different diversities of the horror narratives in how they
reflect the cultural moment. An example of this is the joke about peeping
through the crack of the door or over the top of the sofa or through the crack
of your fingers. That’s all to do with being frightened but enjoying being
frightened. We fear real invasion of our personal space and attacks by hostile
forces. The films, because they are entertainment, take the real fear out of
these threats.
What
makes it quite unnerving for an audience is Zombies are also linked to illness,
infection and plague and like plague and infection they spread rapidly. So in
‘The Walking Dead’ in a cliffhanger to the first episode ‘Days gone by’, Rick
gets attacked by a vast number of walkers and tension rises in a moment of
panic, desperation and thrill. It is a pivotal turning point in the timing
where these moments of panic and desperation happen because it is a character
in peril and the Zombies themselves look like an overwhelming threat. “For a split second, you were so afraid that you reacted as if
your life were in danger, your body initiating the fight-or-flight response
that is critical to any animal's survival. But really, there was no danger at
all.” – Layton.
In
the real world, this would not actually happen but it is the possibility of the
‘what if’ scenario which is very believable while the viewer is watching. The
possibility of being overrun suddenly and unexpectedly is a primal fear and
adds to the drama of making it more real. This also applies to “Dead Set”. In
Charlie Brooker’s “Dead Set” (2004) the setting is the modern day and uses the
Big Brother style images of ‘somebody’s watching you’ using a well known
reality TV show as the background, which makes it all the more realistic for
people to believe in.
At
one point in the story everything is natural and the next minute a mass of
zombies attack from nowhere during an eviction from a Big Brother House and the
Zombies themselves appose a composing threat. “Zombies
are the misanthrope's monster of choice. They represent fear and disgust of our
fellow man. The anonymous animal masses. The dumb, shuffling crowd. Them - the
public. They're awesomely stupid. They have an IQ of one. Proper zombies can't
operate a door handle or climb a ladder. Toss one a Rubik's Cube and it'll
bounce off his thick, moaning head. All they do is walk around aimlessly,
pausing occasionally to eat survivors.” – Brooker (2008)
“Dead
set” reflects a well-known reality or TV reality show that nearly everyone
watches. It links its horror very directly to real things. It’s about the dead
returning to life and attacking the living. Curiously there a few people left
in Britain who aren’t worried about any of this that is because they are the
remaining contestants in Big Brother.
Featuring
cameos from ‘Davina McCall’ and several former housemates “Dead Set” is
described to be a cruel and twisted take on one of TV’s biggest reality shows.
Having cameos from actual celebrities star in a horror drama specifically one
like “Dead Set” makes it all the more believable to relate to the everyday and
makes the ‘what if’ suggestion all the more influential on the viewer and
causes great dramatic effect.
As
Chris Moran of The Guardian describes it to be “A
perfect example of the benefits of aiming low. A lot of the mechanics of the
plot are familiar from its many predecessors, but the new context and the care
lavished on it holds the attention. A lot of the weight falls on Jaime Winstone's shoulders, and she
pulls it off with aplomb, bringing just the right blend of vulnerability and
strength.” – Moran (2008) this shows that a viewer who has watched the show has
gained an atmospheric understanding of the authenticity of what is being
presented in front of him.
The
Main character Kelly, who is a production runner working on the fictional
series of Big Brother, finds herself trying to fend off the walking dead alongside
her producer boss Patrick, boyfriend Riq and the remaining Big Brother
housemates. The drama in Dead Set very quickly escalates and spirals out of
control and the interchange of events is quite traumatic when the Zombie threat
happens. What the viewer believes to be the set up of a well known real reality
TV show to change into this weird post apocalyptic world within a matter of
minutes is really daunting and gripping and what it eventually becomes is a Do
or Die situation where it is kill or be killed.
The
Zombie threat that Brooker presents in “Dead Set” is very similar in comparison
to the way the Zombie threat is presented in “The Walking Dead”. The Zombies
are covered in blood, their eyes are dead shot and they are quite slow and
ridged in movement and in vast quantities of numbers the threat becomes all the
more menacing for the survivors. It is highlighted in “Dead Set” from the main
character Kelly that to kill a Zombie you must remove the head or destroy the
brain, which she shows by beating a Zombie to death.
And
comparing it to the Zombie menace in “The Walking Dead” like the walkers the
Zombies in “Dead Set” are attracted by high frequency sounds such as: loud
banging or a car alarm for instance.
If
you look at the main characters of Rick and Kelly and how they react to the
crisis which is presented in front of them. Rick is a Police Officer and
therefore a member of the authorities, so it is natural for the viewer to have
confidence in him because he is the man who will pull through and find out all
the solutions to the multiple problems, which are faced. Where as Kelly is in
no position of authority both in rank and her job and when the viewer watches
the way she reacts to the apocalyptic crisis you gain an understanding that she
is very much as clueless as the viewer is and it is Brooker’s writing that
gives the viewer the interest in investing in this character into finding out
how she deals with the situation at hand. She is an opposite to Rick as she is
portrayed as being an ordinary, normal girl who has her life changed by
catastrophic events and lashes out in moments of dire peril as part of a do or
die desperation to stay alive, having said that Kelly is like in Rick in some
ways because she is intuitive to the circumstances and her surroundings, she is
a tactical thinker and she is good at making decisions where other supporting
characters around her in the Big Brother house are clueless.
Looking
back in relation to the real world and how it is in “Dead Set” It is portrayed
to be Brooker’s way of pointing a finger at society and the way of life and
showing off to an audience ‘this is the world and look how awful it is now and
how is it any different in comparison to an apocalyptic world with a bleak
landscape and polluted air and heavily populated by flesh eating monsters who
want to eat you’ and using a setting like ‘Big Brother’ for instance shows of
the depravity of the world we live in as it is a show which is a common form of
bear bating for only the purposes of entertainment and we take pleasure out of
watching shows like that for our own personal pleasure.
As
Brooker describes when coming up with the ideas for ‘Dead Set’ “I was watching Big Brother when another thought struck me. All
zombie movies eventually boil down to a siege situation. What better place to
hide than a fortified house thronged with cameras? Every person in the country
must've fantasized at some point about what would happen if some terrible
apocalypse occurred during a run of Big Brother, leaving the contestants
oblivious. So that would be the starting point.”– Brooker (2008) it plays on
the viewers mind and the creative thinking but also having a gripping motive at
the heart of it, which is the Zombie threat.
From a viewer’s response Simon Pegg
says, “Despite my purist griping, I liked Dead Set a lot. It had solid
performances, imaginative direction, good gore and the kind of inventive
writing and verbal playfulness we've come to expect from the always-brilliant
Brooker. As a satire, it took pleasing chunks out of media bumptiousness and,
more significantly, the aggressive collectivism demonstrated by the lost souls
who waste their Friday nights standing outside the Big Brother house, baying
for the blood of those inside. Like Romero, Brooker simply nudges the metaphor
to its literal conclusion, and spatters his point across our screens in blood
and brains and bits of skull. If he had only eschewed the zeitgeist and
embraced the docile, creeping weirdness that has served to embed the zombie so
deeply in our grey matter, Dead Set might have been my favourite piece of
television ever. As it was, I had to settle for it merely being bloody good.” –
Pegg (2008) from a viewer’s point of view it shows how Brooker can represent his
ideas on the world and society we live in and turn it on its side through the
power of suggestion and creative thinking and create a drama that influences
the right reactions so well.
In conclusion to defining horror and
the media influences on how this popular genre engages its popularity on an
audience and embodies changing cultural anxieties it is a matter of an apposing
threat Zombies for example attacking the everyday society and people looking
scared it creates a message to the viewer that ‘these are monsters, they are a
threat, they are meant to be scary’ and the viewers gains an understanding from
this and a connection is made triggering off a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and
ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles.
This chain
reaction is triggered off by a sequence of scary moments or a scary moment in a
horror film or TV programme, which creates an image of a monster that is
implanted into the mind of the viewer and the viewer believes that it is real
because their minds are telling them to believe it. But because its fiction it
is clearly demonstrated in an obvious way of relating to real fear in a
fictional reality.
Bibliography
BOOKS
· Simpson, P., The Rough
Guide to Cult Movies – Rough Guides ltd. (2010)
· Cherry, B., Horror, Routledge
Film Guidebooks – Routledge (2009)
DVDS
· The Walking Dead – The Complete First Series DVD – (2011)
· Dead Set DVD – (2008)
· Doctor Who – The Deadly Assassin DVD Featurette: Frighten Factor
(2009)
WEBSITES
· Layton, J., How Fear Works
– science.howitworks.com
· Moran, C., Charlie
Brooker’s zombie show keeps the undead alive - The Guardian, 28th
of October (2008)
· Pegg, S., The dead and the
quick – The Guardian, 4th of November (2008)
· Swancer, B., The Mysterious
Real Zombies of Haiti – mysteriousuniverse.org, 5th of August (2014)
· Radford, B., Zombies: The Real Story of the Undead – livescience.com
10th of October (2012)
INTERVIEWS
· Reality Bites – Charlie Brooker Dead Set Interview, The Guardian
(2008)
Daniel Bury, 12th of March 2016.
