What if Santa Claus was a Zombie? ……..What if instead of elves , zombies were in charge of gift preparation, packaging and delivery…Just how could the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets and not so snowy streets of your town? Christmas horror and zombie horror is an odd thing. It’s oddly intriguing , and yet it is so often terribly, terribly bad. Even when it’s atrocious though, there’s a certain kitsch about most Christmas themed horror films that you’re bound to get at least some thrill out of them.
…Hear the loud alarum bells
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,… (Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells)
We live in a pop obsessed, media saturated culture and Santa Claus is a quintessential pop culture figure, and as such an icon that shapes a person’s identity; and this seemingly eternal element of pop culture is inextricably linked with our memories, helps us understand the world, and says a fair amount about us as individuals and as a society.
ZOMBIES are a value stock. They are wordless and oozing and brain dead, but they’re an ever-expanding market with no glass ceiling. Zombies are a target-rich environment, literally and figuratively. The more you fill them with bullets, the more interesting they become. Roughly 5.3 million people watched the first episode of “The Walking Dead” on AMC, a stunning 83 percent more than the 2.9 million who watched the Season 4 premiere of “Mad Men.” This means there are at least 2.4 million cable-ready Americans who might prefer watching Christina Hendricks if she were an animated corpse. Statistically and aesthetically that dissonance seems perverse. But it probably shouldn’t….. (Chuck Klosterman )
Michael Spradlin:Some carolers come to the door and you open the door and it's a crew of zombies. What do you do? If that really happens you run and you hope that they are the slow, shambling, shuffling zombies of Night of the Living Dead and not the super fast zombies from 28 Days Later. When I saw 28 Days Later I said, if the zombie apocalypse happens and we get the fast zombies, them I'm toast. The Night of the Living Dead zombies, I think I might have a shot at surviving. If they're the fast ones, I may have well just give up.
…Now – now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows: …
Spradlin:I'm dreaming of an undead Christmas, With the virus all aglow. Where the brainpans glisten, And humans listen To hear zombies tromping through the snow. I'm dreaming of an undead Christmas With every human being I bite. May your days be scary with fright, And may all your Christmas brains taste right.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
…In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells
Of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bell
Bells, bells, bells
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! …
ADDENDUM:
…But what if the audience infers an entirely different metaphor?
What if contemporary people are less interested in seeing depictions of their unconscious fears and more attracted to allegories of how their day-to-day existence feels? That would explain why so many people watched that first episode of “The Walking Dead”: They knew they would be able to relate to it.
A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies.
IF THERE’S ONE THING we all understand about zombie killing, it’s that the act is uncomplicated: you blast one in the brain from point-blank range (preferably with a shotgun). That’s Step 1. Step 2 is doing the same thing to the next zombie that takes its place. Step 3 is identical to Step 2, and Step 4 isn’t any different from Step 3. Repeat this process until (a) you perish, or (b) you run out of zombies. That’s really the only viable strategy.
"These days, the zombies don't need another commentator expounding on the special place they hold in our cultural imagination. Of late, the brain eating, recently deceased have starred in films and evenshuffled into the inner workings of plucky Elizabeth Bennet's young heart. So why should Santa Claus get in the way? To get your zombie holiday fix, you can listen to Zombie Christmas, an album of classic Christmas songs with an undead twist. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com
Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning or filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork, or following Twitter gossip out of obligation, or performing tedious tasks in which the only true risk is being consumed by the avalanche. The principal downside to any zombie attack is that the zombies will never stop coming; the principal downside to life is that you will be never be finished with whatever it is you do.
"Known for its distinct poster style and cult following, Silent Night, Deadly Night still seems to upset people a mere 25 years after its release. Heavily censored and considered "politically incorrect" by today's standards, this film still packs a punch and alot of yule-log 80's cheese too. After a terrible childhood Santa Claus experience, young Billy grows up to terrorize a winter wonderland as he "slashes through the snow" killing everyone in his way."
The Internet reminds of us this every day.( Klosterman )
…Hear the tolling of the bells
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people – ah, the people
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone
They are neither man nor woman
They are neither brute nor human
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!… (Edgar Allan Poe )
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