Christine Mattschei:
Welcome to The Horror Analysis, a podcast that takes a psychological deep dive into all things horror and macabre. Here are your hosts, Frank Horror, writer, director, filmmaker, and podcaster with a background in counseling psychology, and Dr. Elliott Rotman, a clinical psychologist with a background in acting and the arts.
Frank Horror:
At the end of last episode, we were talking about trauma and that seems to be one of the key elements in horror. I want to continue that discussion on trauma a little bit here. Speaking of trauma and using hard to deal with or examine trauma, obviously one of the most relevant topics and the thing that we've had to deal with on a global level is the pandemic, the COVID virus. And that has been extremely traumatic across our society and the impact and the toll that it's taken. And we could probably go into that as a whole topic of its own, but it brings me to the horror that reflects that is the post apocalyptic, zombie horror sub genre that we have. And that could be anything from viruses, the rage virus of 28 Days Later to just the infection of zombies from Dawn of the Dead, just eating each other's flesh.
Frank Horror:
And once you're dead, that turns you into a zombie. There's this thing about infection and disease and spreading, and the fall of our society, this post-apocalyptic world that is captivating. You have a show like Walking Dead. I think they're on season 11 now, and I've been with them ever since, and they've done all the little spinoff shows, all the little avenues they've taken and have been all about The Walking Dead. And I have to say, when the pandemic hit, I felt like, okay, I've seen this for nine, 10 seasons. I think I know what I'm preparing for here for the collapse of society. And so in a way, not to say that this was what led me through a pandemic, but it helped me personally prepare for what to expect potentially. And so let's talk about that. Let's talk about post-apocalyptic and zombie films and what that says about us.
Elliott Rotman:
Okay. Well, I think there's a whole post-apocalyptic genre, not just of films, but of literature where what happens when society collapses, when all of the trappings that we have no longer support us, no longer apply. And I think that the horror of that isn't necessarily involving a creation like zombies, which is the way we think of them now, largely through movies and George Romero's first film, which zombies now became these things that were going to kill you as opposed to the original notion of a zombie, going back into Caribbean culture, which is this person who could be controlled. And they were in this state where, through drugs, you could control them. But if you think about a book like "The Road," Cormack McCarthy, that's a very, very disturbing book because there's nothing there anymore. It's nihilistic. And what would it be like to have survived in a society where everyone else that you encounter is likely a predator, could be a slasher, could be a killer, but it's basically you against the world?
Elliott Rotman:
And what would happen if it was an us or a me or a you against them. Adding something more supernatural adds a dramatic element to it. It's you know what you're fighting. The Mad Max movies are post-apocalyptic, but there it's done as an action film. You're going up against different people. And they ramped up the action so much that the people become characters, just outrageous cars, outrageous chases, really outrageous violence with a focus on a hero. When there is a kind of nihilism where none of the rules apply and you can't negotiate with anyone or anything that goes back to that sense of dread. That sense of, I have no idea whether I'm going to survive, not because of my own wits, but because of something out there and something out there that might look human, but might not really be.
Frank Horror:
Even though the zombies are a primary threat right there by their very existence, they want to eat you, in almost every movie, television show, the zombies almost become secondary. The real threat are the humans. And I think that's the trope. Without society and the guardrails that society provides that implicit agreement of these are the laws and these are the norms of society, it becomes survival of the fittest. It's a very Darwinian. And so even if you build alliances in a post-apocalyptic world in a story like that, there's always another alliance you're going to go up against. There's always going to be some other force of society that what used to be society that is now just wild and unpredictable and out to get you because you have resources that they want.
Elliott Rotman:
And when you throw in the zombie part, you now have something else to focus on because they become a monster. They might have been your next door neighbor, but now there's no reasoning with them and they want to eat you. And they're frightening. They also can be treated as objects because however you get rid of them, if you have to shoot them in the head, decapitate them, that seems to be the proven way to do it, the horrific elements come in with a violation of body integrity. They're coming to get you. They're not going to push you down and punch you. They're going to bite you and rip out a hunk of flesh. It's never been clear to me how have you become a zombie, why it's so easy to do that to people, to simply rip out a hunk of flesh casually, but that's the whole part of the genre that it's like, they can invade us in that way.
Elliott Rotman:
But what's frightening about them is they're mindless, at least in many of the films. They become objects and it's a consequence. And there also isn't necessarily a moral element here. It's like, there's a virus through the world, you're talking about COVID, or fears about things like Ebola, which had devastated some parts of the world, not here in the States. Or the fear of Aids that when it first came out in the 80s, which we're going back, we were talking about slasher films and the moralistic kind of thing. It was like, well, you got Aids if you were sexually wrong, if you did it in an immoral way, and people were terrified at first, because it wasn't really clear how you got it.
Frank Horror:
Right. They used to think if you touch someone that had Aids, you could have it.
Elliott Rotman:
Right.
Frank Horror:
If you shook their hand.
Elliott Rotman:
That's right. Those people who had Aids initially, which were largely gay male population, they became objectified. There was a lack of empathy among [inaudible 00:08:29] portions of the society, going back to Ronald Reagan in terms of not allowing funds for Aids development. It's like they're bad. They deserve to have the slasher, the guy in the mask, or whatever, go after them. It wasn't that simple. In terms of post-apocalyptic zombies, it's a combination of things. There's one, there's the lack of, as we were talking about, the lack of societal structures, which is terrifying.
Frank Horror:
For some. Some people see that as freeing. It's starting over afresh.
Elliott Rotman:
If you survive it.
Frank Horror:
If you survive it.
Elliott Rotman:
Right. And there are people who to this day, they're preppers of some sort who are preparing for, call it, whatever. Sometimes it's nuclear war, race war, or the interesting thing about the zombie apocalypse, it's strictly through movies and television that there are some people who believe this could actually happen, although no one has ever documented an actual zombie walking among us.
Frank Horror:
Yeah. It felt like maybe five, 10 years ago, it could be more, I don't recall exactly, but there was a scare in Florida when there was a few moments where people thought this is zombie outbreak because people were biting other people. And I think it turned out to be just bath salts. People went nuts on bath salts and were attacking each other. But there was a brief moment there where our culture stopped and said, is this the beginning of a zombie apocalypse? Luckily it was just bath salts.
Elliott Rotman:
It was just bath salts. But I think it all goes into that element there of insecurity, anxiety, threat, and some kind of physical violation and threat for our survival.
Frank Horror:
Yeah. Yeah. And for resources. Again, going back to the pandemic, I remember driving to my father's house to supply him with toilet paper. And I thought I've got a precious commodity. Maybe I ought to take my machete with me or something in case somebody tries to stop and hijack my toilet paper. But once those walls of society are down, someone like you or I that we rely on that for safety, for security, for services, needed services, that's threatening to us. It fascinates me about the preppers or some people who look forward to society crumbling. And so they can start over in a new way. And maybe that's a whole different topic to talk about, but people see that apocalypse differently.
Elliott Rotman:
Well or whatever this apocalypse would be. Some people see it in religious terms, but the people who are stockpiling food and such they're feeling in control. It's like, they're going to be ready. And we'll get into this when we talk about the origins of monster movies, but during the Cold War, people building fallout shelters, pretty naively, but stocking it saying something is going to happen that is going to devastate society. It's going to be the apocalypse of Russia shoots missiles at us and we shoot missiles at them. We are going to be ready in some way. And the horror of that would be the people out there who would be exposed to radiation and infection and they would be trying to get to us. These scenarios get played out in different ways. It just depends on what elements you want to put on top that have narrative that have dramatic or emotional value. You can dress it up in all sorts of ways.
Frank Horror:
Just thinking about that. That's what tends to get rewarded for the characters in these scenarios, these survival scenarios in a post apocalyptic world, whatever that apocalypse consists of. It's the people that can adapt and can accept that society is gone and we're going to have to do some drastic, hard things that wouldn't otherwise be acceptable. And that's an interesting avenue to explore because you really have to look at moral choices and what is acceptable, what would be acceptable in that situation.
Elliott Rotman:
In those films, there's also an element there in terms of the protagonists of who's going to be courageous, who's going to be cowardly, who's going to be strong, who's going to be weak. And sometimes the dramatic tension goes to when the person who is heroic ends up not surviving. And then there's a real emotional impact because there's a sense of, oh, okay. He "deserved to." There was every reason that he would buck the odds. And then that has often a really visceral impact.
Frank Horror:
That happens often or that hero at least dies a noble death in saving the others, but you're right. It does have an impact because someone you expected to live because they had that code and they were heroic doesn't make it to the end. I guess there's a lesson in that. Huh?
Elliott Rotman:
What would that be?
Frank Horror:
I have no idea. Don't be a hero.
Elliott Rotman:
Well, you could take it that way. That's a rather cynical one.
Frank Horror:
Well, it is a cynical sub genre when you look at it. It's very nihilistic and it's the people who have that good guy mentality that they don't make it. They have to change. They have to adapt and give up some of that goodness, that what we see currently as goodness. The moral code is restructured in a post-apocalyptic world. It changes.
Elliott Rotman:
For survival.
Frank Horror:
For survival.
Elliott Rotman:
And then you have to figure out, well, who is the enemy? Who is not the enemy? There've been some post-apocalyptic due to viruses where people become vampires and then there's us and them, except the vampires look like us.
Frank Horror:
But that's our society now. It seems like we're hardwired to see in group and out group. There's always an us and them. I think that just codifies that in a survival genre where you've got your group and they'll do whatever it takes to fend off the invaders to protect the group.
Elliott Rotman:
Can you give an example of that?
Frank Horror:
In terms of a film or a show?
Elliott Rotman:
Or just even in society.
Frank Horror:
What? Something that we do now?
Elliott Rotman:
Yeah.
Frank Horror:
Oh, politics.
Elliott Rotman:
Okay.
Frank Horror:
Politics or religion. That is the absolute in group out group, because we draw a line and say, "We're the good ones. We're the pure ones here. They're the ones that are responsible for this. They're the ones that are responsible for that." They become the scapegoats and we project onto that out group. We do that even at family levels rather. We can say, "Oh, well, our family or this side of the family is good, but it's that side. They've got that drinking problem or that kid's got that." We are always drawing those divisions between the in group and out group. And I think that's something that really the survival that post-apocalyptic genre can hit upon if they do it correctly.
Elliott Rotman:
I think you're making a good point. Particularly, I think politically without getting into specific politics, but certainly over the last five years or more, one group that disagrees with the other becomes demonized. They are almost labeled as monstrous because they're out to steal your freedom, take away your guns, do all of those things. And there's no blending. There's no crossing. It becomes very binary, very black and white. And that's really the premise. When we talk about why all of this has so much power, it goes back to us, to human nature, to have an us and them.
Frank Horror:
Look at sports teams. This is Philadelphia. We throw, what was it, batteries at Santa Claus, or people get in fist fights over you're not rooting for the same sports team that I'm rooting for. That's ridiculous. To me, that's arbitrary. But some people take that very, very seriously.
Elliott Rotman:
Yeah. I wouldn't tell that to soccer fans in England.
Frank Horror:
Yeah.
Elliott Rotman:
Or something like that. Let's just come together. No. But it's the demonizing. And then that goes, interestingly enough, back into history where religious groups that have been identified as wrong, as evil, and then all of these powers are attributed to them. Much of the basis of antisemitism is the notion that well, the Jews can control the world and control all of the money and everything else. Therefore, they must be whether it's destroyed or anything else you don't need any evidence for it. In Northern Ireland, Catholics versus Protestants. I was reading about how in Afghanistan, among refugees now, different ethnic groups that are now all being thrown together in refugee centers are figuring out how to have to work together because normally they would be fighting with each other and rejecting. We see this in China. There's a group of ethnic Chinese that are being persecuted, that they're being evil, they're bringing down society. Extending that to our main topic of the horror genre is the first step is to dehumanize and objectify someone, which then lets you act towards them in a horrible or horrific way because they're not really people anymore.
Frank Horror:
They're something other.
Elliott Rotman:
They're something other. They are the other, capital O. Absolutely.
Frank Horror:
And in many ways we have a tendency to give them characteristics that make them different, subhuman, or monstrous. They're a monster.
Elliott Rotman:
Or they're a threat.
Frank Horror:
They're a threat.
Elliott Rotman:
And they will hurt you.
Frank Horror:
And that leads us into the monster movie sub genre. And that is actually the topic for our next episode. So come back for episode five, to hear us discuss monsters.
Frank Horror:
The Horror Analysis is a Frank Horror production, and is brought to you by Frank Juchniewicz, Elliott
Rotman, and William Rizzo. Audio engineering and the original theme music to the Horror Analysis were
provided by William Rizzo. Audio editing provided by Frank Juchniewicz. Sound mastering was provided
by David Parsons. The opening credits introduction was voiced by Christine Mattschei. To learn more
about our show, visit us online at frankhorror.com