Probably not, but yesterday I still binge watched Black Summer (2019) (except for a couple of episodes that looked boring), taking the point of view of someone who has never heard of zombies.
It opens with running. People running fast through a suburban neighborhood (filmed in Calgary), trying to reach the army trucks that will evacuate them. Something bad happened several weeks ago, and the world is in chaos, There are marauders everywhere who will steal your supplies.
Plus when people die, they instantly turn into monsters and attack their companions. The monsters are very fast and impervious to bullets unless you hit them in the head, but they can't open doors.
In the first episode, there are five interconnected stories of survivors running, and when the army trucks leave without them, trying to get to the Stadium, where all of the survivors are gathering.
There is a lot of heterosexist rhetoric: "Do you have a family?" "I'm a good guy. I have a family." "I have to find my wife/daughter/husband/ boyfriend." And no gay characters or male-male bonding to speak of. Mostly people interact in boy-girl dyads.
Finally they merge into 2 groups.
1. Rose (Jaimie King), whose husband monsterized, but her daughter got on the truck.
2. Ryan (Mustafa Alabssi, a deaf Syrian refugee). His character is apparently not Syrian. Cop-out!
At least Justin Chu Cary has some beefcake photos.
Ryan is killed (my favorite character!), and Lance gets separated from the group, leaving...wait for it... Rose and Spears, the same boy-girl dyad we see in every zombie movie ever made. They'll be falling in lo-ooo-ove soon, I betcha.
1. Barbara (Gwyneth Walsh), who is separated from her family out west.
2. Velez (Sal Velez), who is also separated from his family out west.
3. Sun (Ooh Kungsun), who speaks only Korean and is separated from her mother.
They get into a car-battle with the occupants of a pick-up truck, resulting in Barbara monsterizing and Velez and Sun...another boy-girl pair...taking refuge in a deserted diner.
1. Manny (Eddson Morales)
2. Carmen (Erika Hau)
3. Phil (Stafford Perry)
But Phil monsterizes, leaving Manny and Carmen, a third boy-girl dyad. How much lo--ooo--ove can one zombie series take?
Eventually the groups converge and make it to the Stadium downtown. There is utter chaos, with survivors shooting monsters and each other everywhere. Most of the survivors are killed in the fallout. Only Rose, Sun, and Spears actually make it inside.
The Stadium is deserted. It was not a refuge after all.
But on the bright side, a soldier brings in Rose's daughter.
What? How did he know? I mean, she got on a truck with lots of other survivors, who aren't around. How did....
Gay characters/subtexts: None to speak of.
Gay actors: None that I could find.
"I'm looking for my husband/wife": A lot.
Sigh. When is The Walking Dead coming back?
We'll always have zombie movies, because they are so easy to make. All you need is bad actors and some fake blood. Apparently, you do not even need to buy a script anymore, since they are all made from the same one.
ReplyDeleteChanging the subject, you did not need to travel so far to get to your "favorite" city. Here is the Wikipedia article for Hell for Certain, Kentucky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_for_Certain,_Kentucky
I actually borrowed the name from a book of stories by regional novelist John Fox Jr., "Hell fer Sartain and Other Stories," published in 1897
DeleteThanks--that book looks interesting. I just added it to my reading list.
DeleteEddie Spears exiting a sweat lodge?
ReplyDeleteGoogle Images said Nelson Arcand. I don't know who either of them are, so I wouldn't know. It makes mistakes all the time. Check out what happened when I searched for "Billy Joel"
DeleteIt's from a TV movie. He and his grandfather are traveling as a framing device for storytelling.
DeleteA bit of bowdlerizing is involved, though it is hetero content removed. (The story of two brothers fighting your standard eldritch horror. They actually have to sleep with an old crone to get special arrows that never miss.)
Sounds interesting. I’ll look it uo
DeleteWhat exactly would you have them do to signify a gay character? Have him prancing around in a dress? The black man is first introduced in handcuffs. The middle eastern-looking guy ends up killing everyone. And the Asian girl speaks no english yet yaps and yaps and yaps the whole time. I hate to think what they'd do with a gay character.
ReplyDeleteWearing a dress would signify that the character is transgender or a drag queen, which is something else. A drag queen is a man who likes to wear women's clothing, a transwoman is someone with a female gender identity. "Gay" refers to being attracted to members of the same sex. You don't wear women's clothes (unless you're also a drag queen or a transwoman).
DeleteSo you can't indicate gayness by feminine-coded behavior. You would show the guy with a boyfriend or husband, have him mention a boyfriend or husband, or have him flirt wijth a guy.
I was being sarcastic, "prancing around in a dress" being an example of a stereotype held by the most ignorant of the ignorant. I believe it was the first episode of Netflix's "Dead to Me" where Christina Applegate's character mentions her work partner is gay. This gay character is not seen until later, where he is shown clapping and jumping up and down in a an extremely effeminate manner. That's it. The token gay guy behaving like a twelve year old girl. To the show's credit, his flamboyance is toned down when he appears in later episodes, and is even shown to be devoutly religious.
DeleteWhat I meant was this: many peripheral gay characters given a stereotypical appearance or behavior in order to signify that they are gay. By showing a black man in handcuffs, an asian who speaks no english, and a middle-eastern looking man who turns murderous, I could only imagine what they'd do with a gay character.
The whole pushing of the "family" theme is just TV's usual attempt to draw viewers in with cheap pathos.