BBC3: In the Flesh
Apr. 21st, 2013 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethRather wish I hadn't watched that.
I thought it sounded like an interesting new take on zombies. I'm not a big fan of horror where everything's bad and then everyone's dead, so I liked the idea of there being a treatment and an after.
It was still horror. Just not mindlessly.
So, bloke called Kieren Walker used to be a zombie. The most straightforward gory horror scene was the very first one, zombie attack in a supermarket, black girl dies. Turns out to be a flashback from the zombie that killed her, who is having drug treatment for his 'Partially Deceased Syndrome' and being told it weren't his fault what he did while untreated. Interesting beginning.
I'd read the Writers Room blog where the guy said his first story idea was about a guy who had a psychotic episode and did something horrific then got treated and had to go back to the community and face reactions.
Knowing he started out writing about mental illness made the whole thing extra twisted sick.
The community the zombie goes back to has spent years killing zombies on sight. Then the law changed and they're supposed to bring them in for treatment, and they get paid per person. And I couldn't get it out of my head that this started out about mental illness, and I've been reading about Haitian zombies which are, basically, mentally ill people, and the whole thing made me feel sick. But idiot that I am I didn't just turn it off.
If you want to watch it yourself unspoiled don't read the rest of this. Obviously. But, spoilers, in case that weren't obvious already.
So, it turns out to still be about mental illness, because Walker, the main character who was a zombie, had killed himself. And weren't too happy to find his parents hadn't cremated him. So effectively he's back from having attempted suicide, on meds with nasty side effects, and with his parents desperate to treat him like everything is normal but his sister being really confrontational. The three episodes build up to his dad confronting him, yelling at him and telling him off, because his dad found him after he slit his wrists. So it's a suicide story, with extra added bonus social stigma. The metaphor felt tissue paper thin around the mental illness parts. Some people come back home and have to take drugs and if their behaviour changes their parents have to call the nurse. But with the zombie layer, also have to taser them. And everyone around them expects them to become violent. Which maps to some social stigma about mental illness really, really well.
Except in this story it's based on a truth, and in real life mentally ill people aren't actually more violent. More likely to be victims of violence yes, more violent, in general, no. So I keep seeing that first idea but like this it's just evil.
But that's not all: the reason Walker killed himself is because a friend of his, Rick, joined the army then died. Then that guy comes back too, another treated zombie. He's dropped off by the army in full uniform with medals on, war hero returned. There's a reunion with Walker but it's all angst and woe because the guy's dad always hated Walker and wants his son to be exactly like him, and what he's been doing is killing zombies. So he wants his son to kill Walker, and to try and change his mind, Rick takes his makeup off and looks as zombie like as possible and then goes and tells his dad that if Walker is evil then he is too. And after that point I really really wished I hadn't watched this. Because the father takes it as a cry for help, as Rick calling himself evil. The father is saying to Rick that he understands, he's in an intolerable situation, he wants out. And you can see it coming. There's only one thing that man in this kind of story can do. But they don't show you, not until Walker finds the body.
So, bloke comes back from the war different, father decides he's a bad copy and kills him and decides to wait until his real son comes back. That's mental illness from a couple different angles. And they both get killed.
And one last layer of making me ill: while they never flat out said it, it's pretty clear Rick and Walker were a couple. There was no kissing or declarations, but they talked about how they 'messed around' and how Walker sent letters, 'kept us going', and in their den there was Rick + Ren 4ever or similar, and maybe all that is friends, but then Walker's mum said she understood because she'd lost someone too, and it wasn't a story about someone's death, it was about someone she was dating dumping her. So without actually saying so or doing anything positive and supportive or nice, they were pretty clearly a couple. And that was what Rick's dad couldn't stand. And that makes the makeup a coming out scene, and it ends in murder.
Evil, insane, dead: do we need to tell this one again?
I just searched for reviews. SFX covers the metaphor minefield. And then I found this interview with the writer who reckons Kieran and Rick weren't having sex, Rick just couldn't handle the idea of it. So it's not just being coy with the hints? I'm actually annoyed about that. The writer's room blog was about learning to pull the trigger, so he went as far as the violence could go, but apparently not as far as the emotions could.
So to recap: Murderer, made that way because he was suicidally depressed, and gay. In love with someone who comes out to their dad and gets killed for it.
Maybe the point was to make the ill people sympathetic and condemn the violence, but it starts out by making there be actual brain eating murders, so that's a big problem. Because it is generally considered reasonable to hold a grudge once there's dead bodies on the ground.
This is not the more hopeful zombie story I was hoping for. This is some ugly old stigmas with a metaphor slapped over them.
While the original story idea could have been about one man doing one violent thing and how people reacted to that, making it a zombie uprising makes it about a category. Making one more story that links violence and mental illness would have been a problem, since it's already disproportionately represented that way. Making a story where the entire category invariably are violent, and then linking it to mental illness?
I feel sick and I rather wish I hadn't watched that.
I thought it sounded like an interesting new take on zombies. I'm not a big fan of horror where everything's bad and then everyone's dead, so I liked the idea of there being a treatment and an after.
It was still horror. Just not mindlessly.
So, bloke called Kieren Walker used to be a zombie. The most straightforward gory horror scene was the very first one, zombie attack in a supermarket, black girl dies. Turns out to be a flashback from the zombie that killed her, who is having drug treatment for his 'Partially Deceased Syndrome' and being told it weren't his fault what he did while untreated. Interesting beginning.
I'd read the Writers Room blog where the guy said his first story idea was about a guy who had a psychotic episode and did something horrific then got treated and had to go back to the community and face reactions.
Knowing he started out writing about mental illness made the whole thing extra twisted sick.
The community the zombie goes back to has spent years killing zombies on sight. Then the law changed and they're supposed to bring them in for treatment, and they get paid per person. And I couldn't get it out of my head that this started out about mental illness, and I've been reading about Haitian zombies which are, basically, mentally ill people, and the whole thing made me feel sick. But idiot that I am I didn't just turn it off.
If you want to watch it yourself unspoiled don't read the rest of this. Obviously. But, spoilers, in case that weren't obvious already.
So, it turns out to still be about mental illness, because Walker, the main character who was a zombie, had killed himself. And weren't too happy to find his parents hadn't cremated him. So effectively he's back from having attempted suicide, on meds with nasty side effects, and with his parents desperate to treat him like everything is normal but his sister being really confrontational. The three episodes build up to his dad confronting him, yelling at him and telling him off, because his dad found him after he slit his wrists. So it's a suicide story, with extra added bonus social stigma. The metaphor felt tissue paper thin around the mental illness parts. Some people come back home and have to take drugs and if their behaviour changes their parents have to call the nurse. But with the zombie layer, also have to taser them. And everyone around them expects them to become violent. Which maps to some social stigma about mental illness really, really well.
Except in this story it's based on a truth, and in real life mentally ill people aren't actually more violent. More likely to be victims of violence yes, more violent, in general, no. So I keep seeing that first idea but like this it's just evil.
But that's not all: the reason Walker killed himself is because a friend of his, Rick, joined the army then died. Then that guy comes back too, another treated zombie. He's dropped off by the army in full uniform with medals on, war hero returned. There's a reunion with Walker but it's all angst and woe because the guy's dad always hated Walker and wants his son to be exactly like him, and what he's been doing is killing zombies. So he wants his son to kill Walker, and to try and change his mind, Rick takes his makeup off and looks as zombie like as possible and then goes and tells his dad that if Walker is evil then he is too. And after that point I really really wished I hadn't watched this. Because the father takes it as a cry for help, as Rick calling himself evil. The father is saying to Rick that he understands, he's in an intolerable situation, he wants out. And you can see it coming. There's only one thing that man in this kind of story can do. But they don't show you, not until Walker finds the body.
So, bloke comes back from the war different, father decides he's a bad copy and kills him and decides to wait until his real son comes back. That's mental illness from a couple different angles. And they both get killed.
And one last layer of making me ill: while they never flat out said it, it's pretty clear Rick and Walker were a couple. There was no kissing or declarations, but they talked about how they 'messed around' and how Walker sent letters, 'kept us going', and in their den there was Rick + Ren 4ever or similar, and maybe all that is friends, but then Walker's mum said she understood because she'd lost someone too, and it wasn't a story about someone's death, it was about someone she was dating dumping her. So without actually saying so or doing anything positive and supportive or nice, they were pretty clearly a couple. And that was what Rick's dad couldn't stand. And that makes the makeup a coming out scene, and it ends in murder.
Evil, insane, dead: do we need to tell this one again?
I just searched for reviews. SFX covers the metaphor minefield. And then I found this interview with the writer who reckons Kieran and Rick weren't having sex, Rick just couldn't handle the idea of it. So it's not just being coy with the hints? I'm actually annoyed about that. The writer's room blog was about learning to pull the trigger, so he went as far as the violence could go, but apparently not as far as the emotions could.
So to recap: Murderer, made that way because he was suicidally depressed, and gay. In love with someone who comes out to their dad and gets killed for it.
Maybe the point was to make the ill people sympathetic and condemn the violence, but it starts out by making there be actual brain eating murders, so that's a big problem. Because it is generally considered reasonable to hold a grudge once there's dead bodies on the ground.
This is not the more hopeful zombie story I was hoping for. This is some ugly old stigmas with a metaphor slapped over them.
While the original story idea could have been about one man doing one violent thing and how people reacted to that, making it a zombie uprising makes it about a category. Making one more story that links violence and mental illness would have been a problem, since it's already disproportionately represented that way. Making a story where the entire category invariably are violent, and then linking it to mental illness?
I feel sick and I rather wish I hadn't watched that.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-22 03:23 am (UTC)~
no subject
Date: 2013-04-23 03:38 pm (UTC)Zombie uprising sounds like it should be the story of the heteronormative masses trying to destroy the "queer" outsiders with the brains, instead. Makes more sense.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-22 10:51 am (UTC)