lirazel | (no subject)

Two things I wanted to say about the books from yesterday that I forgot about and did not remember until I woke up this morning:

1. There was a chapter in the Lynskey book about zombie apocalypses, and one thing he noted was that part of the popularity of zombie apocalypses as a particular flavor of apocalypse is that they allow for unlimited amounts of violence that can't be morally judged because zombies aren't "real" (living) people. They allow for fantasies that are as violent as anyone wants them to be, and justify the kind of stockpiling of weapons that preppers in the US do anyway.

Obviously there are other things going on, and there are people who enjoy that kind of story that aren't in it as an excuse for violence, but I think he's right that that's one reason they're so popular today.

2. My big takeaway from Proto is the reminder that people have always moved around and societies/languages have always changed. Moving around is one of the things people do. No people have a true "homeland" since all of us came from the same place originally and unless you're from a very specific part of what is now Africa, your ancestors moved around a lot in the past millennia. There are places in the world where we can say, "These were the first people who lived here" (mostly in Oceania) but for the vast majority of liveable land in the world, successive waves of people have lived there. It's a beautiful thing to have a particular and deep relationship with a specific area of land, but that land is not a given people's in any meaningful sense. At one point in time, a completely different set of people had a relationship with that land; in the future, there will almost certainly be still another set of people who have a relationship with it. Two groups of people can have a relationship with it at the same time, and both relationships are legitimate!

The same goes for language: there is no such thing as a pure language. The only way to keep a language pure is to kill it, freezing it in amber. The very act of using language changes it, which means it changes constantly. This is one of the beautiful things about language, one of the things that makes it useful--we're constantly inventing new words and grammatical constructions to describe new experiences or to explain old experiences in new ways. Languages die out all the time, and new languages are developing right now, even if we can't tell because the rate of change is beyond our lifetime.

All of this makes me more of a globalist and makes me hate nationalism even more.

Now, I'm not using this as an excuse to justify any historical atrocities. I think "Indigenous" is a very useful political category. It's obviously morally wrong to go to a new place and conquer it via violence; it's morally wrong to stop people from using their language under threat of force. Violent change is wrong. But non-violent change is just...life. It's what humans do. So I find it genuinely tragic when a language dies out, but so long as it happens naturally, it's just the way of life, like a person dying old in their bed. Always sad! But also natural! As opposed to someone being murdered or being deprived of what they need to live.

People are people are people are people and we always have been. I am a person who delights in the diversity of human experience, societies, perspectives, cultures, languages. But what we share is ultimately more important. And these ideas are not in conflict: our diversity, our specificity is one of the things we share! But it makes zero sense to me to try to draw lines between people and say that one group is inherently different (always with implications of inferiority/superiority) than another. Y'all means all y'all!

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I haven't read Lynskey's book, but I'm really curious as to how he came to that conclusion. I've been a fan of zombie media ever since I was a child and was heavily into The Walking Dead fandom for years, mostly on the non-transformative works side of things, and I never got that impression at all. Zombie media has been popular for quite some time; it did sort of blow up with the success of TWD and with many people trying to capture that audience with a whole lot of zombie-related projects coming out, but I honestly don't see that particular connection with the fans I've interacted with, and from what I've observed. The zombie apocalypse genre is so varied, and what each creator is trying to say/what the zombies symbolize in that media is equally varied. I'm not saying that no one could possibly be into zombie stories because of the unlimited violence they can allow and the justification of stockpiling weapons, but based on my experience, it feels like a stretch to name that as a reason why they're so popular. (Which I could be missing context here for sure, I am just a bit baffled!)

Well, I don’t have any experience with those kinds of fandoms at all, so I will defer to you! Maybe he was just talking about the context of preppers, like the guys who buy AK-47s and relish the idea of civilizational collapse (a demographic, I’m sure neither you nor your fandom friends belong to!)? Since he clearly studied those groups of people, and talks about them in the book. Perhaps he encountered those attitudes among those kinds of people. Or maybe he’s talking out of his ass!

It's very possible he encountered a sect of these fandoms that I just never ever saw -- and if he's studying those groups of people in particular, then that makes more sense! (As I said, I felt like I was missing some kind of context here and almost felt like I should have read the book before commenting, lol) but I'd be really curious if they were actually fans of any specific zombie media or just the idea itself being a vehicle for their fantasies. I don't have hard facts to back this up; I'd have to go do my research. But from my general memories of different zombie media properties, characters who represent or are similar to those prepper types are usually villains and not painted in the best light. (Not that people always recognize when a piece of media actually doesn't like you: see conservative fans of Star Trek!) Anyway, I already put that book on my TBR pile and now it's shooting up the list.

but I'd be really curious if they were actually fans of any specific zombie media or just the idea itself being a vehicle for their fantasies.

Yeah, I would guess it's more people who just like to see the movies/tv shows and yell with glee at the violent scenes and much less fannishly-inclined people (who he doesn't seem to have interacted with at all).

(Not that people always recognize when a piece of media actually doesn't like you: see conservative fans of Star Trek!)

Exactly!

I will be very interested to hear what you think when you read it!

I had many of the same realizations when I started studying historical linguistics. People movements and patterns of cultural and genetic interchange are so much more complex than is commonly recognized, and we can only go back so far before it turns into "there were probably people here by this date, but we don't know who they were or how they relate to the people we see there later/now." This can be a tough topic because it's easy for people to twist it into bad-faith arguments discrediting Indigenous land rights or minimizing the significance of settler-colonialism. The conclusion I came to is that land disputes can't be resolved by who was there first because in almost all cases we either don't know, or the people groups of that time don't have a one-to-one correspondence with people groups today. Which of course is why Indigenous has to be a political category conceptualized as part of an intercultural power structure, as you say, rather than a literal category of "first people" in a place.

Yes! Exactly!

Of course, I'd ultimately like to get away from the idea of land ownership altogether, but we're a long way away from that, so in the meantime, Indigenous land rights are important.

part of the popularity of zombie apocalypses as a particular flavor of apocalypse is that they allow for unlimited amounts of violence that can't be morally judged because zombies aren't "real" (living) people.

I can't speak for everyone, but to me (and I suspect many others) zombie apocalypses are effective horror precisely because zombies once were real, living people. The concept of losing my self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-control, ability to think and reason--everything that makes me human--but still continuing to exist is terrifying. The concept of seeing my family, friends, neighbors, and most of humanity lose their self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-control, ability to think and reason--everything that makes them human--is terrifying. Having to destroy hordes of predators who used to be people like me in order to survive is exactly why the scenario is so horrific.

You see this especially in the frequent moral dilemma zombie story scenario of having to choose whether to use violence against (soon-to-be) former real living people: my romantic partner/best friend/parent/child has been bitten. There's no cure, they're doomed to become a zombie; is killing them before they lose their humanity the merciful/moral/just thing to do? Or is hiding the bite from others and letting them turn because they're the partner/best friend/parent/child I love the right/merciful/least-worst option? It's an untenable choice, and that's what makes it so scary.

I suspect the prepper/weapon stockpilers who enjoy the unlimited violence aspect of zombie apocalypse scenarios also enjoy the unlimited violence aspect of Call of Duty, or Quake, or DnD murder hoboing, and on and on. That is, I don't think there's something unique to zombie apocalypse stories that lets people feel okay about ultraviolence in this specific scenario but not others.

(Sorry, this comment got much longer than I'd intended.)

Izombie apocalypses are effective horror precisely because zombies once were real, living people. The concept of losing my self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-control, ability to think and reason--everything that makes me human--but still continuing to exist is terrifying... It's an untenable choice, and that's what makes it so scary.

Agreed that that is SUPER terrifying!

I suspect the prepper/weapon stockpilers who enjoy the unlimited violence aspect of zombie apocalypse scenarios also enjoy the unlimited violence aspect of Call of Duty, or Quake, or DnD murder hoboing, and on and on. That is, I don't think there's something unique to zombie apocalypse stories that lets people feel okay about ultraviolence in this specific scenario but not others.

You are probably right!

Honestly, hearing from people who knows waaaaaaaaaay more about zombie media than I do makes me discount his theory!

No worries for long comments, not ever! I like long comments!