Having been deemed to have far too delicate sensibilities to see Squid Games on TV by my children, I felt honoured to have been invited to watch The Walking Dead recently.
The first episode of this long running show aired on Halloween 2010, and my, how times have changed. For one thing, we’ve all become inured to the zombie apocalypse genre, so it seems odd when people agonise over offing a child, friend, or loved one that has clearly turned. Even I find myself saying “She’s not your wife anymore! Just take the shot!”
The most jarring thing I’ve found is the gender roles. In the little encampment one group of survivors have set up, the women seem to spend all their time doing laundry, while the men go out on hunting trips or rescue missions. The women are also generally exquisitely groomed, with tweezed brows, nice hairdos, and immaculate makeup. At the same time, the men are shown as sweaty, grubby, and disheveled. Would it be too much to hope for that a zombie show made now might look a bit different as far as gender roles go?
What sadly hasn’t dated is the surfeit of gunplay. I wonder what a zombie film set in NZ would look like? I know there are a lot of guns out on farms but guns generally just aren’t a thing for we city dwellers. Do these zombie shows add to the myth that owning guns make you safer? Because research shows that if you buy a gun, the most likely person to be shot by it is yourself, self inflicted or otherwise. I think I’d rather take the gamble that the zombie apocalypse isn’t coming.