What we talk about when we don’t want to talk about Zombie waste
They have to go. All they do is sleep and eat. Doesn’t matter where we start.
Scene 27: Some unwary living thing enters the frame, as a boarded-up window is breached; fetid forearms, all pustules and bubonic-ghastly surf inside. A feeding frenzy begins.
Scene 28: Hunger slaked, the undead then settle in for a bit of inactivity: Zombie siesta, if you will.
Scene 29: A cereal bowl full of human brains: the perfect midnight snack. This will start the process all over again.
I have never seen a culture — if it can be called that — so obsessed with massive consumption of raw flesh followed by hibernation. And what’s missing from this picture? I’ll tell you, because you’re wondering too. They have to “go,” right? And yet, this simple and basic biological need is handled the same way Hollywood handles the indelicacies of many human bodily functions: Just ignore it.
Well I for one will not. I have a serious problem with that. When I gotta go, everyone knows it. I make no excuses, nor do I consider the faint of heart. Make way everybody — Papa’s gotta move. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. More to the point: it is inaccurate reporting from the field. We should be knee-deep in zombie shit as the camera pans the horizon. Seriously.
First, some fact-like statements:
- There are no morbidly obese zombies. Go ahead, try and find one. This is a killer self-enabling combination of feast and sloth, with no discernibly healthy exercise in between, save the skulking and shuffling about they seem to be famous for. And yet, only wraith-like zombie skeletors seem to stalk the landscape, hollow-cheeked, slack-jawed and svelte as crayons.
- It’s just not plausible to suggest someone or something so slender of shape could ingest so much and not be violently discharging copious amounts of waste. C’mon, writers, throw me a bone here — metaphorically.
- The zombie lifestyle is three equal shares: foraging/feasting, repose (sloth), and evacuation of bowels.
Okay, here’s my point: Given this — albeit sketchy — data, we are forced to assume the zombie metabolic process infinitely more efficient than our own. So, where is the waste? If zombie activity number one is feasting on raw flesh, zombie defecation cannot be very far behind on the charts, in particular when you suppose zombie activity two to be sloth. In other words, my theory is sound — and difficult to disregard.
And it doesn’t have to be “gross.” That misses the point, I think. We are missing some huge opportunities for zombie comedy here. Imagine the hilarity of one of our would-be heroes in an escape attempt, slipping on a fresh load of zombie leavings. What an insult! As a mile marker for scale of suffering a human indignity, this is off the charts. But, this portrayal of “reality” will be seen by those weaker-stomached of you (prudes, I say) as unconscionable. “Gross,” you will say, and leave me to wage this fight alone. Fine. I am up to the task.
Really — how much more disgusting would it be for us to see a zombie unbuckle, squat and push a big loaf out? Minimally, I say. But I am railing against a big machine, culturally, anyway. American audiences will have no truck with zombie taking a leak. Decapitation, ingestion of entrails, yes, O-K. But an undead ghoul, standing behind a tree, watering the lawn? No thank you, friend. Why not? It’d be far more realistic, at least; presuming zombies eat and drink to sustain a biologically functioning carbon based, quasi-life form. Let them piss or take a dump in the street. What do we care? It’s a filthy mess down there anyway, and you know that’s what they’d want to be doing, really.
Scene 29, (rev.1): See the staggering, shuffling undead ghoul suddenly stop by a telephone pole. He looks around, (or not, really) unzips and whizzes his heart out. (Director: okay to interpret literally.) He shudders, zips back up, looks into the camera and shrugs as if to say, “Hey, that’s how I roll.”
It’s realism, plus a bit of levity. Something lacking, and sorely needed in all these zombie epics. So here, we kill two birds with one stone. And maybe eat one ravenously afterward, should we so choose.
It says much about our American culture that we are all too happy to consume until we are undead, sleep fiendishly, and never have to worry about, and deal with, our waste matter. It’s always comfortably outside the frame. Tell that to the sanitation workers at the city dump; at the sewage treatment plants; at the 50 story incinerators which choke the urban sky with acrid clouds. Go and tell them about your reluctance to acknowledge our waste removal process. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You won’t be able to reach them for comment: They are all on an extended lunch break. This, to be followed by a nice, suspiciously long nap.
I think we would like to fancy ourselves the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood type of character in these stories. We ride into town and lo, the righteous zombie slaughter begins. Feasting on human flesh, brother? No, no, not on my watch – And so the judgment day hatchet cleaves the zombie melon neatly in two. Mmmmm, so tasty. The problem with associating ourselves with this mythical hero is simple. We just aren’t that. We’d like to believe it, but unfortunately we are more likely to be the one with a halved melon on both sides of our necks wondering what just went down.
