King Kong and Zombies

Class Notes 

Gothic Horror

King Kong Film

Formula for the gothic romance – fate driving you forward toward a particular goal but you don’t trust it because love is doomed etc.

Heroine is more complex

Dramatizes the first step of her voyage

Love triangle between the heroine, the hero and the monster

Ideal past has eroded away

Civilized vs. the savage

Never was a book- novelization done after the movie

Construction of the savage as a stereotype- was mostly used to justify imperialism

(Central social issue of New Zealand)

King Kong and special effects

Deep dark woods

Isolated Island

Larger than life monster

Nature as the enemy

Paranoia

Helplessness of the heroine

Monster vs. hero

“Marries” Kong

Zombies

-First shows up in films around the 1950s

- Night of the living dead- post apocalypse type survival story

-Why is it popular?- cheap to make, survival skills, hanging on or letting go, motif of being able to let go of your loved one-see them change- zombification, plays with our ideas of morals, about identity, Alzheimer’s = actual zombification, responsibility of the survivors

- The situation of over population- something that we all can see and feels out of our control

- Our population currently is unsustainable

- The paranoia becomes personal

-Paradigm shift

-Zombies are given this incredible amount of freedom with this huge consequence

- Zombies = Immigrants= subtext

- The hope of survival or despair of the population and their reaction

-Isolation = a challenge

- Cleansing aspect tied to apocalyptic ideas

-Depressing/ not really narratives of hope

- The zombie narrative is, you lose- they overwhelm, there is always more

- The hungry ghost aspect- unsatisfied in this life

- The slowness, easy to defeat but its inevitable

-Always more zombies then there are non-zombies

-Some people are already zombies (Shaun of the Dead)

- we fantasize about the end of the world

- the group vs. the individual 

-real enemy isn't entirely the zombies but human nature itself 

-what is savage and what is civilized????