Backstage
Menu
Research summary
Zombie: The Biggest Microcosm of American Society
I first time touched zombie video game when I was only 8 years old. I watched my cousin playing Left 4 Dead for a whole Sunday afternoon. At that time, I started my trip with zombie culture. I began to research everything related to zombie and write some stories in my middle school English class. From those research, I found out that zombie is not just something people have fun in game but zombie has some social meaning such as the black history in America. In my research, I will focus on the history of the zombie and how does these history related to American society. But I will put my main point on the black culture and racism. In my adaptation, I will use my favorite video game Left 4 Dead 2 to adapt and make a movie. And I will focus on the adaptation of my film language and build a lot of meaningful and suggestive dialogues. Through these dialogues from different characters, those deep problems of society of our society will be covered and adapted to warn our society. In the story, I will make a racism conflict between different skin-color characters and all these society problems will be talked in the process of the film.
Annotated Bibliography
“Left 4 Dead 2”
This article talks about the background of the game Left 4 Dead and the plot of the story. As usual, the plots you know from playing this game is not specific enough because of the limit of time. In this case, the game producer usually publish more details information in game magazines. I get more information about the plots and background of the story form this article.
The story starts around noon in Savannah, Georgia. As the last rescue helicopter leaves the building, four unlucky Survivors climb up the hotel to find that they were just a couple of seconds too late. With this newfound predicament, the group decides to go to a mall, where it is said that another evacuation center is still in operation.
These additional information gives me better chance to adapt. Based on the character meet, I could adapt how they meet and where they meet in detail in my adaptation. For instance, one character probably saves another character form dilemma. In this case, they probably have stronger relation than others. Through the talk of background, audiences can get some hints.
“The Survivors”
In this article, the writer gives us the details background of four characters—careers, characters, hobbies and etc. By using these details, I am able to adapt the characters to match the main idea of my adaptation racism.Nick's autonomous personality makes him reluctant to integrate fully with the group. In Dead Center, he either tells the others not to bother remembering his name as he does not intend to stay with them long, or forgoes mentioning his name when asked. Nick is also quite abrasive when talking and is not hesitant to insult others, especially if they cause misdemeanor on him. This is most likely a result from his past as a con artist.
In the setting of the character, Nick is a person who does not like the group. In this case, I am able to choose him to be the person who has racism to the black. This becomes more convictive and more reasonable.
“History is what bites: zombies, race, and the limits of biopower in Colson whitehead's Zone One” *
This article written by Jessica Hurley is putting the race between whiteness and blackness as its biopolitical concern through the Hollywood representations of the zombie and analyze zombies in different aspects. In the article, Jessica watched the culture of zombie through its skin,
In a 2013 episode of the television game show Family Feud a white contestant, asked by host Steve Harvey to "name something you know about zombies," responded: "black." This answer left Harvey visibly shocked and was widely reported on the Internet as an example of contemporary racism. But "black," drawn from the far reaches of this contestant's cultural consciousness (as can be seen in the troubled pause, the frantically reaching eyes), is indeed the defining feature of the zombie no matter what the skin color of its body's original owner(2).This article gives me more aspects (skin of zombie or infection) to adapt my film. It not only gets me the idea why we uses these aspects to zombie but also put them into the story of movies and novels.
“Zombies--a pop culture resource for public health awareness” *
The article looks through the history of American zombie and focus on how zombies express in our social public health. Instead of racism in America, film could cover a little bit other serious social problem. In the article, the writer talks about how zombie related to our and noted how the infection setting similar to some disease like rabies,
“Although zombies are certainly not the only favored supernatural creatures in modern times, they appear to be the best conduit to educate the layman about reemerging infectious diseases such as rabies.”(3)
Few of the novels and movies pay attention to or even cover a little bit of our social health. I realize that it is a good chance to identify the infection of zombie to explain the significance of public health infrastructure and teach teenagers these health knowledge because these fashion cultures are more attractive for people.
“How the zombie represents America’s deepest fears”
The article written by Zachary Crokett and Javier Zarracina is a sociopolitical history of zombies from the origin of zombie—Haiti to the most popular TV play The Walking Dead.
This article focus on the political meaning of zombies in different period of American history. Zombie is represent as a kind of social fear of America. In the article, the writers mention one of the most black racism zombie movie Night of the Living Dead to address nation’s turbulent race relations. Also, the writers talks about “ Zombie: A Cultural History”,
“‘The film was a direct response to cultural events,’ says Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies: A Cultural History. ‘It was shown to inner-city, mostly black youth, and paired as a double feature with Slaves’ (1969) — a film about an 1850s slave rebellion. ”
This article also analyze other different reasons why zombie becomes an symbol of fear in different period of time such as the fear of mass contagion or the fear of Vietnam war. All these information are useful for the form of different characters—each character has background or family somehow related to these specific reasons. For instance, a character’s family used to the a slave owner in the south of America, so he has some acts of racial discrimination.
“The Development of Racism Within Night of the Living Dead and Jackie Brown”
This article written by Steven Russell is based on the movie Night of the Living Dead. In this article, Steven talks about the story of the movie and the relation between the black and white in the story in detail. At the same time, Steven talks about how the director creates these characters and what special meaning they have in the movie and how they are related to society problem.
Night of the Living Dead enables us to make conclusions on the different representation of black and white by using a multitude of white characters but just one black character and their subsequently connoted characteristics. We see the white population of the film to be stubborn (Mr. Cooper), immature (Johnny), passive (Barbara), fatally sentimental (Judy) and murderously systematic (the zombies and the zombie lynch mobs, both exclusively white). As the film begins, when we see siblings Johnny and Barbara on a trip to visit their father’s grave, he proves himself to be cynical as to the sentimental and religious aspects of visiting his own father’s grave, childlike in asking Barbara for sweets and teasing her for being scared in a graveyard. Yet Barbara herself is passive and equally childlike in her interaction with Johnny. Both are dressed in overwhelmingly light clothes, starting the cinematic theme that makes the distinction between light and dark. Johnny and Barbara are the only two characters that we see in daylight (save for Ben, emerging into daylight at the end of the film, examined more later) and both are fatally flawed; Johnny is the first zombie victim that we see and later in the narrative, as zombies over-run the house, his zombie returns to claim Barbara.
The director gives every character different characteristic such as Barbara or Judy. This article and movie helps me to adapt those characters in the game to represent more information. In my adaptation film, I am planing to create a character who is a white lawyer and he is always defended for black. But actually he never likes to do so. In this situation, this lawyer represents the inaction government.
I first time touched zombie video game when I was only 8 years old. I watched my cousin playing Left 4 Dead for a whole Sunday afternoon. At that time, I started my trip with zombie culture. I began to research everything related to zombie and write some stories in my middle school English class. From those research, I found out that zombie is not just something people have fun in game but zombie has some social meaning such as the black history in America. In my research, I will focus on the history of the zombie and how does these history related to American society. But I will put my main point on the black culture and racism. In my adaptation, I will use my favorite video game Left 4 Dead 2 to adapt and make a movie. And I will focus on the adaptation of my film language and build a lot of meaningful and suggestive dialogues. Through these dialogues from different characters, those deep problems of society of our society will be covered and adapted to warn our society. In the story, I will make a racism conflict between different skin-color characters and all these society problems will be talked in the process of the film.
Annotated Bibliography
“Left 4 Dead 2”
This article talks about the background of the game Left 4 Dead and the plot of the story. As usual, the plots you know from playing this game is not specific enough because of the limit of time. In this case, the game producer usually publish more details information in game magazines. I get more information about the plots and background of the story form this article.
The story starts around noon in Savannah, Georgia. As the last rescue helicopter leaves the building, four unlucky Survivors climb up the hotel to find that they were just a couple of seconds too late. With this newfound predicament, the group decides to go to a mall, where it is said that another evacuation center is still in operation.
These additional information gives me better chance to adapt. Based on the character meet, I could adapt how they meet and where they meet in detail in my adaptation. For instance, one character probably saves another character form dilemma. In this case, they probably have stronger relation than others. Through the talk of background, audiences can get some hints.
“The Survivors”
In this article, the writer gives us the details background of four characters—careers, characters, hobbies and etc. By using these details, I am able to adapt the characters to match the main idea of my adaptation racism.Nick's autonomous personality makes him reluctant to integrate fully with the group. In Dead Center, he either tells the others not to bother remembering his name as he does not intend to stay with them long, or forgoes mentioning his name when asked. Nick is also quite abrasive when talking and is not hesitant to insult others, especially if they cause misdemeanor on him. This is most likely a result from his past as a con artist.
In the setting of the character, Nick is a person who does not like the group. In this case, I am able to choose him to be the person who has racism to the black. This becomes more convictive and more reasonable.
“History is what bites: zombies, race, and the limits of biopower in Colson whitehead's Zone One” *
This article written by Jessica Hurley is putting the race between whiteness and blackness as its biopolitical concern through the Hollywood representations of the zombie and analyze zombies in different aspects. In the article, Jessica watched the culture of zombie through its skin,
In a 2013 episode of the television game show Family Feud a white contestant, asked by host Steve Harvey to "name something you know about zombies," responded: "black." This answer left Harvey visibly shocked and was widely reported on the Internet as an example of contemporary racism. But "black," drawn from the far reaches of this contestant's cultural consciousness (as can be seen in the troubled pause, the frantically reaching eyes), is indeed the defining feature of the zombie no matter what the skin color of its body's original owner(2).This article gives me more aspects (skin of zombie or infection) to adapt my film. It not only gets me the idea why we uses these aspects to zombie but also put them into the story of movies and novels.
“Zombies--a pop culture resource for public health awareness” *
The article looks through the history of American zombie and focus on how zombies express in our social public health. Instead of racism in America, film could cover a little bit other serious social problem. In the article, the writer talks about how zombie related to our and noted how the infection setting similar to some disease like rabies,
“Although zombies are certainly not the only favored supernatural creatures in modern times, they appear to be the best conduit to educate the layman about reemerging infectious diseases such as rabies.”(3)
Few of the novels and movies pay attention to or even cover a little bit of our social health. I realize that it is a good chance to identify the infection of zombie to explain the significance of public health infrastructure and teach teenagers these health knowledge because these fashion cultures are more attractive for people.
“How the zombie represents America’s deepest fears”
The article written by Zachary Crokett and Javier Zarracina is a sociopolitical history of zombies from the origin of zombie—Haiti to the most popular TV play The Walking Dead.
This article focus on the political meaning of zombies in different period of American history. Zombie is represent as a kind of social fear of America. In the article, the writers mention one of the most black racism zombie movie Night of the Living Dead to address nation’s turbulent race relations. Also, the writers talks about “ Zombie: A Cultural History”,
“‘The film was a direct response to cultural events,’ says Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies: A Cultural History. ‘It was shown to inner-city, mostly black youth, and paired as a double feature with Slaves’ (1969) — a film about an 1850s slave rebellion. ”
This article also analyze other different reasons why zombie becomes an symbol of fear in different period of time such as the fear of mass contagion or the fear of Vietnam war. All these information are useful for the form of different characters—each character has background or family somehow related to these specific reasons. For instance, a character’s family used to the a slave owner in the south of America, so he has some acts of racial discrimination.
“The Development of Racism Within Night of the Living Dead and Jackie Brown”
This article written by Steven Russell is based on the movie Night of the Living Dead. In this article, Steven talks about the story of the movie and the relation between the black and white in the story in detail. At the same time, Steven talks about how the director creates these characters and what special meaning they have in the movie and how they are related to society problem.
Night of the Living Dead enables us to make conclusions on the different representation of black and white by using a multitude of white characters but just one black character and their subsequently connoted characteristics. We see the white population of the film to be stubborn (Mr. Cooper), immature (Johnny), passive (Barbara), fatally sentimental (Judy) and murderously systematic (the zombies and the zombie lynch mobs, both exclusively white). As the film begins, when we see siblings Johnny and Barbara on a trip to visit their father’s grave, he proves himself to be cynical as to the sentimental and religious aspects of visiting his own father’s grave, childlike in asking Barbara for sweets and teasing her for being scared in a graveyard. Yet Barbara herself is passive and equally childlike in her interaction with Johnny. Both are dressed in overwhelmingly light clothes, starting the cinematic theme that makes the distinction between light and dark. Johnny and Barbara are the only two characters that we see in daylight (save for Ben, emerging into daylight at the end of the film, examined more later) and both are fatally flawed; Johnny is the first zombie victim that we see and later in the narrative, as zombies over-run the house, his zombie returns to claim Barbara.
The director gives every character different characteristic such as Barbara or Judy. This article and movie helps me to adapt those characters in the game to represent more information. In my adaptation film, I am planing to create a character who is a white lawyer and he is always defended for black. But actually he never likes to do so. In this situation, this lawyer represents the inaction government.